JORDAN WILLIAMS - SHOCK, HORROR: ACT wants road money spent on... roads
- Administrator
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
On Friday, ACT launched its Keep New Zealand Moving transport policy, promising to squeeze more infrastructure out of every dollar by stopping road-user money being spent on non-functional art and monuments.
As it happens, our Investigative Lead Rhys had been working on an investigation that landed at rather convenient timing...
Rhys has found that across just three major transport projects, at least $15.8 million has been spent on iwi and hapū resourcing, cultural monitoring, advisory roles and artwork.
The breakdown is pretty eye-watering:
Ōtaki to North of Levin: $7.98 million on iwi and hapū resourcing, including $2.01 million on iwi adviser roles.
Transport Rebuild East Coast: $3.54 million paid to iwi and hapū groups for cultural oversight and monitoring.
Te Ara Tupua (Petone -Wellington walk and cycleway): $4.26 million for mana whenua sculptures and artwork.
That is nearly $16 million across just three projects.
Now, to be clear, nobody is suggesting that genuine cultural issues should simply be bulldozed over. If you are putting a motorway through a burial ground or another site of genuine cultural significance, of course there needs to be consultation and appropriate mitigation.
But that is quite different from allowing millions of dollars to disappear into standing advisory roles, cultural monitoring, reporting requirements and artwork simply because they have become baked into the way major projects are delivered.
And when New Zealand already spends comparatively heavily on infrastructure while getting comparatively poor results, every unnecessary layer matters.
Motorists pay plenty through fuel taxes, road-user charges, rates and tolls. Is it too much to expect that money to go towards roads that are safer, faster and more reliable, not millions of dollars of extras that do none of those things?
Jordan Williams is Executive Director & Co-founder of the Taxpayer's Union
scrap the treaty
As important is the squandering by NZTA on bloating regional staff / bureaucrats three fold, & out sourcing much work previously done in house or by contractors to consultants who insist on being paid in gold...
All in pursuit of power & control whilst wastefully spending taxpayer funds unproductively..
The standard of roads are no better, & road building is being diminished at the alter of bureaucracy...
😆hi,hard to believe what is happening in our lovely country !iwi demands do not represent ordinary maori, they just want to live there lives, like the rest of us ! what new zealand needs is politicians with more backbone to pull the eletist snouts out of the money trough. !! nz first or act, preferably both holding hands together, are, in my opinion, our only hope for plain bloody common sense !! i think our lovely people,of all races, are looking for this salvation ! it will take wisdom and every one bothering to vote ! but do not hold your breath ! ps, please get national to open their ears to their publics exasperated voice. norm mayo, katikati.
Whilst unecessary expenditure on "cultural" matters certainly needs to be shut down, I suspect more what ACT is getting at is around $6.4 billion taxation of road users being spent on public transport rather than road infrastructure.
millions of dollars ...
A whole 1% - wow - sure it's unnecessary, but you TU fellas can surely find something a bit meatier to make a fuss about?😟