Press release of current National Party Transport Policy for HB/Gisborne regions.
1st September 2017.

Last night we watched the first leaders debate on TV One between Jacinda Ardern & Bill English our current PM.

The debate never actually tackled the thorny issues of transport issues we all face deficits from in our East Coast regions.

That has provoked the need for our press release to clarify our Community concerns at those current deficiencies we all face in our regions of HB/Gisborne since the National Party have assumed the mantle of governance over our regions and lives.

When the National Party took over in November 2008 the former Labour lead Government had just bought back the rail system from Toll Rail, an Australian Company and had set aside a track Maintenance Company called Ontrack who were given a $200 Million reserve account to rely on to keep the rail line in service, for the new Kiwirail operator to run their services.

National’s new Minister of Transport Steven Joyce somehow reorganised the Kiwirail Company and folded the On Track rail line Maintenance Company up and the $200 million somehow disappeared.

Since 2009 we have witnessed two events of large rail washouts on the rail line between Gisborne and Central HB, first the washout around Otane in Central HB and later the larger washout at Beach Loop near Mahia Northern HB/Gisborne.

That $200 million was setup for the track maintenance to deal with these washouts, as we have seen many other washouts around NZ rail have been repaired since.

So we must now ask the National Government: “where is our share of that $200 million to repair the Beach Loop washouts so our rail to Gisborne is finally repaired after being left closed since March 2012?”

Will this be left for the new Government to find that lost $200 Million that was robbed from our Public Rail Company account?

We met with the Napier National Party candidate David Elliott six weeks ago about the disastrous “truck Gridlocked roads” causing immense noise, vibrations and air pollution in our local regions especially around the Napier residential areas near the HB Expressway, as we are now confirming that our continuous cameras count over 2400 trucks every day travel on the expressway to the Port of Napier & other areas each day since the rail was cut from the slips.

We asked for the Minister of Transport Simon Bridges to visit Napier and meet our Community Committee and inspect the issues we face now.

After three attempts to ask for Simon Bridges to attend a meeting here with his own National Party candidate David Elliott he has declined.

I expect Mr Bridges knows what a mess he & his Government’s transport policy has now left for us to live with.

So today when we watched PM Bill English in his first Leaders debate talking about his Government actively going around the country meeting all those business folks, Seafood workers, and truck drivers, to see what issues they had we felt somewhat bemused as every letter request we sent for a meeting was declined.

How could our Committee try any harder to work directly with the National Party to meet with our Community Committee in Napier as a copy was sent also to PM Bill English just as we had previously sent a massive 105 emails to PM John Key over five years from 2010 to 2015 to come to Napier about the same issues of transport and Mr Key also never answered one of those 105 emails or wanted to meet us.

So it appears that even our community group has a long history of 16 years working with Government in the past, the National Government do not want to come and discuss transport issues with our community representatives in HB/Gisborne so we need to change this government to get a fair hearing and support for our regions.

They can’t criticise us for not trying to work with them can they?

We needed to set the record straight for voters to decide from here.

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