Smith Lockwood: Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Smith Lockwood: Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14025] 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) 
: 
 In speaking to Part 2 can I say it makes me feel sick to hear Jeanette Fitzsimons pontificate in this Chamber about energy use and people using motorcars. I want to put on the record that I always use the stairs in Parliament. People will never find me in a lift unless I am going more than four or five floors. I have never passed a Green member of this Parliament in the stairwells. I have seen Labour members New Zealand First members ACT members and every other kind of member of this Parliament except Green members. Do members think Green members would ever save energy by using the stairs to go one floor? Not on your life! They use the lifts. 
Part 2 establishes the Auckland Regional Transport Authority. I want the Minister in the chair Jim Sutton to answer this question. Clause 7 establishes the Auckland Regional Transport Authority and clause 8 sets out the objective and principles. Clause 8(1) states: “The objective of ARTA is to plan fund and develop the Auckland regional land transport system in a way that contributes to an integrated safe responsive and sustainable land transport system for the Auckland Region.” I want the Minister in the chair to tell this Committee whether the objective and principles of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority cover the construction of motorways. Do they or do they not? Will State Highway 1 or any State highway in the Auckland region be covered by the objective and principles of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority? That is a clean and simple question. Is construction of the motorways which are essentially State highways covered by this bill? 
Hon Jim Sutton 
: Yes and no. 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH 
: I believe that the people of Auckland deserve better than that. It is my understanding that this bill does not cover the construction of motorways that are State highways; that Transit continues to have responsibility for all of that and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority will have nothing to do with it. But this legislation does not make that clear. 
The Minister in the chair should tell the Committee how decisions will be made as to which principal motorways will be Transit responsibilities and which will be the responsibility of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority. For example is the extension of the motorway along State Highway 1 either north or south of Auckland—in the Auckland region though—a responsibility of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority? If members read clause 8 they will see that it appears that it is because it is part of the land transport system but I suspect that the answer is that it is not. So this bureaucratic legislation which under clause 8(2)(d) requires the Auckland Regional Transport Authority to consider the cultural well-being of the people in the Auckland region may not actually require the Auckland Regional Transport Authority to be at all responsible for the construction of the principal motorways. 
The people of Auckland deserve some answers on this. How much of the motorway network will the Auckland Regional Transport Authority be responsible for? I contend that it is not at all clear from the legislation. The interrelationship between Transit and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority is not clear. Transit will tell us that it responds to the Auckland Regional Council’s regional transport priorities but there is nothing in this legislation that requires Transit to do that. In fact the Auckland Regional Council’s regional transport priorities are changed by this legislation. There is a total misfit here between Transit and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority. There is no clarity as to what the Auckland Regional Transport Authority is actually responsible for in respect of the motorway network. 
I suspect that this legislation will do nothing to extend construction of motorways in Auckland. And that is what is desperately needed. We should forget about setting up more bureaucratic bodies. We should get some bulldozers out there shifting some dirt to build some roads. At the moment there is a crisis and it is getting worse by the month and this legislation is doing nothing to solve it.