Joyce Steven: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Joyce Steven: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3793] 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 I cannot let the moment go without putting some facts right and also responding to the honourable member of course. I notice that she has quoted the noted right-winger Christine Rose from Auckland on the subject of transport. I note also that the member is seeking that the Government do something about car ownership in Auckland. I gained the complete understanding that that meant there was too much of it and that we should therefore somehow control it. I think the good burghers of that city will be interested to know Labour’s view on that. I am wondering what the limits on car ownership are. 
I know it was someone from this side of the Chamber but I remember a Spanish gentleman in the mid-1980s called “Carlos Days” who came out of this Parliament. I just wonder whether the member opposite is actually proposing that “Mr Days” reappear on the scene in New Zealand or whether perhaps she has some other method of control to reduce the number of cars in Auckland. I think that would be an important policy for the Labour Party to announce before the next general election and possibly even before the upcoming by-election. It would be nice to know that Labour is planning to put some sort of limit on the number of vehicles that people are allowed to own—perhaps one per every second house—or maybe it was saying that cars could be driven only on certain days of the week. 
The point that I think the member has not grasped is that we are trying to promote all transport options in Auckland while recognising the history of the city and how it has evolved over the last 150 years in terms of the way people have been transported and while also recognising certain financial realities along that way. I took it from the member’s speech that the Labour Party remains opposed to the Government policy statement; if that is the case then that is fair enough. But as I said Labour members need to be very clear prior to the by-election about what they are actually holding out to the people of Mt Albert. I think that the people of Mt Albert would be pretty concerned if Labour took a policy to that by-election that said it would do this and that and then subsequently prior to the next general election or in a couple of years’ time it then had to turn that policy around. 
Let us also point out in terms of the record on public transport that the previous Labour Government spent $484 million on public transport over the last 3 years— 
Paul Quinn 
: $400? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: —$484 million on subsidising public transport over the last 3 years. Over the next 3 years this Government will be spending $633 million. So we are going from $484 million to $633 million which is a 31 percent increase. 
Darien Fenton 
: What were you spending in 1999? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: “Not enough!” says the member “It should be higher.” But that is the same member whose partner in crime Darren Hughes said in the previous speech that the Government needed to invest more in roads and that it could have done that out of the National Land Transport Fund. So Labour members just have to make up their minds what they are taking money from. 
Similarly on the issue of road policing I tell the Committee that this Government will be spending the largest amount ever on road policing over the next 3 years. The sum is going up from $774 million to over $900 million. The member opposite has tried to say I will have the road toll on my hands because I am not lifting that sum to $949 million. Well I am sorry but I reject that assertion; I actually find it quite distasteful. Nevertheless I ask what is so magical about $949 million. Why is it not $989 million $1.2 billion or $1.5 billion? If the issue is all about how much extra money we spend why are we not spending the whole fund on it? I ask Darien Fenton to tell us why we are not spending the whole fund on road policing because her rationale is that more is always better. 
The Labour Government left no plan for how that money would be spent. We have increased it from $774 million to $949 million but Labour had no plan at all. Labour just said that was what it thought the police would want so therefore it would provide it. The trouble is that that is another indication of Labour having no understanding whatsoever of the value of money or the cost to taxpayers. With the Budget coming up this week I think that Labour members should take a bit more care and in the face of the world’s biggest recession since the 1930s look a little more at the money and ask themselves whether they can afford to do what they say they would do. I suspect that that will be the challenge for the Labour Party but it was always the challenge for that party. I suspect that is why Labour did not stay in Government after the last election. People looked at Labour and said they were not actually sure they could trust that particular party with their cheque books any more—that was the issue. 
I think that the discussion about the value of the National Land Transport Fund and how it is spent has been very illuminating but the Government stands by its decisions and thinks that the New Zealand public will do so as well. Thank you.