The Front Bench: Predictable policy and the rising star of Barbara Edmonds

All right, is there anything more predictable in an election campaign than the Green Party promising more trains and the National Party promising to build roads? And that is what has just happened at the last weekend.

Obviously, you shouldn't believe the Greens that they're gonna get you more trains 'cause they will never get any leading party in government to give them enough money for [laughs] these expensive trains, but you would also be a fool to believe National, especially with regard to their promise yesterday to build Mill Road, uh, just south of Auckland because let me remind you of the recent history of Mill Road.

In 2017, National promised to build Mill Road if they won the election.

They obviously didn't win the election, so Labor came in and scrapped the promise.

And then in early 2022, because it was election year again, Labor promised to build Mill, Mill, uh, build Mill Road again, and then they scrapped it again 'cause they never really meant to build it in the first place because Labor n- actually, never actually wanted to build roads.

And then in 2023, because it was election year again, National promised to build Mill Road, and then this year they scrapped it, and they put it in the go slow lane for the roads of national significance because they probably never really meant to build it 'cause they knew they never had the money to pay for it 'cause they had frozen the petrol tax for three years already, and there wasn't enough money in the road building kitty.

And then five and a half weeks, uh, weeks ago, and we covered this on the show, we found out that NZTA had stopped buying the properties needed for Mill Road if they were really gonna do the upgrade, and they'd started emailing the landowners and canceling the contracts.

So do you really believe, not even six weeks after canceling the plans with the people who own the land that would be required, that all of a sudden we're gonna build the road again, and we're gonna start emailing them again and go, "Whoops, sorry.

Contract's back on"? It's not real, and even if it is real, National will have trouble convincing people to believe it's real because fool me once, et cetera.

But do you see what I mean when I say there is nothing more predictable than trains from the Greens and roads from National in an election? Mill Road has literally been promised now for four elections straight.

Have you got it? Nah.