Sustainable growth and safety for transport sector

Transport Minister Pete Hodgson and State Services Minister Trevor Mallard today announced changes to the government transport sector.

Pete Hodgson said these changes are designed to create an affordable, integrated and safe transport system for New Zealand by 2010, as set out in the 2002 New Zealand Transport Strategy (NZTS).

The policy functions of the Land Transport Safety Authority and Transfund will be transferred into the Ministry of Transport, to enable more coherent policy development and delivery across the sector.

The operational functions of LTSA and Transfund will be brought together in a new agency. This will result in both the Ministry of Transport and the new agency being able to take a more cohesive approach to delivering on NZTS' objectives, nationally and regionally. In particular, the safety programme and national land transport programme will be integrated. The relationship between the LTSA and its various service agents will be unchanged following the LTSA's operational responsibilities being transferred to the new agency.

There will be no change to the safety and regulatory roles of the Maritime Safety Authority (MSA), the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), including the Aviation Security Service (AvSec). They will however have their scope increased to take NZTS objectives into account. There will be no significant changes for Transit.

This sector review came out of the government’s 2001 evaluation of New Zealand’s public management system, the Review of the Centre.

Transport Minister Pete Hodgson said the new structure will reduce fragmentation, enabling the delivery of better, more co-ordinated and responsive, sustainable transport outcomes.

"This government has changed the way New Zealand looks at transport. This was clearly defined in the NZTS. In December 2003, we addressed decades of underfunding, investing $2.97 billion in land transport through the Investing for Growth transport package," Pete Hodgson said.

There are expected to be very few redundancies as a result of these changes. Legislation will be needed to effect some changes announced today and will be introduced later this year.

Pete Hodgson will be available in his office to take calls on the Transport review between 10:30 and 11:15 am.

Background information and a copy of the full report are available on line at: http://www.beehive.govt.nz/transport

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