Rural Roads: Businessman Calls for Funding Overhaul After Storm Damage

A leading Gisborne businessman, Richard Burke, who once headed up a large vegetable growing operation in Tairawhiti, had to deal with the difficulties of getting product to market because of countless road closures. He says today the roads around Tairawhiti are in fact worse than they were fifty years ago.

Burke says the present settings for funding roads are based around use - in other words, the number of vehicles using them - rather than the opportunities they offer and particular needs of the primary sector.

"The consequence of the present settings is that regions like Tairawhiti, Northland, the West Coast and Taranaki miss out on the big funding because they don't have the high vehicle use," Burke told Rural News.

"The present settings don't make sense to me because high export earners such as the primary sector and tourism miss out," he says.

Burke says, aside of the settings the other problem with infrastructure is having a long-term plan and taking this out of the political arena. He says under the present system, infrastructure bounces around due to political influence - the Cook Strait ferries issue being case in point.

"If we had, say, a 100-year plan, that would make a huge difference. In that scenario, the politicians would still control the purse strings, but there would be... a long-term plan," he says.

According to Burke, "commercial settings" should be applied to infrastructure - roads, water, etc. He says knee-jerk reactions are common with what infrastructure is needed and how to deal with adverse weather events.

For example, he says that the pine trees in Tairawhiti are not necessarily in themselves the issue and legislating against them may not be the answer. Rather, better settings or rules could manage the problem and ensure that the environment is not damaged.

"We need to accurately measure potential environmental impacts and not second guess what these may be, because in some cases we overdo stuff in areas and underdo it others," he says.

Burke says in Gisborne there is talk about the need for better water infrastructure. He says this in itself won't attract investment to the region. He maintains that roading is still the big issue and roads need to be able to cope with bigger trucks. He points to what Northland has done to improve its roads and the benefits that have flowed from this.

"Look at Northland and you see how much quicker they will recover from an event than what we will do down here. Most of that is because the infrastructure that they have built up gives them the ability to bounce back.

"We keep asking for more money, but there is a question about whether we are spending it in ways that resolve the problems in the long term."

Finally, Burke says there is a big focus on increasing production to drive export returns, but there is a need to invest in both the market and in the infrastructure to match this.