KEY POINTS:
With the polls suggesting the National Party is sleep-walking its way into power, is it too much to ask the Government-in-waiting to come clean on how it plans to fund the electrification of Auckland rail?
Last Thursday, when the legislation introducing the regional fuel tax that will part-pay for electrification came up in Parliament for a second reading, National opposed it. Support from the smaller parties ensured the bill is still alive. But if a John Key-led Government emerges later in the year, what are its intentions?
Transport spokesman Maurice Williamson managed, in his speech, not to mention public transport at all. In declaring that "we are very, very opposed" to the regional fuel tax, all he could talk about was roads, and how they could be financed in other ways.
He said that roads such as Penlink, the planned highway to Whangaparaoa Peninsula, could be funded by "a whole range of instruments that other countries use, from public debt, private debt, infrastructure bonds, a whole range of public-private partnerships and so on".
He said he had "heard a lot of the big trucking operators say that if they are going to be operating out of Auckland, which has a regional fuel tax, and the Waikato region does not, then they can set up a fuel base just across the regional border and transport their trucks down there with hardly anything on them, and fuel them up accordingly".
Driving a fleet of empty trucks back and forth from Auckland across the Waikato and back just to avoid 1 or 2 cents a litre extra on the fuel bill sounds like a quick way of going out of business to me, but that's not my worry.
What is, is how a National Government would fund electrification. It's not as though Mr Williamson hasn't had time to work out an answer. In late April he was opposing the regional fuel tax but promising this would not stop the electrification of rail. At the time the Greens badgered him for his alternative funding plans. There was silence from him and his leader then as there is now.
Mr Williamson should also tell us what his party will do in government if the regional fuel tax does become law in a few weeks despite National's opposition. Will they repeal it on assuming office and if so, how do they intend to compensate Auckland regional ratepayers for the sudden loss of this income stream?
This is not a hypothetical question. The Auckland Regional Transport Authority is poised to call for international expressions of interest for the trains as soon as the bill becomes law. The deal with the Government is that Auckland ratepayers have to pay the $495 million cost of a fleet of 35 electric trains while the Government pays for the electrification costs of the track network. Before it can begin the purchase process, ARTA and the Auckland Regional Council have to know there is a guaranteed income stream in place to pay Auckland's share of the bills. A fuel tax, beginning at 1c a litre, would not cover the full purchase costs, but it would cover the interest on a loan.
To maintain the current momentum in favour of better public transport, the plan is to call for expressions of interest in July and then open the formal tendering process in November. But before that occurs, Auckland needs assurances that National leader John Key and his team are not going to pull the plug on the fuel tax in a few months' time, leaving the regional government in the awkward position of having committed itself to half a million dollars worth of expenditure it can no longer finance, short of a huge increase in the rates.
Of course National could always borrow from the Greens' book of good ideas. Two weeks back, co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons was making the reasonable point that with rapidly rising petrol prices sending commuters fleeing from cars onto public transport, the Government should be underwriting the whole process so new electric trains could be ordered now.
It was deeply ironic, she said, that there was no threat to "white elephant" roading projects such as the $2 billion motorway tunnel through Waterview. Road building funds should be diverted to public transport, she said.
Somehow I can't see Mr Williamson embracing these ideas. What we would like to see is some evidence he has any ideas at all.
