Government to launch hotline for public to report excessive road cone use
- The Government has launched a hotline to report excessive road cone use, addressing public frustration.
- Christopher Luxon and Brooke van Velden announced reforms to reduce unnecessary health and safety regulations.
- Labour’s Jan Tinetti criticised the changes, calling them reckless and prioritising ideology over safety.
Let’s be very clear what the Minister is saying by promoting her road cone nark line, working class lives are collateral damage so angry drivers can race on the roads like lunatics.
Road cones are there to create the illusion of safety so working class men and woman can work in the baking heat under heavy clothing hoping some impatient driver doesn’t kill them.
Why should the families of working men and women fear their whanau aren’t coming home?
We already have terrible work place death rates for workers, 50-60 per year. Reducing the requirements for health and safety will lead to more worker deaths, but that’s an acceptable calculation from the free market right.
This is a very anti-worker Government.
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Another dick move by Sith Lord Van Evil and a PM who somehow manages to get worse with each day.
Why dont we just deregulate everything in the country .Let everyone drive as fast as they like where ever they like .Lets not have a minimum wage ,lets kill as many workers as we can ,lets build poor quality homes ,have no rego or wof on cars .Then we would not need a government ,school ,hospitals and food prices would be through the roof .Give everyone an AK 47 so they can protect them selves because there would be no police or court system as there would be no laws .
Fuck me the so called red tape is there for a reason and that reason is to protect everyone that lives in NZ AND THEY HAVE BEEN BROUGHT IN BECAUSE SCUM HAVE RIPPED PEOPLE OFF AND CALLED IT THEIR GOD GIVEN RIGHT .
That’s it, Gordon. Evil rules.
As you rightly say, regulations were introduced for a reason but they get in the way of maximising profit so this lot of clowns decide they are unnecessary.
Cheer up, one day it will be their young loved-ones who are the hapless victims of someone’s careless actions unregulated by rules or road cones. Yes, road cones are an eye-sore and over-used but they do have a purpose. Blame the road cone companies, not the users. Road cone owners are raking it in.
Also blame the impatience of drivers and others who just cannot wait and consider others. Nothing must get in their way!
van Velden thinks we were too well protected and looked after during covid too. She didn’t have to stand in very long supermarket queues or wait in cold tents beside the road for testing. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, as usual. The blind leading the blind.
Yes you can’t really get more stupid than this waste of time and money hotline…
This naive 40yer old virgin, just like her boss, Seymour , the other naive 40 year old virgin are absolute masters at really really dumb useless ideas…
…After 18months in Parliament, clipping the taxpayer ticket for over $ 300,000 a year, is that the best that she can come up with.
Jan Tenetti is absolutely correct …this is reckless ….reckless and spiteful and vindictive.
So if some Ignorant Joe blowhard thinks he/she , in all their wisdom, perceives that there are too many cones at a particilar road work site, and phones the hotline…then what??!!…Are the stretched police coming to take some away?
Now we know why Act are plummetting in the polls!
Let’s be rational here. Every business wants to make as much profit as possible. Same with those Traffic Management Companies who have become the modern day vultures, swooping in over any potential site. They are the real problem, much like the P Cleaning Companies back then. So here’s some questions I hope someone here can answer: How are these cones quoted and then invoiced? Who wrote the rules for setting them out? Why do councils simply sign the outrageous quotes? I say it’s a huge fucking racket….Like the P cleaners.
You probably have to take a hundred at a time. Non-returnable and no recompense for not using them, so may as well use them.
The thing about road cones is you need a lot of them to make a visual impact. And of course a lot of rorting Safety Corporations to wrangle the cones.
Bring back a couple of MOW 44 gallon drums painted pink. Drivers respected those.
Stop making sense, next you will be suggesting the MOW is reinstated!!
Obviously a BIG issue for this government … but underfund health, education and welfare … “nothing to see here” said the CoC
On the SH that runs past our place, they have changed the speed limit of a 1km section of highway between 2 60 kmh zones from 80 to 100. This saves 9 secs off your journey.
This section of highway is dangerous and people have died along it in the last 2 years when the speed was 80.
At 80 you are likely to die if you have an accident, at 100 you are certain to die.
Along with the cost of replacing the speed limit sign, they installed a new sign saying “Mistakes Happen Slow Down”.
This is the Coalition of Useless Numbnutted Tory Scum’s idea of productivity gains that they will use to justify their 40,000 salary hikes.
Road cones are a toxic weed growing out of neoliberalism.
Before neoliberalism I lived in Lyttelton. It was fantastic. We could wander down to the wharf areas and fish or hang out with the Russian fishing boat crew and sometimes be invited onboard for a beer or coffee. My oldest son invited a Russian crew member up for beers and cigarettes. We sat outside under our Black Boy peach tree talking with him. He could speak good English thankfully.
Then almost within the same breath in strode little roger, the stunted dictator and suddenly there were high fences, fluro vests and a Berlin Wall or Mexican fence mentality to match the psychiatric disease that’s now commonly known as ‘neoliberalism’.
Read this. A Guardian article on Bernie Sanders. Is bloody interesting in how his piece parallels our own neoliberal political environment.
The Guardian
‘Saying Trump is dangerous is not enough’: Bernie Sanders on Biden, billionaires – and why the Democrats failed
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jun/04/saying-trump-is-dangerous-is-not-enough-bernie-sanders-on-biden-billionaires-and-why-the-democrats-failed
Orange cones and vests etc are a head-fuck. Their presence demands that we must obey and retract before Gods will, orange vests and road cones. The message is : We must obey! It has absolutely ZERO to do with health, safety or efficiency.
I’m no fan of this govt but i think this hotline is more aimed at cones at non active worksites rather than cones protecting workers. having said that.. Stupid use of resources that will not result in even one cone being removed..
Also makes people complacent when sites that have been ‘fixed’ are still coned and obviously no further work being done. Cones lose their effectiveness and then they become useless. People ignore warnings.
So a non active worksite then?
No it is a smoke screen to hide the real death threats in the bill she is pushing .They will be stopping ACC for work place injuries soon .
Always the alarmist. Stop barking at passing cars.
Road cones was the first comment of an ex-pat Kiwi on a brief visit to his country of birth. He noticed something had changed!
Real they may be but for many they’ve become a metaphor for all the interruption in our lives, caused unnecessarily by regulations. Forget that they are, a small incononveience that they may be, there to protect working men and women from impatient drivers. Overkill? Well, how safe is 100% safe?
As for the current coalition position: they’d be pissing in the wind if they thought it’d address the frustrations of muddle Nu Zuland – a bit gender biased but I can’t think of a more senseless act they’d contemplate to placate all the angry and frustrated folk out there.
I was in Stewart Island/ Rakiura recently for a look around. There in the middle of the road a few km from Halfmoon Bay was a solitary road cone. Lonely it was. The effect was … words escape me. It didn’t bring me to tears, not that kind of emotion, but I looked at it and whispered ‘what the fuck’. I even took a photo of it thinking I could sell the image to Shutterstock!
Cone with a “D” on the head legislation?
This is a very anti-worker Government.
I am surprised that Van Velden hasn’t required all road workers with a uniform featuring a target on their back.
Next they will review the 30KM speed limit at roadworks( that most drivers ignorantly ignore anyway ) and make it a round 50 as to limit the awful frustration of having to slow down as to not kill people just doing their job.
A hotline is a diversionary joke.
They refuse to listen or read public submissions that overwhelmingly oppose their shitty law changes , or meet with the members of the Hikoi and other causes but they want a hotline to complain about road cones.
I know where I would like to stick a road cone (s )