Locke Keith: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and  State Enterprises — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and  State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8809] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I was talking about the financial assistance rate whereby Land Transport New Zealand fully funds State highways but local bodies have to scratch up normally 50 percent of the cost of public transport infrastructure such as in Auckland in terms of rail developments.  
It was good to read more recently that there seems to have been some change in relation to Wellington where Land Transport New Zealand has agreed to fund rail improvements there to 90 percent. I hope that will be transferred to Auckland because today I received a petition from 3755 Aucklanders who want a timetable for the electrification of rail and funding from the Government to achieve that. That is the demand from Aucklanders for a decent rail backbone to the public transport system and for substantial expenditure from Land Transport New Zealand on infrastructural development. The public is on board—that is what the petitioners found. Everywhere they went people supported public transport and wanted to sign that rail petition. But it has taken a while to shift the Government and Land Transport New Zealand around in terms of where they direct their funding.  
There is all this talk about the Auckland western ring route and how important that is when even a few kilometres of that would take a billion dollars and that money would be better spent in the meantime on public transport. That is what Aucklanders are really about. An officials report on Auckland transport that came out a couple of weeks ago—from national officials such as from the Ministry of Transport and from local body officials etc—said that 40 percent of the benefit of new public transport spending goes to car users in reduced congestion. I think that all of our plans have to take in the two critical new developments—that is firstly the move towards peak oil where oil will get very expensive and people will not be able to use private cars nearly as much. They will be forced into public transport and we want that infrastructure there for them.  
The other thing of course is global warming where 40 percent of our emissions are coming out of transport and we have to reduce those. Obviously the best way to do that is to go for public transport particularly electrification if that electrification is provided by sustainable energy sources and not fossil fuels. I think the public is much more aware of that and the Government and Land Transport New Zealand need to get much more on board with the public.  
It is true that in the report things are happening like bus lanes but when we look at the figure for bus lanes we see that 16 kilometres of bus lanes have been provided over the year. In Auckland we need lots and lots of bus lanes because one of the things that makes public transport really attractive is if it is fast and faster then commuting by car. We do have some signs of that in Auckland down Dominion Road and Onewa Road where the buses actually get there quicker than the cars. We need lots more bus lanes and much more funding by Land Transport New Zealand for that.  
 I think there really needs to be a whole turn-round in the thinking in this Parliament—in the Government in particular—to say that instead of spending as this report shows $1700 million on land transport and only $209 million of that on public transport the spending has to be turned towards a much higher proportion for public transport so that we can really go forward as a nation in this era of global warming.