John Roughan: National missing the bus with Auckland voters

Leave for a week or so and you come back to a different discussion. The day I left Jeanette Fitzsimons was saying the Greens were not really opposed to genetic engineering.

They thought a lot of good could come of it; they were just wary of experiments outside a laboratory until science could ensure genes might not be transferred by pollen or soil bacteria.

The day I returned the radio was talking of frogs in the food and multinationals at our throat. "Whoever controls our food, controls us," someone said.

The election campaign had begun.

Something poisonous happens to public debate in election campaigns. It is probably best to hide under a blanket until sanity returns, as it always does, in the sudden quiet of polling day. But I can't resist a peek.

This week Labour's serene progress to a second term took a couple of knocks, one of them, significantly, from the left. The police report on the Prime Minister's painting appears to have taken a few points off the party's polls, which restores my faith in public morality if nothing else.

But it took one of her old allies, conspiracy theorist Nicky Hager, to put her off her stride. Talk about contaminated corn.

If there was anything in that planted seed, it was probably nothing compared to the public unease caused by the sight of Helen Clark and Pete Hodgson sweating on television.

Every time they uttered the word contaminated the Greens will have been clocking up votes.

Labour's second term already promises to be as rocky as its first was smooth.

Meanwhile, there is a potent issue for National going begging in Auckland.

It wouldn't be an election campaign without a reported sighting of that mythical beast, the Auckland voter. I cringe to my southern roots every time someone steps forth to introduce us to this "all-important" species.

It is not just the cliches you know are coming - the latte, Ponsonby, the Viaduct - it is the sheer conceit. The presenters invariably are reflecting themselves, moderately affluent, vaguely left-wing residents of the renovated inner suburbs who populate the media and imagine the city aspires to their image.

The vast bulk of Auckland voters divide much like those in the rest of country. If anything distinguishes the largest city, it is a lesser degree of local identification, naturally enough.

Parochial issues are unlikely to pull Auckland votes in a general election but there is one obvious exception, an issue that has most Aucklanders grinding their teeth daily - traffic congestion.

It didn't rate a mention in TVNZ's Assignment programme on the Auckland vote this week, possibly because the inner-city set, who don't need to commute on motorways, fear their neighbourhood will be bowled for roads and believe everyone should use public transport in any case. But it is extraordinary that we haven't heard it from National.

Bill English has only to ask his old colleague, John Banks, to find out how much that single issue turned the Auckland mayoral and city council elections last year when the tide was running against the right.

The public transport lobby melted before evidence of roading neglect, a policy it had quietly encouraged in the hope that congested commuters would abandon their cars. The demand from the city was unmistakable and the Government took note.

Its response, early this year, was to raise tax on petrol, put the bulk of the revenue to Auckland improvements and, tentatively, to invite private investment in roads, financed by tolls.

The Greens, and probably the Alliance, must have choked on the last bit. Legislation permitting private companies to build and operate a road, recovering the cost and a reasonable return from tolls before handing it over to public ownership, was still awaited when the election was called.

Last time I heard Transport Minister Mark Gosche on the legislation, he had yet to nail down the numbers to pass it.

National will know that. Why is it not leaping into the breach? It must also know that without private investment even the modest improvements already programmed for Auckland's motorways are going to fall about $250 million short.

Twice in recent months I have heard Transit New Zealand outline quite impressive progress on the design, land acquisition and resource consents for those projects.

But it is at the point of construction that the public agencies ask for money. Catch Judith Tizard, Minister for Auckland and Associate Minister of Transport, in a candid moment (she has many) and you will hear the money is not there.

Why does National not now leap to promise it will be? Tolls, I suppose. Tolls frighten people who do not spend their mornings snarled in Auckland traffic. If they did, the prospect of paying a few dollars to hasten the journey would not seem so bad.

Those who couldn't afford to pay would benefit from the decisions of those who could. This is an issue with political mileage far beyond Auckland's congested roads.

It is a reminder that everyone is better off when private enterprise enables public services to keep pace with demand. It is a challenge to the Government's attachment to public monopolies.

But National is too cautious this year to say so. Caution has the party at 25 per cent in the polls. Maybe next week it will wake up.

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