September 16, 2024 • 19 mins
A replacement bridge, or a second one – or how about a tunnel instead?
The ongoing debate about a new harbour crossing in Auckland has reignited, with Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown laying out his vision for a second bridge, instead of the tunnel proposed by Labour.
The proposal has already proved controversial as it would require building through Meola Reef to Kauri Point.
How does this plan stack up with other proposals, and why is it taking so long to get this long debated crossing off the ground?
Today on The Front Page, NZ Herald senior writer Simon Wilson joins us to discuss our biggest city’s biggest transport headache.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Kyoda. I'm Susie Nordquitzt and for Chelsea Danielson. This is
the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New
Zealand Herald. A replacement bridge or a new one? Or
how about a tunnel instead? The ongoing debate about a
new harbor crossing in Auckland has reignited, with Auckland's Mayor
(00:27):
Wayne Brown laying up his vision for a second bridge
instead of the tunnel proposed by Labor. The proposal has
already proved controversial as it would require building through Meola
Reef to Cody Point. So how does this plan stack
up with other proposals and why is it taking so
long to get this crossing off the ground. Today on
(00:48):
the front page, New Zealand Herald, Senior writer Simon Wilson
joins us to discuss our biggest city's biggest transport headache. Simon,
can you take us through what Wayne Brown has proposed
for a new White and Matar crossing.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Wayne Brown has recognized that there is a need for
greater resilience in the harbour crossing setup that we have.
Now we're relying on just the aging Auckland Harbor Bridge
and the upper Harbor Highway motorway as well, which is
a security throuit for many people. And he has also
recognized that tunnels cost a lot more than bridges, so
(01:27):
he wants to build a bridge over what he sees
is the short as distance between the shore and a
southern part of the Smith's part of Auckland, which is
at Mayola Reef, which is Westmere Points Chevalier on the
south and crosses Dacari Point on the north.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
How viable is this as a transport route We've heard
about all these different proposals over the years.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Well, we're not really just talking about building a bridge,
we're talking about connecting motorways. So on the south there
is the Northwest Motorway which cuts through from Newton Gully,
go out to Point Chevalier and then crosses the causeway
and goes out to the west. Now that's pretty close
to mail A Reef, and you could build a motorway
extension from there just to the west of the Zoo
(02:13):
along Motions Road. So a motorway would go between the
Zoo and Western Springs Park on one side and Pasadena
Intermediate and Western Springs College on the other side. Then
would presumably fly over Seddin Field out to mail A
Reef and then on to the north. That's a pretty
big imposition on that area, but it wouldn't require much
(02:34):
destruction of housing. And if you did it as a flyover,
you would build it over Motions Road, so mainly you'd
be building it over what's already a road. Ugly but
not so disruptive. Perhaps on the northern side. However, it's
very different to get to either of the motorways, the
Upper Harbor Highway Motorway or the State Highway one. You've
(02:55):
got to carve through large stands of reserve which include
a lot of chari forest, and also got to cut
through suburban areas, so Burke, places like Burke and Heap
Glenfield would be significantly affected. It's an enormous disruption to
the shore.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
One of my bajor things is to stop wasting money,
and the government has said that we should stop wasting money,
and so should they. And there's no way that the
government can afford New Zealand can afford the tunnel solution
is anywhere between thirty five and fifty five billion dollars,
which eats up all of the road budget for ten
(03:36):
years and now that's it untenable.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Do you think it has any chance of going ahead
given those environmental impacts you spoke about.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I think those environmental impacts are only one of a
number of things that will mean this has no chance
at all. It's interesting to think about why Wayne Brown's
raised this. It's not been proposed by any political party
at the moment that we build a new habit it's
not on the government's plans, labors out of power and
doesn't have any forward thinking policies at the moment around transport.
(04:07):
But he's raised this. There are other factors. That's the
environmental factors. There are some cultural factors to do with
the Mailer reef and its role in traditional Ewi culture.
There is also an engineering issue. Mail A reef is
lava rock, so it's hard, but it's pretty thin. Underneath
it is this normal kind of muck sediment that sits
(04:30):
at the bottom of the ocean, and actually that's very soft,
So it's a significant environmental iman. You could build the bridge,
but it would be a major engineering challenge to do that,
so that's a really big issue as well. And then
on top of that you've got to look at the.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Cost the vision that we're setting out today includes separate
road and rapid transit tunnels, reallocating lanes on the existing
Auckland Harbor Bridge to walking and cycling, include having two
rapid transit routes to the north shore. That's got the
greatest benefits of all the options. That comes with a
price tag of between thirty five and forty five billion dollars.
(05:10):
That price tag, of course, would be paid for over
many years, in the same way as as usual for
significant roading projects.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
The last idea for a new crossing came from Labor,
a tunnel that would cost tens of billions of dollars
and take decades to build. That one's dead in the water, right.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
So to speak. When Labor proposed tunnels under the harbor,
which would roughly be close to where the Harbor Bridge
is now, Nationals seem to be sympathetic to that, and
both the major parties have always fancied the idea of
some kind of new crossing there, and they both appeared
(05:49):
to favor tunnels. Tunnels will be extraordinarily expensive. Back a
few years ago, the figure of fifteen billion dollars was suggested,
but it's probably many times more than that now. Maybe
over fifty billion, who knows. And perhaps more significantly, the
last time a business case analysis was done for a
tunnel system under the harbor, it came back suggesting it
(06:11):
would return twenty cents on every dollar point two. Now
that's appalling. That's not the recipe with which you want
to build major infrastructure. That's what it was. Then. We
don't know what it would be now because Labor didn't
produce a new BCA for its new plans last year.
But one clue is that National hasn't included a new
(06:33):
work on a new harbour crossing in its new Land
Transport program, which is a funding program. And my guess
is the reason for that is they know perfectly well
that it's very hard to make it stack up financially,
so they're putting their money into other things. They're not
looking at a harbor crossing. So I don't think you
can see those tunnels really ever becoming a viable option.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Again, there's the argument, though, something needs to be done.
How do we raise the money right?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So something needs to be done. There have been a
number of proposals for bridges. There's a lot of kind
of myth making around than what we actually need. One
of the factors is that if you build more roads,
you get more people driving. So the critical need for
the Shore is to build up what's called rapid transit
(07:21):
on the shore, and the North Shore is a really
interesting poster example already for why rapid transit works. The
Northern Busway was opened in two thousand and eight. Before
it opened, everybody on the shore said, we don't catch buses.
This is not going to work. This is a complete
white elephant or a complete waste of money. In fact,
now on the Harbor Bridge during the morning peak time,
(07:43):
something over forty percent of all commuters are riding on
a bus and it's an extraordinary success story, and it's
one of the things that it should have been copied
in Auckland by now to the west. It is being
copied now to the east, but that's still some years
off being finished. The city needs more of that Now
that Northern Busway route is going to be full quite soon,
(08:05):
so the North Shore is going to need extra capacity
in rapid transit. So one of the needs for the
Harbor crossing is to create more rapid transit at the
same time. I mean, it's really interesting. During the period
between two thousand and eight and now there'sh are populations
grown by forty percent, but there are not significantly more
(08:26):
cars on the bridge. It is because that growth has
been catered for by public transport. Keep that principle going
and you get then the key to what do we
actually need for the crossing? So we need a public
transport crossing. And in addition to that, there are an
awful lot of people who want to walk over the
bridge and cycle over the bridge and don't want to
do that in tunnels, don't particularly want to do it
on a ferry either. They actually want the pleasure, whether
(08:48):
they're commuters or recreational users or tourists, to be able
to get over there and enjoy the really really beautiful
city from that pantage point.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
So more buses, more ferries, and a bike lane.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
More buses, or it could be light rail. See if
it's not tunnels, you know tunnels just know everywhere, So
it could be tunnels. It could be more buses and
a bike lane, yes as well. And if we do
that we will find that at the same time, if
we increase our rail freight capacity to Northland, which will
(09:23):
take freight trucks container trucks off the Harbor Bridge. If
we do that, we may find that we don't need
to build lots more roads.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Simon. We've been talking about an additional harbor crossing for
as long as I can remember. John Banks proposed a
harbor tunnel between Mechanics Bay and Devonport and the early
two thousands for one billion dollars. Why can't we just
get on with it and get it done like other countries.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
One reason that we don't get on with and get
it done is that every time people do try and
work out the economic value of it, it comes up short.
And I mentioned before twenty cents in the dollar last
time it was tried. So there are a lot of
people on the North Shore who feel we should have
a new harbor crossing because they worry that the bridge
might collapse, which it is not going to do. The bridge,
with proper maintenance, we are told by the experts, will
(10:23):
have a reasonably long life in front of it, provided
it's managed. Provided it that doesn't continue having to take
lots more heavy trucks and perhaps lots more buses as well.
If it was if it was left to light traffic,
it should be fine. But people think that we're going
to need that extra crossing, so it's become as a
political thing for politicians to promise to do it. But
(10:47):
because it would be so expensive to do the tunnels,
that's never really been pursued, and because there are other
projects that always come up with a better cost value analysis,
this one keeps being pushed down the track.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Speaking of other countries, Sydney has recently opened the first
stage of its new rapid train line.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
It's Australia's biggest public transport project, and today the crucial
city line of the Sydney Metro opened with much.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Fanfare five seven am. This is a moment in Sydney's history,
the first time a rail line has crossed underneath the Harbor,
part full of passengers. The tunnel that took two years
to dig now takes two minutes to cross.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
It includes twin underwater tunnels, and it took only about
seven years to build. Its transport system seems far superior
to ours. Should we be looking across the ditch for
these ideas.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
What we need to look across the ditch for is
not just the ideas of what to do, but the
way that they do them. In Sydney, that new Metro
line that you mentioned was built during periods of Labor
being in power is in the state government and the
Liberals being in power. Both of them supported it. They
had a cross party accord that kept the project going
(12:07):
despite cost blowouts, despite others saying no, no, we shouldn't
be doing this now. That cross party accord between the
two main parties meant that the project succeeded, and succeeded
in pretty quick time, which is a fantastic achievement. New
Zealand needs that cross party approach to long term infrastructure planning.
That's the thing we need most of all. And to
(12:28):
make it happen because the political parties also they wanted
to happen. To make it happen, they need a mechanism
that will allow them to agree these are the basic
principles on which we will build our infrastructure. There has
to be an economic value, There has to be some
recognition of environmental impacts. There probably has to be some
(12:48):
equity issue involved it. This going to help communities that
need help those sorts of things. If they agree on
the principles, and if our government's plan for the Independent
Infrastruy Ructure Commission and the Independent National Infrastructure Agency If
that plan progresses and they do come up with independently
(13:10):
developed frameworks for assessing projects, then the politicians should be
able to accept that and take the silly short term
politics out of it. If we get that, we'll really
be making progress.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Can you see it happening.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Neither nor Labor have a good track record on this.
They both canceled each other's projects the first chance they
got in the last two changes of government, so they
both got to change their ways. The National government, to
its credit, has proposed this bipartisan framework, but at the
(13:46):
same time they said Labor and the Greens have to
understand that we're going to build our roads. Now, that's
just a crazy way to go into negotiating a cross
party deal. What the projects are, it should be the
last thing that's decided. Priority should be to set the criteria.
What do we want? What kind of country are we building?
And I would say personally that it's got to have
(14:07):
a climate framework put into it. It's got to be
a missions reduction as part of the planning, because if
we're not doing that now, we're going to be doing
it soon and we should be doing it now, so
we need that and then we can start talking about
what projects fit the criteria. I don't think it's been
helpful of the government to say that, but we're going
to have our program anyway. Cross party accords aren't just
(14:29):
about requiring the opposition to sign up to your ideas.
They're about compromise and meeting in the middle.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
What kind of country will we see in the future
if there's not this cross party support.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
That's a really good question. We have got ourselves into
an appalling mess with infrastructure in this country, and we
see it everywhere, from the state of our hospital buildings,
to the roads and the railway, the cook Straight ferries,
the energy development, the lack of wind farms and sol
that we could have in this country so easily because
(15:03):
there has been party bickering we'll do this and no,
we'll do that. And at the same time we've also
always said, well, it's really important for governments to pay
down debt, and one of the easy things to do
is to keep maintenance out of it. If you reduce
your maintenance budget, nobody sees you're doing that, But you
get potholes, you get hospitals being run down, those sorts
(15:26):
of things happen, so it's actually very hard to see
how we're going to see a change in economic commitment
to funding projects and to funding the maintenance of projects
to keep them going. The thing that might make it
happen is that I think that's probably a much greater
popular understanding now that the mess we've got ourselves into economically,
(15:51):
we need to build our way out of it. We
need to build for better and we need to maintain better.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Are we being overly ambitious talking about bridges and tunnels?
We look at more faery options like Sydney has and
I understand you spoke with cable car company Dopplemire last year.
Is that feasible?
Speaker 2 (16:08):
In my view? A range of tech alternatives. Electric ferries
cable cars are two of the options, and there are
probably and there are more as well, and most of
them are relatively cheap. Most of them would be relatively
easy to implement, and therefore we should be trialing them.
You know, the cable car option. There is a new
one that's been developed in christ Church that Queenstown's going
(16:30):
to introduce, which is a kind of hybrid cable car
come uber in the air amazing, which is an extraordinary thing.
It wouldn't cost much at all to see whether that
can work. It wouldn't cost much at all, and it
could be done in a couple of years to put
a gondola line from Botany to the airport to see
if it works. We wouldn't lose anything at all, really,
(16:52):
but it could be transformative and it could have both
sort of things could have a role to play rather
than saying we have to build the biggest and most
expensive and most difficult thing we can think of and
that's the only way we'll solve our problems. That is
a nuts way to approach infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Simon, how should both sides go about getting this cross
party support?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Well, the good news is that because we have an
independent Infrastructure Commission, and because the government is setting up
an independent National Infrastructure Agency which will receive projects and
look at financing for projects, we have the bones already
for cross party support. If the politicians are prepared to
(17:35):
say to those independent agencies, Okay, you come up with
the framework and we will sit down with you and
buy into it. If they're prepared to do that, then
we really do have the basis, or could have the
basis for a genuine collaborative approach on these things that
should be above and beyond politics if they prepare to
(17:57):
do that. The problem with it is every political party
sees immediate populist electoral advantage in saying we'll build that road,
we'll build that cyc away, we'll build that wind farm,
we will ban that wind farm, whatever it is, and
you want to get that vote getting populism out of it.
(18:19):
You want the social greater good to apply and you therefore,
if those independent agencies are powerful enough, they could be
the leaders for.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
This an interesting discussion. Thank you for joining us, Simon.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at Inset Herald dot co dot endzet. The Front Page
is produced by Ethan Sells. I'm Susanne or Quist. Subscribe
to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get
(18:51):
your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind
the headlines.
Kyoda. I'm Susie Nordquitzt and for Chelsea Danielson. This is
the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New
Zealand Herald. A replacement bridge or a new one? Or
how about a tunnel instead? The ongoing debate about a
new harbor crossing in Auckland has reignited, with Auckland's Mayor
(00:27):
Wayne Brown laying up his vision for a second bridge
instead of the tunnel proposed by Labor. The proposal has
already proved controversial as it would require building through Meola
Reef to Cody Point. So how does this plan stack
up with other proposals and why is it taking so
long to get this crossing off the ground. Today on
(00:48):
the front page, New Zealand Herald, Senior writer Simon Wilson
joins us to discuss our biggest city's biggest transport headache. Simon,
can you take us through what Wayne Brown has proposed
for a new White and Matar crossing.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Wayne Brown has recognized that there is a need for
greater resilience in the harbour crossing setup that we have.
Now we're relying on just the aging Auckland Harbor Bridge
and the upper Harbor Highway motorway as well, which is
a security throuit for many people. And he has also
recognized that tunnels cost a lot more than bridges, so
(01:27):
he wants to build a bridge over what he sees
is the short as distance between the shore and a
southern part of the Smith's part of Auckland, which is
at Mayola Reef, which is Westmere Points Chevalier on the
south and crosses Dacari Point on the north.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
How viable is this as a transport route We've heard
about all these different proposals over the years.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Well, we're not really just talking about building a bridge,
we're talking about connecting motorways. So on the south there
is the Northwest Motorway which cuts through from Newton Gully,
go out to Point Chevalier and then crosses the causeway
and goes out to the west. Now that's pretty close
to mail A Reef, and you could build a motorway
extension from there just to the west of the Zoo
(02:13):
along Motions Road. So a motorway would go between the
Zoo and Western Springs Park on one side and Pasadena
Intermediate and Western Springs College on the other side. Then
would presumably fly over Seddin Field out to mail A
Reef and then on to the north. That's a pretty
big imposition on that area, but it wouldn't require much
(02:34):
destruction of housing. And if you did it as a flyover,
you would build it over Motions Road, so mainly you'd
be building it over what's already a road. Ugly but
not so disruptive. Perhaps on the northern side. However, it's
very different to get to either of the motorways, the
Upper Harbor Highway Motorway or the State Highway one. You've
(02:55):
got to carve through large stands of reserve which include
a lot of chari forest, and also got to cut
through suburban areas, so Burke, places like Burke and Heap
Glenfield would be significantly affected. It's an enormous disruption to
the shore.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
One of my bajor things is to stop wasting money,
and the government has said that we should stop wasting money,
and so should they. And there's no way that the
government can afford New Zealand can afford the tunnel solution
is anywhere between thirty five and fifty five billion dollars,
which eats up all of the road budget for ten
(03:36):
years and now that's it untenable.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Do you think it has any chance of going ahead
given those environmental impacts you spoke about.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I think those environmental impacts are only one of a
number of things that will mean this has no chance
at all. It's interesting to think about why Wayne Brown's
raised this. It's not been proposed by any political party
at the moment that we build a new habit it's
not on the government's plans, labors out of power and
doesn't have any forward thinking policies at the moment around transport.
(04:07):
But he's raised this. There are other factors. That's the
environmental factors. There are some cultural factors to do with
the Mailer reef and its role in traditional Ewi culture.
There is also an engineering issue. Mail A reef is
lava rock, so it's hard, but it's pretty thin. Underneath
it is this normal kind of muck sediment that sits
(04:30):
at the bottom of the ocean, and actually that's very soft,
So it's a significant environmental iman. You could build the bridge,
but it would be a major engineering challenge to do that,
so that's a really big issue as well. And then
on top of that you've got to look at the.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Cost the vision that we're setting out today includes separate
road and rapid transit tunnels, reallocating lanes on the existing
Auckland Harbor Bridge to walking and cycling, include having two
rapid transit routes to the north shore. That's got the
greatest benefits of all the options. That comes with a
price tag of between thirty five and forty five billion dollars.
(05:10):
That price tag, of course, would be paid for over
many years, in the same way as as usual for
significant roading projects.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
The last idea for a new crossing came from Labor,
a tunnel that would cost tens of billions of dollars
and take decades to build. That one's dead in the water, right.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
So to speak. When Labor proposed tunnels under the harbor,
which would roughly be close to where the Harbor Bridge
is now, Nationals seem to be sympathetic to that, and
both the major parties have always fancied the idea of
some kind of new crossing there, and they both appeared
(05:49):
to favor tunnels. Tunnels will be extraordinarily expensive. Back a
few years ago, the figure of fifteen billion dollars was suggested,
but it's probably many times more than that now. Maybe
over fifty billion, who knows. And perhaps more significantly, the
last time a business case analysis was done for a
tunnel system under the harbor, it came back suggesting it
(06:11):
would return twenty cents on every dollar point two. Now
that's appalling. That's not the recipe with which you want
to build major infrastructure. That's what it was. Then. We
don't know what it would be now because Labor didn't
produce a new BCA for its new plans last year.
But one clue is that National hasn't included a new
(06:33):
work on a new harbour crossing in its new Land
Transport program, which is a funding program. And my guess
is the reason for that is they know perfectly well
that it's very hard to make it stack up financially,
so they're putting their money into other things. They're not
looking at a harbor crossing. So I don't think you
can see those tunnels really ever becoming a viable option.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Again, there's the argument, though, something needs to be done.
How do we raise the money right?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So something needs to be done. There have been a
number of proposals for bridges. There's a lot of kind
of myth making around than what we actually need. One
of the factors is that if you build more roads,
you get more people driving. So the critical need for
the Shore is to build up what's called rapid transit
(07:21):
on the shore, and the North Shore is a really
interesting poster example already for why rapid transit works. The
Northern Busway was opened in two thousand and eight. Before
it opened, everybody on the shore said, we don't catch buses.
This is not going to work. This is a complete
white elephant or a complete waste of money. In fact,
now on the Harbor Bridge during the morning peak time,
(07:43):
something over forty percent of all commuters are riding on
a bus and it's an extraordinary success story, and it's
one of the things that it should have been copied
in Auckland by now to the west. It is being
copied now to the east, but that's still some years
off being finished. The city needs more of that Now
that Northern Busway route is going to be full quite soon,
(08:05):
so the North Shore is going to need extra capacity
in rapid transit. So one of the needs for the
Harbor crossing is to create more rapid transit at the
same time. I mean, it's really interesting. During the period
between two thousand and eight and now there'sh are populations
grown by forty percent, but there are not significantly more
(08:26):
cars on the bridge. It is because that growth has
been catered for by public transport. Keep that principle going
and you get then the key to what do we
actually need for the crossing? So we need a public
transport crossing. And in addition to that, there are an
awful lot of people who want to walk over the
bridge and cycle over the bridge and don't want to
do that in tunnels, don't particularly want to do it
on a ferry either. They actually want the pleasure, whether
(08:48):
they're commuters or recreational users or tourists, to be able
to get over there and enjoy the really really beautiful
city from that pantage point.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
So more buses, more ferries, and a bike lane.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
More buses, or it could be light rail. See if
it's not tunnels, you know tunnels just know everywhere, So
it could be tunnels. It could be more buses and
a bike lane, yes as well. And if we do
that we will find that at the same time, if
we increase our rail freight capacity to Northland, which will
(09:23):
take freight trucks container trucks off the Harbor Bridge. If
we do that, we may find that we don't need
to build lots more roads.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Simon. We've been talking about an additional harbor crossing for
as long as I can remember. John Banks proposed a
harbor tunnel between Mechanics Bay and Devonport and the early
two thousands for one billion dollars. Why can't we just
get on with it and get it done like other countries.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
One reason that we don't get on with and get
it done is that every time people do try and
work out the economic value of it, it comes up short.
And I mentioned before twenty cents in the dollar last
time it was tried. So there are a lot of
people on the North Shore who feel we should have
a new harbor crossing because they worry that the bridge
might collapse, which it is not going to do. The bridge,
with proper maintenance, we are told by the experts, will
(10:23):
have a reasonably long life in front of it, provided
it's managed. Provided it that doesn't continue having to take
lots more heavy trucks and perhaps lots more buses as well.
If it was if it was left to light traffic,
it should be fine. But people think that we're going
to need that extra crossing, so it's become as a
political thing for politicians to promise to do it. But
(10:47):
because it would be so expensive to do the tunnels,
that's never really been pursued, and because there are other
projects that always come up with a better cost value analysis,
this one keeps being pushed down the track.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Speaking of other countries, Sydney has recently opened the first
stage of its new rapid train line.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
It's Australia's biggest public transport project, and today the crucial
city line of the Sydney Metro opened with much.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Fanfare five seven am. This is a moment in Sydney's history,
the first time a rail line has crossed underneath the Harbor,
part full of passengers. The tunnel that took two years
to dig now takes two minutes to cross.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
It includes twin underwater tunnels, and it took only about
seven years to build. Its transport system seems far superior
to ours. Should we be looking across the ditch for
these ideas.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
What we need to look across the ditch for is
not just the ideas of what to do, but the
way that they do them. In Sydney, that new Metro
line that you mentioned was built during periods of Labor
being in power is in the state government and the
Liberals being in power. Both of them supported it. They
had a cross party accord that kept the project going
(12:07):
despite cost blowouts, despite others saying no, no, we shouldn't
be doing this now. That cross party accord between the
two main parties meant that the project succeeded, and succeeded
in pretty quick time, which is a fantastic achievement. New
Zealand needs that cross party approach to long term infrastructure planning.
That's the thing we need most of all. And to
(12:28):
make it happen because the political parties also they wanted
to happen. To make it happen, they need a mechanism
that will allow them to agree these are the basic
principles on which we will build our infrastructure. There has
to be an economic value, There has to be some
recognition of environmental impacts. There probably has to be some
(12:48):
equity issue involved it. This going to help communities that
need help those sorts of things. If they agree on
the principles, and if our government's plan for the Independent
Infrastruy Ructure Commission and the Independent National Infrastructure Agency If
that plan progresses and they do come up with independently
(13:10):
developed frameworks for assessing projects, then the politicians should be
able to accept that and take the silly short term
politics out of it. If we get that, we'll really
be making progress.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Can you see it happening.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Neither nor Labor have a good track record on this.
They both canceled each other's projects the first chance they
got in the last two changes of government, so they
both got to change their ways. The National government, to
its credit, has proposed this bipartisan framework, but at the
(13:46):
same time they said Labor and the Greens have to
understand that we're going to build our roads. Now, that's
just a crazy way to go into negotiating a cross
party deal. What the projects are, it should be the
last thing that's decided. Priority should be to set the criteria.
What do we want? What kind of country are we building?
And I would say personally that it's got to have
(14:07):
a climate framework put into it. It's got to be
a missions reduction as part of the planning, because if
we're not doing that now, we're going to be doing
it soon and we should be doing it now, so
we need that and then we can start talking about
what projects fit the criteria. I don't think it's been
helpful of the government to say that, but we're going
to have our program anyway. Cross party accords aren't just
(14:29):
about requiring the opposition to sign up to your ideas.
They're about compromise and meeting in the middle.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
What kind of country will we see in the future
if there's not this cross party support.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
That's a really good question. We have got ourselves into
an appalling mess with infrastructure in this country, and we
see it everywhere, from the state of our hospital buildings,
to the roads and the railway, the cook Straight ferries,
the energy development, the lack of wind farms and sol
that we could have in this country so easily because
(15:03):
there has been party bickering we'll do this and no,
we'll do that. And at the same time we've also
always said, well, it's really important for governments to pay
down debt, and one of the easy things to do
is to keep maintenance out of it. If you reduce
your maintenance budget, nobody sees you're doing that, But you
get potholes, you get hospitals being run down, those sorts
(15:26):
of things happen, so it's actually very hard to see
how we're going to see a change in economic commitment
to funding projects and to funding the maintenance of projects
to keep them going. The thing that might make it
happen is that I think that's probably a much greater
popular understanding now that the mess we've got ourselves into economically,
(15:51):
we need to build our way out of it. We
need to build for better and we need to maintain better.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Are we being overly ambitious talking about bridges and tunnels?
We look at more faery options like Sydney has and
I understand you spoke with cable car company Dopplemire last year.
Is that feasible?
Speaker 2 (16:08):
In my view? A range of tech alternatives. Electric ferries
cable cars are two of the options, and there are
probably and there are more as well, and most of
them are relatively cheap. Most of them would be relatively
easy to implement, and therefore we should be trialing them.
You know, the cable car option. There is a new
one that's been developed in christ Church that Queenstown's going
(16:30):
to introduce, which is a kind of hybrid cable car
come uber in the air amazing, which is an extraordinary thing.
It wouldn't cost much at all to see whether that
can work. It wouldn't cost much at all, and it
could be done in a couple of years to put
a gondola line from Botany to the airport to see
if it works. We wouldn't lose anything at all, really,
(16:52):
but it could be transformative and it could have both
sort of things could have a role to play rather
than saying we have to build the biggest and most
expensive and most difficult thing we can think of and
that's the only way we'll solve our problems. That is
a nuts way to approach infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Simon, how should both sides go about getting this cross
party support?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Well, the good news is that because we have an
independent Infrastructure Commission, and because the government is setting up
an independent National Infrastructure Agency which will receive projects and
look at financing for projects, we have the bones already
for cross party support. If the politicians are prepared to
(17:35):
say to those independent agencies, Okay, you come up with
the framework and we will sit down with you and
buy into it. If they're prepared to do that, then
we really do have the basis, or could have the
basis for a genuine collaborative approach on these things that
should be above and beyond politics if they prepare to
(17:57):
do that. The problem with it is every political party
sees immediate populist electoral advantage in saying we'll build that road,
we'll build that cyc away, we'll build that wind farm,
we will ban that wind farm, whatever it is, and
you want to get that vote getting populism out of it.
(18:19):
You want the social greater good to apply and you therefore,
if those independent agencies are powerful enough, they could be
the leaders for.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
This an interesting discussion. Thank you for joining us, Simon.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at Inset Herald dot co dot endzet. The Front Page
is produced by Ethan Sells. I'm Susanne or Quist. Subscribe
to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get
(18:51):
your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind
the headlines.
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