Travelling Wilbury act won’t cut it

Backblocks drivers will picture Auckland’s light rail, and fume.

People in the regions aren’t stupid. They know when big-city officials and politicians are pulling strings in their area. They know what stings and what’s a bribe, what a new petrol tax is, and certainly they remember when a politician from Wellington last showed any interest in their neck of the woods.

And their support at the polling booth tends to cost more than a new walking track, or a factory or a new intersection.

Which makes the past week’s Government assault on regional and rural New

Zealand all the more baffling.

The Government has unveiled a major shift in transport policy, which will hit every New Zealander in the pocket in some respect, and also announced its winddown of Governmentfunded irrigation schemes.

The latter was billed by the Greens and Labour in the election campaign so it was hardly a surprise, but that does little to ease the kick in the guts many farmers will be feeling.

And the Government has found itself flailing in a bid to sell its proposal to can a number of popular major highway projects and introduce a 9-12c per litre rise in fuel tax, in order to pay for safety barriers and some big-ticket public transport ventures in Auckland. Its argument that the previous Government was advised even higher taxes were needed to carry out its plan is hypothetical, as there is no evidence anything close to that was signed off.

The only solace for regional New Zealand seems to be that Aucklanders will face an even bigger, 20c per litre, tax increase.

I learned to drive in the

backblocks of Pongaroa.

No one really needs to know where that is (it’s in the Tararua District) to picture the state of the roads. After every significant rain event, a new part of the road along Route 52 is strewn with rocks and boulders. Or road cones appear when half the unmarked road is washed down a cliff.

The road cones are gradually moved further into the centre of the road until so much of it has vanished, it’s near impossible to get past.

Then, and only then, is a crew sent to fix it.

As a 16-year-old driver on a restricted licence I would make the twice-weekly journey between home and boarding school in Masterton; my parents gave me freedom but rightly, like many parents, worried about me.

Median barriers will be a welcome investment in many parts of the country, but they only limit the damage when crashes occur. It’s the quality of the highways and roads that go towards preventing them.

Route 52 and thousands of other similar routes throughout the country are now even less likely to see any improvement, yet regional drivers will be made acutely aware of Auckland’s flashy new light rail system that they’re paying for at the pump.

The hit to regional New Zealand won’t be easily forgotten – not even when Shane Jones rolls in to town to soothe its residents like some sort of Travelling Wilbury to say it’s all right, by splashing some of his $1 billion fund on a few handpicked projects.

The Government seems set to learn the hard way just how fast the public banks a win and how long it holds a grudge.