Beaumont Carol: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12499] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I too rise to speak on Part 1 of the Infrastructure Bill. But I want to make a few general comments first. Even though Tau Henare is no longer in the Chamber I would like to acknowledge him as other members have done. It is good to see him back and he made a very interesting analogy about the unclogging of arteries. Unfortunately this bill will not unclog the arteries as others have said. It is an important bill in so far as it goes and it makes some very sensible suggestions to ensure that the people who provide utilities and those who control the transport corridors must cooperate. That is sensible so Labour will be supporting this bill. 
But infrastructure is about people really. It is about providing services to people and those services getting to people and it is about the movement of people on for example transport corridors. I think this is what we really need to focus on here. Certainly in many countries in the world infrastructure projects have been used in the current recession to the benefit of people both in terms of investing a lot in extra infrastructure and also providing jobs. Of course we have seen the National Government fail significantly in this area. It has shown a complete lack of leadership in the area of job creation. Unemployment in New Zealand is significantly higher than in many comparable countries as a result of that. That issue too is about people. It means that people are struggling to make ends meet and in many parts of New Zealand they do not have the opportunity to have a standard of living that we might think is fair and reasonable. 
Going back to the bill I point out that as others have commented this work was originally begun under the previous Labour Government and considered by Cabinet in 2007. I was on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which considered this bill more recently under this Government and it is fair to say it clearly has not been a priority for the Government. This bill which will unclog arteries as others have said has clearly not been a Government priority because it has been languishing on the Order Paper. 
None the less I will talk specifically about the code provided for in Part 1. I note that it is probably a substantive part of the bill and it ensures that both the transport corridor controllers and the utilities companies have to try to work together on the content of the code. The code has a process whereby others do get to comment on it and ultimately it is approved by the Minister and gazetted. Quite a lot of changes were made by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee in relation to this part. I think they were all positive changes. Many of the submissions were quite technical but they were also constructive in terms of trying to ensure that we did get this right. The officials also had to deal with quite complex matters in order to get this right. [ 
Interruption 
] The chairperson of the select committee seems to be making funny gestures. I am not sure quite what that means. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: He’s about to join Mr Henare. 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: That is probably true. So this part of the bill provides a code that will hopefully ensure cooperation. 
The code requires some changes. One change that I thought was particularly important was as I said coordinating the work between utilities operators. In many parts of New Zealand we as MPs—and I would say this applies across the Chamber—hear from constituents who are concerned about the lack of coordination. During the second reading of this bill I gave an example from Onehunga of some roadworks that impacted on water pipes and other services and the complete lack of cooperation and coordination in that case. 
In Auckland we have some significant infrastructure needs. We have a fast-growing population and there are some real deficits there. I am concerned as an Auckland-based MP that this Government seems to have focused far more significantly on roading than on the public transport that we require. This trap which many countries in the world have fallen into will mean that ultimately we will never properly meet the need to move people around Auckland until we get the necessary degree of investment in transport infrastructure particularly public transport infrastructure. That is an important area for the Government to consider. It needs to look at improving its game not only in terms of improving transport in Auckland but also in relation to the other real risk for us which is the super-city structure.