Boscawen John: General Debate 
Boscawen John: General Debate 
[Volume:654;Page:3873] 
JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) 
: 
 I came down to the House 5 minutes ago intending to speak on the issue of infrastructure. David Parker could not have given me a better lead-in to that. One of the challenges this country faces is its declining living standards. The previous Labour Government came into power 9 years ago with a promise of raising New Zealand to the top half of the OECD. What happened? We dropped. Our living standards dropped and the income differential between us and Australia increased. I campaigned for the ACT Party at the general election on the issue of raising our living standards. We in the ACT Party would have liked to see parity be achieved with Australia by 2020 but we have had to settle with the National Government on doing that by 2025. What raises living standards? Nothing raises living standards more than raising productivity does. How do we raise productivity? We need to have infrastructure and investment. 
I am campaigning in the Mt Albert by-election and I hope to become the MP for Mt Albert. I am campaigning to win and I believe that I can win. I would like to talk about the Waterview Connection between Mount Roskill and Mount Albert to Waterview. Yesterday the New Zealand Transport Agency held a briefing for all the candidates so that we would know exactly what was going on and could go out and inform people. It was very interesting to note that probably the chief scaremonger—in fact I would say the scaremonger-in-chief—Russel Norman did not even have the courtesy to turn up and find out the facts. Why let the facts get in the way when we can scare people and spread misinformation? Why worry about the facts? Why worry about the truth? Russel Norman did not even turn up to that briefing. 
I am pleased to say the Labour Party candidate David Shearer turned up with a posse of TV cameras. He came along to have a debate. He did not come along to listen and to learn; he came along to have a debate. He was told very plainly and very clearly by Mr Dangerfield the chief executive of the New Zealand Transport Agency that that was not the agenda. It was not a meeting to debate the issue; it was a briefing held to inform candidates. It is a pity that Mr Shearer did not stay for the whole meeting. If he had stayed for the whole meeting instead of rushing off to try to get some more votes and shake some more hands he would have been better informed. Mr Shearer is going around the electorate and telling people in Mount Albert that the Waterview Connection will cut a hole right through the middle of Mount Albert. He is going around scaremongering and telling the people that this road which this country desperately needs in order to complete the motorway and to unlock the benefits of it will divide the people of Mount Albert. 
Mr Shearer and the Labour Party need to understand that the New Zealand Transport Agency is proposing New Zealand’s most expensive road two-thirds of which will be underground. Two-thirds of this road will be underground. The New Zealand Transport Agency has identified 360 homes that could be affected by it but probably the most interesting point for me that I heard yesterday was that only approximately 200 of those homes will need to be demolished. Two hundred of those 360 homes will need to be demolished and the other 160 will be left standing. Yes it will be very difficult for people to live in those homes during the course of the construction of the road and the New Zealand Transport Agency would like to buy those homes. But ultimately at the end of the project those homes will be available for people to move back into if they want to. They can be refurbished and they can be onsold. 
It is interesting that only 200 homes will be demolished. How does that compare with the previous Labour Government’s scheme? Under Labour’s scheme 160 homes were to be demolished. We are looking at the loss of a further 40 homes. The scheme put up by this Government will cost $1.5 billion compared with Labour’s pie-in-the-sky scheme which would have cost $3 billion. Mr Parker talked about the need for infrastructure to be built. The way to get infrastructure built is by not wasting money. The reality is that this country is not rich enough to be able to afford a $3 billion tunnel. 
Mr Parker talked about the building of infrastructure. He criticised the former National Government for its failure to build infrastructure. I agree with Mr Parker in so far as the 1990s are concerned. The 1990s were a decade of a huge loss of opportunity. The Mount Roskill to Waterview Connection should have been built 15 years ago if not earlier than that. The 1990s were a period of massive lost opportunity. Helen Clark’s Government was very slow to get going but at least it got going and signed a contract to extend the motorway. That Government built the section of the motorway from Hillsborough to Mount Roskill. But if that Government was as good or as generous as Mr Parker claims it was why did it not carry on and complete the section from Mount Roskill to Waterview? It did not have to stop the project at Mount Roskill; it could have carried on. Why did it not carry on? It was because that Government wanted to perpetuate a hoax on the people of Mount Albert by telling them that somehow it was going to build a tunnel.