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Ryan Bridge: Are we about to witness the return of the pothole? · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Are we about to witness the return of the pothole?
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Both Labour and National want to basically put the petrol
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: tax on ice. Labour would stop the 22 cents a
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: litre going up over three years. The Nats probably won't
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: go ahead with a 12 cent hike that they've penciled
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: in for January, though they have to get the coalition
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: support for that. Problem is, this money goes into a
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: big fund, along with rucks from trucks to pay for
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: building and fixing our roads. Remember at the last election,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: people were angry as hell about potholes. Remember that? Nasty things,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: really annoying. I remember a headline about them being really annoying.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Rim wreckers, rim shredders they are. Panel beaters had a
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: field day performing more rim jobs than you could shake
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: a stick at. We had 62,000 potholes back then, highest
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: number in a decade. The money to fill them comes
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: from the petrol tax. It's ring fenced into a wee
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: pothole fund. Less money in that Fund means crapper roads.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: To make matters worse, Labour wants to raid this fund
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: to pay for cheaper bus fares for city folk. It's
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: one of their election promises that they've made on the campaign.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: So the fund is being starved on new money at
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the same time it's being robbed, basically a Peter to
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: pay Paul type situation. The coalition is making its call
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: on Monday about the funding. The easy route is to
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: stop the tax. The hard route is to hike it.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: which means no matter who's in charge, we'll probably have
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: cheaper gas next year but wrecked rims. And that includes, ironically, buses.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: to Newstalk ZB from 5am weekdays or follow the podcast
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio.