Shane
JONES
Infrastructure Spokesperson

4 July 2011 MEDIA STATEMENT
National re-announces re-announcements

Labour’s Infrastructure spokesperson Shane Jones says National’s so-called infrastructure blueprint announced today is little more than a rehash of its announcements in March last year.

“One of the more significant announcements in today’s Second Infrastructure Plan is that the Third Infrastructure Plan won’t be delivered for another three years,” Shane Jones said.

“What this means is that National has decided there’s no point in updating the plan every year as that just means creating more work for itself. What New Zealand actually needs, however, is a real action plan to move our economy forward far more decisively than National will ever achieve.

“This second infrastructure plan would be almost identical to the first one in 2010 if not for the extra spending (already announced) needed following the Christchurch quakes,” Shane Jones said. “This is election year and National will use any opportunity it can find to re-announce what it has already announced so often before.

“Extending the mixed ownership model --- in other words, flogging off shares in our precious state-owned assets --- is not a recipe for the long-term future prosperity of this country.

“I’ve given up counting the number of times National has announced its roads of national significance,” Shane Jones said. “The last Labour Government simply went ahead and built roads.
“But as well as spending money on roads, Labour invested in public transport, rail and coastal shipping as part of an integrated approach to get New Zealand moving.

“Labour continues to believe in an integrated approach that unclogs our cities as well as improving the state highway system,” Shane Jones said. “National has an ideological commitment to roads, and rail will continue to be the poor cousin under this Government.

“National’s idea of kick-starting infrastructure development is to write Telecom a blank cheque for broadband and to hand over state prisons to private overseas companies so they can make a profit.”

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