Speech to Rail and Maritime Transport Union Annual Conference 2012
Phil Twyford
Good morning. Wayne, Aubrey, delegates. It is great to be here, with our party leader David Shearer, and as Labour transport spokesperson have the chance to share some thoughts on the future of rail, our ports, and how we build a transport system that can serve New Zealand well in the 21st century.
I want to acknowledge my colleague Annette King who was a fine Transport Minister in the 5th Labour Government.
Let me introduce myself. I’m a second term MP. I represent the electorate of Te Atatū in West Auckland. I’m a union member. I’ve spent my life as a campaigner for economic and social justice. That’s why I’m Labour.
I don’t think anyone in politics disagrees with the idea that transport is vital to New Zealand.
But there is a huge difference between Labour and National on what our priorities should be.
We think the Government’s transport priorities are wrong.
In certain areas – like ports and rail – they have taken their hands off the wheel.
They don’t take enough care to make sure the taxpayer is getting value for money.
We think that the Government is not thinking hard enough about what kind of transport system the country needs in 20, 30 or 50 years’ time.
These questions are important. Our freight transport system supplies the arteries of our economy.
And right now the greatest challenge we have is to kick start some growth into a stagnant economy.
To get the job growth we desperately need. Transport is critical to that.
National thinks, or at least this is what they say, that they can boost economic growth by spending buckets of your money on building mega-motorway projects.
They call them the Roads of National Significance. We call them Roads of Significance to the National Party.
Never mind that their own figures say that most of these motorway projects are low value. Some of them won’t even break even.
And they are costing the taxpayer a billion dollars a year. Twelve billion over the next 10 years.
Hardly a week goes by without the Minister getting up in the House and claiming that these seven projects will generate economic growth, but he hasn’t presented a shred of evidence to support that.
That’s because he can’t.
If we take the Puhoi-Wellsford again, you have to ask yourself whether slicing 5-10 minutes off the journey between Auckland and Wellsford – so John Key and Steven Joyce can get to their beach houses at Omaha five minutes faster - is going to grow the economy?
The Government has clearly over-sold the economic benefits of its motorway building programme.
And while it is spending on new motorways like there’s no tomorrow, other parts of our transport system are being run down.
The rail network that should be the backbone of our transport system is being driven into the ground.
The Government’s so called Turn Around Plan for rail is a bit of a con job.
The Minister likes to say that the Government has put $750 million into Kiwirail. But he never mentions this is a drop in the bucket compared to the huge legacy infrastructure backlog.
He also never mentions that fact that under the Turn Around Plan Kiwirail has to find $3.5 billion from its own balance sheet for capital investment.
It is so unrealistic – but it does explain why Kiwirail has been forced into laying off 158 workers, and deferring half of its network maintenance for the next three years.
This my friends is madness – for a publicly owned rail company in the middle of an economic recession, at a time of record unemployment, to be laying off skilled workers and deferring desperately needed maintenance.
The same unrealistic Turn Around Plan is driving Kiwirail to flog off or shut down any part of the organisation it doesn’t define as “core business”.
Take Hillside which David has talked about – shutting it down or selling it off makes no sense on so many levels.
They want to close the Gisborne-Napier line. They are looking to sell off Tranz Scenic. The Capital Connection service between Palmerston North and Wellington is about to get the chop.
And I believe the air of desperation around the Turn Around Plan is also behind what has been a string of el cheapo procurement decisions: the Chinese locos and wagons, and now the 7000 rotting Peruvian sleepers.
It is important we don’t focus only on Kiwirail’s woes. I recently spent three days as a guest of the organisation, and I met a large number of Kiwirail staff and saw operations first hand in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington.
Turning Kiwirail around and building a successful, modern rail company is a big ask. It is a project of true significance to our nation. I want to salute the work that your Kiwirail members do. I know that many of you feel passionately about rail and want to make it a success.
Labour will back you.
We will ensure rail competes with roads on a level playing field.
If you applied to our roads the same profit and loss analysis that Kiwirail use to justify closing the Gisborne-Napier line, then a good many of our rural roads would get closed down.
Labour in Government will invest in rail as the backbone of a modern, efficient and sustainable transport system.
I want to talk about another part of our transport system that you know well – our ports.
It’s another vital part of our transport system that this Government is ignoring.
And just as with rail, that careless neglect is not looking after the interests of our country.
Under the current law ports are required to compete with each other. With so many ports that gives a lot of market power to their customers which include the foreign shipping companies, who strangely are not required by New Zealand law to compete against each other.
It creates a situation where as your fellow members in Timaru found out recently, it allows Fonterra to basically decide the future of a port.
We need a national port strategy – just as the Labor Federal Government in Australia has done.
Without a national strategy we have no way of ensuring that the right investments are made so that our ports are set to cope with the projected doubling of freight volumes over the next 30 years.
Without it we have no way of ensuring we can accommodate the big container ships.
Labour believes our ports are a vital part of the country’s freight infrastructure. They are a strategic asset and should be publicly owned so they can be run in the interests of all New Zealand.
We don’t favour the current dog-eat-dog model that in the case of Auckland has seen an employer trying to bust the union, casualise jobs and claw back conditions as a response to competitive pressures.
Instead of the current government’s hands-off approach, Labour will actively work with the industry including with your union and the other transport unions to develop a national freight strategy.
We believe we can get a truly efficient freight network by getting the best out of all the parts of the system.
Not by putting all freight on trucks. In any case our roads and our communities just won’t be able to cope with a doubling of the number of trucks.
We want to get the best out of rail, coastal shipping, roads and ports.
So what would Labour do?
We will take a much more hard-headed look at the economic value of new transport projects.
We will put rail and roads on a level playing field.
We will look to invest strategically in all modes of transport, and their connections, to deliver the greatest efficiency for the export supply chain.
A Labour-led Government will build a transport system that moves people and freight with maximum efficiency, supporting an economy that allows New Zealanders to do what they do best – getting on with making this country world class again.