United Future
Larry Baldock

Budget speech on transport

If the members of this house cannot recall my frequent questions in this regards I am sure that the 900,000 members of the AA, the Fed Farmers, the members of the RTF , Local Govt NZ  who must year after year extract more rates from property owners to pay for local roads,,Business NZ and the residents of Auckland, Wellington and Tauranga who are facing increasing congestion on their streets every year certainly do.

This raiding of the petrol excise taxes began in the 1970ís when government began to spend less on roads than they were collecting, and it was worst during the 80ís when income was 211% of expenditure rising to a peak of 283% by 1990. BY the year 2000 it had reduced to 165% but  rose again to 174% in 2002. and is now projected to rise to 182%.

In fact I was told the story that during the stormy years of the Nat NZF coalition when NZF were trying to get greater transparency over this expenditure, The minister of Finance Bill Birch threatened to resign if anymore of his precious cash cow was going to be touched.

Mr Speaker the most common answer given by both previous National and Labour governments when asked why more of petrol excise tax money is not spent on the roads we so desperately need, roads that could save lives and reduce injuries, and therefore save health and ACC costs, Is to answer the question with a question.

What schools would you like to close?

What hospitals would you close, what surgeries will you cancel?

What taxes would you raise

But here in this budget the government announces new expenditure in health and education and a whole raft of other new spending without closing hospitals or schools or raising new taxes.

The govt is able to do this because of a surplus and govt chooses what to allocate that extra revenue to, without cutting some other departments expenditure at all. Except 13 million from Transfund. Ironically.

My point Mr Speaker is that this new spending announced in the budget is only possible because of the planned plundering of the NLTF next year to the tune of $452 which will be diverted to the consolidated fund or $867mil if you simply take the excess of revenue from Petrol excise and RUC which totals 1.579 billion over Transfunds budget of 867 million.

 The much aclaimed surplus is then not really as large as it appears because it has been bolstered by the excess of revenue collected from the motorists of this country over the amount spent by Trannsfund..

Which begs the question, Mr Speaker, who really is paying for this new spending.

And that answer is simple Mr Speaker,

The NZ motorist is. He is paying for new health initiatives and new educations initiatives as he has paid for them year after year as successive governments have raided the NLTF to meet needs in other areas.

 We do not expect this situation to be corrected overnight. It has happened over the course of 20-30 years and it will take at least 10yrs to correct it but  now the results of robbing Peter to pay Paul have come home to roost with this government. Or I should say the robbing of Paul to pay Trevor, the robbing of Paul to pay Annette, and what worries me is whether Paul will be robbed again next year to pay Steve.

We ask this government  to break with the bad old habits of the 80ís and 90ís and commit in next years budget to replacing over time the money that is raided from the NLTF,

I know that the minister of Transport is aware of the problem, and I commend him for the hard work he is doing to address the issues, and we in UF are committed to delivering some solutions with the LTMB being passed this year with some alternative funding options, but that on its own is not going to solve all the problems. Spending on roading must increase.