Faafoi Kris: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9791. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Taloha ni Mr Chairperson. Thank you very much for the chance to speak at this Committee stage. Iain Lees-Galloway and Julie Anne Genter started their contributions by speaking to Supplementary Order Paper 235 I believe but I would like to start by addressing Supplementary Order Paper 234 which is still in the name of my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway. It talks about the amendments that are being made in the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill around the purpose.So I am starting at the start—a good place to start. At the moment the bill as reported back from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has the purpose set out as: “The purpose of this Act is to contribute to an effective efficient and safe land transport system in the public interest.” We are not happy with that on this side of the Chamber obviously so that is why Iain Lees-Galloway has put forward this amendment in Supplementary Order Paper 234 where the purpose should read—and we would hope that the Committee would adopt this—“The purpose of this Act is to contribute to the aim of achieving an affordable integrated safe responsive and sustainable land transport system.” It is a very good amendment and we do hope that during this debate—and perhaps a Minister in the chair could comment on whether the Committee could pick this up.I want to look at each one of these aspects that Iain Lees-Galloway has put in his Supplementary Order Paper on changing the purpose to affordability being integrated being safe being responsive and being sustainable and I want to put that into the context of the Kapiti Expressway which the Government is forcing upon the people of the Kapiti Coast.Let us start with the first one and that is affordability. As I said earlier in the previous stage of this bill the Government is spending $515 million on this Kapiti Expressway and a leaked report from Beca Group last year revealed that the benefit-cost ratio for this investment was $118 million over 30 years. The rough maths in my department says that that is a benefit-cost ratio of somewhere around 0.2:1. So in terms of an investment it is a dog. The economics case or the affordability case in terms of Mr Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper does not stack up in that sense.When you put that next to what was proposed before the Kapiti Expressway—when Steven Joyce changed the tack of the National Government—the plan before that was the Western Link Road which was costed at around $300 million I believe and wasfully consulted on with the people of the Kapiti Coast. All the permits and all the official documents were signed off and things were pretty much ready to go and everyone on the Kapiti Coast thought that this Western Link Road would go ahead. But no in December 2009 Steven Joyce rolled Ōtaki MP Nathan Guy and decided to go with an option which we now know as the Kapiti Expressway which is roughly $200 million more than what was planned.When you put that into the context of the Government being quite tight in the fiscal department especially in terms of land transport—and this bill itself allows the Government to borrow more for transport—and when you go from a $300 million project to a $500 million project that makes the project much more unaffordable for the Government. So to help the Government Iain Lees-Galloway has put forward this Supplementary Order Paper to ensure that any project that it undertakes is affordable. So there you have it.In terms of the Kapiti Expressway we could have saved the Government $200 million in one fell swoop by making sure there was a roading solution that was not just a big concrete ribbon through the Kapiti Coast but it was an upgrading of State Highway 1 it was a local road for the locals and it was making sure there was a better focus on public transport through the increased electrification of the rail network on the Kapiti Coast. So in terms of affordability that would have been a much better option for the people of Kāpiti but the Government of the day has chosen to ignore that and go ahead with the Kapiti Expressway. We will not quit in our opposition to—you know there are some people who should be quitting—this expressway because in the affordability stakes it certainly does not match up.The second point that Mr Lees-Galloway makes in Supplementary Order Paper 234 is about an integrated transport system. I have already touched on this ever so slightly earlier—[Bell rung] I am only on point two of five points so I had better get a move on. In terms of integration the solution for the Kapiti Coast would have been what Labour had proposed towards the end of 2008 and that was to upgrade State Highway 1 to build a link road for the Kapiti Coast—so we separated the local traffic from the through traffic who are dead set on heading further north even though they should have stayed and spent some money on the Kapiti Coast—and also to upgrade the rail link and make it much more accessible and I guess affordable for those people who are going to use public transport.The Government has gone against that. It is gone against integration. What it has done is say: “We only really care about the big stuff the big traffic so we are going to build this $515 million road through the Kapiti Coast.” So what you have now instead of integration is the local and the through traffic going on a four-lane motorway that has crashed right through the Kapiti Coast. Anyone who knows the Kapiti Coast well will know that there is a mixture of both young and old. A lot of people head up to the Kapiti Coast to retire. What you are going to get now is unfortunately some people who would probably prefer not to go on a four-lane monstrosity mixing with the big trucks that are heading either north or south through the Kapiti Coast and probably feeling very worried about that. So that is not necessarily the best in terms of safety and not the best in terms of an integrated service.Also the Government is not looking at upgrading the rail network. There is no focus on that and I think that is a real loss given the number of people who are now making their homes on the Kapiti Coast and are commuting to Wellington—which is not a dying city I should add; it is not dying city—heading south to work. More and more people are doing that and more of them would prefer a much more integrated public transport system. Our option the Western Link Road would do that. If the Government did have integrated transport systems at the purpose and at the very heart of this billthen maybe it would have been able to do that with the Western Link Road plan instead of the Kapiti Expressway.No. 3—I think I am a bit behind—is safety. I have already mentioned the fact that this road that the Government wants to build is a four-lane monstrosity. Everything will be travelling on it as opposed to what I said before—you know the local traffic on the local road and State Highway 1 being for a lot of the commercial traffic heading further north or further south. In a safety sense I would prefer if I was a local to be on the local road not mixing with the two-rig trucks that are speeding at 100 kilometres an hour—or maybe a little bit more—down State Highway 1. I think that is awful in terms of a safety sense. The Western Link Road addressed that because the locals did not want to be mixing with that through traffic but the Government has decided to go against that in terms of safety.Now on to responsiveness. With me here I have the signatures of 4072 people from the Kapiti Coast. These are the people who were pretty much opposed to—not pretty much but dead against—the Kapiti Expressway. Instead of being responsive—Mike Sabin: Did the Greens help collect those?KRIS FAAFOI: —the Government ignored these people and is still going through with the Kapiti Expressway. Mr Sabin wanted me to choose a page so I will for his pleasure.Mike Sabin: A random one.KRIS FAAFOI: I will choose a random one. Here we go.Terry Smith from Wellington—a very good man Terry Smith; could be a lady—said: “Bad idea. High impact on local community. Already have transport corridor.” Good on you Terry. That is a very good representation of what the situation is. OK let us go over here. Susan Ansell from Kāpiti in New Zealand said: “You can serve the needs of the local community and provide an efficient sustainable transport solution improve rail two-lane Western Link Road improvements to make...the community has not been fully informed on the effect of a four-lane highway. Many are unaware of the negative impact it will have on their community at all.”So in terms of responsiveness this Government has absolutely and utterly ignored the people of theKapiti Coast. Sure they want a transport solution but what this Government has put in front of them and will force on them is not what they wanted. What they wanted was the Western Link Road route the one that would have had a local road an upgrade of State Highway 1 for safety and also for capacity and also an upgrading of the public transport route. This Government—