OPINION
“I don’t think there’s been enough straight talking with the New Zealand people,” said Christopher Luxon on Sunday, in his first “state of the nation” speech as Prime Minister. He’s right about that.
“We have some tough choices” he added, several times, and promised his would not be “a Government of PR and spin”. Hooray to that too.
Then he said the previous Government had $200 billion worth of transport plans that were announced but unfunded. How irresponsible!
Wait, what? Talking to media after the speech, Luxon doubled down on the claim, calling it “classic Labour”.
I asked him about his own Government’s transport plans, including a new four-lane highway to bypass the slip-prone Brynderwyn Hills road north of Auckland. In December, Transport Minister Simeon Brown called it a “top priority” and said it would be “fast-tracked”.
“Is it funded?” I asked the PM.
“Well, that’s something we’re working through right now,” he said.
So, announced but unfunded.
I followed up. “The minister has also announced the Rons [Roads of National Significance] programme is back on track.”
“Absolutely,” Luxon said.
“And the four-lane highway from Whangārei to Auckland. Are any of those projects funded?”
“Again,” he said, “we’re working our way through that.”
“You also support a new Auckland harbour crossing?”
“We do.”
“With no funding? What is the difference between your position and Labour’s?”
“What’s unacceptable,” said the PM, “is when you’re in Government and you stand up and tell the New Zealand people, ‘We’re doing this project,’ and you haven’t got a source of funding for it.”
Which, with the Brynderwyns, Rons, four lanes to Whangārei and a harbour crossing, was literally what he had just done.
Since we’re doing “straight talking” now, I should mention that this isn’t new. In March 2009, then-Transport Minister Steven Joyce announced National’s first Rons programme, but without funding. That came later, a big chunk of it from the budget for road repairs and maintenance.
Potholes, anyone? But I digress.
The Rons programme rolled on, always with funding that followed, case by case, sometime after the policy announcement.
The straight-talking fact is, that all Governments do this.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the practice is fine. Governments announce infrastructure plans years ahead and often estimate the costs as well. But they write those projects into their budgets as they go, usually in four-year blocks.
This is not “classic Labour”. It’s the normal planning process.
And it’s absurd to criticise “PR and spin” in your opponents when you use the same process yourself. That’s the opposite of “straight talking”.
Puffery aside, I have considerable sympathy for Luxon. He said the state of the nation is “fragile” and I think that’s true. Productivity is stuck and many schools and hospitals are in a precarious position. Tolerance is short. And it really does seem that changing these things and embarking on new projects has become absurdly difficult. Labour couldn’t do it.
You bet we need a fresh approach. And, you bet, there are tough calls to make.
But is it being “tough” to pick on beneficiaries and pedestrian crossings, as Luxon and Brown have done, respectively, over the past week? That sounds more like bullying and distraction tactics to me.
Luxon’s “tough love” speech was very well received by the party faithful. They cheered, often. They seemed to love hearing that other people would have to do it tough.
But if Luxon really wanted to present us with courage and leadership in these fragile times, he’d stop telling his supporters what they want to hear. His straight-talking would include asking them to share the burden.
Yep, he’d cancel the promise of tax cuts for the wealthy.
And if he really wanted to “give Kiwis a reason to stay in New Zealand”, as he said on Sunday, he’d name the single biggest cause of migration to Australia. Higher wages.
The sooner we move to a higher-wage economy, the better. But the Government’s 100-day plan is doing the opposite. The fair pay agreements law has been scrapped, 90-day trials reintroduced and the just-announced minimum wage rise is less than the rate of inflation.
All of this will hold down local wages and widen, not narrow, the wage gap between Australia and New Zealand. But Luxon boasted about them on Sunday, even while complaining that Aussie wages are $20,000 higher. It makes no sense.
There are many other tough truths a bold leader would ask his followers to accept, especially because he must know them to be true.
He’d tell them it’s time to get serious about climate action. New oil and gas exploration would remain off-limits, there’d be a new scheme to get more EVs into the market and he’d tell farmers it’s time for them to join the nationwide commitment on emissions.
He’d put a stop to the nonsense that “blanket speed limits” are slowing down the economy and instead start talking about our appallingly high rate of deaths and serious injuries on the roads.
Incredibly, though, on Sunday he listed abolishing the “ute tax” (done) and removing lower speed limits (to be done) as items one and two of his Government’s achievements, and both got a big cheer. That is not what making tough calls looks like.
He’d also reinforce the idea that to manage congestion on the roads, we need to fast-track public transport projects. Labour’s tunnelled light rail was a poor choice, but surface light rail isn’t.
Instead, Luxon told his enthusiastic audience that Brown and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop would soon be building more roads.
There are many other similarly tough messages he could deliver. How to reduce poverty, how to address the causes of crime and face down racial hatred. How to step up the work on domestic violence, which the police have now said they cannot cope with, even though there is no other agency able to step into the breach.
How, despite the peculiar desire to punish, benefit sanctions do not work and are especially hard on children.
And the biggest one of all — he could commit to ending the terrible damage done to our economy and society by the property market.
Will there be any tough love, Prime Minister, for the people who need it most, or is it all to be directed at the already vulnerable?
Meanwhile, just to hand yesterday, two excellent opportunities for a straight-talking PM:
First, the business case analysis for Labour’s doomed Auckland Light Rail project has been released. Guess what: It’s 2.4, which means every dollar invested would bring an economic benefit of $2.40. That’s a good result.
The analysis also looked at surface light rail, and the result was the same: 2.4. (The surface option would be quicker to build and much cheaper, which is why it should have been preferred. But it would carry fewer people and cause less housing development along its route.)
That’s a benchmark for transport projects right there. In contrast, when Luxon recommitted to a new harbour crossing on Sunday, he was talking about a project with the most recent BCR (benefit-cost ratio) at 0.2.
He and his transport minister are also keen to restart plans for an East-West Link highway from Penrose to Onehunga. The most recent publicly released BCR for that project is also less than 1.
Luxon could make the “tough calls” on the obvious economic nonsense of those projects right now.
Second, the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi will take over the operation of speed cameras and it wants to increase their number from 200 to 800.
Here’s some straight talking — speed kills.
The Ministry of Transport says that during 2020-2022, speed was a factor in 34 per cent of fatal crashes and 21 per cent of serious-injury crashes. In 2022 alone, 114 people died and 572 people were seriously injured in crashes involving speed. A 2019 study by the NZ Transport Agency reported that cameras caused a 23 per cent drop in serious crashes in cities and towns, and an 11 per cent drop on rural roads.
Will the Government be tough enough to support the agency on this?
Minister Simeon Brown says he’s writing a new Government Policy Statement with “a strong focus on safety enforcement”. Surely that’s not just “PR and spin”. He declined to comment on the plan for 800 cameras.
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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