Subscribe to RSSBudget: Roading A Priority
Tackling bottlenecks in roading, electricity and telecommunications networks are given as the government’s infrastructure priorities by Finance Minister Bill English in this afternoon’s Budget.
He says.the Government has already announced investment of $10.7 billion over the next 10 years in building the state highway network.
Rail gets a mention in the Budget for the already announced $500 million for electrification of Auckland rail lines, as well as $250 million for the wider rail network and rolling stock.
Bill English, who is also infrastructure minister. said that being cost- effective was a key mandate.
“We have released a 20-year National Infrastructure Plan, we are pursuing public-private partnerships where they make sense and developing more rigorous public sector asset management to ensure future capital spending is high quality and goes where New Zealand needs it most,” Mr English says.
Today’s Budget allocates another $1.45 billion in capital spending in 2010/11 – the second year of a five-year $7.5 billion infrastructure funding plan.
Capital spending outlined in Budget 2010 over the next four years includes for
- Broadband - $200 million for the roll out of ultra-fast broadband, as well as $48 million more for broadband in schools
- Prisons - $337.4 million to lift prison capacity and manage justice sector pressures
- Schools - $177.4 million for new schools and school property.
Greens’ co-leader Russel Norman referred to the Puhoi highway in his budget speech in parliament this afternoon:
“The result is a Budget that takes our country in the wrong direction. It adds to the nation’s fiscal, environmental and social deficit and has a terrible deficit of vision at its heart.
It adds to the fiscal deficit and takes away the sovereignty of future generations by borrowing to pay for tax cuts that heavily favour the wealthy, borrowing for holiday highways and borrowing to subsidise polluters.”
The result is a Budget that takes our country in the wrong direction. It adds to the nation’s fiscal, environmental and social deficit and has a terrible deficit of vision at its heart.
It adds to the fiscal deficit and takes away the sovereignty of future generations by borrowing to pay for tax cuts that heavily favour the wealthy, borrowing for holiday highways and borrowing to subsidise polluters.
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