Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Associate Minister of Transport): I'm going to start my contribution to this debate by reading from an article that was published nearly a year ago—eleven months ago: The world's leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risk of drought floods extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target which they say is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris Agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C."Now we are seeing a rise globally and here in New Zealand in demand for action from our young people and that is right. Our Budget this year isn't just about the immediate wellbeing of New Zealanders; it's got to be about the future wellbeing of our children and their children the long-term prospects of New Zealand to respond to climate change to mitigate by reducing our dangerous carbon emissions and to adapt to the changes that we already know we will face that will affect our farmers our food production our infrastructure. This Budget has significant commitments that start us on the pathway to where we need to go. There are huge opportunities and I particularly want to refer to transport because transport infrastructure is one of those areas where we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by investing in those modes of transport that are going to enable more people and more goods to move around our country while reducing pollution. In transport in this Budget we had a significant commitment to rail that we haven't seen in decades. I refer to the previous Minister for Infrastructure's speech on the amount of money that has been invested in KiwiRail—just this morning the Minister of Transport and the Auckland mayor announced a new interchange at Puhinui station which is going to result in a high-speed bus link through Puhinui that will link up the airport and east and south Auckland to the southern rail line. It's that type of infrastructure which was not funded under the last Government. That project would not have happened if we had not had a change in Government but it will result in significant improvements into the ways that people visiting Auckland and people living in Auckland can move around their city. There is a need for much more and that is why our Government policy statement on transport which lays out the priorities and the funding levels for each three-year transport budget period the National Land Transport Programme identifies these priorities—using the infrastructure we have improving it making it safer ensuring that we're making best use of our rail corridor so that more goods can move by rail and getting those big heavy trucks off the road which damage the road and make it less safe. Of course there's still going to be a need for trucks but the more we can move on rail the better for our existing road network. The same goes for public transport in our cities; of course our major cities are the ones that currently have the biggest improvements in public transport but there's no reason why medium-sized and smaller cities can't have frequent fast reliable bus services and that's something that we will be working on in the coming years. Safe walking and cycling—our children have a birth right to walk and cycle safely. In order for that to happen we need to ensure that we have the infrastructure there that means that there's safe and appropriate speeds around their schools and around the places where they live but also on those arterial roads with higher levels of traffic that there's that safe separated infrastructure. That's not just a benefit for the climate. Yes it's a benefit for the climate if we can have more kids walking and cycling to school if we can have more goods moving by rail if we can have more people at peak hour moving by public transport. That's good for the climate but it's also just good generally. It's good for public health. It means our kids learn more; because they're more active they can be more independent. It's good for our air quality and our water quality. It costs less money—and this should be obvious although I have to explain it quite a lot to members of the Opposition. It is way cheaper for people to make short trips by bicycle or by foot or for more people to share a bus or a train than for every individual to have to go in their own car. The infrastructure required is less the cost of running it is less it saves individuals money it saves businesses money and it saves the country money.Because there has been a lot of confusion coming from the Opposition I feel the need to come with some graphs to show exactly what is happening and set the record straight on transport funding. The blue line here is the transport budget from 2011-2015 the darker blue one is 2015-2018 and the green one is from 2018-2021. Now as you can see this Government is spending slightly more on State highways over three years than the previous Government did in the previous two Budgets. Now that makes sense because there's more money in the Budget and because there are more people travelling but this doesn't tell you about how we're spending it so I will get into that.What you can also see is that we're spending significantly more on local roads. Local roads carry half of our traffic. Half of our car and truck trips are on local roads. The previous Government were so focused on delivering just seven motorways over nine years. You know in 2009 they announced seven motorways two of which had been committed by the previous Government. The next five two of them aren't even complete yet. So they didn't manage to deliver seven roads in nine years but they did spend the vast majority of the transport budget on those extremely expensive roads which only carry 4 percent of all vehicle trips. It's an extremist transport policy. It's one that is pouring all of the money into just a few stretches of road and letting the local roads—where the traffic actually is—just languish without the investment and without the maintenance and safety improvements that were needed. So we've significantly increased spending.If the members are interested: we had a 51 percent increase in local road improvements; a 12 percent at least increase in local road maintenance; and in State highway maintenance an almost 20 percent increase—that has meant that over 2000 kilometres of State highway additional have been maintained just in the last year.Of course people out there in New Zealand are still going to see potholes on the roads. Why? It's because under nine years of the last National Government they sweated the assets and they didn't invest in road safety and they didn't invest in maintenance where it was needed. And that is why the road toll rose inexorably between 2013 and 2017—no one can deny that. The Opposition cannot deny that despite record amounts of spending on a few small State highways the number of people dying and being seriously injured on our roads increased. That is because the money was not being spent all across the road network; it was only being spent primarily on seven extremely expensive highways.We have increased the money for road policing and safety promotion and we have massively increased the money that is going into public transport rail and rapid transit infrastructure. That makes sense because that gives people choice. That's where I have to say that this Government is absolutely committed to giving New Zealanders more choice when it comes to transport because it's the right thing to do: it's the right thing for the environment and the climate and it's actually the right thing for Kiwis' back pockets.Now it is very easy for the Opposition to confuse people on this issue and to mislead and they have been doing so in regular social media attacks but I think New Zealanders deserve to know the truth. The truth is that this Government has an extremely balanced transport plan one that will invest for the future for our children's children. We're already seeing luckily some curbing of the deaths and serious injuries and we haven't even begun to truly invest in the road safety improvements. We have the road safety strategy Road to Zero out there. It's just come back in from consultation—very strong support from New Zealanders Kiwis right around. I am absolutely committed to ensuring that we have an evidence-based and balanced approach.Although the Opposition has claimed that we're looking at blanket speed-limit reductions there is nothing true to that claim. Every time I sit down with ordinary New Zealanders from right around the country or people who work in the freight industry and I explain to them what our transport policy is do you know what they say? They say "Well that just makes sense." And it does—it just makes sense. It's exactly what New Zealanders would expect. It's what a responsible Government does. We don't go out and mislead we don't have extreme impositions we don't hate anyone and we are investing not only for the Kiwis of today but for the future.I'm very proud of this Budget and the steps we've begun to take in the right direction but it will take a few more years to undo the damage that was done under the nine years of the last Government and their extremist transport policies and their negligence."