KEY POINTS:
Auckland transport politicians fear the region's $1 billion-plus rail electrification project will be shunted into a big hold-up unless bureaucratic hurdles are removed from proposed fuel tax legislation.
Both the Auckland Regional Council and its wider land transport committee, which includes non-elected appointees from "stakeholder" groups, will ask the Government to remove a double-consultation requirement they fear will delay by at least nine months the purchase of 33 electric trains costing up to $500 million.
Government agency Ontrack has already appointed a director for its half-share of the project, to electrify the region's railway lines between Papakura and Swanson, and to modify bridges and other structures for safe clearance.
But council chairman Mike Lee told the Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee yesterday that such a delay in ordering new trains would make it impossible to electrify a core part of the network in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
For that, the council-funded Auckland Regional Transport Authority says it must start the tender process for new trains by the middle of next year.
It all depends on the council's ability to borrow money in the certainty it can be repaid from its half-share of a new regional fuel tax of up to 10c a litre, which the Government promised in the Budget.
Provisions for Auckland and other regional councils to raise special taxes on road fuels are included in a transport amendment bill on which a select committee is not due to report back to Parliament until late March.
That is when the regional council hoped to start consulting ratepayers on a regional fuel tax proposal in its long-term budgeting round.
But chief executive Peter Winder told the council and the Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee at separate meetings yesterday that the legislation would require both organisations to conduct separate consultation exercises.
The committee would have to set the ball rolling, even though it now lacked power to do so, meaning having to wait until after the legislation was passed in April or May.
Even then, council officers believed a drafting error excluded the wider committee from gaining such power.
Assuming the oversight was remedied, the regional council would have to wait for the committee to complete its work before starting a second round of consultations, and then seeking ministerial approval for a fuel tax.
"The short answer is that it's a mess - in essence we would lose a year," Mr Winder said.
Mr Winder said the council believed it had already gained the Government's agreement to be the organisation responsible, after being invited by Finance Minister Michael Cullen in February to submit a proposal for raising a tax for rail electrification.
The scheme proposed in discussions with the Government was to be developed, consulted on, and put in place by the council.
Some members of the wider regional committee, particularly Automobile Association official Simon Lambourne, expressed disquiet at being asked to surrender a new responsibility as representatives of various transport "stakeholder" organisations.
"It looks like the ARC is making a power grab - it smells like it," he said.
But what threatened at one point to become a rift was repaired with a majority vote for the regional council, in consultation with the transport committee, to be responsible for developing and implementing a fuel tax.
Councillor Joel Cayford said it was the committee's job to set the regional land transport strategy and then for elected politicians to take political responsibility for funding it.
Mr Lee said the council did not want to cut across anyone's prerogative, but transport bureaucrats had made the legislation very complicated.
