Locke Keith: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Locke Keith: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14290] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 Saturday 2 February was a great day for Aucklanders with the opening of the much-needed North Shore busway which is already pulling people out of their cars providing quick journeys up and down the North Shore and making it easier for North Shore commuters to get to Auckland City. 
Inspired by this the Prime Minister should have loosened the purse strings for other vital public transport projects in Auckland. Instead Labour has developed a bad case of what we might call tunnel vision. It has decided to spend $2.3 billion of our money on a 4.5 kilometre stretch of motorway from Mount Roskill to Waterview 3.2 kilometres of it through a tunnel. That is huge money about half a million dollars for each metre of motorway. 
If the Government is keen on tunnels then it should be throwing this money at a cheaper tunnel to carry a railway line beyond the Britomart downtown terminus to Mount Eden. It is obvious that Auckland needs a downtown rail loop like that in Sydney to have the frequency of services required which is why the Auckland Regional Transport Authority favours this rail tunnel project. But the Government is stuck on the mantra: “We’ve got to complete the motorway network.” 
The Greens have a slightly different mantra: “Let’s complete the rail network first.” The rail network has 50 years of neglect to catch up on and it takes people out of their cars whereas motorways encourage people to hop into them. The downtown rail loop would be expensive but considerably cheaper than $2.3 billion and new over-ground rail loops do not cost nearly as much to construct. A southbound to Avondale line may cost $200-300 million and a connection to the airport should not cost much more than that. 
To get around the argument that rail projects should come first the Government is proposing a public-private partnership to build the Mount Roskill to Waterview motorway. It is a sort of “build now pay later” situation. But Melbourne taxpayers found that when they finally got around to paying for their public-private partnership city link motorway it was twice as expensive as a fully public funded one would have been. 
One reason privately funded ventures are more expensive than publicly funded ones is that the Government can borrow money at a cheaper rate than private firms can. In a public-private partnership to build a motorway from Mount Roskill to Waterview there is no way that the private partner will pull the required $2.3 billion out of a back pocket. That private firm will borrow the money. “Aha!” members might say. “But isn’t some of the money going to come from tolling?” The Government might project that but a couple of years ago there was a consultation on tolling for the western ring route—of which this projected motorway is a part—and Aucklanders gave tolling an emphatic thumbs down. Tolling just is not a runner. The sort of tolling the Greens support is that which gets people out of their cars. It is often called travel demand management. We do not support tolling to raise money to build a motorway that will only put more people into cars. 
The English Greens support London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s tolling around central London which has reduced traffic volumes. But the key difference with Auckland as it is now is that London has an effective public transport alternative particularly the London underground to get people in and out of the central city and Auckland is still a long way behind. Our State spending should be helping Auckland to catch up. We want Auckland the City of Sails to also become the “City of Rails”. 
Jeanette Fitzsimons’ Climate Change (Transport Funding) Bill if passed by this Parliament will help. It will ensure that transport funding is allocated mainly to encourage alternatives to car travel rather than to build new roads. It is not just the general need for public transport in Auckland that we are worried about; it is even greater need when the global production of oil peaks but the international demand for it keeps growing pushing the price of petrol in Auckland through the roof. It is pretty certain that petrol will be much more expensive come 2015—the projected opening date for the Mount Roskill to Waterview motorway. Throwing $2.3 billion at this project just does not make sense.