Joseph Mooney - MP for Southland
Growth in Queenstown Lakes has been rapid, and with it comes real pressure on transport, schools and other infrastructure. Congestion on State Highway 6 and 6A is one of the clearest signs of that pressure, and it is something I hear about from residents, visitors and businesses across the district. Solving it will not come down to one project. It needs an integrated, coordinated approach across the whole basin’s transport network, involving the council, NZTA, Otago Regional Council, the airport, the trails trust and private operators already investing in solutions.
That was the message from last week’s South Island Election Conference in Christchurch, where the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon set out National’s South Island growth plan. As part of that plan, National has pledged that congestion reducing gondola solutions in Queenstown would for the first time become eligible for public transport funding through the National Land Transport Fund, treated the same as buses, trains and ferries.
National has also pledged funding to four lane the remaining stretch of SH6 and 6A past Hansen Road down to the Five Mile roundabout, building on the $250 million already committed in 2024 for the Queenstown Upgrade Project.
I have been advocating for both of these for some time among other transport solutions, so was very pleased to see these announcements.
As Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop put it at the conference, we simply cannot keep adding lanes in Queenstown. That is why these two commitments sit together. Roading has a role to play, but so does public transport, and putting gondola projects on an equal footing with other modes for funding purposes is a significant development.
NZTA is also developing a strategic network plan for the basin, and Mayor John Glover’s new Mayoral Taskforce on congestion is a welcome local initiative that I expect will feed into the Regional Deal process once that is signed. I remain in ongoing discussion with the Mayor, Otago Regional Council, NZTA and local business leaders about how it all fits together.
Growth also puts pressure on the infrastructure supporting new development, and the Government has been working through how those costs are recovered. Consent panels already have the ability to require roads, water and wastewater as conditions of approval for fast track projects, and can decline a project if its infrastructure impacts are out of proportion to its regional benefits. The Government intends to amend the Local Government Act so councils can update Development Contribution policies to recover more of the infrastructure costs attributable to growth from eligible fast track developments, an interim step on the path toward full Development Levies.
On schools, two pieces of good news. Education Minister Erica Stanford confirmed this week that Te Kura Whakatipu o Kawarau is one of around 170 schools nationwide receiving funding to move away from open plan classrooms toward calmer, more clearly defined teaching spaces.
Recently, Arrowtown School, Remarkables Primary and Shotover Primary were also confirmed for solar panels under National’s 500 schools programme, expected to save each school around $8,000 a year in power costs, freeing up money for teaching and learning.
This week I also joined a trial jetboat trip along the Kawarau River with Watersports, who are testing whether students could be jetboated to school as one way of easing pressure on the Shotover bridge during the morning rush. Solving congestion in this basin will take a genuinely broad and coordinated set of ideas and actions, and I will keep pushing for all of them and for the conversations needed to make that happen.
