We recently learned that the NZTA is likely to take over control of the country’s supply of roading bitumen. NZTA has denied this, but Janet Wilson in an opinion piece in The Dominion Post on 16 April says that Z Energy announced it intends to pull out of the market because it had been verbally told the NZTA was taking over the market from July 2023. Unfortunately, denial of any move like this is just business as usual when information is sought from any government department or agency. But I suggest that denial is not because the story is untrue but is simply due to the lack of a comms team (spin doctors) to develop a publicity campaign to convince us that such a move is good for all of us. It will come, I am sure.

Alarmingly, we are seeing increasing government intervention into private business, and like obedient serfs, we buy into the spin. Whoever has heard of any government running a successful business? Successful business and government just don’t fit together, never have and never will. As Wilson says: “As soon as any government decrees it can simply take over an industry, you’re no longer living in a democratic country that values the power of the market.” What’s next? Will the government help KiwiRail buy a large road transport operator and get back into the road freight market because it is more efficient?

What troubles me with the bitumen story is the underlying question of the NZTA yet again departing from the core principles it was set up to deliver. Mind you, it is arguable that this departure started when the Land Transport Safety Authority, whose focus was on road safety, was merged with Transfund, whose focus was on funding roads, to become Land Transport New Zealand 2004. Recently, we have seen the eroding of the road safety function, with NZTA shifting its focus to environmentally friendly ways of getting around, such as walking and cycling. We have surely reached the point now that we should be asking if NZTA is doing the job a world-class road-safety regulator should be doing? You need to look no further than the failure of the heavy-vehicle certification and inspection regime to find an answer.

The proposal in the Proposed changes to land transport regulatory fees, funding and charges consultation document, left me wondering how far our regulatory regime will have to sink before somebody realises we are heading in the wrong direction. One of the proposals (proposal 2) suggests removing the re-sit fees for all drivers’ licence tests. The argument advanced is that if people fail their licence test at the first attempt, then imposing re-sit fees may discourage them from re-sitting the test, the inference being they will not drive until they have a licence. I am unsure of the basis for this as no data is supplied to prove the point, but I am suspicious of the real motivation behind this proposal. I would have thought the situation was quite clear: you failed your test the first time because you did not reach the standard to pass, end of story. That you should be able to re-sit the test without penalty, i.e, paying a re-sit fee, will only encourage sub-standard drivers. Perhaps in this new-age world, the idea that people need skin in a game to value something has passed its use-by date and has gone the same way as common sense.