Catchpole Brent: Land Transport Management Bill — Second Reading 
Catchpole Brent: Land Transport Management Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:612;Page:9334] 
BRENT CATCHPOLE (NZ First) 
: 
 That was a wonderful example of the member not speaking with his Minister of Finance before opening his mouth. First I would like to acknowledge Helen Duncan the chairman of the select committee handling this bill. I would like to join my fellow MPs from New Zealand First in wishing her all the best. I found her to be a very fair chairman during the select committee and we appreciate all the help she gave us. I would also like to thank the officials for all the work that they put into this bill. They have done a wonderful job. 
As far as the bill is concerned it really will not do anything for the congestion in Auckland or the economy which really is based largely in Auckland. A billion dollars is lost to the economy because of the congestion around Auckland. Goods cannot be transported throughout the country because when they arrive in Auckland they cannot be offloaded and transported easily. Sure that benefits other parts of the country—Tauranga for instance and that is fine—but Auckland and the economy around Auckland is suffering badly. I would like to look at one particular area—that is the Albany to Puhoi realignment (ALPURT). This bill has set ALPURT back. 
Dail Jones 
: Where is it? 
BRENT CATCHPOLE 
: The ALPURT project is up in Orewa north of Auckland. ALPURT has all of the resources in place to go ahead and should have been completed by December of this year. I repeat that: it should have been completed by December this year. The agreement with Orewa was that the termination of the existing motorway would come to an end and the motorway would be taken out of the middle of Orewa and moved on to the ALPURT extension. That will not happen and we now believe that Transit has applied for an extension of not just 1 or 2 years but 7 years for ALPURT. That is because it has now discovered that it can toll it. By tolling it it throws out all of the consents and the consultation that has been in place right up until now and the project has to go back to be relitigated and consulted on for the wider community because there has to be an alternate route. That route was never consulted on during the original process. Tolls are the bane of that project and because tolling is seen as a means of funding that road it will be set back a lot further. 
Funding should have been available for this stretch of motorway. It would have taken the traffic out of Orewa as was promised by December of this year had this Government released the petrol tax and the road-user charges. The Government has put so much of those charges away into the consolidated account. In fact the Government even put a 4.7c a litre tax right throughout the country to pay for Auckland’s roads. I ask the Government where that 4.7c a litre went because it certainly has not gone to Auckland’s roads. The Government needs to answer that question. The rest of the country is suffering because it is paying extra money supposedly to go into Auckland roads but it is not going there. I ask the Government to answer this question: where are the taxes going and why is it putting so much tax away into the consolidated account? 
Roads and the motorway networks throughout the country and in particular around Auckland have been underfunded for decades simply because the taxes have not been used on the roads properly. There has been an unwillingness of successive Governments to use the taxes for other things outside of roading and public transport. What is more there has been a failing of successive Governments to plan long term. Auckland roads were originally planned nearly 40 years ago but the funding and the resources were never planned with that. This bill will not provide that funding or those resources. 
It is suggested that the funding should be applied for on an annual basis. How can a whole motorway section be planned annually? The Governments says: “But we can’t provide the funding any earlier than that.” I suggest that planning not 5 or 10 years out but 25 to 35 years would be a much better way of organising the progress of transport in this country. If we plan for the funding and allocate the funds accordingly then those plans would be put in place and would have been put in place if successive Governments had planned as far ahead as that and Auckland would not be suffering these problems. It is the same with Wellington. Wellington would not be suffering the same problems if long-term planning had been put in place as well as long-term financial planning. 
A lot of funding in this bill is to go to coastal shipping—money transferred from the roads. Petrol tax and road-user charges will be put into coastal shipping. This is not just for New Zealand flagships; it is for international flagships. How can we justify putting money that should have gone on roads and public transport into foreign-owned shipping to transfer goods around New Zealand? It does not make sense. This Government does not make sense. 
We have seen a huge brand-new railway station built in Auckland. It is a magnificent place. I was there for the opening and it is awe-inspiring. We had to wait half-an-hour for the first train to arrive as it was running late and every train since has run late simply because the funding is not there to provide the network of rail and the upgrading of the rail that should have gone with the planning of this. They have bought 40-year-old rolling stock to provide for the transport and 40-year-old rolling stock keeps breaking down. They have repainted on the outside and put new seats in but they have not upgraded the workings of the system; therefore it is continually breaking down and never on time. 
Every region around the country desperately needs better funding and planning from this Government yet it continues to sit on its hands and not provide that funding. I wish Darren Hughes would be listened to by his Minister of Finance and have that funding available as he promised. He quickly promised that. I saw Dr Cullen cringe knowing that Darren Hughes was promising money that would never be made available because he knew it would be spent elsewhere. To rely on tolling to fund these roads is really not good enough when one has the finances in the consolidated account from petrol tax. It should be used on roads and on public transport. It should not be wasted on foreign shipping or elsewhere.