Yesterday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced a cabinet reshuffle, which saw Simeon Brown picking up the Health portfolio as it’s been taken off Dr Shane Reti, and Transport has been given to Chris Bishop. Additionally, Simeon’s energy and local government portfolios now sit with Simon Watts.
This is very good news, as Simeon Brown was probably the most fanatically ideological transport minister New Zealand has ever seen.
If we go back to over 10 years ago, on the 19th of August 2014, the New Zealand government announced that they were putting forward $100 million in funding for cycleways in urban areas. This promise, made ahead of the 2014 election, was formally actioned in early 2015.
While the Urban Cycleways Fund rolled out at half the recommended level of investment – and a tiny fraction of what was going into the RoNs at the time – it represented a step change towards rebalancing transport choices in New Zealand cities, in a healthy, productive and cost-effective direction.
Crucially, this advance was made by a National government, under Ministers of Transport Gerry Brownlee and Simon Bridges. Moreover, not long after, in January 2016, Prime Minister John Key announced another great leap forward: central government support for early funding of the City Rail Link, something previous National transport ministers had opposed for years.
This was due in no small part to consistent work and advocacy by Mayor Len Brown (and backed up by polling numbers in Auckland). But like the cycleways fund, it was a major shift from the National Party’s ideological inclinations, in the direction of bipartisan common sense. The same year saw the first ATAP agreement between central and local government, which set out a relatively progressive long-term transport plan, even under the old school “predict and provide” approach.
This is not to sugarcoat the Fifth National Government: their main transport focus remained large road projects. But they showed a willingness to look beyond their political paradigm to achieve better outcomes, to support the new Super City’s priorities, and to enthusiastically help tell the story of why it’s a no-brainer to invest in a wide range of transport alternatives.

Fast forward to 2024-2024, and the picture could not be more different.
Under a self-styled banner of “back to basics”, the (now outgoing, thankfully) Minister of Transport Simeon Brown has pursued a bizarre culture war against the most basic transport modes of walking and cycling.
Under the banner of “local control”, his wildly skewed Government Policy Statement on transport (GPS) reached right down into the nitty-gritty of local projects to dictate there would be no funding of any multi-modal street designs. This has gutted funding for local cycleway networks, safety and accessibility for active modes, and public transport improvements across the country – even where they were ardently backed by communities.
The fallout has been universal, including in National Party strongholds – and flies in the face of widespread public support for safe, all-ages bike routes, and local aspirations for accessible streets and town centres,
Despite claiming to support ‘localism’, Brown has pushed a GPS that has been described as ‘a disaster for local government’. His meddling has resulted in the axing of hundreds of long-awaited local projects across the country, overridden Auckland’s choices on building and funding our transport network, and grabbed ministerial control of reforms to Auckland Transport.
Under Simeon Brown, the government has brought back the next tranche of RoNs, which Brown has pushed to all be four-lane mega-roads, regardless of terrain and expense. In order to procure funding for the mega-roads, the government has been looking at locking in Private Public Partnerships, which will saddle future generations with billions of debt in the decades to come. They’re also looking to implement tolls that have no hope of ever recouping the cost of the roads they’ve recklessly promised.
This time round, the RoNs look set to bankrupt the country with expensive monstrosities that don’t hold up under any scrutiny. The Northern Expressway alone would cost 10% of New Zealand’s entire infrastructure budget – our collective resources not just for transport, but for all kinds of public infrastructure, from hospitals to energy to defence.
Worse, not only did Brown lie about his road safety policies, he ramped up his culture war to embarrassing levels – casually calling respected international road safety awards ‘woke’, while championing policies that will lead to the unneeded deaths of Kiwis on our roads. His anti-safety crusade ran against the wishes of experts, local communities, evidence, and sanity.
This is not even to mention the impact of Brown’s transport policies on climate emissions, doing his bit to lock us into a damaging continuing cycle of worsening weather, wrecked roads, and costly fallout.
It must have been galling for senior National figureheads to witness this aggressive swerve away from common values and normative policy. In Brown’s skewed worldview, his predecessor Simon Bridges (who currently chairs the NZ Transport Agency) and former PM John Key would be considered “woke warriors”, for the crime of supporting, funding and celebrating urban cycleways. Cabinet colleagues of Brown’s such as Minister of Education Erica Stanford, and fellow National MP Tim Costly, have supported raised crossings and safety measures, which Brown says ‘infest’ New Zealand’s roads.
Brown’s words and actions in the role were not normal; not the actions of a normal Minister of Transport.
You would expect any politician to hew to their party’s political leanings. But the best care enough about outcomes – and evidence – to consider and accept a variety of different solutions. They care enough about their communities to support their desires for the betterment of the local environment.
Simeon Brown did not care when people and communities differed from his worldview – even when they voted for his party. He only cared about drumming up a bizarre culture war, and delved deeply and inappropriately into project detail to do so.
Again: Simeon Brown was not a normal Minister of Transport.
Now, in Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s cabinet reshuffle, the transport role has been given to Chris Bishop, who retains his roles as the Minister for Housing and Minister for Infrastructure.

Chris Bishop is a National Party politician: his rollback of Kāinga Ora and moving responsibility for social housing to community housing providers, are examples of him sticking to the party line.
Yet there’s also plenty of evidence he’s an evidence-based guy, with a much more rational approach to policymaking.
Within his housing portfolio he’s made some positive moves with ‘Going for Housing Growth’ which has the potential to fill in the hole of Auckland’s donut-shaped development pattern. This is despite National pulling out of the bi-partisan Medium Density Residential Standards in 2023.
Bishop has also been pushing for a cross-party long-term infrastructure plan, and with the Infrastructure Commission currently developing a ‘menu’ of verified projects for the Infrastructure Priorities Programme, there could be a good foundation to do so.
Now that he has the Transport portfolio, Bishop could have the opportunity to genuinely push for a far more credible cross-party agreement, without the bad-faith fanaticism of Simeon Brown.
What his actions and rhetoric so far demonstrate, is Chris Bishop can be a normal Minister of Transport, as New Zealanders deserve.
It will be interesting to see if there’s a mood to reverse some of the destruction left in the wake of Simeon’s reign as Minister of Transport to be reversed – or whether political momentum (and the most ideological GPS ever written) shackles Bishop to the same maniacal path.
I don’t think Bishop is motivated by the obsessive malice his predecessor showed; this switch brings the potential for change.
There’s no doubt RoNs will continue to be the focus. But there may be an opportunity to scale back the mega-roads of the RoNs in order to free up funding for a wider range of projects. We might see a reversal of the some of the cuts to cycling and safety, and we might see sensible decisions to fund hard-won multi-modal projects like the Hill Street intersection upgrade.
Perhaps there’s even hope that Simeon’s deadly speed rule will be wound back a bit, restoring to communities the option to continue to calm streets in ways they choose, at speed limits they choose. And there’s also some hope that Bishop gets the vital role of abundant transport choice in lowering emissions, reducing pollution, improving health, shaping our urban fabric, and helping people cope with the cost of living. These are all things New Zealanders want, and vote for.
No one can predict the future – but we can reasonably feel a lot more optimistic with Chris Bishop as Minister of Transport.
Meanwhile, with Simeon taking up Health, he’s inadvertently been given a hospital pass. Health is a tricky role, and with way he acted in the transport and local government space, he will likely end up in hot water sooner rather than later.
And as Simeon’s stint as transport czar recedes in the rear-view mirror, what tangible evidence of his legacy will remain in a few short years?
People are still riding the cycleways built by his predecessors in greater and greater numbers, and have enjoyed the fruits of public transport investment – while Simeon just threw billions, bullying, and bluster at the sector. And is getting out before any of those pigeons come home to roost.
Thankfully his name won’t be etched for all time on the opening plaque for CRL, as all of his decisions seemed driven by only taking actions which ‘visibly’ helped motorists – regardless of the evidence. What has he done, other than cause division and desolation?
Who’s going to celebrate that? A sad thing, to have a negative, invisible legacy.
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I won’t be getting my hopes up, it would be a bad look for the government to suddenly flip flop on a bunch of Simeons policy changes and I have my doubts that Chris Bishop at his most evidenced based would care enough to. This cabinet reshuffle calls to mind the tag line from cinematic masterpiece Alien vs Predator:
“Whoever wins… we lose”
It certainly won’t change overnight but things definitely can change under a different minister. An obvious one would be turning a blind eye to councils who don’t change their speed limits back.
Councils are unable to operate illegally, even if it saves lives.
Very difficult for police to enforce as well basically meaning roads default to 100 or 50 depending on road type they must be set legally and many councils have caused police a massive headache with tickets getting invalidated due to the council whacking up whatever speed it felt like without doing it legally. Don’t tell anyone Forrest hill road in Hendo may or may not have been slightly illegally set at 50 for years (as it’s technically the rural boundary so 100 should apply) and police have issued many tickets. At least now it’s fully legal. Arrogance thinking you can just set the speed at whatever you want causes more problems than it solves… you want lower speeds? Convince people they are needed instead of trying to forcefully put them on people who don’t want them.
Simeon got Health?!? RIP everyone…
Yeah. He’s proven himself, in transport, to be impervious to evidence and callous, utterly unfit to manage anything where wellbeing is impacted.
I guess they’re going that Brown will decapitate the system quickly and continue to attract the public loathing towards himself, letting National off, somewhat.
Yep. Brown is there to sell whatever nasty changes they are planning to a section of the population via identity politics.
Dr Reti appears to have been too concerned with actual heath outcomes.
After Luxon said that Brown was there to ruthless deliver health outomes (or words to that effect, ruthless was in there), I don’t think it is good for anyone.
I know that local government politicians (even in safe National areas) are doing happy dances today now that Brown is gone from the LG role.
It was a ruthless execution as soon I read that I made the gesture of hand gun and gun firing sounds.
I don’t envy the guy being responsible for health. The health system is the point where people meet the hard reality that we a a poor country and can’t afford what other countries have. Things like nurses, doctors and hospitals that work. If we close down high paid jobs like the energy industry and try to make our living pouring coffee for tourists (who are richer than us) we can pretend we are doing well right up to the moment we need expensive treatment.
Brown doesn’t care about anything. He is there to reduce policy discussions to identity politics that will play well on ZB, while they take a sledgehammer to concept of public healthcare.
We’re neither a poor country nor a wealthy country but we’re definitely closer to the top end of the spectrum.
Health system problems exist in many countries that are more wealthy than us. As with many things there are multiple reasons why, but in my view the biggest driver is an unwillingess to tackle the issue of the growing costs caused by an ageing population.
The world Bank puts us 23rd on GDP per person in 2023 ($48.7k USD), well behind the nations we try to compare ourselves to like Australia ($64.7k) or the Scandinavian countries. The issue we face is we are in decline and those people who can make money are headed out. The aging population has hardly even started to matter yet, but it will. Our government looked at Norway and their sovereign wealth fund and said no screw it let’s shut down gas and serve coffee to visitors instead. Only when you have to engage with the public health sector do you realise what a piss country we have become.
Sovereign wealth is indifferent to the source of the money, it is the longevity of the program taking advantage of compounding interest that matters. For NZ, the issue is that we didn’t have compulsory super contributions for decades that has put us behind comparable countries.
Yes so long as there is a source of income. Norway uses oil (while promoting EVs at home to look green). NZ on the other hand has an economy that requires cheap labour. When we don’t have enough of that they open the gates allow in more unskilled people. Economists talk about convergence, well we are doing that with the poorer countries.
Meanwhile Australia can provide a health system and security and good wages for employees.
The oil/gas industry here is small fry, and they import most of their senior expertise. Not the answer to a better economy, let alone a sustainable one. Never comparable with Norway.
We’ve never had a serious source of income from minerals, the royalties are simply too small. Shutting down oil and gas exploration has little to do with our comparison with Australia.
The previous government practically rolled out the welcome mat when prices were high and still nothing payable was found.
Critics do often highlight the absolute difference in expenditure and wages for healthcare workers between here and Australia for example, even though our expenditure is fairly high relative to GDP and government revenue ( https://apps.who.int/nha/database/DocumentationCentre/GetFile/57490351/ru ).
What’s with the poor country rhetoric. Go do some learning on how wealthy we are.
Just go look at the waiting area of any hospital. It is like that because we can’t afford to do any better. If our country was wealthier then we could have a better health system.
I had an experience of the health system up close this Monday gone.
Yes, waiting times were long (but bearable). But the care expertise and care I got were excellent.
My reasoning that wait times were long was that I was triaged to be a lower priority due to my injury, as opposed to multiple incoming “Code 3 Ambulance” arrivals, so I kept getting pushed down the ladder.
There are only so many nurses & doctors you can hire and have standing around idly, waiting for the peak to occur. Analogize it with peak traffic flow. We build/engineer roads for peak traffic, but outside of those we complain that the roads (or even – playing devil’s advocate – cycle lanes) are empty.
To me, I think we are getting a great deal on a well-run system and resources. Sure, there could (and should!) be more investment to improve outcomes as wait times could definitely come down. BUT there can also be over-investing in the system as well, not that that is happening either.
It is a very fine line. But agreed – Simeon should stay well away from the purse strings and policy settings trying to make it any leaner!
But there is no direct correlation between a country’s wealth and the quality of its health system. The US are the prime example but some politicians seem to aspire that.
NZ ain’t poor. We’re wasteful, unproductive, and vast sums of our wealth is funnelled to a small minority and offshore.
Our fundamentals are fine. To be rich we need to do 4 things.
First, CGT so the gov gets a share of the wealth/can invest. 2nd, remove total renumeration contracts for KS. 3rd, make KS mandatory. 4th, slowly up our matching rate to 10%. There are obvs other tinkering that will make a difference, but nothing compared to sorting KS.
Those will solve our balance of payments and capital shortages, and eventually drag up the rest of our economy.
—
Agreed that health is a no win portfolio though. As the resources provided will never be enough for all, and we also choose as a country to provide not many resources.
1/ Some people can’t afford Kiwisaver. Making it compulsory isn’t going to make them better off.
2/ People like me contribute the bare minimum to Kiwisaver and save the rest privately. Forcing me to lock more of my money in Kiwisaver will just mean I save less elsewhere. Our savings wont increase.
3/ You can’t make people better off by adding more rules to them. But you can create angry push-back.
4/ We are a low wage economy because Ruth Richardson set it up that way and successive governments have used immigration to keep it like that.
5/ Not extracting gas is just bat-shit crazy. It means when the world has to pay real money to address the effects of climate change then we will be too poor to do so.
Bravo! Amen.
Unfortunately Simeon has set a lot of the direction already. I doubt Bishop is going to stick his neck out to change anything. It will take a different central govt election result in 2026 to finally get back on track with a party that’s actually sensible about transport. Which is neither of the big two parties frankly, but at least one of them is slightly more balanced.
This is well put. I always thought that his hatred of cycling infrastructure would be unpopular with a lot of national voters. Our cycle paths and trails are increasingly populated by boomers on e-bikes, for whom cycling is a big part of their retirement. The fact that he still sees riding a bike as something associated with ‘wokesters/hippies/marxists/etc’ shows how much time he spends around people like him, and how little he appears to understand about our country today.
Bishop seems quite intelligent. I can imagine him appreciating the general appetite for cycling infrastructure from people across the political spectrum even if he himself doesn’t ride.
Bishops electorate is about to get a cycleway connecting them to Wellington without having to risk riding onan expressway. He will be all over the ribbon cutting for that.
There is also the Eastern Bays Seawall + Shared Path right by his house in Days Bay that will reach Seaview Marina by 2026.
It’s likely something he will use on the regular.
True! Cycling could get very popular in that area.
If Chris Bishop wants to be successful in his Housing Role then he has to change the direction Transport was heading in. Buidling density in our main Cities and throwing the whole budget at 4 lane motorways do not go hand in hand. I don’t think we will see much change but some subtle changes where the public appear to be against current policy. Who knows, I don’t hold much hope..only plus side is that the public are really invested in Health and Brown will absolutely tank it in that role, very visibly and will hopefully be the end of his weird political career. I still think Brown knows something about Luxon nobody else does which is why Luxon gives him everything he wants, they are church buddies.
Bishop was the sort of Nat that owned an E car before the govt subsidies, this is a substantial improvement. Bishop is actually responsive to his electorate and sizeable chunk of which are very regular bus, train and bike users. These people will be in his ear and he will have to fight to keep this seat.
Brown was safe as houses in petrol head botany.
I am SO glad to see the back of the fanatical Simeon Brown. Chris Bishop was always a better choice for Minister of Transport as he has always professed a liking for trains and comes across as more of a human being than Brown. I hope he gets to work righting some of Brown’s wrongs before they can have too much of an impact.
Simeon Brown was awful, and I’m thrilled he’s out of the transport portfolio(less thrilled he’s picked up the heath portfolio) however Chris Bishop isn’t going to be much better. He’s echoed quite a number of the directives that has been imposed by Brown on his own social media pages, such as huge expensive roads, reversing speed limits and halting construction of speed platforms. This is also the same guy who leading up to National’s humiliating 2020 campaign, made a policy statement to mandate cyclist to use cycle lanes or risk a fine. It goes to show he’s equally capable of fueling a culture war, just like his predecessor.
I think he changed his mind on the mandatory bike lanes when someone pointed out it would become impossible for cyclists to move further to the right…
I dare say that this change of portfolios is about popularity, in a not very popular political party currently held in power by a couple of backwards minor political parties, but still aware that we are almost halfway through their mandate, which means nearly halfway towards a review of their performance, particularly given that our current prime minister prefers to talk like a CEO, rather than a leader of a nation.
Simeon Brown seems unjustifiable in his frustrations, he is still young, and most of us currently or formerly young, know that we didn’t know much then, and probably know less now.
But the conflict between modes of transport needs to be ended. We are a nation obsessed with moving around, yet wonder why our kids can’t sit still anymore? Who do our children learn from? The “grown ups” that surround them. We are collectively becoming jumpier every day.
With the Orange Guy looming in the middle of the North American Continent, our external threats are far more frightening than our internal pettiness, so hopefully Chris Bishop takes his surname seriously and looks for some unifying factor in our motu, as our former and most excellent Prime Minster Jacinda Arden repeatedly did.
Also pigs might fly
bah humbug
My main concern is that Simeon Brown, who thinks that public tranposrt needs to make a profit, is now in charge of health and will apply similar logic there. There might be even more lives at stake than with his (stupid) speed limit decision.
He was head of, and very active in, an anti-abortion “pro life” group at university. If he brings the same taste for imposing his personal ideological zealotry to health that he has to transport then he’ll guarantee the one term government moniker that is already circling this government.
Oh, great. And as always, being “pro life” ends at childbirth and most definitely does not extend to independently undertaken rides to school…
My greatest concern is that the new Minister of Transport may feel locked into the AT reform deal announced almost 8 weeks ago by the two Browns (Simeon and Wayne). While details are still to be fleshed out, a key move which they propose (yet to be debated or approved by councillors) is to put a long-term Auckland transport plan in the hands of a small committee half-appointed by the Minister. Why should Auckland have less control over it’s transport planning than any other region in the country?
The Land Transport Act 1998 required all Regional Councils (including Unitary Authorities) to form a Regional Land Transport Committee (RLTC), with the primary purpose being the preparation of a long-term Regional Land Transport Strategy. (RLTS). This system has worked well for over a quarter century throughout the country, but was discontinued in Auckland when the new Supercity (Auckland Council) was established in 2010, with all transport planning responsibilities in the hands of newly formed Auckland Transport, defined as a “Council Controlled Organisation”, which was also to be the delivery agency. In practice of course the six CCOs, which together control well over half of Council’s operations and expenditure, have proven to be anything but Council Controlled – each subject to a Statement of Intent (SOI) which Council may comment on but which is ultimately approved by the CCO itself. So returning control of the strategic direction of transport planning to the Governing Body (councillors) may at first sound good, but the small group that will control long-term planning is to have half its members appointed by the Minister, who also gets a say in appointing the so-called “independent” chair. At least Simeon will no longer be that minister, but why should the government have such a powerful say in deciding our transport strategy? The government has never had any say whatsoever in the preparation or periodic review of the RLTS of any of the regional councils.
One other aspect is of concern. Although I do believe in democratic accountability, it can be carried too far. In my 30 year experience as an elected representative, I witnessed some situations where certain elected members had a tendency to be far more concerned about their self-interest (positioning themselves for re-election) than the public interest. Fortunately this was not widespread, but it did sometimes distort debates and lead to poor outcomes. So I am a strong advocate of the RLTC system legislated for in 1998, which allows for the appointment of some non-elected members representing relevant sector groups. The legislation was quite broad in its listing of 12 different categories, though in practice this has been used sparingly by most regional councils. In Auckland however, there were 6-10 appointees alongside 11 elected councillors representing the ARC and its six constituent councils. Appointees varied over the years, but included passenger transport users and providers, vulnerable road users (pedestrians/cyclists/disabled), freight operators, the AA, etc. There were also observers from agencies such as the Police, TransitNZ and KiwiRail. I observed many dozens of RLTC meetings over its last decade and was encouraged by the generally productive debates, in contrast to some of the toxic debates I was unfortunately involved in during my 30 year political experience.
We need a proper debate about our options rather than being forced to just accept what the two Browns announced as if it was a fait accompli in early December.
Thanks Graeme i strongly agree with this comment. A key additional point is that the Minister already has powerful influence through the GPS and the Transport Agency to influence and indeed alter what happens with the RLTP at the point it gets elevated to the National Land Transport Plan.
The proposed structure of the RTC means it is not Regional at all, but already dominated by National interests at the first stage. This is a mistake.
Your case for sector interests having offical representation at this level is also a strong one for better holistic decision making. The proposed model is very narrow and likely biased towards mega projects away from many opportunities to improve things at the local level with lower cost, lower risk projects. Is part of a worrying trend by the now previous minister to concentrate too much power to his office.
A high risk strategy as it assumes a great deal about who is the minister; as is already the case, almost certainly sooner than he expected, he has just massively empowered his successor. Of course they will not always be from his own party, and can change way sooner than anticipated, in the rough game that is politics.
Chris Bishop’s appointment gives a sliver of hope that National might move towards a slightly more sensible transport policy. He talked about building a consensus on infrastructure. That would be impossible under Simeon Brown, but if Bishop truly wants to create a consensus it would mean making some concessions on the road building front to build more in the public transport / cycleway sphere.
As a National party politician, Bishop will still want to build a lot of roads. But unlike Brown, I think he actually recognizes the value of public transport and cycling and isn’t pathologically opposed to them. Given how much Brown locked in already, we’re probably going to suffer through only incremental changes, but any change at all from the present course would be welcomed.
Some areas where I think Bishop could be impactful:
* Reviewing the RoNS. They’re still going to want to build *some* motorways to show they’re delivering. But they can use the economic climate to cancel or postpone some projects (e.g East West Link, Mill Road) and scale back others (Northland roads, the Granada-to-Petone link).
* Put forward some vision on rapid transit that could get bipartisan support.
* Remove some of the handcuffs that Simeon Brown tried to place on NZTA and councils on what they could do and how they could spend money. E.g blocking motorway money from being spent on shared paths and cycleways, raised pedestrian crossings. Giving councils more discretion and flexibility to lower speed limits where they think it’s appropriate.
I think they’ll just reorder some of the RONS, and go for some of the easier ones.
They won’t remove any off the books, but the expensive low benefit ones like East – West link will get switched out for an extension of SH1 up to SH7 in the SI (probably staged over a decade, so once they finish Woodend they start going to Amberly, then the SH7 intersection (I don’t see it needing to go further than that, but Chch will sprawl into Amberly soon), a motorway bypass around Chch, and starting to extend the motorway from Rolleston towards Ashburton. As the RONS are political tools as well as projects, and Chch has more votes than Wellington (which likely won’t be voting Nats regardless). Maybe something around Palmerston North and something token around Nelson/Taranaki/Qtown.
Then the East West link will remain a ‘high priority’ but the money will be redirected continually to better projects (both financially and politically).
What’s a “normal” minister of transport? You moan no matter who is transport minister. The policy direction stays the same the govt has recognised the speed reversals were popular and Simeon delivered them quickly. Hence he has been moved to health he has a history of performance now expect any struggling ministers to be replaced by Brown. You get a slightly different mouth piece maybe not as openly anti woke but still same policy direction a has already been set.
The direction of travel will largely be the same (RoNs) but there will be some key changes.
Historically he has been a supporter of rail extensions in Wellington (Melling to Kelson) and proposed a feasibility study for rail in Dunedin (to Mosgiel) when in opposition. And practically wet himself when on the Australia trip to see new HR and LR lines. However, he has been critical of Kiwirail in the past too. But with a pro-Rail Minister now (Peters) there might some movement here.
I also think he will live up to the “localism” Brown lied about. He won’t die in the ditch where all and sundry want speed reductions in their community – including some of Brown’s fellow MPs – just to fight the culture war Brown insisted on. That one will be done quietly though, as it should be. It’s a local issue.
lead-addled petrol huffer thinks destroying healthcare contrary to evidence is a good thing?
Checks out.
Hope you enjoy the new quality of NACT healthcare when you get into a car crash caused by your obsession with speed. Y’all deserve to suffer the same inconveniences you inflict on anyone who can’t drive or chooses not to drive.
An ‘evidence-based guy’ would not have worked for Phillip Morris to oppose the (National party’s) plans to increase tobacco excise and introduce plain packaging and flipped to support them when selected by National.
Yeah, trusting The Bish is like trusting Winston or Shane Jones gonna get lead around
My impression is that, while Bishop has generally decent personal political beliefs (even if I or other readers of this blog would disagree with some of them) but he is absolutely not anchored to them. He’ll gladly bend over backwards to fit a company line that contradicts his instincts if it’s politically advantageous.
Ironically, that means that the strategy to get good urban outcomes out of him is to make transport as low-salience in the public eye as possible, so that he can quietly do generally decent, if imperfect, things. If transport remains a big centrepiece of the culture war, he won’t be afraid to toss red meat to his base, at the cost of good urban outcomes.
This 100%. Or doesn’t have to be low in public eye, just has to be uncontroversial.
It would be interesting to see if Chris Bishop as Minister of Transport and Minister of infrastructure, is open to the idea, the national rail network (infrastructure, train control and Cook Strait rail link) which currently connects 13 of the 16 regions, can be recognised as the country’s second ‘open access’ national land transport infrastructure asset with similar policy, planning and funding policies similar to its bigger sibling, the State Highway network. to allow for increased freight and passenger rail movements across the country.
Clearly PM Chris Luxon misunderstood advice to him to give Simeon a hospital pass. Commending Simeon on “execution” set me thinking of the Queen of Hearts (Of with his head!) and the Lord High Executioner (I’ve got a little list). The furore that we can expect on Health may distract from Transport woes, but let’s keep pressure on Chris Bishop to restore sense as far as possible.
Governance of AT and the NLTP/RLTP for Auckland will be critical – can he bring back a true local/national collaboration? At the very least, economic and social impact statements need to be properly funded so that the true costs are made plain to people.
undoubtedly a better option than the previous occupant but ultimately any hope people have of a massive u-turn on the policies seems optimistic. The interpersonal style will change and he does seem more centrist but ultimately Cabinet chooses the direction and he was part of those discussions.
Back to normal Nats. Great change. I don’t see any real change to Rons (as regardless if they stack up financially, they stack up politically and the gov ars politicians, not accountants). Maybe the order of a few might be pushed forward/back.
Biggest win is they’ll quietly (probably after waiting until the next GPS) go back to having basics like footpaths and back to building Rons with shared paths beside – as the reason RONS work is that they’re giving something for everyone – the nice new road for commuters, the nice road for holidaymakers, the nice shared paths/less traffic on their streets for locals, and for developers vast new tracts of land that is now feasible to develop. Plus there are the safety/congestion etc benefits too.
Bishop is someone who generally knows the correct thing, does the correct thing if left to himself, and is relatively competent at achieving it.
He also has a sense of self preservation/will easily throw whatever he views as right under the bus if there is a political/personal reason to do so. He’s never going to be #1 (being a tobacco lobbyist means he’s never going to be PM and win an election), but I think he’ll stick around and achieve a lot. Good or bad, that’s more about how much pressure comes, and from what direction it pushes. Left to his own devices he’ll do great, but he won’t be left alone.
When Bishop is an improvement, the bar has been set sub-zero.
I cannot express my relief that Simeon Brown is no longer Transport Minister. His insane pathological hatred of cyclists and determination to make no more safety provisions for either cycling or pedestrians was both outrageously unfair and just plain bizarre. It also used make me feel physically ill, like he was our own mini Trump saying outrageously unfair things and always getting approval for his ridiculous anti walking, cycling and train ideology. He was the Minister for more cars ( petrol preferably ) going faster. Tough luck if you wanted to walk anywhere, like school, to the bus stop, to the shops, along a footpath or even have the audacity to want to cross a road safely. What is somewhat alarming is how Cabinet agreed time and time again to approve the ridiculous laws he put in, most concerning being the raising of speed limits. Firstly he completely dismissed all fact based evidence from numerous experts from all around how this would affect death and injury from road accidents. He joked that we could all stay home and then no one would get hurt, that’s how little he cares, because some of his voters are annoyed they have to go slower round schools or on highways. The fact is we have just had the lowest road toll in years and that is by more than 50 people. Who are those people.. well, we’ll never know will we. Could be you, or a family member , could have destroyed your life either through death, the agony of losing someone, or having to look after someone for the rest of their life due to traumatic injury. It seems dramatic but this is the reality of road accidents death and injury. To add insult to injury Simeon Brown then insisted that Local Goverments, that is YOUR RATES… will have to pay for the sign changes even if the Local Government and all its ratepayers vehemently oppose speed limit increase. How unbelievably dictatorial and unfair is that!
Bishop , has an opportunity to turn the sick ship of Transport Simeon Brown created around and restore funding to Public Transport, cycling infrastructure and safe road crossings, including a crossings on slip lanes at least on any busy suburban road. And cancel the lifting of speed reductions.
Will be interesting to see how this goes. Hopefully better for PT & cycling.
you said: “there’s even hope that Simeon’s deadly speed rule will be wound back a bit”…
How’s that going so far for you?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360563005/speed-limit-reduction-reversals-start
Woah, it’s like someone would be a sucker for trusting the man who’s on Team Corruption in the triathlon
If anything we got a bit of confirmation that it will be wound back a bit. They didn’t reverse all of them and have specifically said they are consulting on the remainder so it may well be that a number of these lowered speed limits survive.
Also they haven’t even touched council roads yet, I have a suspicion that they will turn a blind eye to councils that don’t want to change back.
You mean the govt is reversing the really unpopular ones and then consulting on the rest…. That’s called democracy and it’s what this govt does unlike the last one. Honestly though I could see a blind eye everywhere except Auckland, AT are a pack of arrogant losers forcing speed changes unwanted by the majority. I think every Phase of the SL reductions had more people opposed than support. At one point it seemed like they were rushing to get them all lowered like one might get away even just blatantly ignoring a clear majority on some arterials when AT themselves didn’t list safety as a reason for lowering it.
Hi Simeon.
It can be framed anyway people want but either way the government appears to already be back-tracking from all Labour speed limits will be reversed to we will consult on many of them. It’s only taken 10 days of a new minister.
Odd to call AT a pack of arrogant losers when you’re so sensitive to anyone else resorting to name calling.
Jezza it’s not name calling where AT are concerned. What I said about them is 100% true hence why they are getting disbanded soon. Never before has an agency been so deliberate in how it ignores people and causes widespread backlash and somehow thinks that means they have the mandate to forge on. Democracy was at very real danger of being under attack from ATs existence. It wasn’t just speed limits just about everything they would do the AT special 3 simple steps. “Consult” “Ignore” “Force”. It’s time for the people to be back in charge we know what’s best for us not AT.
I’m pretty sure calling someone a loser is name calling irrespective of who it is.
Incidentally, the current elected council supports keeping speed limits as they are so giving them more control wont make any difference.
What of course will make a difference is that the government now has more control so people in the Hawkes Bay and Canterbury will have more of a say in Auckland’s speed limits. Sounds great at the moment, but at some point possibly next year the coalition will be turfed out and Labour and the Greens will have more say.
“Also they haven’t even touched council roads yet, I have a suspicion that they will turn a blind eye to councils that don’t want to change back.”
Or, more likely, he will seek to change back but entertain the “localism” that Brown promised but was ultimately shown to have mislead voters on.
There are a whole host of councils whose ratepayers want bespoke speed restrictions in their area, including a number of NACT MPs.