Genter Julie Anne: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Genter Julie Anne: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 18 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3639. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Speaker. I would like to start by acknowledging the comments made here today by the Associate Minister of Transport Simon Bridges who rightly pointed out that there are opportunities to not throw billions of dollars at wasteful projects and to have more intelligent targeted spending that results in the same benefits. So the question is when the Government will apply that logic to its transport spending because it is not applying that logic to its transport spending at the moment. Yesterday I asked the Minister of Transport about the cancellation of the Otaki to Levin expressway and the Minister said some really intriguing things like—I will quote this from  
Hansard 
—“The Otaki to Levin expressway is not one of the roads of national significance.”  
Far be it from me to question what the Minister is saying but I do have a report here from the New Zealand Transport Agency and it says: “Project update: roads of national significance: Otaki to north of Levin”. Then it says right here: “The Otaki to Levin project is a section of the Wellington Northern Corridor Road of National Significance.” This document is dated 3 July 2012 so it is very up to date and recent but I am sure that if you go back to 2009 when the roads of national significance were first announced it was in fact the Levin to airport road of national significance. So there is really no way anyone could conceive that the Otaki to Levin expressway was not part of the roads of national significance. What the New Zealand Transport Agency does say is that it has found that the best option is to target improvements on existing State highways because this offers better value for money than building a new expressway away from the existing road. I think that is very logical and the Government has been able to save $300 million this way—a reduction in cost of 75 percent.  
Why will the Government not be applying that same logic to the Kapiti expressway? Just earlier today I was on the steps of Parliament and we saw a community group from Kapiti present a cheque for $450 million to the Wizard of Christchurch. That is the difference in cost between the Kapiti local connector road that had been agreed by the New Zealand Transport Agency and by the community before this Government come into power and the new expressway that the Government plans to ram through that area at an enormous cost—actually three times the cost of a local road that would achieve the exact same benefits perhaps greater benefits at lower cost. When are we going to see some economic rationality from the Minister of Transport and from the National Government when it comes to transport spending? This situation is really like the 
emperor’s new clothes when it comes to transport spending because I think that perhaps Government members do not feel empowered to actually look into the business cases; they just assume that if you throw billions of dollars at a motorway it is going to result in economic benefit. I would be happy to sit down with them and explain why that is not the case. In fact as the Minister pointed out yesterday I do have a background in transport economics and have been paid to do research at a very low cost compared with the cost of planning roads that will never be built.  
What worries me about what the Minister of Transport said yesterday is that he said he was going to direct the Transport Agency not to undertake economic research into transport projects. This is what we are hearing from the Government: rather than spending a small amount of money on research that could save the country hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars and get better economic outcomes it would rather throw those hundreds of millions of dollars—in fact $14 billion—at building projects for which there is not one shred of evidence that they will have a positive impact on the economy. That is concerning and what is worse is that the Minister does not even see fit to come to question time prepared to answer honestly and correctly when I pose questions to him. I have some grave concerns about that.  
The Green Party is quite happy to work towards a smarter transport future with the Government. We are happy to sit down any time and have a non-ideological conversation about how we can save billions of dollars. Thank you.