Graham Kennedy: Climate Change (Transport Funding) Bill — First Reading 
Graham Kennedy: Climate Change (Transport Funding) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:655;Page:4846] 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 It is my privilege to support the adoption of the Climate Change (Transport Funding) Bill initiated by my colleague Jeanette Fitzsimons. The principal aim of this bill is to alter the funding priorities of the National Land Transport Fund away from private transport and on to public transport. The transport programme of this new and perhaps mercifully interim Government allocates a disproportionate amount of public funding to modes of transport that palpably are not sustainable. This is in an era when even the National Party acknowledges that sustainability is the imperative of our time. The Government’s programme equates to six times more funding for maintaining and growing the road network than for all the alternatives combined. 
Our legislation would require that the National Land Transport Fund be spent mainly on travel demand management and also on infrastructure and services that support modes of transport other than the increasingly ubiquitous yet increasingly troubled private motor vehicle. It would require in its first year that 20 percent of the fund be spent on public transport operations and infrastructure on facilitating walking and cycling on rail freight and rail infrastructure on coastal shipping and on education and information pertaining to travel demand management. 
It was pleasing to see the Labour Party and the Maori Party extend support to this bill in its first reading as this will allow for submissions. It will be interesting to discover in due course what level of public support the bill will receive not least in terms of demand management for the main component of the Government’s concern with the bill appears to be that issue: the matter of what the public wants in its transport infrastructure. Well let us find out. The challenge is there for the Government to discover what the public really want for their national infrastructure. 
The Government’s policy at least as articulated by David Bennett rests on a descent into circular reasoning with such simplistic force that the Government is unable to reason its way back up for air. Mr Bennett derided the public’s concern about climate change and peak oil. He rested his opposition to the bill on the grounds that transport in the future would comprise electric vehicles and that we would therefore need more roads. In the Government’s brave new world the public will not need much public transport. It took Mr Bennett most of his 10-minute speech to get this logical lock-in across. It took 10 minutes of circular reasoning because of his inability to step out of the Yezidi circle he had inadvertently created for himself. 
Hon Member 
: The what? 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM 
: Yezidi—it is found in Central Asia. 
Let us analyse in the logical light of a new day the points made by Mr Bennett. Point 1: we shall not be driving electric vehicles any time soon. They are simply too expensive. Point 2: electric cars remain just that—electric cars. Our bill addresses the problem of traffic congestion and supports having a sustainable urban forum. Point 3: unanswered questions still surround the technologies for batteries. Point 4: unanswered questions still surround the issue of electricity supply. Even people who drive electric vehicles today are drawing down on a grid that depends on fossil fuels. Mr Bennett made a second point that went beyond his reverence for electric cars. It was that public transport requires some minimum population density to be commercially viable and that that has some mysterious implications for New Zealand because we are a population of only 4 million. He nostalgically cited his visit to Mexico City which comprises 30 million people. He is simply incorrect. The International Association of Public Transport says that every city of any size requires an increase in public transport of somewhere around 30 percent in order for sustainable living to be attained.