Lees-Galloway Iain: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5106. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 This piece of legislation the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill is typical of a Government that is either ignorant of or deliberately blind to the long-term consequences of the decisions it makes today. This piece of legislation does nothing to support good-quality transport infrastructure in New Zealand. Normally with the National Party what we say is that it narrows its view simply to a thin economic analysis of anything—anything the National Party does. It overrides the social implications. It overrides the environmental implications. But in this legislation it has narrowed things so far that there is not even economic criteria any more in its decision making around transport infrastructure. The only criterion is whether these projects fit National Party policy. That is the only criterion that the New Zealand Transport Agency will have to consider when it is deciding whether it should be building transport infrastructure. But that is wrong because not only do we need economically sensible and viable infrastructure but we need our infrastructure to be socially viable and environmentally viable as well. 
I want to go through the criteria that are currently in the Act and that this National Government is going to get rid of and consider what the impact will be on our nation. The first criterion is to give effect to the Government policy statement. That one gets to stay and as my colleague Phil Twyford pointed out the only thing that that means is “Does it fit the Government’s policy?”. Whether the Government’s policy makes any sense at all on economic social or environmental criteria does it fit the Government’s policy? Tick—that one fits. Is it affordable? That is a question the National Party should always be asking. Is it affordable? Well we have already seen what this Government’s view is on transport infrastructure. It does not matter whether it is affordable. As long as it is a road then build it. Build the darn thing whether we can afford it or not. Its view is “Gold plate it build it with eight lanes or 20 lanes who cares! As long as it is a road we will build it if we are in the National Party.” Is it integrated? Well it does not matter any more whether the transport infrastructure is integrated because there will be only one form of transport infrastructure and that is the roads. 
Is it safe? We have already seen what this National Party thinks of road safety and transport safety. Mr Bridges should be interested in this. He is of course the Associate Minister of Transport. I was in his electorate the other day and I was talking to people about transport infrastructure and transport funding. Do you know what the council told me? It told me how its funding for road safety promotion had been cut as 75 percent of its work had been funded by the New Zealand Transport Agency and now barely 50 percent of the work is being funded by the New Zealand Transport Agency. That has resulted in a net cut in road transport safety promotion activities by the council in Mr Bridges’ region. Those activities are not undertaken just for fun. They are undertaken because there is an evidence base behind them that says that they improve road safety. This Government has no interest in road safety. It is cutting the funding already and it is going to take the criterion that building transport infrastructure should be safe out of the legislation. Is it sustainable? Well we know that the Government is not interested in sustainability. Does it assist economic development? Well as my colleague Phil Twyford also pointed out the Minister of Transport does not even care about benefit-cost ratios. He does not care about economic sustainability. He does not care about affordability. He cares just about building roads. 
Here is the one that I am really upset about. It is the criterion that asks whether it protects and promotes public health. This may sound like a bit of a tangent but there are four huge looming costs to our health system. They are confronting us right now and they are going to confront us even more in the future. One of them is cancer the second is cardiovascular disease the third is diabetes and the fourth is respiratory disease. I am not sure whether there is much of a link between transport infrastructure and cancer although I would not be surprised if there is one but there certainly is a link between transport infrastructure and our ability to tackle cardiovascular disease diabetes and respiratory disease. We need more investment in active transport. Cycling and walking as genuine transport options need to be invested in. If we want people to change their behaviour if we want people to move to rail or walking or cycling then we have to build decent infrastructure that actually entices them and makes it useful and worthwhile for them to undertake those forms of transport. 
So in the interests of public health in the interests of saving our health dollars and making sure that our health resources are available to the people who need them we need to be building transport infrastructure that supports good health and supports people so that we can reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and the same with diabetes. Respiratory disease is an issue that this Government completely overlooks in its health policy but again the emissions from vehicles and the location of transport infrastructure is an important factor in the incidence of respiratory disease. If we could do more with that again we would be saving our nation a lot of money and we would be doing a lot of good. We would have healthier more productive better-off people in our country. But these are things that this Government is either ignorant of or deliberately blind to. 
Social responsibility—Mr Bennett talked about his pet transport project and his hatred of a rail link between Hamilton and Auckland. Well my pet transport project at the moment is the rail link between Palmerston North and Wellington which is very similar to the proposed link between Hamilton and Auckland. Many people use that link every day. For many people that is their sole way of getting to work and getting to the job that happens to be in Wellington when they live further up the line. For many of those people the loss of the train will mean the loss of the ability to have that job. They will either have to move from where they are at the moment into Wellington or they will have to give up that job and get a job somewhere else. Not everybody has a driver’s licence. Some people—and this might come as a bit of a shock to this Government—have disabilities that prevent them from being able to drive a car; therefore they need alternatives choices options in transport infrastructure. But this bill is not about options or choice in transport infrastructure. This is about the National Party’s narrow focus on its roads of national significance. 
Finally there is environmental responsibility. Well we know that public transport particularly rail uses significantly fewer resources than private car-based transport. So in the long-term environmental interests of this country we need to be building better public transport infrastructure. But this Government simply is not interested. It is a conservative Government that is not interested in trying to lead change. It is not interested in trying to improve our nation. It is not interested in trying to improve our economy. It is not interested in trying to improve the nation’s health. It is simply interested in supporting the status quo and continuing on with tired old ways of doing things. 
This is not a piece of legislation that will take New Zealand forward. It is a piece of legislation that simply reinforces the Government’s desire to pursue a policy that makes no economic sense no social sense and no environmental sense. We need better thinking from our Government on transport infrastructure. We need a Government that is thinking about the future and is interested in building an integrated and responsive transport system not one that is stuck in the old ways and the ideas of the past—the think-big projects that the National Party is so well-renowned for. We do not support this legislation.