KEY POINTS:
The phantom recordist at the National Party's recent conference did not know the party's MPs very well. He ought to have stood within range of Maurice Williamson. The former minister, now National's transport spokesman, never minces words. At the weekend, without need of hidden tapes, he happily predicted that commuters on National's intended tolled roads could pay up to $50 a week.
He is right of course, but not right to say it. The Prime Minister seized on the figure to claim National's toll roads would suck up any money people gained from its promised tax cuts, and it fell to National's deputy leader, Bill English, to issue another of those "clarifications" that are coming too often for voters' comfort.
Mr Williamson had "got a bit exuberant about the numbers", said Mr English. "We're not going to impose costs like $50 a week on motorists." But his colleague had never said the weekly cost would be "imposed". Quite the opposite. Mr Williamson's point was that given a choice between queuing on free roads or paying tolls of $3 to $5 a trip, he believed most people would gladly pay. They wouldhave a choice; National's policy, like Labour's, wouldpermit toll roads only where a free alternative route was available.
Why did Mr English not say that, rather than embarrass his transport spokesman and the party? Possibly because Mr English, finance spokesman, is less convinced of the value of tolls. He talks of charging no more than $2 a trip and believes New Zealand's population is too small to make a tolled road pay without substantial public subsidy. Or, more likely, he and leader John Key are simply in election mode, happy to talk vaguely of "public-private partnerships" for infrastructure development but anxious to deny any policy implication that can be misconstrued by their opponents.
Subtlety has no place in election campaigns. Helen Clark would have known she was wildly misrepresenting Mr Williamson's words when she said National's tolls would claw back its tax cuts. Tax is compulsory, tolls need not be. The projects cited by Mr Williamson included tunnelled sections of Auckland's western ring road through Waterview and a Northern Motorway extension to Warkworth, both of which would leave reasonable alternative routes available.
A Northern Motorway extension from Albany to Puhoi will open next year with a toll of $2. Transport Minister Annette King says the charge will cover only half the construction cost even at the motorway's maximum use. She says Mr Williamson misses the point that "you can't set a toll so high that people won't use the road".
Private enterprise understands that point well. It is fundamental to the economics of an investment that the product can be sold at a price people are willing to pay. The Government's Transport Agency possibly underestimates the amount motorists might pay for a faster, more convenient route. In a public-private partnership the private investor is better placed to make the estimate, as long as the partnership does not indemnify the private participant against losses.
Mr English, like Mrs King, appears to have accepted the agency's view that $2 is the maximum that can be charged before use declines. If National is going to set that sort of heavily subsidised toll, there seems no public value in a partnership with private interests.
Mr Williamson's candour was in accord with the logic of his party's stated policy, Mr English's correction of him leaves serious doubt of the policy's integrity. Sometimes caution is not the safest political course. National has merely muddied its water again and given the Government another straw to grab.
