Key John: Land Transport Management Bill — In Committee 
Key John: Land Transport Management Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:613;Page:9741] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 We should not be surprised that the Green Party comes to the Chamber and tells us it is OK for environmental sustainability to be put into the purpose clause of the bill and throughout the schedules as well ahead of economic efficiency because the Greens are financial and economic Neanderthals. Under their way we would have “fortress New Zealand”. We would be back where we were about 50 or 60 years ago. Under those conditions the walking bus that the Greens promote so heavily would work really well. We would be able to walk around the villages in our Roman sandals in between our morris dancers and we would have a lovely time. 
Those of us who want to live in the 21st century and take New Zealand forward need to refer to the schedules and to look at exactly what is being done to land transport in New Zealand. I want to talk for a moment about what the schedules are doing as they relate to the construction of the boards of Transit and Transfund. One of the great tragedies is that the schedules do not include structural changes to the way Auckland is constructed in terms of roading purposes. Anybody who knows the situation will know that Transit and Transfund which are referred to in the schedules play an important role in Auckland. But equally anyone who knows the Auckland situation well will know that we have a whole group of people involved. We have seven territorial local authorities the Auckland Regional Transport Network Infrastructure Auckland and the Auckland Regional Council. They all have their own boards their own agendas and their own plans. None of them are put under one simple possible structure. I know that the Minister is doing his job up there privately and secretly with the joint officials group and if he is doing it properly he will be instructing it to look at that. He will not be worrying about the fact that the schedules set out the construction of the Transit board because that is not the solution to his problems. 
I want to talk for a moment about one of the things that the Transit board will be able to do under the new plan and that is to borrow money. That is not new. As I said last night the board has had the capacity for many many years through the Minister of Finance to borrow money but it has chosen not to do so. Today at the Finance and Expenditure Committee I asked Dr Michael Cullen what he thought the fiscal implications would be of the joint officials group effort in Auckland in terms of how much money would be likely to be applied to fixing Auckland’s roads and just what impact that would have on the Crown’s operating balance into the 2003-04 period. I was shocked and stunned by the answer. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: Which was? 
JOHN KEY 
: The answer was that there would be very little impact. Dr Cullen is not intending to do very much for Auckland roads. That is just more and more of the Labour Party’s spin. Labour has had 4 years to fix the problem in Auckland and every year it has become worse and worse. The spin machine and the “Burns unit” have been wheeled out. That Government would wheel out anything—except the wheels of a car because they are not spinning in Auckland. We are losing $1.4 billion a year. That is $1.4 billion of lost economic activity. 
So I hope that the board of Transit is appointed via these schedules in a good and constructive manner. I hope that its members do not just become the Labour Party lapdogs that we know they have been in the past and that the Hon Roger Sowry indicated to the Committee they would be. We hope that this Government will not turn that whole exercise in Auckland into a vote-buying process that is merely an extension of the election but we know that that hope is wrong. 
We saw when Transit released its 10-year plan last year how cruelly Auckland had been treated. Auckland consumers and businesses came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and begged it to make alterations to the plan but that did not happen. In fact what happened was that Auckland was dropped from the vast majority of projects and projects in marginal Labour electorates were brought further up the list. That was the reality of Transit New Zealand’s 10-year plan and that will be the reality going forward under this Government because the Government cares more about staying in office about its own LTDs and about preserving power for the sake of power than about using it for the benefit of New Zealand. What a tragedy that is! 
I cannot wait until election day in 2005 when we will be able to vote that Government out and replace the boards of Transit and Transfund. Those boards will be full of Labour Party lackeys who do not deserve to be there.