National, ACT attack government transport plan's cost, Greens target cost to climate

Political parties are criticising the government's transport plan, with those on the right targeting the cost, and the Greens sounding alarm bells over the climate.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Transport Minister David Parker released the draft plan for consultation this morning, centred around a $20b spend over the next three years, prioritising 14 "critical" projects while also increasing maintenance funding.

National's finance spokesperson Nicola Willis targeted the fuel tax increases which would help support the extra funding - alongside more funds transferred from general taxation and borrowing.

"This is exactly the wrong thing to do when New Zealanders are hurting. With Labour it's more expensive petrol and maybe a few cents off your carrots," she said, referring to Labour's plan to remove GST from unprocessed fruit and vegetables.

She committed National to not doing the same until inflation had fallen to within the Reserve Bank's target band, below 3 percent. It's worth noting the Reserve Bank has forecast that to be in the second half of 2024 - when Labour's increases would start.

"Our plan can be funded without any increases to petrol tax, and we will rule out any increases to petrol tax until inflation is under control, that is back under 3 percent."

"There's a lot of roads in that policy that National will deliver with our transport plan we've already announced.

The party's transport spokesperson Simeon Brown said the plan was "not worth the paper it's written on and reveals a desperate admission from the government that it has been wrong about roads for the past six years".

However, he acknowledged many of the projects matched those proposed by National's own transport policy announced last month.

"Labour has cut and pasted transport projects from National's Transport for the Future policy ... in a cynical attempt to fool New Zealanders into thinking that they care about building roads."

Parker said it had "obviously" been worked on before National's plan had been released, and the plan was not much different to what the previous minister, Michael Wood, had been working on.

"You don't put this sort of thing together just in a couple of weeks.

"I would say our plan is costed, it's funded. It's deliverable. I think it was the ACT party that call their (National's) list of projects 'wishful thinking', so, they're going to use magic money."

Brown said National was the party of infrastructure, and its transport plan was fully funded, rejecting suggestions the $9 billion of funding coming from private investment, value capture and cost recovery was a "hole".

"We're funding it through increased Crown contributions, reallocations. Some of the things that are in this [government] plan such as light rail, and rapid transit in Wellington, we aren't going to be doing."

"We've said there needs to be a greater use of toll roads in New Zealand, and we've said value capture tools need to be used when we're unlocking roads which unlock housing growth," he said. "We're not going to be closed-minded like this government when it comes to different funding sources to get things done."

ACT leader David Seymour said the government should be focused on reducing wasted funding before talking about raising taxes.

"As it happens people see endless waste, suburban streets turned into obstacle courses, turned into cycle lanes and raised crossings, frustration about getting where we're trying to go - and they want to tax us more for the privilege?

He was not opposed to the idea of increasing petrol excise again, but said that should be based on transport spend.

"National's arbitrary threshold, which appears attached to CPI ... doesn't have a lot to do with what sort of value for money you're getting out of your roads.

"I suspect that due to a combination of not arbitrarily limiting increases, but also not funding a whole lot of present transport activities that don't assist drivers in getting where they want to go, ACT would come out somewhere in the middle of National and Labour but get more value for money along the way."

'Simply irresponsible'

Green Party Transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter said the policy was prioritising roads over climate, and "is simply irresponsible".

"Labour is moving towards National's transport policy which is an absolute climate denial - and the weird part is it's not what people want," she said, referring to a recent Guardian poll which found 72 percent of people favoured prioritising other options over roads.

"We can fix up our existing roads but spending tens of billions of dollars on highways in our biggest cities is completely counterproductive. People want choices, they want alternatives, but we have to put the investment there to deliver it."

She said she thought the government's policy might be in breach of the Zero Carbon Act.

"And it's quite possible that the government - whoever it is - will be challenged on whether the policy gives effect to other policy that's been passed.

"As long as we're spending the lion's share on motorways - particularly urban motorways - we're not going to be able to shift the dial for people."

Any fuel tax increases should be reinvested into giving people options to avoid it, she suggested.

"You have to pay for your transport infrastructure but the problem here is that your fuel taxes are going to go up and people aren't going to have alternatives to avoid paying the fuel tax. So it makes sense to invest things in public transport, rail, that enables people to rely less on cars."