Catchpole Brent: Land Transport Management Bill — Third Reading 
Catchpole Brent: Land Transport Management Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:613;Page:9806] 
BRENT CATCHPOLE (NZ First) 
: 
 I would like to acknowledge the enormous amount of work put into this bill by the previous chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee Helen Duncan. She did a tremendous amount of work and was very fair in listening to the submissions and in the work we did with her. 
New Zealand First does not believe that setting up tolls everywhere and anywhere is the answer to roading problems in this country. Congestion problems exist throughout the country and I will name just a few of the areas: Christchurch Wellington Tauranga and Auckland. They are examples of areas where congestion and roading problems exist. There are many other areas throughout the country. The use of tolling will simply make motorists pay twice. An 18.5c per litre petrol tax has not gone into roading but has gone into the consolidated account. Motorists pay that petrol tax yet they will be asked to pay a toll. They will be asked to pay twice. Therefore New Zealand First opposes the approach this bill takes of tolling everybody anywhere all over the country. 
Planning for Auckland’s motorways and public transport corridors was done 40 years ago in 1963. Sadly successive Governments have failed to provide funding for that network. Plans for the whole network were put in place 40 years ago but the funding has been piecemeal. Successive Governments have just knee-jerked from one position to another and have changed the priorities throughout the whole network. In other words each Government has based its planning on “The squeaky wheel gets the oil”. When one area has made enough noise priorities are changed. 
An example of Auckland motorway planning and key roading projects is the Albany to Puhoi realignment project north of Orewa which was supposed to have been finished by the end of December this year. That project had resource consent to feed traffic into Orewa until the end of December this year but the motorway has not even started. Now the roading is not expected to be finished until 2007-08. That is one example of a project that should have been completed straight away. The Mount Roskill extension is another example. That one should have been finished 2 years ago. It was planned and funding has been set aside for it. It should have been completed 2 years ago. It is now not expected to be completed until 2006-07. Once again there has been a knee-jerk reaction. The Government has shifted funding from one area to another and has not done a long-term plan for motorway projects in Auckland. 
I will give an example of how under this bill the funding will work. Each year every roading project will have to go into a bidding war and each year the priorities of each project will be reassessed and reshuffled. In other words one may as well just take a pack of cards and throw it on the floor and whichever one ends face up gets the money. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Ask them about the reshuffle. 
BRENT CATCHPOLE 
: The Minister bleating over there is asking for a reshuffle. Perhaps his position may be reshuffled shortly. The very junior Minister over there is asking for his position to be reshuffled; he is asking to be moved off that bench. Well watch this space; I think he might be reshuffled off within the next 2 years. 
But the bidding war is a ridiculous way of producing a definite planned approach to our motorway systems. If the projects have to bid each year if they end up being reshuffled each year and if money is not planned for a long-term project then how could that possibly solve Auckland’s motorway problems? That short-term approach is the reason for this situation. It was put to me recently that the motorway planners and funders of New Zealand take the approach that tomorrow is the immediate future next week is the medium-term future and next month is the long-term future. Why do we take such a short-term view of projects and try to fund them in the short-term? We should be planning 25 to 35 years ahead and we should plan the funding for it. We should plan where that money is going to come from and where that money should be going. We should design our approach so that the planning 
follow the trends and make sure that the trends are not getting ahead of the funding. 
Tolling is not going to solve that problem. To throw in a toll here there and everywhere is simply going to add additional costs to individual motorists using the road. I give an example where tolling has failed miserably. The anticipated number of road users of Route K in Tauranga was 10000 vehicles per day. That figure has been reassessed back down to 6000. Currently the usage is below 2000 vehicles and the tolling ends up barely paying for—if it is paying for—the manning of the tollbooths. We are not getting any money back from the project at all. So it is a totally short-term view of funding. [ 
Interruption 
] 
I would like to summarise now seeing as I have got members of the Government bleating away there. I have obviously hit a raw nerve amongst them. They really cannot stand the heat. The results of this ad hoc approach have done nothing to solve the motorway problems. If we consider the ad hoc approach to funding over the 40 years of Auckland’s motorway planning it is no wonder Auckland has gridlock for hours and hours. It is estimated there is about a billion dollars of lost revenue time and transport costs. If we add in the potential loss of business to our ports because goods from them cannot be transferred around the country then we see that the losses are far higher than that. The situation is great for other ports because they are picking up that transport and access but they cannot transport the goods back into Auckland. So it is a loss all-round. 
The short-sightedness of the planning of funding is a major cause of the problems around Auckland and everywhere else in the country. It is short-sightedness; it is short-term solutions.