While government transport policies over the past few years have been nothing short of utterly depressing, what has been a lot more promising has been the thought opposition parties have put into creating smarter transport policies. An example of this is a conference put together by the Greens and Labour, related to smarter transport outcomes, that will be on later this week in Wellington. A full agenda of the conference can be read here, and is outlined below: 
For those who can’t make it down to Wellington, Paul Mees will be speaking in Auckland on Friday evening, details below:
When: Fri, 19/08/2011 – 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Where: Owen Glenn Building, Grafton Road, Auckland University, Room – OGGB5Come and hear Dr Paul Mees, author of ‘Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age’ and Senior Lecturer at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University talk about our public transport future.
That should be quite interesting. I wonder what Mees thinks of the GPS?
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I wonder if anyone from the government will even attend?
Of course not. It is a Labour and Greens event. That is like expecting a Labour MP to turn up to the National Party conference to listen to their ideas on youth unemployment.
Actually, it’s not anything like a party conference. It’s a workshop that crosses party lines, whereas a party conference is a cheerleading session for a single entity. Plus, it’s not unheard of for members of other parties to speak at party conferences. Act and National have cross-pollinated in past years, though not this year for obvious reasons.
I expected to see Joyce’s name in the programme, and was somewhat surprised by its absence.
It is organised by Labour and the Greens and about half the speakers are their MPs or Councillors. This is a party political event.
I am interested in the CID attendance. They’re an industry group that promotes extra spending on infrastructure of all types. Fletcher Construction and the Aggregate and Quarry Association are members. What do they think about Puhoi to Wellsford?: ‘”Scuttling the Puhoi to Wellsford highway will put Northland’s economy at risk and have serious road safety implications in the future”, says New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development Chief Executive Stephen Selwood.’ Will Selwood be promoting this view to a smart transport conference? Probably not, since his aim is for Labour and the Greens to spend money on projects that his members can build and operate.
“This is a party political event.”
Obi, that’s nonsense. I am sure if National had shown any interest, then they could have offered their views. But not on the beauty of trucking, but on their opinions of the “smart transport themes” – just because you hold a conference whose subject is more dear to your party than to another doesn’t make it a party show unless the other side treats it like that. and that’s then their own fault.
You’d think the average National hack would know they were relatively clueless and they would benefit from listening to world class academics on the subject. Or is it National party policy to put their fingers in their ears and go la-la-la?
Well Selwood is speaking, he’s a ‘pave everything’ advocate…and close to the minister
That’s exactly the sort of close-minded, I know best, everyone else is stupid attitude that typifies Joyce. The mere idea of Joyce listening to some experts that know an awful lot more about transport than he does seems completely foreign to you. Perhaps it’s just because as a scientist I find it normal to listen to experts in a field and see how they do things and therefore change my own views and ways of performing experiments (or spending billions of dollars of government money) – maybe I’m being too logical about the whole thing.
or naive…?
He told the Listener: “New Zealand at the moment is like a museum of the very worst transport policy ideas of the 1950s”.
When was that? Wouldn’t mind reading the article.
Looking forward to it. Hopefully I can find a park at Waikanae or Paraparaumu station at 10am 🙂
@axio my thoughts exactly!
The minister was invited to speak and attend. He sent a rather funny refusal back saying that he thought New Zealand’s transport policies already were smart 🙂
Ba-Boom! what wag, Steveo…
This is a conference preaching to the choir. I guess is people enjoying engaging in an exercise where their dearly held views don’t get challenged or subject to any serious scrutiny, it’s fun. For I suspect that would be what you’d think if National and ACT held a “building roads for the future” conference, full of people who were pro-motoring. Particularly having MPs moderating sessions pretty much ensures it will be politically driven to suit agendas with a focus on the election, not an attempt at balance or impartiality. It wouldn’t have been too hard to get professionals who are not politically aligned to do that.
I’ll be astonished if anyone advocates pricing roads NOT to punish motorists and finance railways, but to simply get more efficient use out of the infrastructure. Roland Sapsford after all once said anyone driving a car with a bigger than 1.3 litre engine is evil, and waged a campaign against Wellington getting a proper cut and cover tunnelled inner city bypass in the 1990s.
Thanks for the post. Important that as many people as possible hear what folk like Dr Paul Mees have to say
Obi- my role at the lecture tonight by Dr Mees is to introduce him, and help facilitate the questions at the end (which I am sure he is more than capable of doing on his own!) It’s not a party political event and all are welcome.
I realise that everyone is welcome and Mees would actually be quite interesting. However, the only place I could find the event advertised was on the Green’s web site (it isn’t mentioned on Labour’s, as far as I can see) and is certainly designed to promote Green and Labour policies. I thought the idea that Joyce should attend was just strange.
Take yourself back three years. ACT are organising a Sensible Sentencing Conference, hosted by David Garrett. The speakers are mostly ACT MPs, a couple of National MPs, a handful of three strikes weirdos, a lecturer in criminology from the University of Singapore who believes weed smokers should be executed, and the representative of an industry association whose members are pushing the government to build more prisons. They invite Attorney General Michael Cullen. He declines, remarking that “sentences are already sensible”. Blog commenters are surprised that Cullen didn’t attend. One says that Cullen is a bit dull and would learn a lot from listening to these experts. Another says that this is typical of a close-minded arrogant Cullen. Obi2008 takes the same position I have this time, and comment that of course Cullen wasn’t going to join in an ACT party political event. Would you have said it wasn’t party political on the basis that anyone could attend? Did Cullen and Clark ever attend conferences and seminars organised by the minor opposition parties?