Joyce Steven: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Joyce Steven: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12788] 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 I will happily answer a couple of the questions the previous speaker Darren Hughes raises. I could start perhaps with the Puhoi to Wellsford motorway because somehow the previous Labour Government thought it was a very good idea to build a new motorway north from Auckland to Puhoi put it alongside the old highway and make it three lanes of traffic—disappearing into a paddock just outside of Puhoi. None of the traffic had left the road at that point but it was a really good idea to build a really long road there and then stop it where no traffic was leaving the road. It was one of the silliest roading decisions ever made in this country and it was made by the previous Government. I point out something else for the Opposition: that road carries something like 25000-odd people a day. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: No it doesn’t. 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: Yes it does. Between Puhoi and Warkworth the number of vehicles is around 19000 or about 25000 people a day according to—[ 
Interruption 
] The Opposition constantly says we should put that money into rail in Auckland. I think that rail in Auckland is important but I note just to get the comparator right that we currently have around 22000 passengers on the entire Auckland commuter rail network every day. The Puhoi to Warkworth section of State Highway 1 has more traffic on it than the entire Auckland commuter rail network has on an average day. That is the reality of the situation. The Opposition says we should not invest in that highway and that we should stop it in a paddock at Puhoi despite the high level of usage of that road. That is the ridiculous nature of the Opposition’s approach to transport. 
Another example of Labour’s approach is the highway north of Wellington. The previous Labour Government put its fingers in its ears and said that it did not have to worry about whether it had a plan for State Highway 1 north of our capital city. It preferred not to have to think about that because it was a bit hard and it did not want to talk to people about it. Labour members thought: “We’ll take the one highway designation that is reasonably possible north of Wellington and use it for a link road. We won’t need it for the highway. We won’t worry about the highway. We’ll just have the thundering traffic on the old road with all the access issues and we won’t even think about the future.” That was the approach of the previous Government. 
So when I went up the Kapiti coast and asked the people in the local district where State Highway 1 went in this grand master plan they said: “We really can’t tell you. Maybe there is a third designation.” Of course that is what we all had to go through last year and the reality is that there is not a third designation that is acceptable for the local community. There is a designation there that is acceptable and that should be used for New Zealand’s highway. In fact it is not just about the Kapiti coast; it is also about Palmerston North about Levin about Wanganui and about the whole lower North Island linking to Wellington. That is what is very important. 
The third thing I should draw to Opposition members’ attention is that somehow they thought they would be paying for their roading projects. They keep saying: “We were going to do that; we were going to do that.” But they cut the budget just before they left office and the Government policy statement on State highways which was signed off by the previous Minister of Transport going forward was around $650 million a year in State highway investment. It is now $1 billion a year. So Labour was going to have to delay Victoria Park. It had no plan for Waterview. It was going to borrow stacks of money for Waterview outside of the National Land Transport Fund and increase the Government’s fiscal deficit. 
Those were Labour’s plans—it did not have any and it could not afford to pay for Transmission Gully. But now we have a $10.7 billion pipeline to invest in these roads of national significance and somehow Opposition members are trying to tell us they would have done some of them. Well they would not have had the money because they were frittering money away on everything else in their classic “just throw money at whoever wants it” approach. 
National has a much better system running with the Government policy statement for the investment in the highways. I am very proud that we will see real opportunities for economic growth by investing in not just these seven projects but the projects that do not involve roads of national significance. Labour members never found the time to do the Kopu Bridge. They never had the time to do the Matahorua Gorge. They never found the time to do the Hawke’s Bay Expressway’s southern extension. All these things have been started and done by this Government and of course Victoria Park is one of the biggest overall. 
I think the problem is that the previous speaker has no understanding of the importance of prioritising and getting this infrastructure right and spending in the right places. Thank you.