Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Dom Kalasih: Transporting NZ CEO on Labour ruling out increasing fuel taxes for three years if elected

Transcript

Dom Kalasih: Transporting NZ CEO on Labour ruling out increasing fuel taxes for three years if elected · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: National says it won't increase the petrol tax in January
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: by 12 cents a litre. They need ACT and New
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Zealand First support to confirm that though. Labour came out
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: yesterday and said they won't increase it for three years.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: His government has locked in a 22 cents a litre
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: increase in fuel tax.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: That's still government policy as of today.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Money pays for building and fixing roads. Dom Khaleesi is
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: with us transporting New Zealand CEO. Dom, good morning.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Morning, Ryan.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: What do you make? We'll start with Labour's promise, no
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: increase to the fuel taxes for three years. What do
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: you reckon?
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Well, firstly, I think it's good to see parties starting
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: to show their policies. But certainly from our members' view,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: a reliable road network and getting freedom people to where
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: they need to go, it's really important for economic prosperity,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: productivity and safety. And so our concern is that any
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: holding off on roading investment, it's false economy. It's like
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: delaying going to the dentist. Short-term gain for long-term pain.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And the fact is that, and I mean, this won't
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: be a popular take, but it's true that the fuel
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: tax is a flat rate, right, per litre. So in
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: real terms, it's actually gone backwards of late.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Look, that's dead right. If you look at the cost
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: of road maintenance on a dollars per kilometre basis, from
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: 2021 to 2025, costs increased 36%. And so even if
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: the planned increase, which was 22 cents over three years,
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: if that had gone through, that only equates to 31% increase.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: So we're just going backwards.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: So you're saying the cost of actually fixing, maintaining the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: roads has gone up 35%, 36% in five years? Yep, that's.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Correct. That's NZTA data, right? So what does this mean?
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: More potholes?
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: More potholes, probably a less resilient network. But the Infrastructure
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Commission did a report too recently, and that showed we're
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: in the bottom 10% of OECD. for return on investment,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: for infrastructure spend. We just can't keep holding off investing
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: in key infrastructure.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Dom Khaleesi, Transporting New Zealand CEO.