By Simon Court, ACT MP and candidate for Kaipara ki Mahurangi
A government infrastructure project opened at Westgate this month on time and under budget. That sentence ought to be unremarkable. In New Zealand, it is almost shocking.
The new bus station was funded at $50 million. Forecast savings of around $19 million will help pay for the next station at Brigham Creek and improvements along the North-Western Motorway.
Taxpayers got something useful, and the saving can go straight into the next job.
As an engineer, I judge a project by what is on the ground and what it cost to put there. Westgate passes both tests.
Labour’s Auckland light rail scheme failed the same test. After six years and more than $228 million, it produced precisely zero metres of track.
Ministers had meetings and consultants. West Auckland got the bill.
The demand for practical public transport has been staring Wellington in the face. The WX1 carried more than 1.1 million passenger trips in the year to May. Westgate now gives people travelling from Helensville on Route 125 a proper connection with express services into the city.
Once the full busway is built, the corridor could move up to 9,000 passengers an hour in each direction. That is four motorway lanes’ worth of people. Moving more commuters by bus leaves more space on SH16 for freight and people who need a vehicle for work.
Anyone driving south from Helensville knows what happens when the network cannot cope. A crash turns an ordinary commute into an expensive exercise in sitting still. A builder misses an appointment. A delivery turns up late. Those delays cost businesses money and families time.
But the job is far from finished. Brigham Creek and the separated busway must be delivered. The Kumeû bypass has spent long enough as a line on a map.
The North-West is growing whether Wellington is ready or not. Infrastructure needs to keep up.
For too long, the RMA has made basic infrastructure slower and more expensive to build. Projects become trapped in years of process while costs climb and communities wait.
ACT has pushed to replace the RMA with a system based on property rights, so useful projects can get consented and built faster.
RMA reform alone will not deliver the Kumeû bypass. Government still needs the discipline to choose projects that stack up and get on with delivering them. Communities should not have to wait for an army of consultants before getting the road they were promised.
Too many politicians point to the size of an invoice as proof they have achieved something. ACT asks a simpler question: what did taxpayers actually get?
At Westgate, they got a station and enough money left over to help build another. Labour’s light rail scheme left taxpayers with a $228 million invoice and no track.
Every dollar wasted on a project that goes nowhere could have been used building something useful or left with the people who earned it.
New Zealand has had enough announcements and lines on maps. We need infrastructure people can actually use.
More ACT MPs means more pressure to cut waste, remove the roadblocks to building, and get projects like the North-Western busway and Kumeû bypass delivered.
No more delays. No more excuses. It is time to build.
Party Vote ACT to unlock New Zealand’s potential.
