Potholes damned potholes and National Party statistics

Written By: - Date published: 9:31 am, July 19th, 2023 - 16 comments
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National underlined its complete lack of intellectual grunt and its fascination with passing anxieties as well as its intent to forget what it did by recently releasing a pothole policy.

I admire their ability to ignore causes, forget history and absolve themselves of blame while at the same time blaming it all on Labour.

But to do this requires a particularly myopic view of reality, something that National is not unknown for.

The reality is that the plethora of potholes that the country is currently suffering from can be related to different causes, none of which Labour should be blamed for.

How about these:

  • National’s savaging of the road maintenance budget so that it could build its roads of national significance
  • Allowing 53 tonne trucks on our roads.  These trucks have an exponential ability to increase damage to road surfaces.
  • Climate change and the wettest year so far by far.

In this series of tweets Michael Wood summarised the situation.

And what is the Government doing about it?  Well quite a bit as these answers to oral questions given yesterday by David Parker in Parliament shows:

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) to the Minister of Transport: What is the current State highway maintenance budget for 2021-24, and how does this compare to 2015-18?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): The Government is spending more on road maintenance, including on pothole repairs, than any previous Government. The current State highway maintenance budget is $2.8 billion for the period 2021-24, a 65 percent increase on the $1.7 billion from 2015-18. With the increased frequency of severe weather events, increasing the resilience of our roading networks is critical to our economy. Maintenance spending on all roads, including local roads, has increased by 54 percent since this Government took office. This has meant we have been able to fund huge increases in pothole repairs and road resurfacing.

Shanan Halbert: How many potholes did Waka Kotahi repair in 2022-23, and is this an increase?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, in 2022-23, Waka Kotahi repaired 60,989 potholes. This compares with just 12,739 pothole repairs in 2013-14. That’s an almost 500 percent increase in pothole repairs.

National is unable to feel shame about the hypocrisy of their attacks on the Government for a situation they have created.  But the attacks are in one sense quite clever.  They will raise ire and dissent amongst those who do not appreciate the background.  And they add to a growing sense of malaise that National is busily cultivating.

It is not helped by a compliant media who too often report the headline without the analysis.

16 comments on “Potholes damned potholes and National Party statistics ”

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  1. Ad 1
    19 July 2023 at 9:58 am

    Beware communities of New Zealand: if National are prepared to wipe out $500m out of the Road to Zero budget, they are fully prepared to wipe out your own road upgrade, bridge upgrade, the failing embankment, your new roundabout you were promised and fought for, the pedestrian crossing planned for the local school with lights that would stop kids getting injured and killed, all the cool little upgrades that help you get on with your life.

    They are fully at risk in this scale of budget reallocation.

    No RLTP or RPTP is safe with that lot.

  2. Dennis Frank 2
    19 July 2023 at 10:06 am

    Yeah I'm with MS on the overview. Wood's response seems okay. Unfortunately Labour didn't ever seem proactive in taking that to the media during last year while word of mouth spread awareness of the growing problem. Whoever does pr for Labour never seems to present as on the ball. That lapse will hurt them (perception defeats reality).

    • ianmac 2.1
      19 July 2023 at 11:34 am

      For some reason MSM will not publish the counterfactual of many issues. It should be easy to publish Michael's bottom graph above. Would need little explanation.

    • newsense 2.2
      19 July 2023 at 11:46 am

      That literally is from last year. The media are a bunch of pricks. Even here we get Ad saying how everything has failed which is simply not true.

      Apart from Hayden Donnell:

      Oh no cycle ways! Popular planned cycle ways protecting kids going to schools supported by numbers like 70% or 80%!

      But that’s not a Bernard Osman story. Teleological Muppet men Lee and Brown interfere in popular local safety project! Hit the kids!

      https://www.metromag.co.nz/city-life/city-life-transport/cycleway-saboteurs

    • Drowsy M. Kram 2.3
      19 July 2023 at 12:23 pm

      Perception Is Not Reality [5 August 2019]
      The challenge we face with our own thinking, as well as the thinking of others, is how to ensure that perceptions remain close to reality. This alignment is essential for us to live in the real world, find consensus with others, and maintain the individual, governmental, and societal structures that are necessary for life as we know it to exist. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

      That lapse will hurt them (perception defeats reality).

      We hurt ourselves. 'Reality' cares naught for political perceptions and other trivialities.

      The ongoing political dance between perception and reality [26 June 2023]

      If Govt were a business, ministers would be under performance management [17 July 2023]
      Assessment of a ministerial cohort should rest not just on popularity but on outcomes, though voters should be careful they are not reacting to current underperformance by over-rating the options.

      The alternative candidates would no doubt display strong self-assessment and rustle up a couple of decent, if closely related referees, but scepticism would be well justified. I recall that Jack Marshall fought the 1972 election on the slogan “Man for Man, The Strongest Team” and lost to Norman Kirk when voters did not share his view. Anyway for these purposes the point is that voters should be careful they are not reacting to current underperformance by over-rating the options.

      In any case my increasing perception is that failings in support or delivery structures of government are more significant to current underperformance than is widely appreciated. Under our system ministers inherit their support and delivery structures from preceding administrations (setting aside a few political courtiers). Though the fantasy is that this “public service” is totally neutral, anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with its upper echelons will know there is a flavour and type that reaches and stays in that spot.
      …
      But like investment, voting should be not about the past but the future. You cannot influence the past now with your October vote. The only thing that matters is the forward judgment about aims and capability. Our system with MMP actually complicates this, substituting some of the messiness of diverse reality for the simpler binary choice.

      In the end you have to imagine a new cohort of ministers and how competent they are, imagine the aims they decide on as they are assembled and how they fit the times, and imagine the public service delivering them.

      Good intentions are not enough. But might I add, from my own perspective, bad intentions are even worse. (Wink, wink).

      wink wink Potholes ahead…

      • Dennis Frank 2.3.1
        19 July 2023 at 1:21 pm

        I appreciate your thoughtful response – particularly since I had thought my comment to brief to merit one!

        messiness of diverse reality

        Can't help it, I feel a necessity to go deeper into this. I've got several books on the construction of social reality spanning the past half-century, scanned but not read them since the gist is usually all one actually needs. Key point: reality basically lies beyond our detection, yet our senses sample it often.

        From there one heads into the most relevant academic silos to incorporate communal views of reality within each silo, whereupon a transcendent mind will compose a multidisciplinary overview of reality. Yet this is merely a collective approximation, no matter how profound it seems to the rest of us. I couldn't believe it when I read Capra's masterly presentation of systems science and encountered a distinct lack of field theory. His co-author was a biology prof, he has himself been a physics prof, so allowing a biological paradigm to feature must have been a choice he made. I've been a fan since the Tao of Physics in '75, more so after Green Politics in '84, but I have to fault him for neglecting field effects. A grievous error.

        Another physics zealot could easily fault him for it in such a way as to demean his entire theory of systems science. Not me, I've a more benign view of Capra. However the lapse is serious enough to flag an opportunity for another theorist. I've been exploring it since I read The Systems View of Life (2015).

        Nor does it include the existence of archetypes as formative components within nature. One must use metaphysics to see the relevance of those, and integrate a new scientific paradigm by articulating them into context intellectually. Which is where your phrase above comes in: reality has diversity in natural and social context. Each group and ecosystem is medial between part and whole: reality is formed, for us, by this medial process within each operational context.

        Then you get self/interface/arena, our operational triad. That's simple for us but the messiness comes from the way the simple integers produce biodiversity; with each messy piece of our collective reality we must try for psychosocial ordering by configuring the damn thing correctly. Thus the Deep Green view conceptualises order out of chaos. Messy experientially, but a tidy mind can clean up the mess…

        • Dennis Frank 2.3.1.1
          19 July 2023 at 1:27 pm

          Note to moderator: may have to move the DMK comment & my reply to his comment to OM, huh? The relevance of perception to reality around potholes has produced a too-interesting digression and I apologise for my enthusiasm. angel

  3. Mike the Lefty 3
    19 July 2023 at 12:40 pm

    These are all valid points but are probably useless against National's populist chest beating. What people see are heaps of potholes, nobody doing anything about them and "Traffic Safety " trucks with crews engaged in traffic cone rearranging contests. Plus When you have Geoff Upson and the AA campaigning for National to enhance the car culture it is very hard to look like you are on top of the problem.

    • James Simpson 3.1
      19 July 2023 at 1:27 pm

      I tend to agree,

      There is so much looking backwards. National blames everything on the government. Labour blames everything on what National failed to do a decade ago. Its like asking my children what happened when a cup breaks. They just point the finger at each other.

      Just give us solutions for fecks sake.

  4. adam 4
    19 July 2023 at 2:44 pm

    Get the memo.

    Our corporate media are scum.

    In my opinion, deceptive scum.

  5. Incognito 5
    19 July 2023 at 9:33 pm

    This insider’s perspective is quite interesting (HT to Newsroom Pro): https://civilcontractors.co.nz/Pothole-repair-plans-sensible-but-underlying-funding-issues-need-clarity/10912-8f5aac06-f1de-4735-a836-aa51f908af88/

    It even contains an explainer of what causes potholes.

    • PsyclingLeft.Always 5.1
      19 July 2023 at 9:45 pm

      Quick fix options such as spot-fixing of potholes were sometimes necessary – but were not cost-effective. Much better would be a well-funded construction and maintenance programme including cleaning out culverts and drains,

      Back in the day…I used to do that culvert/drain cleaning job (amongst others). Was just part of normal rostered Highway maintenance…

      And also good to see this noted…

      Damage is also accelerated by heavy vehicles. An increase in vehicles’ maximum allowable weight and the additional pressure from a greater number of trucks carrying these heavier loads, combined with record breaking rainfall over the past year, has acted as one-two punch breaking down the defences of New Zealand’s road network.

      Definitely needs more exposing of the actual cost of heavy vehicles on our road network.