Brian Rudman: Toll from the past has future message for Brash

COMMENT

Isolated from the electors in his secure list seat, National Party leader Don Brash can wax lyrical about the wonders of tolls and congestion pricing as the best way to pay for roads, without a worry about voter backlash.

It wasn't always so.

In September 1980, as a first-time candidate in the East Coast Bays byelection, Dr Brash was so aware of the popular dislike of tolls that he turned on his fearsome National Party leader, Rob Muldoon, and spoke out against this method of payment. The road in question was the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

Perhaps the trauma of losing the safe seat a few days later to funny-money party candidate Garry Knapp is still so raw that this disastrous entry into politics stays buried in the good doctor's subconscious.

But if he wants a long future in politics, now would be the time to seek help from a specialist in recovering memories.

I'll try to jog his memory. Prime Minister Muldoon, who didn't bother hiding his disdain for the "dry" economist the local party chose as National's candidate, knee-capped Dr Brash five days before the byelection by announcing the first increase in bridge tolls in the structure's 21-year history.

In desperation, the candidate turned on his leader and called for the abolition of tolls. It was a time not for principle, but self-preservation.

Dr Brash said he used to favour the user-pays principle, but he did not see the justice in the people of the North Shore having to pay when other people did not have to pay for their highways or bridges.

But all the East Coast Bays voters knew was that Sir Robert was raising their bridge tolls. Dr Brash lost the safe seat by nearly 1000 votes.

These days, Dr Brash is back on the user-pays trail, extolling the virtues not just of tolls, but of congestion taxes as well.

All heart, he adds that "there should eventually be scope to reduce both rates and excise duties on petrol as tolls are introduced".

But reading the rest of his pro-roads charter, which he delivered to an Auckland Chamber of Commerce breakfast last Friday, it's hard to imagine any reduction in either tax in the near future.

Dr Brash is one of those relics from the last century who wants to tarmac the whole isthmus. "Modern transport runs on roads, Auckland doesn't have enough of them; those we have are inadequate and can't be properly managed ... The real solution to Auckland's traffic congestion lies in building more roads, and doing so without delay."

In support, he trots out the old canard that "reputable estimates put the economic cost of road congestion in Auckland at more than $1 billion a year - and that doesn't take account of the wear and tear on motorists arising from the stress of sitting on a motorway ... going absolutely nowhere ... "

I would have expected a little more accuracy from a former governor of the Reserve Bank.

I hunted out the origins of the $1 billion myth a while back: a 1997 Ernst and Young study which estimated the economic cost of congestion to the manufacturing and distribution sectors in the Auckland region was about $185 million a year and the total cost of congestion in the region was $755 million.

The road lobby quickly rounded that up to first $800 million, then $1 billion. And so it grew, first to $2 billion and then, last November, Alasdair Thompson, the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) chief executive, and former Social Credit vice-president, doubled it again to $4 billion.

Dr Brash's road building promises for Auckland are even more alarming than those of Mayor John Banks. The National Party leader is promising to sort out the Resource Management Act within three months of taking office - and the new Land Transport Management Act.

He's going to set up a body called Transport Auckland to use his own words, "to expedite the construction of roads".

Roads, which in the Brash new world, will have tolls from one end to the other. It's a scary prospect.

Luckily, he first has to convince the motorist to vote for the party promising new ways of extracting money from them. His 1980 experience, when it finally comes back to him, suggests that's unlikely.