My earlier post today was just a quick note to promote some discussion. I’ve also had the opportunity to have a bit of a think about what this might all mean. Here are a couple of key points made by commenters on the original thread:
- Matt L pointed out that it’s potentially quite insightful that National have chosen to put such a senior minister in charge of transport. A lot of discussion had been around associate minister Nathan Guy getting the promotion, but that hasn’t happened. Does this suggest that National are a bit worried about transport being a potential weak point? I think that there’s some merit in this argument – that transport will be a challenging portfolio over the next few years as Auckland Council gets impatient over City Rail Link progress and lower petrol tax receipts make life more and more challenging.
- Does choosing someone form the South Island, who very much seems quite separated from the Auckland situation, a slap in the face – as suggested by Patrick R? This is where I’m probably most worried about Brownlee – that he simply won’t be able to get his head around how different Auckland is to the rest of the country. I think that Joyce could have understood this matter, he perhaps just disagreed a bit on the medicine. I somewhat struggle to believe that Brownlee will even care much about Auckland needing something different to the rest of the country.
One thing that I have got worried about is in relation to that particular project known as the City Rail Link. Back in December last year, Brownlee was pretty keen to jump up and show that he disliked this project even more than Joyce did (2.15-2.25 of the video below, thanks to Matt L for finding it):
But regardless of this, I think it’s fair that we should give Brownlee a chance. Clearly he will continue with the main elements of National’s transport policy: the Roads of National Significance. Clearly he won’t decide to cut back Puhoi-Wellsford and chuck that money into the City Rail Link project. So we shouldn’t slam him for that, anymore than we would have done so to Steven Joyce.
So I’ll look for a few key signs over the next few months:
- Where will things go on the additional four RoNS projects added into the mix in the Government Policy Statement earlier this year (Cambridge-Tirau, Hamilton-Tauranga, Hawkes Bay expressway & Christchurch SH1)? To what extent will solutions along these routes be guided by sensible analysis or to what extent will pre-determined solutions be “fitted” onto the routes like has happened with Puhoi-Wellsford?
- What noises will Brownlee make about the City Rail Link project? Joyce has always left the door open a little bit, saying that he felt it was the most likely next rail project in Auckland and that it would be likely to happen at some stage. Will Brownlee be more positive towards it than this (actually trying to find some potential funding sources) or will he go more negative?
- How might Brownlee approach the balance between central and local government role in transport? Will he be as dismissive of regional fuel taxes as Joyce has been? What will be his attitude towards Auckland Council looking at alternative funding options such as congestion charging?
- If geotechnical problems between Warkworth and Wellsford turn out to be as bad as they sound, will he consider looking at abandoning that section of the “holiday highway”, or at least downgrading it to a large-scale safety upgrade of the route?
Finally, it’ll also be interesting to pontificate over the extent to which Joyce is still controlling things from behind the scenes.
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First up, I don’t think Joyce will be controlling things from behind the scenes other than as part of his role in cabinet where the big decisions are made anyway and suggesting strategies to deal with certain individuals i.e. Len Brown.
By having a new face in the portfolio it does enable for changes to happen without others having to lose faith e.g. I suspect that National have realised that P2W is a bit of a lemon but it was probably a bit much to ask SJ to turn around and scale it back after fighting for it so hard, having a new minister allows them in the future to say “New info has come in and it doesn’t really stack up any more. It probably makes it easier having that person from outside Auckland as well.
Of the new RoNS, I would expect to see the new Canterbury ones progressed and probably tied into the rebuild which Brownlee is also managing.
For the CRL it will largely depend on how well the Auckland Council can convince Brownlee that it is a good idea, this will likely need far more work than just a new business case unfortunately and it would be interesting to know how long it takes him to meet key players in it like Len or AT. I think it would also be good to see him catch a train from out west to see how busy they actually are in peak times and how much of a difference the CRL would make, March would be a good time.
“Of the new RoNS, I would expect to see the new Canterbury ones progressed and probably tied into the rebuild which Brownlee is also managing.”
Not forgetting the people of Christchurch asked for light rail. Is Brownlee going to go into bat for light rail?
A year on, none of those four MPs in the first frame of that clip are still in parliament. Shows that the political environment is unpredictable and can change quickly.
“Back in December last year, Brownlee was pretty keen to jump up and show that he disliked this project even more than Joyce did (2.15-2.25 of the video below, thanks to Matt L for finding it)”
I don’t see that at all. 2.15 is a long shot and I think I can see Brownlee sitting in the front row doing nothing. Certainly not jumping up. Then it switches to Hughes. At 2.26 Bill English is waving his hand in the air. But I didn’t see Brownlee doing anything at any stage.
Around 2.25 Brownlee sticks his hand up in the air.
At 2:25 you can see him put his hand up just before Bill does but he doesn’t waive it around (he is on the left of the picture)
Well spotted. I didn’t even pick that as a hand until you (both) pointed it out… it looked like something attached to who ever is sitting behind Key.
I don’t see that question time is evidence of much at all, and I don’t see it as a good method for examining policy or holding a government to account. It’s an opportunity for the opposition to try and score points, and they rarely do because they’re up against the full policy and research might of the public service. This clip mainly consisted of Joyce pointing out the deficiencies in the Auckland CC business case. A natural part of this involves mocking Hughes. The tunnel itself gets caught in the cross fire. If Hughes had actually wanted to see the tunnel constructed then he would have been well advised to not turn it in to a political football. If Labour hadn’t made it the center piece of their effort to win Auckland Central then National wouldn’t now be able to argue that voters had rejected the tunnel by validating National all across Auckland.
“If Labour hadn’t made it the center piece of their effort to win Auckland Central then National wouldn’t now be able to argue that voters had rejected the tunnel by validating National all across Auckland.”
You do realise that in the 2011 election, bucking the trend in the rest of the country, Auckland had a notable swing away from National-Act and towards Labour-Green.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/ElectionMap/
Nikke Kaye is only the electorate MP for Auckland Central because of the simple plurality system used in electorate contests.
Nikki Kaye increased her share of the vote in Auckland Central from 42.9% in 2008 to 45.39% in 2011. National increased its share of the party vote from 40.08% to 42.24%. That’s a big swing to National. And it is more impressive because Labour’s candidate this time wasn’t Judith Tizard.
Whatever Kaye is doing, people in Auckland Central like it.
obi, stop talking in percentages and start talking in absolute numbers. Kaye got fewer votes this year than she did in 2008. At some point this will sink in: National didn’t win, the left lost.
Fewer people gave National their party vote this year than did so in 2008. In most electorates National’s increase in absolute numbers (where there was any such increase, which didn’t occur in Auckland or Christchurch Central) isn’t even in proportion to population growth. You can spin it any which way you like, but you cannot change the raw numbers.
Hell, look at Bennett, who lost to a first-time challenger while the incumbent and a Cabinet Minister. That’s historic, and says far more than any spin about relative changes in percentages of the vote.
It was always going to be a political football, because National didn’t get their pet candidate elected to the mayoralty. Toss in absolute apathy, if not outright loathing, of public transport, and any public transport project with a 10-figure price was going to catch a lot of flak.
It’s entirely proper that a hugely expensive transport project be subjected to a proper examination. What’s not proper is for different standards to be used to accept/dismiss a project based on predetermined outcomes. Joyce’s calls for the tunnel business case to stack up economically at the same time as using a different assessment formula to talk up the SJMHH as being economically justified were just bullshit. Joyce made this about the tunnel, not Hughes. Not that I expect National to actually be honest about their reasons for supporting Puford over the CRL, of course, but it’d be nice if they could try.
Ok then let’s give Brownlee a chance and pretend he could be different. At least that will give us a short break from having to face the depressing truth for a while.
I’m not waiting in hope to see if he will be better than Joyce. I am waiting in fear to see if he is worse.
That’s not half full, nor half empty, but shattered, and a shard has stuck into one’s neck.
“Always look on the bright side of … death”
Chin up, old boy. It’s only 1082 days to the next election.
1082!!?!?!!?! – Now I’m depressed too.
As Jennifer pointed out even the Herald calls it as ‘bizarre’. Yes it is and perhaps it won’t last as I said earlier it possibly has more to do with not want to appear to snub Brownlee by him losing portfolios without gaining others. And with the idea that this area is already sorted. The money is spent for decades and Brownlee will be busy in CHCH and plan is to build the RoNS and ignore all other voices. Especially urban, especially Auckland ones. And as Obi pointed out they probably feel confident that they can do that and not even lose votes up here. This then, is what Kaye’s ‘support’ for the CRL amounts to, she has helped give her masters the confidence that other factors [Key’s famous charm] trump Aucklanders desire for PT in general and the CRL in particular.
So no, AK did not send a message on this issue, Admin often points out that people vote at national elections on other issues, and this certainly seems to be one of those disconnects, like the asset sale issue. Many Aucklanders, it seems, think like Obi, believing in a government that refuses to share our money with local government, yet demanding that that local government somehow delivers us the things we want. Remember Joyce went to such lengths to keep all the money away from councils while also increasing AT’s indebtedness specifically around PT.
“Many Aucklanders, it seems, think like Obi, believing in a government that refuses to share our money with local government, yet demanding that that local government somehow delivers us the things we want.”
I’m not opposed to central government contributing to local projects. That is normal and mostly necessary. However I do think that a super city has to step up a bit and act super. And I don’t think central government has any responsibility to rescue Brown from the promises that Brown made.
But I’m still opposed to using infrastructure as a political football. Most infrastructure projects run for the life of several parliaments. In the past they have been generally well supported by all the main parties (including motorways by the Clark government over nine years) and that is necessary if we’re not going to scrap all infrastructure progress every time there is a change of government. What Labour and the Greens should have done is sat down with the government a few years ago, agreed that infrastructure had to have multi-party support, and offered National their support on the RONS projects which are important for regional development. At the same time they could have added the tunnel and other PT projects to the list as being important for Auckland. I can’t imagine that National wouldn’t have agreed to packaging RONS and a tunnel if it meant certainty for both for the future.
Instead we had Mike Lee banging on about “holiday highway” and Gareth Hughes thinking “colossus of roads” was clever. Labour and the Greens campaigned on scrapping RONS and using the money to build the tunnel, and they lost big time. That’s a fail for them, and the tunnel has been colateral damage. Note that Brown has been too clever to play this game… he has promoted his projects, but I don’t believe he has ever criticised any of the government’s. If the tunnel is approved (and I suspect it will be), then a lot of the credit should go to Brown putting projects in front of politics, rather than vice versa like Labour and the Greens.
Funny, Obi, are you willfully naive? Believe in the tooth fairy too? Of course; wouldn’t it be nice if we all just get along and agree about everything… lalalalala,
And what, do you suppose, would Key and Joyce have said to the beaten opposition parties kind offer to support half of Nationals policy in exchange for National supporting half of theirs? Oh Ok, that’s nice, yeah even though we won let’s meet in the middle, our supporters at the Road Users Forum won’t mind and it’ll all be so nice and lovely.
They wouldn’t be doing their job right if they rolled over on dodgy policy. A lot of the RoNS are really meritless. They have very limited benefits for a great amount of cost, which is billions and billions of dollars we don’t have. There are cheaper alternatives to full blown 4 lane motorways. They are building a 4 lane motorway from Waikanae to Levin, when all that is needed is an Otaki Bypass. The rest is a complete waste of money. There’s a half a billion dollars of waste right there. That would pay for half the CBD rail link.
So what you are saying Obi is that they should be a party to such rubbish policy. Labour’s failure is that they were only half-hearted in their opposition to the roads boondoggle – like their support of Transmission Gully, a $1 billion white elephant. The Greens didn’t stuff up. They increased their vote, and are looking more and more like being the major party in government in the medium-term.
The real tragedy is the lame-ass TV and print media in NZ that went soft on anything of substance, including transport policy. They were content to publish dodgy polls and do fluff pieces. They were happy to not inform the dumbed down population. Hence we got the government you get when nobody is smart enough to know what they are voting for. We got a National government because a. Labour were hopeless. and b. Kiwis, as a general rule, are thick.
Megatropolis doesn’t have all that much power to raise money, though. It’s limited to rates, charges and commercial operations, just like every other council. It cannot levy any road taxes, for example, or fuel excises. It cannot charge business taxes. It’s all very well to say it needs to “act super”, but it doesn’t have any additional powers than existed before. In some ways it’s less super than the previous councils, where there was at least a dual rating base (regional and local) from which things could be funded. Now there’s just a single rating base.
Unless central government changes the law (which I don’t consider to be likely under National), Auckland is going to be quite restricted in what it can do because there’s only so much money that can be levied directly on the residents.
Also, given that National is so fond of characterising Auckland as “an anchor” and “a handbrake”, you’d think they’d be falling over themselves to put money into projects that will help Auckland perform to its full potential.
Megatropolis may have just got the power?
http://auckland.scoop.co.nz/2011/12/auckland-city-to-sell-bonds-in-us2-5b-euro-mtn-programme/
Let’s borrow in Euros, then when that tanks completely, pay them back at the new far lower exchange rate.
Still doesn’t expand their ability to pay the debt back, however. Lower lifetime servicing costs are good, but it still has to be paid back from the same highly-constrained income stream.
Labour should take a gamble and make Ardern transport spokesperson.
Its a big portfolio for one so new to politics, but it would really lay down the challenge in Auckland. It would drag the “local” issue of transport into a national debate.
She’s not exactly new to politics. New-ish to the House (second term), but she worked on Helen’s staff before being elected in 2008. I think she should hold the Auckland Issues portfolio, given her close affinity for this city, and possibly associate with Transport. Give Transport to Robertson.
I think Tywford should be transport spokesperson as he genuinely seems interested in the issue and even made a submission towards the Auckland plan for the council to consider a NW busway.
I agree Matt L. Twyford would be great.
Have to agree Phil Twyford would be an excellent choice.
I agree also. Twyford for transport. Interesting comment today on aktnz
http://www.aktnz.co.nz/2011/12/13/keeping-it-in-the-family/#commentspost
Jennifer, It’s alarming and appalling that so many commenters (presumably AK residents) are totally ignorant of what has happened to this country over the last year and a bit and actually think that anybody who does understand the challenges facing this country is an Auckland-hater. If those people weren’t so obviously speaking from ignorance one would be tempted to think that see the Canterbury quakes as God-sent opportunity to the remove the opposition. Auckland certainly has unique transport problems but they are insignificant in the short/medium term compared with the challenges created by this once in 80 years city devastating tectonic event. Aucklanders would be wise to take a cup of tea and ponder the wisdom of the Draft Auckland Plan proposing to place the city’s principal greenfield development zone on the city’s most liquifaction prone soil right on top of the M6 Drury faultline and just tens of kms from the M7 Wairoa North faultline.
It is also time the Wellingtonians fessed up to the fact that during the 1960s and 1970s they “borrowed” $500m (in todays money) of Christchurch petrol taxes intended to build motorways in Christchurch and spent that money building the Foothills Motorway. Then they made Auckland pay the money back to the South Island (it never actually reached Christchurch) from the mid-70s through to the mid-90s. This led to Judith Tizard’s Herald opinion pieces stating that Auckland had not been recieving it’s fair share of roading money since the 1970s and consequently the decision to postpone the Christchurch motorways a further five years so that the $500m could be paid back to Auckland. Hence Wellington owes Auckland $500m and Auckland owes Christchurch $500m. Instead of NZTA dipping into the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Fund to pay it’s share of the $750 quake repair bill for CCC roads it should simply use the money proposed to pay for the Basin flyover to get everything square between Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Then you can take comfort from the fact that Brownlee comes from a city which not only has no rail commuting but also almost no motorways or flyovers, ergo he should be less biased towards motorways in Auckland than Joyce or Key.
Kevyn, Auckland must succeed for the country to pay for the rebuilding of Christchurch. Ignore the money-go-round that never happened for historic motorways (be thankful that Christchurch was spared the blight that has been imposed on Auckland and Wellington), and look at the facts: over a third of all taxation revenue comes from Auckland. That was before the quakes, too, and the share will doubtless be higher now because the country’s second city is far from fully-functional.
The reason Aucklanders are leery of Cantabrians’ views of the city is that Auckland is so reviled by them in the normal course of business. Auckland is regularly accused of bludging money off the hard-working folk of the South Island, of not paying its way nationally. You cannot deny these allegations are made routinely. It’s little wonder, then, that Auckland’s residents are not now immediately embracing the appearance of Cantabrian who has expressed no love for public transport as the man responsible for deciding if a key transport project in Auckland will get funding from central government.
As for the greenfield sites, where would you put them without breaking into our regional parks? Auckland is not considered to be at a high risk of an earthquake, whereas Christchurch was known to be vulnerable, and the sites that suffered the worst liquefaction were flagged before even being approved for development. Little wonder there are rumblings that the CCC is rumoured to be at risk of a lawsuit.
Matt,
I am an Aucklander living in Christchurch and studying environmental planning at Lincoln Uni. Two of my research projects investigated the consequences of Christchurch drawing the short straw in the motorway money-go-round. Because the central and northern motorway designations were in place for up to 25 years and the government acquired 75% of the land for the St Albans motorway we managed to experience all the negative consequences of a motorway through that suburb for absolutely no gain until after the designation was lifted. Property developers moved in and replaced all the run down bungalows with tiltslab townhouses within walking distance of the CBD. The last five year delay to the southern motorway gave developers the opportunity to buy some of the land originally designated for the motorway driving up the motorway land costs and, rather foolishly, residential subdivisions were allowed close enough to create noise problems for the motorway resource consents. You can read the full report in the next issue of Lincoln Planning Review.
As with most new transport initiatives the motorways in Auckland and Wellington did produce huge benefits by allowing those two regions to sell themselves to big business as “progressive” fast growing city-regions. Now their value is questionable. The traditional big city’s (London, New York, Sydney) investments in commuter rail followed that same value cycle fifty years in advance of motorways although I can’t really see much of chance of a motorway renaissance fifty years from now.
The motorway money-go-round can’t really be dismissed as “historic” since the more recent part of that history was used by the Clark Government to deprive Christchurch of $500m to the immediate benefit of Auckland. But the really important point is that both Auckland and Christchurch were paying for Wellington’s motorway extravagance. So I’m not suggesting that the CRT be deferred to allow the ledger to be squared but rather that Transmission Gully or the Basin Flyover be delayed to allow Wellington to pay it’s dues.
I recommend reading both the Auditor General’s report on the Government spending due to the Canterbury earthquakes and Treasury’s pre-election fiscal update. The figures the news media have cited for the economic impact of the earthquakes were grossly exagerated. Because the main industrial/commercial corridor from Addington to Hornby escaped largely unscathed from the February quake very little of the expected GDP reduction actually happened, hence the earthquakes are likely to have a positive impact on both GDP and tax revenues over the five year forecast period (because of the billions coming into the economy from reinsurers). If the Government hadn’t been so generous with it’s assistance to the insurance industry the earthquakes would have cost taxpayers nothing at all, other than the need to repay the $4bn the Government borrowed from EQC over the years, hence the issuing of $4.8bn of Earthquake Bonds paying less than 4% interest instead of the 6% EQC was being paid. It is absurd that Joyce insisted that NZTA use $300m of that borrowed money instead of using Christchurch petrol taxes when he only needs to cancel one of his dodgey RoNS to square everything up.
Be a bit more cautious with the comparison of seismic risk for Christchurch and Auckland. Christchurch was considered no more risky than Auckland up till about 25 years ago. Comparing the emerging knowledge of the Alpine Fault with what was known of the San Andreas Fault lead to the conclusion that there had to be hundreds of faults close enough to cause liquifaction in Christchurch but it was only in the last ten years that it has been possible to actually locate the fault traces under hundreds of metres of gravel. The Auckland Engineering Lifelines Group considers the risk to be much higher than is generally appreciated. For Christchurch the risk of a Sept 4 quake was considered “overdue” but the risk of a Feb 22 quake was considered about as unlikely as a rupture of Auckland’s Wairoa North Fault (which has an estimated recurrence interval between 14ky and 40ky – about the same as the Greendale Fault).
The best greenfields sites are the two identified in the north. The two in the south could go ahead once the new foundation standards being applied in the orange zones are adopted nationally, possibly within two years if current concern and momentum is maintained.