Increased taxes are not forgotten in road-funding announcement – but look what’s missing from RMA reform statement
Ministers have become adept at burying politically discomforting words in their press statements – or omitting them.
While announcing the passage through their third readings of bills to replace the Resource Management Act, for example, no mention was made of “matauranga Maori” or “the Treaty”.
But be sure they will play a part in the way resource use is managed henceforth.
In another example, the word “tax” can’t be found too early in the press statement when the PM and Transport Minister David Parker released the draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) on land transport for consultation.
The government is thinking about splitting the road tax increase next year to an initial two cent increase for a litre of petrol, with another two cents six months later.
This would be followed by a four-cent annual increase in 2025 and again in 2026 – a total increase of 12 cents over three years.
Through a mix of increased petrol taxes and road user charges, the aim is to raise the total revenue from petrol taxes and road user charges from $13.1 billion to $14.5 billion over three years. This (we are assured) will be dedicated to improving our transport network.
But the emphasis in the introductory paragraphs of the press statement is on announcing the draft GPS is proposing to increase transport funding to a record $20.8 billion over 2024-27.
That’s an increase of $5.3 billion, or 34 per cent, on 2021-24.
The draft GPS 2024 increases the investment range available to essential maintenance of state highways and local roads, including pothole repairs, by 41 per cent per cent to between $5.4 and $8.1 billion over 2024-27, Parker said.
The draft GPS 2024 guides how funding will be allocated to different transport activities.
Over the next three years, the draft GPS 2024 proposes a minimum level of investment of:
The government is thinking about splitting the road tax increase next year to an initial two cent increase for a litre of petrol, with another two cents six months later.
This would be followed by a four-cent annual increase in 2025 and again in 2026 – a total increase of 12 cents over three years.
Through a mix of increased petrol taxes and road user charges, the aim is to raise the total revenue from petrol taxes and road user charges from $13.1 billion to $14.5 billion over three years. This (we are assured) will be dedicated to improving our transport network.
But the emphasis in the introductory paragraphs of the press statement is on announcing the draft GPS is proposing to increase transport funding to a record $20.8 billion over 2024-27.
That’s an increase of $5.3 billion, or 34 per cent, on 2021-24.
The draft GPS 2024 increases the investment range available to essential maintenance of state highways and local roads, including pothole repairs, by 41 per cent per cent to between $5.4 and $8.1 billion over 2024-27, Parker said.
The draft GPS 2024 guides how funding will be allocated to different transport activities.
Over the next three years, the draft GPS 2024 proposes a minimum level of investment of:
- $5.4 billion in road maintenance ($2.4 billion for local roads and $3 billion for state highways)
- $3.8 billion in road improvements ($460m for local roads and $3.4 billion for state highways)
- $3.6 billion in public transport ($1.9 billion for running services, $1.7 billion for public transport infrastructure)
- $1.5 billion on safety programmes like road policing and road safety advertising
- $1.2 billion on upgrading and maintaining the rail network
- $500m on walking and cycling improvements.
And then the press statement provides an acknowledgement that someone has to pick up the tab:
“This Government agrees that this investment is essential – but it has to be paid for,” David Parker said.
“Some of the additional funding needed will be raised by small increases in petrol taxes and road user charges. These sources fund the core of our transport networks. Past governments have regularly increased these charges, and this will commence again.”
The increase in the first year is proposed to be split into an initial two cent increase, with another two cents six months later. This is to be followed by a four-cent annual increase in 2025 and again in 2026 – a total increase of 12 cents over three years.
A two cent per litre increase in petrol taxes, equates to a 44 cent per week increase in cost to the average motorist, or a 0.9 percent in the cost of petrol (including GST) at a petrol price of $2.50 per litre.
The increases in petrol taxes and road user charges will raise the total revenue from petrol taxes and road user charges from $13.1 billion to $14.5 billion over three years, and will be dedicated to improving our transport network.
Cabinet has agreed to inject $1.5 billion of capital and $900 million of operating funding into the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) to support Waka Kotahi to progress these priorities.
This funding support is possible due to careful management of the Government’s books in recent years, with our debt position low compared to other countries. The additional funding means that the standard NLTF funding mechanism of Fuel Excise Duty and Road User Charges can support record road maintenance investment.
Other proposed funding sources for the draft GPS 2024, in addition to petrol taxes and road user charges, are:
- Crown grant to the National Land Transport Fund ($2.9 billion – inclusive of CERF below)
- Crown loaan to the National Land Transport Fund, to be repaid over 10 years from petrol taxes and road user charges ($3.1 billion)
- Climate Emergency Response Fund contribution, dedicated to walking and cycling activities ($500 million)
- Safety camera and fine revenue, dedicated to safety initiatives ($300 million)
The draft GPS 2024 will be available after 1pm today at www.transport.govt.nz
Consultation on the draft GPS closes at 5pm on Friday 15 September.
About a month before the general election, in other words.
The announcement is posted on the government’s official website today along with news of the passage of legislation to replace the Resource Management Act, a change for Māori tertiary institutions, and the establishment of an independent body to strengthen and protect the integrity of the sport and recreation system,
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Environment Minister David Parker explained that the Spatial Planning and Natural and Built Environment Bills replace the 30-year-old Resource Management Act.
Despite regular tinkering by successive governments, the RMA was failing to either protect the environment or enable sensible development, he said.
The RMA had great potential – it just didn’t work the way it was supposed to.
But why should we be confident the new laws will do any better?
The Environment Committee received around 3,000 submissions, with 94 per cent supporting the thrust of the reforms.
Parker said the changes made to the original bill included giving more effect to local democracy through statements of community outcomes and improving planning and consenting provisions, notification, designations and fast-track.
That’s ominous, depending on what is meant by “democracy” and the extent to which “the Treaty” is construed to mean “partnership” and “co-governance”.
During the third reading debate of one of the two bills, Labour MP Arena Willisam said:
Let me then bring us to Te Tiriti o Waitangi clause. I want to speak about how this clause is the same in both the Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill. It requires all persons exercising powers and performing functions and duties to give effect to the principles of Waitangi.
National MP Stuart Smith, in the same debate, said a lot of evidence heard by the Environment Select Committee had “warned against the very things that we have in the bill.
For example, the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi—what does that mean? And we actually asked—and I was present when that was asked, I’m pretty sure, I do remember that—the officials: “What are the principles then?”
And they said, “Well, they’re evolving.
Smith said the Minister had been asked what does that mean and how was it going to be interpreted by the courts when there is no actual definition?
ACT MP Simon Court raised similar questions about matauranga Maori:
This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the resource management process—the way we use land, the way we protect the places that are special to us—but instead Labour has doubled down on some of the things that have frustrated development.
It’s extended the red tape. It’s included metaphysical concepts in the Natural and Built Environment Bill, spiritual and animist concepts like Te Mana o te Wai. The purpose of the bill being to uphold te Oranga o te Taiao. It’s a novel term.
Lawyers told us at the Environment Committee that it could take a decade or more to unravel what that means. This bill includes undefined terms like “mātauranga Māori” and “tikanga Māori”. Well, you can go to court and ask a judge what it means, or the Minister might have agreed with me when I tabled an amendment to this bill at committee stage that we could include a very simple definition of what traditional Māori knowledge is if that’s what mātauranga Māori means. But the Minister refused.
It looks like we must find out the hard way what it means and how it will be applied.
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
2 comments:
Any mention in the increased road tax policy about getting anything from the free loaders i.e. electric car owners? Nah, not really, don't want to piss them off just before the election aye?
At every turn, this current Government has proven itself entirely unfit to govern for the average New Zealander and the election can't come soon enough. Racist, stupid and inappropriate policy is all they can produce. As David Seymour so aptly said recently: they are out of ideas; out of Ministers; and now out of our money.
They and their policies need to be gone and prison would be too good for their utter ineptitude.
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