Is National to blame for our road deaths?

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We praise the Gods of the Free Market

National love to deregulate and underfund everything, it’s what they do, but the admission by NZTA that they completely dropped the ball on road safety under National deserves some more focus, especially as Simon Bridges was in charge at the time and is now leader…

…surprise, surprise. Just like the billion in debt Beneficiaries owe which was created under National…

Exclusive: Taxpayers $1 billion out of pocket because of overpayments to beneficiaries

Taxpayers are almost $1 billion out of pocket due to overpayments to beneficiaries by the Ministry of Social Development. 

National is calling it shocking incompetence. However, the Government has pushed back, saying most of the overpayments happened under National’s watch. 

…and the predicament that Dairy Farmers find themselves in

The National Party, conned you all into believing John Key’s pump and dump economic policy and tricked you into dairy intensification for China while you were pressured into taking on enormous amounts of debt by the banks and when that China fantasy popped, you’ve all been left with that enormous debt, Fonterra melting down and depression levels that make you suicidal AND THAT’S ALL THE LEFT’S PROBLEM???

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

…all three of those things are the result of deeply flawed National Party policy.

So with National promising to burn 2 regulations for every one they pass, shouldn’t we be deeply disturbed they might get back into power?

I mean, how many deaths caused by flawed National Party policy is too much?

 

14 COMMENTS

  1. “shouldn’t we be deeply disturbed they might get back into power?”

    Well, they have their man at the ready.

    Meanwhile, we need to be a bit gentle on Simon maybe, in the lead-up to his (political) demise. The Nats may be hoping that the Left take him down in some way.. Let them do their own dirty work.

  2. NZTA are also complicit in this.
    Parties and personal vendettas are their thing.
    Take an interest in this upcoming case to see what they are up to with your tax money. OIA requests confirm more than $80,000 spent up to March, 2019. Who knows how much now.

    Byrne Vs NZTA , Employment court, Whangarei District court, 4-6 November ,2019

    • Correct Gerald,

      NZTA drove the whole effort to expand the truck freight traffic that have now made every road in NZ so dangerous that this well seasoned global road traveler has never seen any other developed country with narrow single lane roads allow truck gridlock onto their roads like NZTA does.

      NZTA is just servants for the “Road transport forum” (RTF) lobbyists.

      Here is our CEAC press release on this yesterday;

      Phil Twyford is right to rest their management and expel all the criminal national puppets in NZTA.
      Newsagent
      MEDIA MONITORING
      Hawke’s Bay Coverage
      SCOOP’s latest coverage regarding Hawke’s Bay.

      CEAC supports Minister Twyford reset of NZTA
      Thursday, 10 October 2019 9:25 am | Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre Press Release
      Tags: Politics, General Politics, Transport.
      CEAC brief on Government media today regarding their concerns about ‘NZTA’ activities. Minister of Transport Phil Twyford is now appropriately putting the heat on NZTA quote; ‘obstructive tactics” “CEAC supports Minister Twyford reset of NZTA” … … More >>
      http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1910/S00108/ceac-supports-minister-twyford-reset-of-nzta.htm

      Politics

      CEAC supports Minister Twyford reset of NZTA
      Thursday, 10 October 2019, 9:25 am
      Press Release: Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre
      CEAC brief on Government media today regarding their concerns about ‘NZTA’ activities.
      Minister of Transport Phil Twyford is now appropriately putting the heat on NZTA quote; ‘obstructive tactics” “CEAC supports Minister Twyford reset of NZTA”
      Our community organisation NGO rocky past history with NZTA 2008 to 2019.
      • CEAC and NHTCF has never been fairly treated by NZTA through all our attempted efforts to have NZTA give fair urban mitigation from truck freight traffic since 2008 to 2019.
      • CEAC/NHTCF had worked well as a community “partner” with NZTA‘s former agency “Transit NZ” from 1999 to 2007.
      • NZTA has now used ‘obstructive tactics against CEAC after we requested detailed operational procedures under OIA requested documents from NZTA in July 2019 – two months ago.
      • After weeks of no feedback ‘inclusion discussions’ with the agency we received a brief letter of refusal to our request for OIA documents for NZTA activities regarding their operations from 1995 to 2019 in Hawkes Bay.
      • We say this was a reasonable request; – as we were beginning a study of NZTA activities inside our ‘Napier urban zones to Napier port’ on behalf of the whole community being affected by truck gridlock noise/vibration/air pollution, causing ‘sleep disruption,’ and threats to residential health and wellbeing, loss of property values and enjoyment of life.
      • We requested the information with an explanation; “that we were reviewing the operation of NZTA with regard to the new rules set out by the new “community wellbeing act 2019”.
      • Fact; NZTA had never committed in their policies to begin inclusion of the Government policy of a new rule enshrined in law under the ‘Community wellbeing act’ 2019.
      This new law was designed to make NZTA and other agencies responsible for planning for Community health and wellbeing” which was the principal reason for us reviewing NZTA operations today and without receiving any response we regard the NZTA as acting with ‘obstructive tactics” to the detriment of our community’s health and wellbeing.
      Also today we heard a positive statement on ‘Magic – drive at 4.40pm with news hubs Ryan Bridge interview with Phil Twyford.
      Mr Twyford stated that he is directing NZTA policy to begin a slowing down of all transport speeds for road safety, – to lowered settings in cities and rural areas and this will be positive for us all as slowing trucks brings lower noise/vibrations/air pollution and accidents/deaths. We will be following this policy as it unfolds.
      The ‘Road Transport Forum, (RTF) does not want lower speeds.
      Response from the trucking lobbyist Nick Leggett quote;
      Road Transport Forum chief executive Nick Leggett said those proposals, which included recovering a fairer proportion of costs from a wider group of road users, could see the a pendulum swing into over-regulation and more expense put on road users
      “We’re concerned that throwing more money into regulation will see investment in road maintenance suffer.”
      Perhaps Mr Leggett needs to agree to meet with us finally to finally discuss our community issues?
      Fact; in May 2019 We called Nick Leggett and asked for a meeting with him and after discussion with him he never set up a requested meeting with him.
      So now have those ‘heavier trucks’ already everywhere on our roads; – and driving folks out of their homes and harming their public health so what do we do about our roads that are falling apart in front of our eyes daily now and make communities safe to live in?
      Our only viable option is to use rail.

      • they wont give you nothing via OIA cleangreen, ive tried.
        they wont even give out whattheir employees qualifications are. Its like a secret organisation, more secret than the spooks they use.
        In the above case, they ordered the dismissal of a professional woman from one of their suppliers, because a man was scared of her.
        This man is 6’1″ and over 100kgs, the woman is 5’4″ and 45kgs. The NZTA employee who is scared of the 45kg woman, is ex military and has a police record of threatening to shoot people. Yeah i kid you not.
        all this evidence will be produced at Byrne Vs NZTA, 4-6 nov, 2019, Whangarei district court.

  3. Not only did the NZTA drop the ball but the law enforcement side of roads had its funding slashed under National by 10% under Collins and a further 19% “savings” by Tolley whilst both were Ministers of Police. By January 2017 funding problems both in the police and NZTA at least saw police disbanding all urban road policing units just to save money because in short, they didn’t have the budget. This was quickly reversed by the Nats who hurriedly found money elsewhere before the public really knew but the damage had well and truly set in by then anyway.

    You may also note the previous governments road safety advertising campaigns were the first thing to go under Keys National Government and any new safety initiatives quietly went away. A golden time to drive how you liked.

    The worst part of years of funding problems is it changed the culture of most of the public service from a siege mentality to an acceptance that there would never be enough resources to do the job properly and so any shit outcome would do. Triaging became a reason to exist and the continual problems associated with quality, mistakes and blunders we see today you can pretty much chalk up to Nationals obsession with budget cuts!

    I really don’t think Bill English gets the credit he deserves for being one of THE most damaging Ministers of Finance!

  4. Deregulation? Its already happening, Its called the CP-TPP and now possibly the RCEP. Can someone remind me who is ultimately responsible for that?

    Much as I have little time for the Nats I personally see little coming out of the current govt that is a whole lot different.

    Maybe too we should be focusing attention on those in office who actually stand to make the rules as opposed to those who might be? Just saying…….

  5. It’s silly to assign the problem to any political belief, although a failure to keep building motorways will, in the future, lead to more road deaths.

    According to road research scientists, the two dominant *causes* of accidents are:
    1. Incompetence
    2. Inattention

    Could the advent of smart phones be an underlying factor in the increased toll?
    Could more foreign tourists be a factor?

    In a modern car, you’re unlikely to die in a crash unless you hit a very solid object (large tree, concrete post etc) or hit a vehicle going in the opposite direction, so the fatality rates on well design dual carriageways is very low compared to typical NZ country roads. That’s why we need to keep on building motorways.

    • Yes, main highways like SH1 are basically shit for a supposed First World economy.

      But NZTA has delayed important safety improvements in black spot areas and some horrible bottlenecks have not been fixed because of National’s obsession with big ticket motorways.

      More motorways induces more traffic. Cars are dinosaurs, about to become extinct. PT is democratic, sustainable, and the way of the future.

    • “In a modern car, you’re unlikely to die in a crash unless you hit a very solid object (large tree, concrete post etc) or hit a vehicle going in the opposite direction, so the fatality rates on well design dual carriageways is very low compared to typical NZ country roads.”

      Unless of course your 1. Incompetent 2. Inattentive.

      “That’s why we need to keep on building motorways.”

      Seriously, not more?

      • There’s a difference between cause and consequence.

        The point I was making is that people make mistakes and cause crashes but on a motorway it is far less likely to result in a fatality because median barriers prevent crossovers and thus eliminate head-on crashes while outside barriers prevent vehicles running off the road to hit things like trees or heading into gullies.

        • I disagree, more motorways will not reduce accidents as long as our population increases and your reasons for why accidents occur continues.

          • Actually most accidents happen on country roads that have higher than average traffic than it was designed for or stretches of raid that are unfilliar to the driver. Of course standardised highways is one way of dealing with it but your not going to connect every suburb and town with a highway, that would be crazy. So not just highways, you’d have to leverage rail (National don’t like rail) you’d have to leverage bridges and other civil infrastructure (National don’t like that either) sea and air ports (National would privatise those in a heart beat).

  6. Sometime ago Simon Bridges was shown on the telly ‘protesting’ about an area in Tauranga where there had been many road deaths and his words of exclamation ‘People are doiying on OUR roads and this government hois done nothing..’ I am deliberately making fun of Bridges’ speech here e.g ” people are doiying…..”

    Whilst he was a transport minister in a previous National government I think he said to a group of people that it’s not the National government’s responsibility to ensure people drive safely on New Zealand roads.

    And whilst he throws fire and brimstone upon this government and he is firmly STILL in Opposition he showed up his true hypocrisy when all things considered.

    In early 2001(and yes Helen Clark was Prime Minister of NZ back then)I lost two very much loved and dear friends in a freak accident up North(near to Wellsford). To lose someone in an accident is something we have to live with for the rest of our days. I still grieve for my friends to this day.

    But when a pathetic excuse of a politician like Simon Bridges did sweet F.A whilst transport minister and yet condemns this government now proves to me he is just not fit to be a politician. He lacks the intelligence, the empathy, the caring. However if Luxon gets to be National leader then I guess we can be well assured even Luxon lacks the basic necessities to be viewed as a human being.

    National will never ever take responsibility for what happened during their Slash and Burn Budget cuts whilst in government from say 2008 through to 2017. They deem themselves as to being such utter perfection that they sit right beside the Great Spirit/God. They will never ever admit to making mistakes because when all things considered they love MONEY(for themselves) EGO(for themselves) POWER(over all others) and just being praised upon by those in the mainstream NZ media who are either deep into the NZ National Party pocket or are too weak and gutless to ever deeply or intelligently(not that the likes of say Duncan Garner can interview intelligently)question why National did sweet F.A in so many areas of NZ society in 9 long years they were in government???!!!!!

    Apologies if I am off on a different tangent here with what I have said. Just I am now so over the bloody self-righteous NZ National Party that I wouldn’t vote for them if they were the ONLY political party left in New Zealand. They are pathetic has-beens through and through.

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