Cunliffe David: Infrastructure Bill — First Reading 
Cunliffe David: Infrastructure Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5844] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 I am slightly relieved not to be the previous speaker—the Associate Minister for Infrastructure Steven Joyce—but I will pay him a compliment. The Minister walked into a bit of an infrastructure buzz saw early in his tenure when he cancelled the regional fuel tax in Auckland and then woke up the next morning and realised that he had thereby cancelled $137 million worth of railway stations. The locals were none too happy about that. However unlike Minister Joyce’s colleague Anne Tolley—who has also made a rather unfortunate cut in the area of adult and community education—he had the foresight and listening ability to realise that he was faced with an unintended consequence and he took steps to reverse it. The solution he came to was a 60:40 split between the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Auckland Regional Council. The bottom line is that those stations are now being built. Good on him. I hope his colleague Anne Tolley will take a leaf out of his book. 
Labour supports the Infrastructure Bill with enthusiasm in respect of Parts 1 to 3 but does not currently support Part 4 which we believe needs to be carved off and given careful separate analysis for reasons I will go into. In my remarks tonight I will say three things. Firstly Labour is an enthusiastic supporter of infrastructure development and our record proves it. Secondly the key provisions of the bill in Parts 1 to 3 are necessary and with due select committee consideration should be worthwhile and deserve support. Thirdly Part 4 is complex and does not belong with the rest of the bill. Indeed we suspect that it has been placed with the rest of the bill to confuse two things in the minds of the public: first the accepted need to smooth the way for needed infrastructure; and second what appears to be a push-back from some in the real estate community against the necessary provisions to require affordable housing in certain economic circumstances. That is why we think Part 4 needs separate consideration. 
I will begin by discussing the first of those three major points. Labour is incredibly enthusiastic about infrastructure. We want to see New Zealand moving. We like the Government accept that infrastructure barriers can be a significant block to investment. How would investors feel about new industries if they could not be assured of an adequate energy supply of the ability to transport goods to market or in the case of intellectual property of the ability to transport ideas to market around the world using good old fat broadband pipes? 
Labour’s record on infrastructure proves we have much to be proud of in that area. Post-election I do not normally in the Chamber hark back to the good old days of being in Government. This speech is not an exercise in enthusiasm of that kind but it is relevant to recognise where the country has come from in the last decade. When the Labour-led Government was elected in late 1999 New Zealand’s infrastructure was in need of serious investment. Many new major roading projects under construction were virtually non-existent investment was barely adequate to cover road maintenance and Auckland was in danger of becoming permanently gridlocked. The railway system had been sold and was then asset-stripped. Investment in energy generation and transmission languished. 
Labour was elected to Government on an agenda for change with an investment in infrastructure signalled as a high priority. Over the Labour-led Government’s nine Budgets annual funding for roading for example more than doubled from $850 million in 1999-2000 to over $1.9 billion in 2008. Let us put that $1.9 billion into perspective. The National Government in its latest Budget has heralded the fact that over 5 years it might spend around $7 billion on roading infrastructure. On a per annum basis that is less than was spent in the last year of the previous Labour administration. Although we are very pleased to see the Government making that investment and we support it let the country not be under any illusions: that spending is no great increase. Indeed on a pro rata basis it is a slight decrease from what was spent in the last year of the Labour Government. 
Investment in public transport in 2008 was over 15 times greater that in 1999-2000. Major public transport projects such as the building of the Northern Busway in Auckland have been completed. A $600 million project to improve train services in Auckland is under way. Of that $600 million some $300 million has gone end to end for the New Lynn underground rail trench a project that will transform that community get new businesses into the area and un-gum a huge bottleneck of transport services to the city. For transport investment as a percentage of GDP we cannot really go past that example as an indicator of commitment. Transport investment was at 1 percent in 1999 at the start of the previous Labour Government and nearly doubled by the end of our term. There was the buy-back of the railway sector and in the energy sector there were major investments in generation capacity with over 1600 megawatts added to capacity since 2000 equating to $3.5 billion to $4 billion of investment. Nobody armed with those facts could possibly argue otherwise than that the outgoing Labour Government had a solid and proud record that was well based on developing New Zealand’s infrastructure needs. 
Sandra Goudie 
: Ha ha! Oh dearie me! 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Some members opposite may laugh through pure ignorance but they have inherited a party that traditionally has not represented an activist view of the State. Going back to 1935 Labour has been the Government and the party of change activism and getting New Zealand moving especially in recessions. 
I will give another example: broadband. The issue was controversial in the election campaign. Labour had committed an initial $500 million of grant money with a further $500 million to follow. That is $1 billion all up. Because it was regional because the projects were shovel ready—or I should say fibre ready—and because no return to the Crown was expected from that investment we were able to guarantee leverage of greater than one for one: closer to two for one. The projects were ready to go; the project plans had been approved and banked. The new Government came in on a promise of a $1.5 billion package which sounded good. It seduced some people but there were three problems with that package as we have now found out. First fibre to the home was never going to actually be to the home. It would have been to the kerb at best leaving the householder with $1500 to $3000 of connection cost. Second our package was ready to go whereas National has been waiting for a year thinking about its package. Third and most important our package was regional and competitive whereas unless National has a road to Damascus experience all the signs are that it may fall back on the old Telecom monopoly and put the grant money into the hands of the incumbent. Let us hope it does not do that. That is one reason why we believe that the part of the bill that guarantees reasonable and consistent access to utility corridors is absolutely essential; it was on our work programme. 
Network infrastructure providers have to make the best use of assets that are already there. For example it is well known that KiwiRail has massive amounts of optic fibre running the length of the main trunk railway line. The trouble has been that others could hardly use it. Another example that everybody knows is that because we could not get councils and infrastructure companies to work together as productively as they could have done a street was dug up to lay pipes resealed and then dug up again to lay fibre or wires. Why not get councils and infrastructure companies to work together do it once and do it right? That is why Labour introduced provisions like developer contributions and upfront consultation. We think this bill will assist that situation and we think it is a good step forward. 
Let me come to something the Government probably will not want to hear: an OECD report which Treasury officials submitted to the Finance and Expenditure Committee that revised downward the OECD’s estimate of the fiscal stimulus from this Government from the 5 percent of GDP we left it at to only 3.5 percent. Part of the reason for that is the OECD has found some double-counts like Kopu Bridge. It was brought forward 9 months as it was a good project. National members said: “Let us do it!”.