Fitzsimons Jeanette: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:648;Page:17209] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Green Party’s position on the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill has been made pretty clear in the first reading the second reading and the Committee stage. So I thought that in the third reading I might go a little wider and look at the new systems that the bill is setting up and some of the things I hope they might do in the future. 
We have the new Transport Agency. We have been changing the institutional structure of how the funding of land transport works over and over over the years. We have had many different ways of funding public transport and we still have not got it right. We had a funder/provider split then we re-merged funders and providers. We have changed functions and we have changed boards. The important thing is what they actually do. 
The bill gives increased weight to regional land transport strategies and that is a good thing. It gives some local control over how money is spent. The bill establishes that Government policy statements have a statutory role in guiding the whole thing. But guiding it towards what end and for what purpose? The concepts in the Land Transport Management Act—integration responsiveness and sustainability—are well chosen but they are so high-level that it is very difficult to rule out a project on the basis that it does not meet them. 
What we need is a system of transport agencies that acknowledges we are entering a new era when oil is never going to be cheap again; an era when the fuel that has driven our entire economy for 200 years will become unaffordable for many and in the end less available. At the same time burning too much of it is changing the climate. So we need a radical shift a transition an economic transformation towards a sustainable economy and a less oil-dependent economy. The real question here is how much the changes in the bill lead us in that direction. 
David Bennett 
: What do the trains run on? 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: I guess the easy thing to say is that it is much cheaper to run a train using electricity than it is to run a truck using oil. 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: Electric trucks aren’t that far away. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: Electric trucks are some way off into the long-distant future I think. The first thing that I hope the agency does is true cost-pricing. We want prices for transport modes that reflect the real costs. We want an end to the subsidies that are happening now because some transport modes pay more of their cost to the economy than others. 
This has been recognised for a very long time. The National Government asked that it be looked into and it produced the Land Transport Pricing Study. It was many many years in the making. We welcomed it when it came out in 1998 but it did not really lead to any change. Then Labour had a go at it. It brought out  
The Surface Transport Costs and Charges Study 
. That did not really lead to any change either but the two of them showed the same thing. They showed that big trucks are paying less of the total cost that they cause to the economy than any other transport mode. They showed that trucks pay 56 percent of the cost they cause to the whole economy and the rest is subsidy. They showed that motorists pay 64 percent—a bit better than trucks but they still have a subsidy. They showed that freight trains pay 82 percent. They still have a subsidy but not nearly so much. If we are trying to consign freight from one end of the country to the other on a long-distance haul and we are deciding how to send it then if the trucks are subsidised much more than rail is we will choose trucks even though they use four to five times as much fuel to take a tonne of goods a kilometre and even though they cause road congestion and require the building of more roads and more maintenance costs. 
So the first step towards making wise transport choices is to have the real costs reflected in prices. The Government took a step in that direction today. I am interested that Maurice Williamson who has been applauding what I have been saying about true cost-pricing and not having subsidies is opposed to the rise in road-user charges for trucks despite the fact that it is the first step to narrowing the gap between what trucks pay and what trains pay. Surely we want a system where if the train is the best and most economical way to go we use the train rather than the truck. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: It was more that we were going to be given notice of the change; that’s all. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: OK. I thank the member for clarifying that point. 
I hope we will go further and have the courage to have an in-depth look at the plethora of charges that now make no sense. Why do petrol users pay for use of the roads through their fuel and diesel users pay through a mileage charge? We all know the historical reasons why that is the case but is it sensible to perpetuate it? Should we be looking at different ways to pay for roads? Are we going to find a way of charging people for the use of roads that does not invade their privacy by creating a Big Brother State where the State knows exactly where every vehicle is at any time of the day? That is one of the main reasons why private motorists oppose a global positioning system for charging for road use. I am sure there are technical ways around it and I think it is time we had another look at it. We certainly need to look at the inequities between petrol cars and diesel cars and between small diesel cars and 3-tonne diesel trucks which pay the same road-user charges. 
We need to recognise that the more new State highways and motorways we build the higher our maintenance bills will be in the future and the higher road-user charges and petrol tax will be in the future because with every new road we build we are committing future generations to a big maintenance bill even though with high fuel prices they probably will not be using them as much. 
The other thing that I hope will be done by the new Transport Agency the regional strategies and the Government policy statements is a review of the financial assistance rate. As I have told this House many times before it really does not make sense that if Auckland decides to ask for a new State highway to take people from South Auckland right across to the North Shore it is paid for entirely by central government through the National Land Transport Fund but if Aucklanders want a railway line to do exactly the same thing Auckland has to find half of the cost. In fact with the regional fuel tax provided for in this legislation Auckland has to find more than half the cost because there is a crafty arrangement whereby Auckland is allowed to levy a 5c regional fuel tax which it will put into electrifying the rail system along with the loan that it will raise and pay interest on; the Government in its generosity funds its half of the electrification by raising a second loan but hang on who will pay the interest costs on that loan and who will service it? Aucklanders will through another 5c regional fuel tax. And that is supposed to be a fair split between local government and central government. 
The Minister of Transport is fond of saying that she will not make an old lady in Invercargill pay for a rail system in Auckland that she will never use. But for some reason the Minister has no objection at all to making an old lady in Invercargill pay for the Waterview Connection which is a gigantic new motorway in a tunnel that will cost half a billion dollars per kilometre—$2 billion for just 4½ kilometres. It is absolutely fine apparently for an old lady in Invercargill to pay for that. I cannot see the difference. 
Let us hope this legislation will give us some transparency some level playing fields and some equity in the way that transport is managed. The Greens are voting for it mainly because we want the electrification of the Auckland rail system to go ahead. This bill is the only way on the table for doing it so let us get on and do it.