The government gets a headline, we get potholes

Written By: - Date published: 8:09 am, March 25th, 2009 - 9 comments
Categories: national/act government, scoundrels, spin - Tags:

No Right Turn puts the farce of the governments spin into perspective in Public relations replaces policy II. I’m just going to quote it…

Earlier in the month the government announced that they were spending $1 billion on state highways. It was apparent from the original press release that this was purely an exercise in PR, and that there was no actual new funding, but now Labour’s Darren Hughes has uncovered the real kicker: they’ll be cutting the maintenance budget to do it:

‘I am staggered to read the fine print of Transport Minister Steven Joyce’s transport announcement last week,’ Darren Hughes said. ‘The Government plans to reduce spending on local road renewal, maintenance and operation by $75 million over three years, and spending on renewal and maintenance of existing state highways by $122 million over the same period.So, the government gets a headline, we get potholes. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried…

That last paragraph is classic writing. What makes them think that they can get away with this bullshit?

9 comments on “The government gets a headline, we get potholes ”

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  1. enzer 1
    25 March 2009 at 8:37 am

    Potholes?

    Bloody luxury…

  2. Kaplan 2
    25 March 2009 at 8:57 am

    If it wasn’t for the fact that NACT are still succeeding in keeping this kind of debate out of the MSM I’d probably laugh at this.

  3. Tane 3
    25 March 2009 at 9:22 am

    Argh, Lynn, there’s another one quoting No Right Turn scheduled for later this morning!

  4. BLiP 4
    25 March 2009 at 10:03 am

    And the fuckers have the cheek to raise petrol taxes!!

  5. Matthew Pilott 5
    25 March 2009 at 10:44 am

    You guys are all too stupid for words. Don’t you see the real plan?

    No maintenance of SH1…cycleway from Cape Reinga to Bluff…

    I’m just not sure how that will create jobs, but it doesn’t matter – it won’t cost $50 mil – it will save $200 mil!! genius!!!

    • George Darroch 5.1
      25 March 2009 at 11:22 am

      What makes them think they can get away with this bullshit?

      Well, for a start, the Herald isn’t even used to wrap chips in these days…

      Matthew, thanks for the explanation. SH1 is the new cycleway. It makes a lot more sense now.

  6. mickysavage 6
    25 March 2009 at 11:31 am

    Oh for a paper that would say that we have not had $1b additional spending but a mix around. The net increase of spending is $0.

  7. libertyscott 7
    30 March 2009 at 5:50 am

    Actually, given that the National Land Transport Programme is developed and approved independently by the NZTA Board (all the Nats are doing are changing priorities around capital spending), this is just nonsense.

    It is more likely that with the collapse of oil prices the inflationary expectations around road maintenance expenditure in the next few years have dropped dramatically.

    The land transport funding system does not allow Ministers to decide on levels of maintenance spending – you ought to know – since it is the system Labour maintained pretty much intact (except for major buckets of spending being able to be altered) since it got into government.

    NZ still has international best practice in roads management, light years ahead of anything done in North America for example.

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