Twyford Phil: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Text is subject to correction 
Twyford Phil: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4204. Text is subject to correction.] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 I want to make three points. The first is that the National Government’s fetish for building new State highway projects otherwise known as the roads of national significance has crowded out and squeezed out every other category of Government funding including local roads. All over New Zealand provincial communities are having to face up to the fact that this Government has slashed the funding for local roads.  
My second point is that the roads of national significance themselves are poor value for money overall. This National Government has utterly corrupted the whole process of evaluating the economic value of these infrastructure projects.  
My third point is that the National Government’s approach to transport is so completely unbalanced in favour of roads that other important parts of our transport network are suffering. I am talking particularly about public transport—and I want to talk some more about that—and also about KiwiRail. As a vital piece of our national transport infrastructure KiwiRail has been set up to fail by this National Government.  
But let me go back to local roads because I recently in the last adjournment travelled around parts of the South Island including Invercargill and Southland but also including parts of Otago and Clutha Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago. What I found in every place I visited is that the community the local council and the local mayor were very upset with the National Government for having cut their funding to local roads. If I may say so the people of Southland were particularly embittered by the fact that the National Government has cut the funding for local roads in that area. As you will know Mr Chairperson— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Order! You cannot bring the Chair into the debate. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Sorry. As I was saying— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: The member can traverse the area as he is but he must not bring me into it. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: As I was saying the member from Southland knows well that that area has the largest network of local roads in the country. It has one of the smallest bases of ratepayers and it is feeling the financial squeeze because of the policies of this Government. Everywhere I went the people in those communities said: “You know what? We haven’t seen Bill English for a long time around here. We haven’t seen Jacqui Dean in Alexandra for a long time. She hasn’t shown up since the last election.” And they said: “When you go back to Parliament say to the National MPs that we’d quite like to see them we’d quite like them to show up and we’d like them to explain why rural and provincial New Zealand has been hung out to dry by this Government.” They are told that they have to pay more for their local roads. They do not want to subsidise the roads of national significance because they know that mostly they are a crock and that they are a waste of taxpayers’ money which is being badly spent—billions and billions and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money wasted on projects that will be white elephants around their necks just like the Think Big projects. It is Think Big all over again. This Government wastes billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and it does not care if rural and provincial New Zealand has to subsidise its follies.  
It might be justifiable it might be defensible if the roads of national significance made economic sense to this country but they do not. Most of the roads of national significance would never have been built 5 years ago because their benefit-cost ratios are so low. Several of these gold-plated motorway projects were made roads of national significance even before the most basic economic assessment—the analysis of their worth—had been done. But no the colossus of roads Steven Joyce the former Minister of Transport declared with a great triumphalism that National was going to build these seven great motorway projects come hell or high water. We found out the other day that more than $200 million has been spent by this Government on design and investigation work for motorway projects many of which will not be built for a very long time. That is absolute profligacy. There is no justification for it.  
You know what? Under this Government transport has become a kind of Bermuda Triangle of Government spending. Vast amounts of cash go missing constantly nobody can explain it and the normal rules of public sector financial management somehow do not seem to apply. It is amazing. What did we have the other day? We had Gerry Brownlee saying that one of the things you have got to be careful about is relying constantly on cost-benefit analysis. That is very strange. In the next 10 years $12 billion will be spent on the so-called roads of national significance and the benefit-cost ratios for some reason are a bit overrated—you must not rely on them. That is very strange. But when it comes to something like the city rail link in Auckland oh well then the benefit-cost ratios are very important. In fact the city rail link has to be subject to the Government’s better business guidelines. That makes complete sense. Why not? We want our Government infrastructure spending to be sensible to be well spent and to be rigorously tested. But that does not apply to the roads of national significance and this Government should be ashamed of that. 
Hon Annette King 
: The vote-buying roads. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: That is right the roads of national vote-buying.  
The third point I want to make is that transport under this Government is so completely unbalanced and the city rail link is a really good example of that. Not only was the Mayor of Auckland elected on a platform of building a city rail link not only did the opinion polls tell us that an overwhelming majority of Aucklanders regard it as the No. 1 transport project not only has its business case been internationally peer reviewed not only will it double the capacity of the existing rail network in Auckland and not only will the Britomart Transport Centre hit capacity by 2020 unless the city rail link is built but this Government has no plan to deal with Auckland’s traffic congestion. It has no idea and it has no plan. The Minister sits in this House day after day and rubbishes the city rail link yet he has got nothing constructive to put on the table to address the problem of traffic congestion in our country’s biggest city. All the Minister has got is a proposal that the Ministry of Transport has written up that would see 1000 diesel buses in the Auckland central business district per hour—1000 buses an hour. That demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of transport thinking by this Government.  
My last point is about KiwiRail. The Government loves to trumpet the Turnaround Plan. It is going to put $750 million into KiwiRail’s capital expenditure. Yet the real story about the Turnaround Plan is that KiwiRail has been forced to put in $4.75 billion from its own balance sheet. This is not some act of charity by the Government. KiwiRail is having to pump its own balance sheet for $4.75 billion. That completely unrealistic Turnaround Plan is forcing KiwiRail to do things like lay off 220 track workers and defer 3 years of track maintenance. The Government is forcing KiwiRail to do crazy things like sell off the Hillside railway workshops sell off the tourism side of the business— 
Todd McClay 
: That’s enough punishment Phil. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: The member does not like to hear this because he is ashamed. He is embarrassed by this Government’s transport policy. It is forcing KiwiRail to close regional lines and regional commuter services like the Capital Connection. It is unrealistic. This Government does not like rail it does not believe in KiwiRail and it is setting KiwiRail up to fail. Because of the Turnaround Plan and the completely unrealistic financial targets in it KiwiRail is in a situation where it is chopping off one limb after another and soon it will be left with only a torso. Nowhere else in the world is a national railway expected to run as a stand-alone corporation and turn a profit. It is a vital piece of our country’s transport infrastructure. This Government does not believe that. It is setting KiwiRail up to fail instead of investing properly in a multimodal approach. And I am afraid to say that the junior Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Transport would not know a multimodal approach to transport if he fell over it on a dark night.  
National’s transport policy is unbalanced. The Government has a fetish for building new State highway projects at the expense of every other activity class in the transport budget. That is leading to the neglect of local roads. The Government has cut the funding for new public transport infrastructure. The Minister would know it if he bothered to pay attention but he is so obsessed with building his roads of National Party significance that he does not give the time of day to any other major transport project. The Government is wasting billions and billions of dollars of precious taxpayers’ dollars—