Gosche Mark: Road Traffic Reduction Bill — Second Reading 
Gosche Mark: Road Traffic Reduction Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:615;Page:11136] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 First I congratulate Jeanette Fitzsimmons and the Green Party on promoting ideas whose time has come—ideas that many in New Zealand scoffed at 3 or 4 years ago and are now saying are sensible. I remember that when I first became the Minister of Transport the Automobile Association visited—as it should—and obviously it was a very strong proponent of more roads and motorways and not particularly good on other forms of transport like public transport. So we challenged the association—the Associate Minister of Transport at the time Judith Tizard challenged it to find out whether its members agreed and in particular the people of Auckland about whom the association was most concerned. To the Automobile Association’s credit it did a professionally run survey which told it that the Auckland public wanted to see a mix of public transport and roading and alternatives to roading as the answer to Auckland’s transport problems. 
Members will now find that some of those people who were very strong on building more roads as the only solution have changed their tune dramatically and are not afraid to say so. I know that Auckland City and its mayor have been very strong proponents of more road-building and good on the mayor for saying so. But he has also accepted as the rest of Auckland has that there needs to be better public transport more people walking and a safe infrastructure for those things to occur. Those ideas have been incorporated by the Government—not only into law by way of the Land Transport Management Bill but put into action. Action is something that this side of the House knows about. 
Unfortunately the theorists on the other side have all sorts of weird and wonderful answers to these problems and I am sure that Maurice Williamson will rise to tell us what they are because he is National’s new spokesperson on transport. I know that not so long ago he was still telling all the local body people on the North Shore that “better transport” and “better roads” were the answer. I am sure he will tell us that in his speech just after me but sadly they are not. 
Not so long ago a report in Auckland newspapers stated that funding for walking school buses would be cut. The story turned out to be wrong—sometimes the media does pick up the wrong end of the stick—but there was a public outcry. People in Auckland said that would be terrible because they liked walking school buses. They demanded that the small amount of money that had been put into the project—which still has quite a few noughts on the end of it but is small in comparison to the cost of some of the roading projects—be continued very rapidly. The powers that be in Auckland said not to worry and that it would continue. Why? Because parents are grabbing the idea and saying that they do not want their kids going out on those congested roads and if they can get their children to school safely then that is a good thing. 
As all MPs in this House do I get the publications of Transit and Transfund. I am not sure how many members read them. Certainly nobody in the National Party probably does because they would not like this headline: “Biggest construction period in Auckland history gets under way”. I will come back to that in a minute but on the back of the January/February 2004 issue of  
Transfund News 
 is the news that 14 new walking and cycling projects have been approved—over $1.3 million worth of projects. Those projects are not just happening in Auckland and feeding the fears people have had that this Government has a focus on Auckland only. 
Manukau City will get $30000 and construction of an airport - to - Mangere Bridge cycleway. Anybody who goes to the airport in Auckland will know that there is a significant number of workers at the airport. It now has its own supermarket and Warehouse so the market recognises that there are a lot of people out there. There has always been a cycleway but not a particularly safe one that I would like to venture on to. That cycleway is getting $71000. 
I go to the Waipa district. Who would have dreamt that the Waipa district would have wanted a walking strategy but it will have one and it is being funded. In Taupo a control-gates bridge cycleway will be constructed costing $300000. National Party members joke about that but the National Party is so out of touch. Taupo used to be its heartland—did National not hold the Taupo seat once upon a time? It probably has not been there for such a long time because the people have rejected it. The people of Taupo say they want a cycleway. The Government did not say it would make Taupo have a cycleway. The people of Taupo through their local authority said that was what they wanted. 
If National Party politicians got out of their little enclaves every now and then and realised what the rest of New Zealand already realises they would see that Ohope which I think is in Tony Ryall’s seat will get $30000 for a road cycleway. A safe cycle route is to be constructed along State Highway 2 and so on. There is a list so maybe National Party members could get this pamphlet out of the piles of papers in their offices they never read. They would see that New Zealanders welcome a mix of solutions to transport. 
Yes they do want roads but the National Party will not like this: “Construction is about to begin on two of Auckland’s most significant motorway projects. Celebrations were combined”—so much is going on that there have to be combined celebrations on some projects—“for the start of stage 2 of the central motorway junction.” Everyone in Auckland knows what a shambles “Spaghetti Junction” is—left completely by the National Party. It thought that the concrete with the steel sticking out of it was artwork that Transit did when it started to build the motorway. We know different. In fact it was uncompleted work. 
I could not find a single piece of motorway infrastructure in Auckland that has Maurice Williamson’s or Jenny Shipley’s name on a plaque opening it. There is nothing. As the Minister of Transport I even opened the Albany to Puhoi realignment which is— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Who started it? 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: And who finished it? So those proud road builders over there cannot find a single piece of motorway in Auckland that they completed in 9 long years of Government. They then criticise this Government for activity on things like tolling. In 9 long years National did not pass a single bit of legislation that enabled local bodies throughout the country to make that decision for themselves and for the local people to say they wanted that road. 
They all mock the stuff that the Green Party has talked about. They do not like the idea that public transport use in New Zealand since we have been Government has increased by 24.9 percent and that we have doubled in 4 years the spending on public transport that Maurice Williamson froze for 5 years. Why? Because more people are using buses trains and ferries and there will be even more. 
We have a funding system that does not reward people for doing nothing but rewards them by giving them extra money for more bums on seats. It is called patronage-based funding and companies like Stagecoach cannot invest quickly enough in new buses in New Zealand. They cannot believe the growth their company is getting because there is a Government with vision that says it must build more roads and they must be safe roads and they have to have some alternatives built into them so that there can be busways cycleways and walkways. That makes them multimodal and gives safe options to people who want to get on their bikes or their feet and walk places and not just use their cars. 
This Government has the vision it has the legislation and it has the action that the poor old National Party just cannot stand looking at. Those members must put on their blinkers dark glasses and everything else as they drive back to their homes in Auckland and say: “I cannot stand the look of this. The Government has actually done something when we sat on our backsides for 9 years and did nothing except freeze public transport spending and watch the road toll go through the roof.” There were not enough police on the roads. 
When I became the Minister in 1999 it was a terrible portfolio to take over such was the neglect of the National Government. There was not even a national transport strategy; there was nothing. There were regional ones but the Government of Maurice Williamson was too lazy to even have a strategy let alone to build anything.