Williamson Maurice: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10428] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I once again thank the National Party whips for giving me a speaking slot somewhere between 4 in the afternoon and around 9 p.m. because as the whips well know now that is drive time in Auckland—up to about 9 o’clock—and people are locked blocked and stopped in their cars. 
I want to focus on only one thing because Annette King gave me the entrée to focus on this the other day in the House. She brought in a graph about spending on roading and then she realised that it was not as complimentary as she thought. She did not table it and she ran away without it. So I have had the graph drawn up again and I will explain to people exactly what it means. 
First of all I will give a bit of a compliment—that is I will say that the spending on roading for this Budget is excellent. There we go; we have finally got to a point where it is excellent. But what I am really really getting a bit peeved with is Labour’s view that when National was in Government it did not spend anywhere near as much as Labour did and that Labour has spent a lot more on roading. So I have gone back and I now have a graph here and I want members to focus—and with it being the first day of televised Parliament I hope it is showing off my make-up and my hairdo at the same time. But here is a graph and I hope that everyone can see it. 
Members will see there are some blue bars there is a purple bar and there are some red bars. That is how much road spending as a percentage of GDP occurred during the 9 years of the previous National Government and a part-year that National partly funded because we did the Budget for it before the 1999 election as it was a June year. Then the red bars are road spending as a percentage of GDP spent by the Labour Government. If we look at the last one we see that yes it is good. Let us give some credit where it is due: the last bar has got to 1.18 percent of GDP. But I want the Committee to know that in the first 1 2 3 4 5 years—5 full years; not the first 6 months up to June but the first 5 long full years—of the Labour Party in Government the actual total spending on roading was less as a percentage of the GDP of the economy than it was under any of the years of the previous National Government. 
I hear Labour members say that spending has gone up. In fact I made that comment on Radio New Zealand National when the Budget came out. I said that spending was up. But spending on roading is up every year. Annette King made a joke about it and said that I was wrong that it was not true and so on. But I have the graph here for members to look at and members will see that the single line is actually the dollar funding not the percentage of GDP. The single line is the amount of money spent on roading and—hello—it does drop only once. Only in 1 year does the actual amount of money spent on roading drop—that is during the first full year of the Labour Government. The only year that money for road spending dropped in absolute terms was the first full year of the Labour Government. So let us call this programme tonight  
Mythbusters 
. Let us get into busting the myth that Labour has spent more on roads. 
I have been really struggling to get hold of a particular transport Minister because I think that Labour has had more Ministers of Transport than we on this side have had hot meals during its term in office. I think it is seven transport Ministers or maybe eight. 
Hon Member 
: No! 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Oh yes there have been. Let us go there. Mr Hodgson was one; he will remember. Let us go through them. It started with Mark Gosche then went to Paul Swain then went to Pete Hodgson then went to David Parker then I think it flicked back to Pete Hodgson and then it went to Annette King— 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: No no. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No no—the member took it over for a while after David Parker—plus we have Harry Duynhoven plus we have Judith Tizard. If we keep adding them up I think we would come up with nine. It is unbelievable but there are the facts. Unlike Annette King who would not table the graph I will seek leave at the end of this speech to table it because if anything the Government has done the right thing in this Budget year. It has committed what I think is a realistic sum of money to the road account. I welcome it I congratulate the Government on it and I give Labour an assurance that National will carry on with it. 
Here is the joke. At the last election we had a billboard with red and blue. On the red side it had: “What’s your petrol tax for?” and it listed hip-hop tours twilight golf singalong with Charlie wananga Treaty lawyers and so on. On the blue side there was just one word: “Roads”. I know that the Greens do not like the word; they cannot even say the word “roads” but if they worked with me closely they could say it. I ask them to say “roads”—come on it is not hard. Those members could learn to love roads because New Zealand does not have enough of them. 
I seek leave to table a graph showing the percentage of spending on land transport as a percentage of GDP. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.