Dunne Peter: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Dunne Peter: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:648;Page:17213] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 There is a statement attributed to the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George that could be a good metaphor for our approach to transport policy in this country over the years. Lloyd George is reported to have said at the time of the People’s Budget in 1909 which brought in the welfare State in Britain at the price of attacking what he described as entrenched privilege that everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die. That is a very good summary of the way in which we have approached transport funding policy in this country over the years. 
We all want the infrastructure but we are not prepared to meet the cost of providing it. When I say “we” I mean Governments as much as individuals over a long period of time. Our response up until comparatively recently—and I will come to that point in response to the member in a moment—has been simply to defer to downplay or to downsize our requirements. When we talk now about New Zealand being a modern First World economy and when we talk about all the slogans—we used to say “first half of the OECD” and all of those sorts of things—we come back to deficiencies in infrastructure being one of the major impediments as to why we do not achieve those goals. 
There has been a huge investment in roading and public transport over the last decade and I acknowledge that. I think that it is long overdue but all it has done really is highlight the fact that we have more to do. We still have significant problems around our two major cities and in many other areas as well. We have to upgrade public transport. I hear members say that we should be placing much greater emphasis on public transport. Yes we should but it needs to be of a standard that will attract people and it needs to be reliable. There will be a good test of that I suspect in Auckland and Wellington tomorrow morning but I fear that what will happen yet again is that public transport services will be struggling to cope with passenger demand. All that does in the longer term is fuel a public view that those services are unreliable and therefore should not be diverted to in times of need. 
So we have to crack that suspicion of the worth of public transport at the same time as ensuring that our roading infrastructure is up to scratch to meet the needs we place upon it in a modern and dynamic economy. It is not a question of one or the other; it is a question of moving both together jointly in a reasonable period of time. I think that the bill in its essence attempts to set out structures by which those changes can be facilitated and by which decisions can be made about how that infrastructure can be paid for. 
A lot has been said about the regional fuel tax proposals and I acknowledge that in the times we are living in at present with mounting international oil prices there has to be a measure of huge sensitivity as to the acceptability of imposing fuel taxes to provide for transport services. But I come back to my opening point. We all want these additional facilities and services and we have to find the mechanisms by which they are to be funded. I think that the bill strikes a very useful balance in that it provides for a maximum of 10c a litre but a maximum of 5c on any particular project and it says that the projects that will qualify have to be designated by the region as specific and high priority. So it is not just a case of saying: “Let’s chuck another 5 10 or whatever number of cents it is into this vast amorphous pot called transport funding.” It is very much project-dedicated and I think that that will impose a discipline that has been lacking previously. 
The question then arises as to what level to impose. That is a matter frankly for regional councils as they determine the projects coming forward that require their funding. In the Wellington context Transmission Gully stands out as the obvious example. What we know about that at the moment is that on the table is a revised costing of around $1 billion. About half of that is already potentially funded because of the Government contribution. The balance now needs to be determined. It will come I suspect through a variety of mechanisms. Part of it will come through a regional fuel tax part of it will come from income from tolling and part of it may well come from some form of debt financing. But the point that we have to embark upon is a debate about the best way of putting that package together so that the roading programme can go forward. I think that that is the key point that is lost sight of often in this debate. We have moved on now from asking whether something should happen to recognising what has to happen and the question now is about how we achieve that objective. 
Over the years we have had many attempts through many restructurings of transport funding to try to strike the best mechanism for making progress. We had the notion some years ago of trying to equate road rail and other forms of transport in terms of what a funding allocation might be but it did not work. We went through the idea that perhaps we should simply privatise the whole network in various forms. That did not work. We have now come back to a much more mixed position. But what we need to have—and what this legislation is all about providing—is the framework within which those decisions can be made and more important within which the decisions that are made can be implemented. 
We cannot afford as a country to continue to have a situation where in our major city the ability to do business is being severely curtailed by transport requirements. I know as a frequent commuter to Auckland that it is now impossible to have more than two or three appointments in a day get around the city and go to and from the airport. In fact at some points of the day in Auckland it takes longer to drive from the airport to the city than it does to fly from Wellington to Auckland. That is an intolerable situation. People cannot get about their normal course of business efficiently and those in the transport industry in Auckland are telling me that they are now effectively dropping at least one if not 1½ runs per day simply because of the cost of gridlock. 
In Wellington we face a similar situation for different reasons. A different typography constrains the ability of this city to expand naturally but the numbers of vehicles and people coming into it continue to increase. We have roads that were designed for flows of around 15000 to 18000 vehicles a day now having to cope with 20000 or 30000-plus vehicles a day and we do not have the physical capacity to extend those roads. The public transport network in this city is stretched virtually to breaking point. In Auckland there is a developing system. It has a long way to go to be comparable to the needs of a city of a million-plus people. But we have to start to seriously address the issues and we have to start to put in place the mechanisms that will deliver change. 
I think that one of the things this bill will do particularly in the Auckland context—assuming that the royal commission on the governance arrangements for Auckland comes up with some viable solutions—is start to put a fresh focus on making sure that we can actually make significant process and on making sure that people in that city do not spend most of their working day in trying to get to and from work that people do feel able to move about and that some of the boundaries being established almost artificially because of transport requirements can be broken down. In the city of Wellington I think the situation is much more about facilitating the flow of people across what is a very wide region. 
The point is that unless we are serious about funding and serious about organisation we will not make that progress. And then we will continue to have to confront the argument about why our economic performance overall is so lacklustre. Why is it that with a good ability to produce high-quality products but in a very long thin country we are unable to be as efficient as we might be? The question automatically then turns on the transport network. 
This bill seeks to address that. I think it is a positive step forward. I acknowledge though that there will be sensitivities about how aspects of it are applied. I hope good judgment applies in terms of the execution of the bill’s provisions. But do I see that the crisis it is attempting to resolve is one that we as a country simply have to grasp by the nettle and actually seek to make significant progress on if we want to continue to maintain a reasonable standard of living.