New Zealand First Leader and Northland MP Rt Hon Winston Peters
Guest Speaker at the Paihia & District Ratepayers’ Association AGM Tourism
Paihia War Memorial Hall,
Williams Rd, Paihia
5pm, Monday, 20th June, 2016

History, scenery and climate – but endless bills

Paihia and districts is one of the jewels in New Zealand’s crown. It is at the heart of a most beautiful part of New Zealand. But it is beset with problems of straining, ageing and inadequate infrastructure that residents are asked to put up with or pay for even though “retired” is the largest cohort among residents, with a lot of business being seasonal and lots of “tourists workers” taking up employment.

Beautiful scenery and climate with a backdrop of history seemingly doesn’t pay the bills.

It is fashionable for politicians, local and central, to travel the country talking positivism and being aspirational. But when that approach disguises deep and enduring problems it helps no one, no community, and no country.

In short, like so many communities, yours is being asked to pay for what it needs but ratepayers can’t afford.

Last month the government announced they would provide $12 million funding over four years for local communities to deal with huge tourism numbers.

The reality is $12 million, at $3 million per year, stretched all over New Zealand is going to go almost nowhere.

Lincoln University professor of Tourism David Simmons told the Press that $12m over four years is pitiful – enough he said to build between seven and 15 toilets.

The government last year received $630m net surplus from GST on international visitor spending.

Which begs the question: why wasn’t much of this surplus diverted to communities such as yours to help pay for infrastructure impacted by tourism?

Tourism Industry Aotearoa called on the government to provide $100 million to support local councils deal with tourism.

Others want more information collated on the numbers of freedom campers coming to New Zealand, their impact on the environment, and the cost on communities having to provide facilities such as public toilets and rubbish facilities

Some leaders in the tourism industry have approached the prime minister suggesting a tourism tax should be introduced.

Mr Key said a departure tax could give the government up to $80 million a year.

His biggest worry was, he said: “What the hell do we spend the money on?” (NBR, June 10, 2016)
Really.

Which begs the question, how many local communities have written to the Prime Minister to let him know just how unfair that statement is where their communities are concerned.

Northland Transportation Alliance

The Northland Transportation Alliance is due to start on July 1, claiming to deliver financial benefits over 10 years of $18 million. That equals $1.8m per year.

It is not clear how they arrived at this figure but $1.8m per annum is what some CEO’s get paid annually.

Did bureaucracy pluck it out of the air to justify what they are doing?

The four Northland councils say that the collaboration will enable them and the NZ Transport Agency to co-ordinate work programmes and align contracting investment to become more efficient.

They want to make more headway with transportation and roading services.

What are the efficiencies to include?

We have not been told.

The transportation alliance is just the first phase of Northland Forward Together, which will include managing water and wastewater. Now if serious money is being put behind these ideas then it should be applauded. Again there is no mention of that.

But if it is simply the government leaning on the councils and leading them up the garden path to amalgamation – creating something like Auckland’s so-called Super City - then we should all be alarmed.

In other words, the government would be creating another mess.

If they want you to have a unitary council you should decide that by referendum and not a nameless bureaucrat in Wellington.

Roads

The NZ Transport Agency seems to have got the Northland Transportation Alliance side-stepping the whole issue as far as transportation and roading in Northland is concerned.

Your local paper the Bay Chronicle published an article (May 19) headlined:

Roads little more than country lanes.

The article was written by a sales rep who travels all over the North Island.

He said heavy freight vehicles are tearing up the road surfaces.

He wrote one of the most dangerous situations on the roads is logging trucks.

What is the NZTA and the Transportation Alliance going to do about the disintegrating roads, the huge number of log trucks, and dusty roads affecting the movement of people and products, driver safety and people’s health here in Northland?

We all know the answer to that – nothing, unless realistic budget forecasts are behind it.

The solutions are simple – they start with the government allocating more funding for rural roads which they removed in 2009.

Then they must re-invigorate rail in Northland, not kill it off, as they are doing now.

A wonderful opportunity has been blatantly ignored for some time over the future of Northport.

Ports of Auckland are looking for a suitable site and the deep water port at Marsden Point is the logical choice.

But the government won’t support a 20km rail line from the port to the main trunk line.
This would benefit both Northland and Auckland. The only trouble is the government won’t have a bar of it.

Two years ago they closed the rail service from Dargaville to Whangarei without the decency of making a public announcement about it.

That demonstrates a contempt for local people.

You don’t improve transportation in Northland by signing up councils in an alliance reduced to verbal gymnastics about aligning contracting investments and co-ordinating work programmes without putting serious money behind them.

The plain fact is Northland roads are being left to fall apart because the Government will not provide funding from monies collected for that very purpose. They are taking these monies off you and giving very little back.

And while the government has pushed money into Roads of National Significance, not a cent had been spent on the promised Puhoi to Warkworth now Wellsford super highway.

They took the rural roads money off you promising that you would get a super highway, hundreds of kilometers south of here, and yet not one metre has been built since 2008.

Tourist drivers

While on this subject of roads, it is important that tourist drivers coming to this region have a level of proven competence and are aware of the type of roads that we have.

There have been too many reports of poor and erratic driving by tourists.

New Zealand First’s bill, the Land Transport (Tourist Driver Rental Vehicle) Amendment Bill, would require rental companies to investigate the competence of hirers from overseas to drive on New Zealand roads, educate them about driving requirements, and ensure that they have the experience to do so.

Police

It is important in small towns such as Paihia that you go to sleep at night knowing it is a safe community to live in.

We are not a police state but it is reassuring when people know the police are near at hand if required.

A disturbing feature in New Zealand today is the thin blue line becoming not just thin, but emaciated.

This is not the fault of the police. They too are victims here.

The government has frozen funding to police for six years and as a consequence we have a new radical style of policing: fly-by car patrols and ‘police by warning.’

Police are now concentrating staff in big centres at the expense of small towns.

Councils are having to employ private companies to undertake patrols while also paying millions of dollars for CCTV security cameras trying to keep their streets safe.

Eighteen councils are seeking support from Local Government New Zealand to lobby the government for better policing resources – real proof that our police men and women are seriously under-resourced.

They won’t have any luck.

The Police Minister Judith Collins says police foot patrols have increased since 2013. That statement is false. She did not mention what level of patrolling was occurring prior to 2013, after five years of the government being in power.

Both she and central government are also masters at fudging statistics. We saw it in the Budget when Finance Minister Bill English crowed that crime had dropped by 16 per cent.

What Mr English did not say is police are increasingly giving warnings and cautions, instead of charging offenders.

Official statistics obtained by New Zealand First show the percentage of incidents police have attended that end in arrests have dropped from 16.5 per cent in 2007 to 13.15 per cent in 2015.

From 2008 the total number of incidents police have attended has risen from 420,000 to 525,000 in 2015, or up 105,000 or more than 20%.

Of those incidents, the number of arrests made during this same period has dropped from 72,000 to 69,000 in 2015.

Incidents up 105,000 and arrests down 3000.

Without adequate government funding, police are struggling to find answers.

It means pulling police, community and youth aid police from towns for centralised units and more highway patrols.

New Zealand First’s policy is to reinforce the police frontline.

We brought in an extra 1000 frontline police, plus 235 back office staff between 2005-2008. That was New Zealand First’s policy then. It is still our policy, and we would put more police on our frontline.

Waitangi

Finally, New Zealand First believes the government must ensure access to Waitangi, the birthplace of our nation, is free to all New Zealanders.

It is unacceptable that the public, and this includes tourists, must pay to visit this most historic New Zealand site.

The Treaty Grounds are looked after by the Waitangi National Trust which has been forced to charge the public.

There is something wrong when New Zealanders and overseas tourists visiting our national museum in Wellington, Te Papa, are not charged, whilst visitors to the Waitangi site are.

Making Kiwi adults pay $20 each and tourists $40 at Waitangi does not reflect well on us when other nations make no charge for the public to view their most historic sites.

Conclusion

It is the policy of the party I lead to return to the provinces taxes collected there and to use those taxes for the purposes they were collected.

· Roading taxes should go roads.

· Tourism taxes should go to tourism, infrastructure and promotion for the tourism areas where it happens.

· Because personal security and tourism go hand in hand provincial communities need appropriate police numbers that are able to act with urgency.

Ladies and gentlemen there is a lot seriously wrong with New Zealand politics as it affects our economy.

It is the provinces which create the real export wealth for our country. When international tourists come here that is also export wealth – exporting our country.

The sooner that central government and bureaucracy, with their obsession with Auckland, get that message then the better off your community and our provinces will be.

I am confident that the Bay of Islands and Northland have a great future but if only we are all resolved to get our fair share of the resources.

ENDS

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