Sowry Roger: Land Transport Management Bill — Second Reading 
Sowry Roger: Land Transport Management Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:612;Page:9318] 
Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 This is a bill of lost opportunities but I will come to that in a moment. I want to start by wishing Helen Duncan the chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee all the best. I know she would want to be here today to speak on the bill. The submissions heard on the bill agreed almost unanimously with the principles in the legislation. However they almost unanimously disagreed with the detail. Submitter after submitter said that they supported the bill in principle but that its detail meant it would not work. 
It became apparent during the select committee process that we could make this bill work. I wrote to the Minister and offered the National Opposition’s support in working with the Government to deliver legislation to the House that would enable Auckland’s roading issues to be dealt with public-private partnerships to grow and roading issues in other parts of the country to be dealt with by a combination of road tolls public-private partnerships congestion charging and allowing Transit to borrow. The Minister and the Government chose to ignore that letter. They did not respond to it at all. Instead they chose to ditch the United Future party—transport was one of the major issues for that party when it came to the House—and cuddle up with the Greens to deliver back to the House a Labour-Green bill that every group that came to the committee has since said will not work. The Automobile Association said the bill would not deliver. Business New Zealand made the same sorts of comments—namely that the bill fails to solve the problems. The Auckland chamber of commerce said the bill is a wasted opportunity by the Government. The Road Transport Forum worried that the bill would not deliver on the Government’s roading objectives at all. The Employers and Manufacturers Association in Auckland was damning in its criticism of the bill. 
Every group lined up and said that the bill would not work including the Minister. The Minister said in the House today that it became apparent that we want to give Auckland a whole range of new options to be able to develop its roading network but it is not in the bill. That is why a joint action group was set up to work in parallel with the legislation and report early next year. If we are to believe the Minister the Government which just a few weeks ago voted against National Opposition amendments to allow for widespread congestion pricing and no doubt will vote against them in the House in a few weeks’ time—the Minister nods that it will—will come back in March full of spring in the new year and vote for them. It will decide that the joint action group will deliver what this bill cannot deliver. 
I tell people in Auckland that this legislation is a lost opportunity. The Government is stringing them along. Aucklanders need to know that this Government is engaged in a cynical exercise of stringing them along and trying to make them believe that the same Ministers and the same Labour Party members who will vote against solutions in this House over the next few weeks will miraculously change their minds and vote for those amendments in March. We do not believe that. More important as I travelled around Auckland I noted that the vast majority of groups in Auckland did not believe it either. This bill has been years in the pipeline. The Minister’s predecessor the Hon Mark Gosche promised it 4 years ago. He promised it would solve Auckland’s problems but it does nothing of the sort. 
I shall talk about some areas where the bill lets Auckland and New Zealand down. It will not deliver Transmission Gully for Wellingtonians. No one believes it will. In fact the other weekend Darren Hughes told people to stop whingeing. He told Wellingtonians to stop whingeing about Transmission Gully that there was not the money to do it and that the money was going to Auckland. The people on the Kapiti Coast are still struggling with that. The bill will not deliver Transmission Gully. It will not deliver any public-private partnership other than the Tauranga Harbour Bridge. We have gone through so much and have listened to so many submissions for nothing. The groups that looked at the bill when it was introduced said it would not work. They went to Mr Swain who told them to make strong robust submissions and the Government would change the bill. The groups made strong robust submissions and the Government did not change it. Mr Swain decided to cuddle up with the Greens rather than change the bill. 
I am worried about some other parts of the bill. The international financiers who came before the committee said that 35 years would not work and when we talked with them after their submission they said that 35 years plus 10 would not work. Why will the Government not listen to them? Why will the Government not listen to the people who are financing projects around the world? When they say this will not work what does the Government not understand about that? 
I am worried about a bill that defines land transport as coastal shipping so that land transport money can be diverted into coastal shipping subsidisation. The foreign flag bearer that comes to New Zealand from the Panama Canal and picks up some freight and carts it around New Zealand on its way back to South America will be subsidised by the New Zealand taxpayers from their road transport fund. They do not think their petrol money is subsidising foreign-owned shipping companies. Why have Labour and the Greens insisted on that being in this bill? Why have Labour and the Greens consistently voted against a cap being included in the bill to stop the raiding of petrol money so that a maximum of only 10 percent can go into public transport? Labour and the Greens have consistently voted against that. They want an unlimited amount of road transport money available for things such as public transport. Road users will be appalled when they find out that that is what will be happening to their money. 
This bill has been a lot of effort to get a second bridge in Tauranga. That is the total upshot of this bill. I say to the House today that the National Party will be moving a series of amendments through the Committee stage—the sorts of amendments that the Minister is whispering around Auckland he will support next year. We will test the Government and the Auckland Labour members to see whether they are prepared to vote for the solutions—solutions that the Mayor of Auckland tells us Labour members are pretty keen on in private. We will see whether they are pretty keen on them in public. We will see whether they are prepared to vote for them in public. I do not think they will. I think that Labour Party members are saying one thing in Auckland and a different thing in Parliament. The Auckland Labour members will be tested on that over the next few weeks. I think that will become a test for this Labour Government. 
The lack of transport infrastructure is hindering economic growth in this country—nowhere more so than in Auckland. The Government had an opportunity to go with any political party other than the Greens. National New Zealand First ACT and United Future are at one on fixing that problem. Labour and the Greens are committed not to solving the problem but to making it worse.