Yip! All the more reason to get rid of this racist treaty!
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https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politi...GAHVJT73Q4L6U/
Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson defends $16.1 million costs of scrapped TVNZ-RNZ merger, next steps
Poor Willie .. the Stars just happened to out before the Dancing started :)
Such a disappointment and now all the excuses ;)
How's the search for a new Day Job going - Willie ? ;)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/state-...JBYVWMW6277AU/
State Highway 25: Coromandel highway closed after further collapse
More stuffed roading for Woody Woodpecker to preside over fixing the earlier stuffed up fixing up ;)
At this rate Michael Pothole might have to put his Beehive Salary, perks & Super back in the pot
to help pay for all the ongoing chapters of fixing up previous fixed originally badly potholed stuff ups
he didn't want to know about earlier ;)
@nztx past 2 posts:
1) Don't worry, $16M is a drop in a bucket if 3 Waters is going to be reversed.
2) $ that would be for maintaining our roadways. Building cycle paths and walkways does NOT add to productivity to the country... it lowers it.
One thing certain, and i'm not being racist here. The Maori agenda certainly has wasted a LOT of $$$$. Their methodology certainly can not win.
Yes, despite huge opposition, back in 2010 influential trucking transport groups successfully lobbied Stephen Joyce & the National govt to increase the maximum allowable weight of trucks far beyond what our roads were designed to carry, causing $billions of damage.
Once permitted its very hard to unwind & Private companies have been allowed to extract the profits while socialising the costs, i.e. the taxpayer/ratepayer having to pay to fix the roads the trucks are destroying.
A 20% increase in axle weight results in a doubling increase in road damage.
You might want to consider previous National govt's have caused a lot of damage.
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2...ucks-approved/
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO19...ier-trucks.htm
You forgot this bit Blue Skies.
"Despite fairly overwhelming opposition, it has been decided to allow the maximum weight of trucks on New Zealand’s roads to increase from 44 tonnes to 53 tonnes – although only on particular routes designated for this increase. "
Which rather undermines the whole premise of your post.
And this bit, which outlines the rationale of the policy change.
Developing this permit system creates an environment where productivity gains in the range of 10 to 20 percent could be realised by using fewer trucks to carry a given amount of freight while enabling the impacts of heavy vehicles to be properly managed.
“This will help to reduce road congestion, operating costs, vehicle emissions and improve the road safety environment by slowing the increase in heavy vehicle movements on New Zealand’s roads.”
Trucks carrying heavier loads will not be any wider or higher than present vehicles, though a limited number may be slightly longer. Roads that are allowed to be used by vehicles will be specified in their permit and road controlling authorities will have the final say on whether routes applied for are suitable for heavier vehicles.
Any vehicle issued with a permit to operate at a heavier weight under a permit system will have to meet all appropriate safety requirements.
Your post does nothing to back your claims when this is taken into account.
How about the problem of Waka Kotahi's poor record of maintenance and inefficient spending since Labour got in? How about Labour's reversal of the roads of significance programme to suit Cindy's idiotic Climate Change policies which have also resulted in 100s of thousands of tonnes of coal being imported from Indonesia?
Five and a half years in charge and all Labour can do is still blame others for their own incompetency.
Didn't forget it, but you ignored the section after that, & other opinion refuting that rationale/ spin by the then National govt to justify the policy, AND the resulting damage which has proven beyond any doubt our roads were not built for these weights.
For example you would have to be blind to ignore the damage heavy logging trucks have done to the roads in Northland, Whanganui, Tairāwhiti, etc
Im not saying the Labour govt shouldn't have done something, but as I said its very difficult to unwind policies when you've got a powerful lobby & opposition fighting any move.
Hey Jonu, you're absolutely right. Drill into the policies and what you will find is that the 5 years of Labour have massively distracted a number of very large and expensive government agencies away from their core functional and regulatory responsibilities.
It is incredible that the government, who are voted in to serve us, and the public service (agencies), are actually serving themselves manipulating public opinion, denying services to non-idealistic policy, encouraging service to aligned policy and attempting to move society toward idealistic ambitions, that only a portion of society voted for, even if those ambitions where not manifesto during an election and only emerged after the government was voted into power.
As well as increased their agencies workloads. Outside of their core mandates. Which increases head count and costs.
You cite NZTA, who used to be, and should be just building and maintaining roads. They certainly get a large whack of the taxes from fuel tax, road user charges, vehicle registrations, and a heap other other 'taxes', etc (user pays, apparently). But no, now they're 'Road to Zero', Carbon Emission reduction, Clean Cars (soon trucks as well), Safety Cameras (fancy speed cameras), cycleways, walkways, tunnels, heavy rail, light rail ... and on and on.
The policies behind all of this, and not just NZTA, are basically just to implement Labour legislation (creating laws) that they rammed though with their majority .. which is, outside of their core mandate, essentially social engineering, or society manipulation if you prefer. They are all designed to change societal behaviours and they are all funded by taxation on businesses and people.
Other agencies are similarly burdened with widening mandates, they just cannot do it all without increasing the take on the Crown purse, which taxpayer pay for. Even then, they're mostly not achieving it in the unreasonable timeframe that the current Labour government has expected them to, so costs are escalating and timeframes are blowing out. (because that same government has no real-life appreciation for how complex, or long it takes to gets things done, whether it's sensible or not).
This doesn't just distract, it diverts funding away from core infrastructure investment (across, health, corrections, police, education, transport, infrastructure, etc) to arguably idealistic ambitions. None of which are actually successfully implemented during the term of government, prior to another government being voted in, who ends up revoking some or all of it, but still incurs the costs of sunk capital, devolution and remediation. Which the taxpayer pays for!
It beggars belief how wasteful and extravagant on social engineering policies, that this current government is and has been, without care or attention to any practicalities of actual cost or implementation timeframes, regardless of whether the polices were sound, or not.
And, possibly even worse, a new government if it comes, will waste another fortune undoing it all, before they can spend another fortune implementing their alternatives, which the taxpayer will pay for!
Think about that. Understanding the machinery of government is complex, confounding and often confronting. Not that most of the population would have any idea about what actually goes on, which is sad because it's their taxes that pay for it.
These are some of the things that the partisan posters here will never acknowledge. It is not just that the current government has dug a very deep hole, or that that the past governments set the scene for them to revise every policy because it didn't fit well well their ideals, but that any new government will squander many millions, or billions more, undoing it all.
Worst still, under the current government term, any new government will still not be able to make the changes to reform or fully implement new policies, and the cycle of political dysfunction will be perpetuated. Ad Infinitum.