National vows to 'gut' road law

Maurice Williamson

Senior National Party politicians promised angry Warkworth residents last night they would "gut" land transport legislation and strip Transit NZ's power to veto developments.

Party leader Don Brash told 240 people at a public meeting in the town that what was happening in Warkworth was "tragically" happening all over New Zealand.

He said Transit was using the 2003 Land Transport Management Act to become a land-use planner through its power to veto developments likely to add traffic to state highways.

Dr Brash said he had been told in Queenstown that even a school planned by the Education Ministry had been blocked by Transit's refusal to allow it a road connection.

"We are talking about Transit's power to act without notice and substantially influence the property rights of landowners and to do so without compensation and without appeal," he said.

Although better roads were not all that was needed to close a widening income gap between Australia and New Zealand, without them this country would never have the economic growth it needed, Dr Brash said.

National would "fix" the transport legislation to take away Transit's veto, would move all petrol tax into roads, and would make it easier for private developers to build highways.

National's transport spokesman, Maurice Williamson, went further, vowing to "gut" the legislation, particularly "the sustainability stuff" he accused Transit of hiding behind.

He said he would sack the Transit board and put the chief executive on a performance contract based on the number of roads built.

"Who gave them the right to turn off the tap of development? Their attitude is, 'We are not going to let developments be built if they throw all this new traffic on to our roads'.

"I would have thought if there is all this traffic we ought to build new roads because they are not their roads - you built them with your petrol taxes."

Local MP Lockwood Smith said Transit must be "brain dead" if it thought it would be possible to drive from Auckland to Northland in 10 years without any new roading projects in that time.

Although Transit is part-way through building a $365 million toll motorway extension to Puhoi, residents at the Warkworth meeting questioned the many years it took to start that project and called for it to keep going past Wellsford.

Former Rodney District mayor Sir Gordon Mason, whose Warkworth Community Liaison Group called the meeting in protest at Transit's opposition to a $90 million retail and retirement village development, said he had never seen such a large turnout in his 40 years in local government.

Transit was not invited to the meeting and its management was not available for comment.

But Land Transport NZ chairwoman Jan Wright, whose agency funds Transit, said she supported its position trying to control development which had got out of hand in the past.