Keep New Zealand Moving

ACT will get more transport infrastructure built from every dollar, stop road-user revenue being wasted, and ensure New Zealand’s roads keep pace with growth, ACT MP and Infrastructure spokesperson Simon Court says.

“New Zealanders already pay a lot for transport through fuel tax, road-user charges, rates and tolls. They rightly expect that money to be spent building and maintaining the transport network,” says Mr Court.

“Instead, too much is swallowed by optional extras, over-engineered designs, deferred maintenance and rules that put politics ahead of value.

“Families are priced out of newer vehicles, while public contracts can still be shaped by ancestry rather than merit.

“The Government has started restoring discipline to infrastructure spending - ACT will go further.

“ACT believes government should focus transport spending on movement, safety and resilience, demand value for every project, and then get out of the way of the people who build, drive and invest.

“ACT’s plan is to clear the obstacles and build more, faster, for less,” says Mr Court.

“ACT will keep New Zealand moving with six reforms:

1. Build what works: ACT will require major projects to publish the lowest-cost safe option alongside the preferred option, including the cost, delivery time and benefit-cost ratio of each. No‑frills, fit‑for‑purpose design will be the default. This will mean that engineers choose the simplest safe design option and are accountable for delivery.

2. Build for growth: ACT will require major growth areas to have funded transport-capacity plans, protect future routes early and use clear traffic triggers to move projects from planning into construction so infrastructure arrives with growth. Too often, the houses and traffic arrive years before the roads needed to carry them. ACT will ensure land is protected and projects are ready to build before congestion becomes a problem.

3. Fix the network first: ACT will protect maintenance and renewal funding in the National Land Transport Fund so it cannot be raided to pay for new capital projects. Road users see the basics failing, potholes left unrepaired for too long, blocked drains, weak bridges. A dependable network starts with looking after these basics first.

4. Put delivery before ethnicity: ACT will make equal treatment a condition of Crown infrastructure funding. No Crown-funded project will use ethnicity to decide who can bid, how bids are scored, who receives preference or who must be subcontracted. Ethnicity-based spending targets and reporting requirements will also go. This will allow for more competition, lower costs, and more roads, pipes, and resilience projects from the same budget.

5. Make road money deliver roads: ACT will ensure that non-functional art, monuments and decorative amenity features are ineligible for National Land Transport Fund funding. This means money collected from motorists will be spent on the network they use, not diverted to funding public art, decorative landscaping and cultural monuments that do not make a journey faster, safer or more reliable.

6. Keep vehicle prices down for families: ACT will scrap unrealistic vehicle-emissions settings, oppose arbitrary age bans and other rules that price affordable used vehicles out of the market, and require new proposals to disclose their effect on vehicle supply, prices and fleet turnover. This will stop anti‑car rules that price families out of safer used imports.

“New Zealand does not need to accept deteriorating roads, unaffordable projects and congestion as the price of growth.

“The payoff for drivers and the public is more value from their every dollar with standard, proven designs and transparent published projects with their timelines.

“New Zealanders will have roads arrive with houses, not a decade later.

“Kiwi families will have access to safer cars, contracts will go to the best bid and communities can still add extras – just not on the road user’s tab.

“ACT will build more, waste less and make every transport dollar deliver, so New Zealand keeps moving,” says Mr Court.  

Note to editors: ACT’s full policy is here.