There seems to be no end to media stories catching my interest recently. Perhaps it is the time of the year or that we are now on the downhill side of this election cycle, who knows?
The draft National Infrastructure Plan has come in for both good and bad comments. At 164 pages, it must have cost a bit. However, given it is a plan for the next 30 years, I wonder if it is all worthwhile. I have seen it hailed as “blueprint for the future” (and it may well be), and “at last we have a plan”.
All things being equal, over the next 30 years, we can expect nine, perhaps more, general elections, giving us the possibility of nine different governments bringing with them their differing political and ideological views. Can we really expect the plan to be implemented as many hope it will? I have my doubts. Still, it gives the impression that we are moving in the right direction. The reality, however, may well be disappointing for many of us.
Another troubling issue is the announcement that the government has cancelled the project to update the Freight Demand Study, despite already spending $150,000 on external consultants. The last study was completed in 2018, and the world has changed since then. This study is frequently cited as the source of the claim that 93% of New Zealand’s internal freight is moved by road. However, given the upheaval we have experienced since 2018, it would be beneficial to obtain more relevant and relatable numbers.
It is possible to get the tonnage of freight moved by rail and coastal shipping, but not by road. We can obtain the numbers of containers moved in and out of ports, but, in the overall context of freight movement, container numbers don’t provide anywhere near the full story.
Much of the problem for this, I believe, is the way RUC is calculated, coupled with the industry’s reluctance to share what it is doing in case it gives a competitor an advantage. Until this changes, I guess we must live with outdated numbers. Try telling IRD that the latest records you have for your business are from 2018 and see how far you get.
The NZTA has announced the start of a project to update the transport service licence register, stating that about 73% of the 146,000 licences in the register are currently inactive.
If you ever needed an example of how NZTA has lost the plot, this is it. The last time I recall NZTA undertaking a project like this was about the time that ORS was all the fashion – remember ORS, that all-seeing all-knowing system that was going to revolutionise the licensed transport industries?
Gone would be cowboy operators, gone would be non-compliant operators. Customers of transport services would insist that their transport service providers held a minimum of four stars. What went wrong?
We have been told that NZTA is to review the Land Transport Rules, saying they are overly cumbersome and outdated. There would be few of us who disagree with that. But then, who has been responsible for these rules since they were introduced? NZTA used to have a rules team, but somebody decided that group was no longer required, and most were laid off.
I was intrigued to read that the government is establishing a new Crown agency to oversee the properties used for education throughout the country. This is what the Ministry of Works used to do, along with building roads, police stations and a myriad other things for the benefit of us all – until somebody in their wisdom decided private enterprise could do it better. I wonder if somebody from government has taken a walk across the road from the Beehive to Archives New Zealand and had a look at what used to work!
