Hon Darren Hughes
Transport Spokesperson

18 March 2009
Media Statement

Cost of road safety funding cut will be counted in lost Kiwi lives

The cost of the National Government’s decision to slash road policing spending by up to $50 million over the next three years will be counted in the lost lives of New Zealanders, Labour transport spokesperson Darren Hughes says.

“No one can say how many extra New Zealanders will die on our roads, but if you start losing road safety momentum, the toll will certainly increase.”

Darren Hughes said: “Last year’s road toll was 366. That was still far too many lives needlessly cut short, but when you consider that 729 people died on the roads in 1999, it represented a dramatic improvement.

“It was not, however, an improvement that just came about,” he said. “It was the result of huge efforts by the Ministry of Transport, by police, by road safety experts and campaigners, and by New Zealand drivers who listened to and heeded the safety messages.

“The improvement in the road toll was also down to the political will to invest in road policing and road safety. Sadly National doesn’t have that political will. You could see it when National was in Opposition and day after day, week after week National MPs criticised the amount of police resources used in road policing,” Darren Hughes said.

“Remember their lies about ticket quotas, even though National introduced them in the 1990s and Labour got rid of them. Those blatant untruths summed up how sincere they are about saving human lives. In government they’ve got the chance to make even stronger inroads into the road toll, but instead they’re slashing the increased spending Labour had committed, and spending it on roading infrastructure.

“Just last year New Zealand committed to an ambitious new target of no more than 200 deaths a year on our roads by 2040. Clearly National has no commitment to such a target,” Darren Hughes said.

“Transport Minister Steven Joyce cynically says the Government is putting money into road engineering, not road policing. Better, safer roads help, of course, and that was a key element of Labour’s programme too. But better roads are only one part of the answer. Once again, National is taking a one-dimensional approach to a complex issue. In this instance, such an approach will cost Kiwi lives.”

ENDS

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