Williamson Maurice: General Debate 
Williamson Maurice: General Debate 
[Volume:629;Page:1377] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I remind members of the public that that was “Barbeque Phil Goff” speaking just then—the man who should really not talk about trying to stab leaders in the back. 
Can I just say to this House that I have never known the portfolio of transport or roading to be in such a shambolic state. I say that because of the level of press releases that have come out today; not from the National Party although we have done our bit but from just any other organisation one might wish to name: Federated Farmers the Automobile Association the regional councils and a number of other organisations that are absolutely in a state of crisis—and the Contractors Federation can be added to that list as well. They are in a state of crisis because they simply have no idea what the roading programme for the next few years is. 
One might say that that is not really fair comment because the Government has put out a reasonably good document. Well actually the Government has put out lots and lots of documents and every one it has put out contradicts the previous one. I have to say that the Minister of Transport David Parker should either tender his resignation because of the shambles or more important go after the members of the board of Transit seeking their resignations. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Who’s on that board? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Actually the member asks a good question. Who is on the board of Transit? A common factor with Labour Party overspending comes to mind. His name is Mike Williams the Labour Party president. When we hear the cry in the House all the time: “Pay it back pay it back!” maybe Mr Williams should get some of that money back so he can pay for all the printing that goes on at Government Print or whoever does it. 
I want to tell the House this. Transit put this document out in the last week of June last year. Now that is proper. That is what should happen. It is a 10-year plan that is released once every year saying what the next 10 years should look like. That is absolutely proper. But what happened was the first codicil that was added to the document came out on the day the document came out. There is a little orange sticker at the very bottom that says we cannot take any notice of this document because the Government announced something just that week that Transit did not know about and therefore this document is not worth the glossy paper it is printed on. It is full of maps graphs and tables—but we can forget it; it is not worth it. That is the first point. 
So everybody sat in limbo for some time. Then 2 months later there was another document. Members will spot how much the covers are alike but the new one has the words “Update August 2005”. I do not know why they did not put the day and the week as well because that is what we will have to go to. Now yet another update has come out with it all changed. Everybody out of the pool—it has all changed. The construction industry people said: “Oh my God! Now we have to go back to the drawing board and decide how many new bulldozers and how many new personnel we will need.” 
Then the rumours started leaking out driven by the Prime Minister’s speech last week that there was a problem with roading. She made one of the worst mistakes she has ever made. Again she was badly briefed by her transport Minister that roading costs were blowing out because of contractors and their pricing. Well the Contractors Federation was out of the blocks straight away pointing out that the key drivers of roading costs are cement prices steel prices and fuel prices—not one of which the federation has any control over. They are international commodities and that is what is driving it. Even when we add all those increases together the contractors’ margins have been squeezed back a bit. So I tell the Prime Minister that she should not start blaming the contractors. She should blame her Government for driving some of the inflationary spiral. 
But now I come to the doozy. We have all been waiting for this. We heard about it last night around the corridors. There is a new document out. I thought: “Right! I better be ready.” so I got my team ready with the spreadsheets. We got all the old data and we said that we had better look to see how different it is. All morning I have sat at my PC inputting this data. Here it is—a beautiful coloured glossy about the State highway programme. I thought it was really worth doing so that we would be really ready to respond. 
An hour after the document was formally released at midday the Associate Minister of Finance Trevor Mallard said: “See all these? Forget them. They don’t mean anything. They are of no value. We are not going to do it. They are of no value—they’re gone.” That is what Mallard said. I say to this Government: how on earth can the roading industry plan where with this Minister and this board of Transit the plan changes daily?