Coddington Deborah: Land Transport Management Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Coddington Deborah: Land Transport Management Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:613;Page:9683] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 This is Part 2 which deals with the funding of the land transport system and the land transport programmes. The member for United Future made a very good speech in favour of pork-barrel politics because with this legislation we are seeing a return to having money dished out in election year or close to election year to favour certain electorates. We will see tolling only in Tauranga just to satisfy that member. We have heard that a bridge will be built in Waimakariri which will keep Clayton Cosgrove safe because he listened to the speech given at the ACT conference and knew that he might be in danger of losing his seat. We have seen the Associate Minister of Transport signal what will happen in the eastern part of Auckland. She said that she did not agree with the eastern corridor and that it was not the right solution just so that the people of Howick could have an extra half an hour in bed. She says that she was misquoted but everybody says that do they not when it comes back to bite them? 
People have said tonight that they do not understand what the old system of cost-benefit ratio was about or that it was something to do with having someone die on a road before anything got done. That is impugning the reputation and expertise of all the officials at Transfund who did a very good job of setting a cost-benefit ratio. This bill sacrifices cost-efficiency to social and environmental factors. The efficiency goal in terms of the cost-benefit ratio does not accommodate those considerations at all. Members opposite obviously do not have a clue what the cost-benefit ratio meant. [ 
Interruption 
] It is obviously market day again because the fishwives are out in force—to quote the member for Tauranga. 
Safety considerations are incorporated via the estimates of the benefits of a project in reducing road accidents. They already are taken into consideration. That is part of the cost-benefit ratio. United Future members talked about efficiency but they cannot actually define what that means. They had some nebulous definition that efficiency meant moving around without wasting time. It is interesting that they support the Transmission Gully project—or their leader has supported it—but Transfund has repeatedly reported that that project is not cost-efficient. All projects seeking money from Transfund should be evaluated on economic criteria and be expected to provide a positive net benefit for the required investment. That is what it means. 
The previous Minister of Transport said earlier that this legislation would get the trucks off the road. That is absolutely not true. That is Government spin because this Government has done a sweet deal with Toll Holdings and given that company exclusive use of the soon-to-be-formed Track Co. Under this bill road-user charges will be used to maintain and prop up Track Co the rail track— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: That’s outrageous. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: It is outrageous. The people who use the track should pay for it. Toll Holdings an Australian company should pay for it. It only has to get freight up to a certain tonnage—the Minister knows what I am talking about—which is not very high before it stops paying any rent on that. So New Zealand road users will be subsidising Toll Holdings which has come in here and is going to take over the New Zealand trucking industry. Why would it want to invest money in a trucking industry when it wants to put all the freight on to rail? It would not. If this Government wants to get freight on to rail it will have to return to the bad old days of the 40-mile or 150-kilometre limit because that is the only way freight will be forced on to rail. Trucking is more efficient. 
This Government should be getting rid of all the nonsensical consultation that is in Part 2 of this legislation—consultation that goes on and on. Consultation has to be with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust with affected communities and with Maori of the region. We will have more and more taniwha nonsense and consideration of wahi tapu holding up the construction of important roads. Members should look at what has happened about the highway between Auckland and Hamilton. The people in this Government talk about roads being safe and saving people’s lives—