Concepciones de la participación.

include control of market power, third-party costs (externalities) and people acting in apparently ‘irrational’ ways (“cognitive biases”) (Meade & Evans, 2015, p. 1). The report says that ‘general rules to protect competition complement and sometimes substitute for industry regulation, as do

alternative forms of ownership’ (2015, p.2). Regulatory trends include ways to replace ‘command and control’ mechanisms which are seen as informationally demanding, costly and distorting, and replacing them with incentive regulation that encourages firms to use their private information to reduce costs (Meade & Evans, 2015).

Neither the Government Policy statement nor the research strategy use the word ‘sustainability’ with reference to transport from 2009 onwards. This contrasts with the NZ Transport Strategy 2008 (MOT, 2008) that contains objectives to ensure environmental sustainability through the limitation of greenhouse gas emissions and consideration of resource use and local environmental effects. The first NZ Transport Strategy in 2002 set out a vision to have ‘an affordable, integrated, safe,

responsive and sustainable transport system’ (MOT, 2008, p. 2) and set out to provide direction over the next 30 years in line with the ‘government’s sustainable development, energy and climate change agendas’ (p2). The words sustainable or sustainability appear 48 times in the strategy document. It seems that transport policy is divided along party lines with no underlying agreement on what is going to be good for New Zealand on the medium to long term.

The political influence extends to the way the dendritic role of transport is viewed in a productive economy. O’Brien, a transport commentator, defines infrastructure as the means by which land transport happens (O'Brien, 2008) and that includes infrastructure employed by roadways, railway, airway and seaway. O’Brien observes that the NZTS and the National Rail Strategy do not deal with infrastructure – documents both written under the preceding Labour-led Government whereas the National-led Government’s GDS 2010 focuses upon infrastructure provision both as the target for spending and for the funding of research into the engineering aspects (such as the tensile strength of concrete). O’Brien posits that the Government is relying on overseas research that describes a high correlation between the provision of infrastructure and economic growth as guidance for its transport policy.

In 2009, the Minister for Infrastructure described the concrete and mortar approach as a step ‘towards the first national infrastructure plan’ (Government, 2009b) in terms of ‘Building Nations’. However the initiative to ‘build a nation’ is ideologically different from the actions of New Zealand’s historic nation builder behaviours as described by Easton (2007). What is different is an apparent over commitment to economic growth as a race against Australia, to build our way out of economic performance problems through the pursuit of efficiency that better road networks. For this thesis

the time fame is not critical, but for the purposes of a realistic or at least conceivable period of transition transport infrastructure is often considered to have a lifetime of at least thirty years. For context the policy of a mayoralty for the district of Tasman in the South Island of New Zealand, one candidate campaigned on the need to develop a five-hundred-year plan. Within that timeframe, Soddy’s century old concern about energy use central to transport are topical, and reports such as The Limits of Growth (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972) would be classed as breaking news.

The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) report on sea freight scenarios addresses the question of how policymakers act to ensure an efficient sea freight market, and find that any move away from a competitive market is ‘likely to act as a drag on the New Zealand economy and reduce GDP’ (Nixon, 2010, p. 29). The Minister of Transport said that the report supports an industry-led approach and welcomed the report’s findings as ‘consistent with the government’s view’ (Joyce, 2010). He said, “Attempts to pre-empt future likely market developments are unlikely to produce better results for the economy, with the government’s best role being to “ensure the right price signals are in place and land-based infrastructure, such as roads and rail can meet the needs of the freight industry as it evolves”(Joyce, 2010). The press release ends by saying that “attempts to pre-empt future likely market developments are unlikely to produce better results for the economy” and notes that the report “adds to the debate about maritime transport and I look forward to further discussions with the industry to reach a common understanding of its likely future” (Joyce, 2010). This is reinforced in the policy direction document where it is restated that the best approach for government is ‘to leave the final decisions in the hands of shippers and let ports react to those with their own investment decisions’ (Government, 2014a, p. 39) From this it is clear that the current focus on freight transport policy to do more of the same faster and more efficiently whereas, as Galbraith wrote in his book The Affluent Society ‘that the conventional wisdom having been made more or less identical with sound scholarship’ (Galbraith, 1958, p. 9) it appears in this case that market forces are considered ‘sound scholarship’ . Responsibility for connecting New Zealand with world markets has at this time the government’s role to ensure the right price signals are in place for road and rail infrastructure to meet the needs of the freight industry as it evolves (Government, 2014a). Since 2008 the Ministry of Transport has issued about fifteen strategic document and research reports none of which are critical of this approach.

The policies of many other countries continue to show concern for transport and sustainability. The international Transport Forum’s key Messages from Ministers, regarding freight (OECD, 2011) emphasised the vital importance of goods transport for enabling economic growth while at the

same time recognising that there is a complex challenge in meeting society’s demand for high quality transport, while simultaneously reducing the adverse impact of transport on climate change and air quality, human health and the natural environment. The paper calls for a sustainable and efficient logistics and freight transport system, able to meet the demands of economic and traffic growth. Better infrastructure, wider roads, longer tunnels and better bridges are given as solutions to reduce the costs of geography. Consistent with NZ transport network objectives, there is a push internationally to get more movement on existing structures by employing better information and technology as logistics, and to keep costs per tonne/km down by more efficient engines to move goods. The report also hopes there will be a decoupling of the cost of transport from the cost of goods movement and so somehow address the statistics that show that for every unit of economic increase, there is 1.3 units of transport increase.

The New Zealand Transport and Research Strategy 2016-2020 (Government, 2015) has as it goal: To create a research environment with the capacity and capability to ensure

transport research maximises economic and social benefits of the transport system and minimises harm.

The goal of the strategy is to create a research environment to ensure that research maximises economic and social benefits and minimises harm. The long-term outcomes are given as effectiveness, efficiency, resilience, safety, and responsibility. For transport the government

objectives cover growth, infrastructure and efficiency and conservation where the transport system goal is to ensure the efficient movement of goods ‘from the farm gate’ to overseas markets. The infrastructure plan focusses on ensuring better use of existing infrastructure and for new investment to meet long term plans. The aim is for transport is to become more efficient, with greater diversity of fuels and alternative energy technologies.

The research strategy has a strong focus on asset management and safety. In response to the perceived fast-moving environment, research is to focus on knowledge gaps of strategic importance with an expectation of potential synergies being found between public and private sectors, and across health, environment, social and economic sectors. To achieve this, the strategy aims to employ common methods to guide research development and prioritisation, and co-ordination between researchers and users of transport research. Potential research themes are summarised as follows:

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