Labour Cabinet ministers tried and failed to broker a confidential agreement with their National counterparts to reach a consensus over the multibillion-dollar Auckland light rail project.
The upshot is that the $14.6 billion project announced yesterday — which will nudge $20b once associated urban development infrastructure costs are factoredin — remains a prime Auckland transport political football.
Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson, who also holds the infrastructure portfolio, must be tempted to get a contract in place and a tunnel-boring machine under way before his party next gets turfed out of government. Or has to form another coalition with a party that objects to the project.
Transport Minister Michael Wood took then National MPs David Bennett and Christopher Luxon through the Government's thinking late last year.
The meeting was said to be constructive. Robertson later confirmed to me that he was "pretty sure in principle there is agreement there, but politics can get in the way". As indeed they have.
Luxon is now National's leader. Bennett has been dropped from the transport role and in his place is a new transport spokesman, Simeon Brown.
It is Brown who is threatening to jettison the Auckland light rail plan if National becomes Government in favour of building more roads.
Auckland light rail has been talked about for more than half a century since former Auckland Mayor Dove-Myer Robinson, affectionately known as Robbie, wore the mayoral chains.
Right now the scheme is simply more talk.
National's curve ball is tiresome.
This see-sawing approach to Auckland's vital transport infrastructure is infuriating.
National's Simeon Brown is threatening to jettison the rail plan. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Other Australasian cities have just got on and built metro lines which run from CBDs to their airports, while New Zealand politicians indulge in "roads versus rail" arguments that stretch on for decades.
Meanwhile, there' s not even a direct bus link now between Auckland Airport and the CBD.
Ubers have filled that vacuum by ratcheting up their prices, and taxis, which according to a noticeboard just inside the domestic terminal door are required to offer set rates to the CBD, often try and stiff passengers by turning the meter on rather than charging the posted rate.
It is not too late for National and Labour to hammer out a deal.
All National has to do is insist that the light rail project which passes through Labour-held electorates is matched with a similar project taking light rail through a new harbour crossing to its political heartland on the North Shore.
If the Government had not allowed itself to be seduced with an NZ Super Fund sweetheart proposal and instead stuck with the competitive bidding process that was already under way, then Labour's 2017 flagship election policy to build light rail from the CBD to the airport could have been advanced much faster. As it turns out, the processes did not pass the Auditor-General's scrutiny and the Government had to go back to the drawing board.
The proposal advanced yesterday now sits within the broader framework tipped by this columnist just before Christmas when Cabinet delayed announcing a decision.
Yesterday the Government said:
• Key decisions on an additional Waitematā Harbour crossing would be brought forward to 2023, to integrate with light rail and with new rapid transit to the North Shore and the northwest • The Government had selected a partially-tunnelled light rail route from the Auckland CBD to the airport, becoming the spine of Auckland's future transport network • This light rail option will see transport available every five minutes from approximately 18 stops, cutting travel times from the CBD to the airport in half for many • It would accelerate New Zealand's economic recovery with the creation of up to 97,000 new jobs and 66,000 homes by 2051, and a business support package would be developed alongside affected businesses.
To overcome objections, the Government has cast the project as a vital part of Auckland's urban development.
This is not simply spin.
To help meet the estimated $20b costs it is investigating a "value capture" tax which would hit on property owners who stood to make windfall gains from selling land along the proposed light rail corridor.
The Auckland Light Rail Group business case assumed a $1000 annual levy on land around the stations.
Wood reckons this could raise $2b-$3b, helping to fund the project.
The numbers will be debated for years.
But frankly, the time for debate is over — it is time for action.
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