Dreadful roads and drivel
Congratulations on your headline article about the sad passing of Paddy O’Leary, the Mangonui publican, and also on your fine leading article on the dreadful roads we have in the Far North.
I made the mistake of reading the drivel from our MP, Matt King, which just has to be answered.
Some time ago I wrote in saying it was a tragic mistake that we had missed the chance of having the most powerful MP in New Zealand, the one who chooses the government, as our MP, and instead we had a policeman whose own party only had him at #62, and his latest diatribe only confirms this.
He suggests the current government are tax-raisers, clearly forgetting that National increased GST by 20 per cent. He then suggests that National is strong on roads, forgetting that the very first move of Steven Joyce was to cancel all new rural road-sealing.
The nonsense about four-lane highways from Auckland to Whanga¯ rei needs addressing. National committed $1 billion to 18km of four-lane highway between Puhoi and Warkworth (still well inside the boundaries of Auckland City), and it will be completed after 12 years of construction. At this rate it would get to Whanga¯ rei in 68 years.
National don’t like rail, yet the modern countries of the world have been building rail flat out for the past 10 years. National failed to connect North Port to the national rail grid, leaving it as the only international port in the Pacific without a railhead.
A good rail system connecting North Port to Auckland would allow the shifting of Ports of Auckland to North Port, and with it the same sort of boom that Bay of Plenty have enjoyed thanks to the rail connection from Auckland via Hamilton to Tauranga that the taxpayer funded years ago.
The public of Auckland are happy to see their port head north to give their harbour back to them, and the public want to see that cargo sent south via rail, not trucks.
Driving from Whanga¯ rei to Auckland over the weekend, when there are no trucks and no congestion north of Albany, takes only two hours, the same as if it was a motorway, so get the trucks off the road. Restoring the rail north of Whanga¯ rei to Moerewa, that National shut, and putting an inland log port at Moerewa would do the same for the overcrowded, beaten-up roads north of Whanga¯ rei that National did nothing about.
Wake up voters! WAYNE BROWN
Mangonui