NRT – Transmission Gully: A $2 billion scam

Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, July 11th, 2013 - 13 comments
Categories: Gerry Brownlee, infrastructure, privatisation, transport - Tags: ,

I/S at No Right Turn on Transmission Gully…

Transmission Gully: A $2 billion scam

Last year, the government announced that doing Transmission Gully using a Public-Private partnership would cost $300 million more than if the government built it. That’s bad enough, but it’s worse than that. Today, the Minister admitted that the private-sector markup would be $2 billion:

Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee’s pig-headedness was on full display today when he wrote off $2 billion of taxpayer money as being ‘irrelevant’, Labour’s Transport spokesperson Iain Lees-Galloway says.

“Answering questions at select committee today Mr Brownlee said Transmission Gully will be built by public private partnership (PPP) even if doing so is more expensive than usual public sector contracting.

“The extra $2 billion that would add to the lifetime cost of the road was ‘irrelevant’.

This is a scam, pure and simple. That $2 billion is money we could be spending on schools, hospitals, and public transport. Instead, its going to go straight into the pockets of National’s road-building cronies. And why? So they can hide debt and pretend the government books are in better shape than they really are. And then of course, they’ll cry about “a decade of waste” from when labour was in government (you know, when they ran surpluses all the time and unemployment was at record lows).

This is economic mismanagement, it is waste, and it is outright corrupt. And any future government should unilaterally cancel the PPP contract rather than let it stand.

13 comments on “NRT – Transmission Gully: A $2 billion scam ”

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  1. One Anonymous Knucklehead 1
    11 July 2013 at 10:23 am

    Agreed. Cancelling all of the contracts that the National Party has awarded its clients, from RoNS to Sky City, is the best way to respond to this corruption. May they think themselves lucky they aren’t up on charges.

    • AmaKiwi 1.1
      11 July 2013 at 1:13 pm

      I don’t think you can cancel those contracts once signed. The contractors will have recourse in court.

      Any lawyer out there want to comment?

  2. Draco T Bastard 2
    11 July 2013 at 1:44 pm

    And the companion piece:

    Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer has some bad news for New Zealand: 3% of us paid a bribe for public services in the last year:

    The simple fact of the matter is that NZ has become corrupt and we need to do something about it. We can’t wait for the politicians to do anything about it either as they’re the most corrupt as the above article(s) shows.

    • One Anonymous Knucklehead 2.1
      11 July 2013 at 2:02 pm

      Why wouldn’t people do this: they are entitled to take their cue from the government are they not? Remember John Banks’ offer to “help” Kim.com, for example.

    • RedLogix 2.2
      11 July 2013 at 2:19 pm

      Just following the example set by their political masters.

      And while 3% sounds low, it’s only for a 12 month period. If that trend continues we’re going to be in dire trouble within a decade.

    • Wayne 2.3
      11 July 2013 at 5:16 pm

      The same poll said 3% had paid a bribe to the Judiciary – frankly not credible.

  3. paul andersen 3
    11 July 2013 at 2:14 pm

    with a government that wants to sell off assets and privatise government services, there will always be a large amount of sharks who want to hang around . toll roads are a great source of dollars for private enterprise who, like casinos are good at washing illegal cash and underpaying tax. like casinos they can claim huge and uncountable expenses in their running costs(who bets that the convention centre will need constant extra taxpayer bucks to keep it going?). if the government gets into bed with someone to build and run transmission valley, whats the bet that the coast road will be made less of an alternative to force the punters into the toll road?

  4. Richard Down South 4
    11 July 2013 at 3:17 pm

    Follow the money, whos fronting up with the cash… and making $2b

  5. mouse 5
    12 July 2013 at 9:46 pm

    This is Odious Debt… We will cancel it when the facists are forced from the House… Let the lenders beware.

  6. Bladelores 6
    18 July 2013 at 5:16 am

    I’ve taken to laughing at things instead of crying. This road building to save Wellington from earthquake congestion when ‘the big one hits’ is becoming an epic comedy to me. Let us not forget that its sold as a congestion buster ( what congestion? a ten minute crawl at the top of Taupo swamp?), an escape route for people to flee the area in ‘the big shake’ ( the entire route sits smack bang on top of a very large fault line duh!!) and of course now an overspend of $2 billion so your mates can build it. Oh that’s right it also has a cost benefit ratio of 0:6 back in 2010, I would imagine more now with the ppp model. I think they must all be on ppp to be seriously building the road this way. Hahaha so funny my tummy huts :- (