'People felt blackmailed' - road tolls opponent

Photo / Dean Purcell.

Road tolls opponent Hans Grueber has accused the former Transit New Zealand in court of conducting a "bogus survey" to support charging drivers to use Auckland's Northern Gateway motorway extension.

"People felt blackmailed, betrayed," he told Justice Geoffrey Venning in the High Court at Auckland today.

"With the bogus survey, they [Transit] broke the law -- their consultation was not up to scratch and couldn't be the basis for decision-making."

Dr Grueber, 73, was appealing against his conviction two and a half years ago by justices of the peace on four charges of failing to pay tolls despite being the owner of a car which made 22 trips on the motorway extension to Puhoi.

His references were to a survey of residents of Whangaparaoa Peninsula and the Hibiscus Coast, which former Transport Minister Pete Hodgson relied on in 2004 to recommend that the Governor-General of the day, Dame Silvia Cartwright, make an order-in-council allowing the road to be tolled to cover about half of its $356 million cost.

Justice Venning reserved his decision after hearing lawyers for the Transport Agency, which succeeded Transit NZ in 2008, defend the survey as showing majority community support for tolls.

Dr Grueber said Transit tried to expand to Whangaparaoa the definition of "affected communities" from which the minister needed to be satisfied of a high degree of support, after submissions from residents closer to the motorway route showed divided views.

He said many of those who indicated support did so only for fear that the road would be delayed without tolls, even though Transit was under time pressure from the Environment Court to build it regardless of how it was bankrolled.

Agency lawyer Ben Hamlin acknowledged support was stronger from Whangaparaoa than from the wider Hibiscus Coast, by 65 per cent to 60 per cent, but said that did not justify an accusation that anybody had "cooked the books".

Neither did advice to survey participants that an inability to charge tolls may delay the road by two to three years, or possibly longer, "support a notion of lies or deliberate misrepresentation about timing".

Dr Grueber, a retired lawyer, was fined $160 and ordered to pay $583 in costs in North Shore District Court in June, 2012, but has since been as far as the Court of Appeal in an unsuccessful bid to gain access to documents to challenge the validity of the order-in-council.

The Transport Agency in July disclosed that it had spent $9970 in external legal costs responding to Dr Grueber's challenges.