KEY POINTS:
In the days following MP Maurice Williamson's musings about $50 a week road tolls, news coverage understandably tracked National's subsequent reversals.
But in following the twists and U-turns of that story a larger question was overlooked - why do we think privately financed toll roads are the solution to our transport problems?
Auckland's traffic is gridlocked because we have continued to build more roads while failing to build a user-friendly public transport system.
During the 1990s, as New Zealand sold assets like our trains and ferries, we spent next to nothing on Auckland's public transport network. In 1999, just $15 million was spent on helping Aucklanders get around by bus, train or ferry.
So we entered the 21st century with Aucklanders stuck in nose-to-tail traffic with no viable public transport alternative.
Mr Williamson's solution is to turn to the private sector to finance more roads and get the public to pay for them through a $50 a week toll. Bill English rushed in and said National's tolls would be more like $2 a trip.
So National is fudging on how large its road tolls would be. But it's very clear on one thing. It still won't invest in public transport despite the fact that this is the main reason why Auckland is stuck in traffic.
Why? Because National believes the private sector will always do things better than the public sector, despite the evidence to the contrary.
ACC is a good example. Despite PricewaterhouseCoopers finding that ACC provides cheaper, more efficient and more comprehensive accident compensation than Australia, National wants to allow Australian insurance companies to provide accident compensation here.
PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that effective injury management under ACC is worth $315 million a year to our economy. Private is better does not apply to accident compensation. It doesn't apply to roads either.
The Cross City Tunnel in Sydney was built and run by a private consortium. It went bankrupt after 16 months of operation with debts of $687 million. Why? The consortium expected 90,000 drivers to use the tunnel every day but only 30,000 were prepared to pay the toll.
In the United States, Macquarie Bank built toll highways in Indiana and Chicago, then leased them back to the states for 75 and 99 years. The US Government Accountability Office says there's no way of knowing that the bank won't make excessive profits by continuing to levy a toll on the roads long after they're paid off.
In Britain, the belief that the private sector is better cost the Government almost $5 billion after companies fixing London's underground train system went broke.
A security company was stripped of a contract to run prisons in Texas and Louisiana. As well as mistreatment of prisoners, it was accused of trying to maximise profits at the expense of drug rehabilitation, counselling and literacy programmes.
In Canada, the province of Nova Scotia had to cancel contracts for privatised schools because of cost overruns.
In Australia, the Victorian Government took back control of La Trobe Hospital from a private company after financial losses meant the company could not guarantee the hospital's standard of care.
Despite these experiences, National continues to turn to its back on the public sector and look to the private sector to deliver vital public services.
It plans to repeat the mistakes made in Australia, Britain, the United States and Canada by privatising the ownership and control of roads, schools and prisons through the failed model of PPPs (Public-Private Partnerships).
As PricewaterhouseCoopers points out, privatised accident compensation is more expensive because private companies have to deliver a profit and cover marketing expenses.
Publicly owned and operated public services do not.
There are clearly risks involved in privatising public services because the private sector is less accountable than the public sector. The public sector is under constant scrutiny and is regularly held to account in the media and in Parliament if there's even a hint of a problem.
Contrast that with the private sector. In the last two years, more than 20 finance companies, responsible for more than $2 billion in investors' money, have got into trouble.
Investors and the public have only found out that there are problems when the companies are at risk of collapsing.
Earlier this year, the PSA called for a dedicated election debate on the future of our public services. With the question of toll roads focusing attention on this issue, we repeat the call for that debate.
We believe the question of how we provide the services and infrastructure that the country relies on is worth debating.
* Brenda Pilott is national secretary of the Public Service Association (PSA).
