Dominion Rd 'saved' by tunnel to Mt Roskill
Govt picks Auckland rail plan with long tunnel to Mt Roskill; National wants 2 new motorways instead; Core NZ inflation at 13-yr high of 3.2%; Voter confidence at record low; PM's rating at record low
TLDR & TLDL: Michael Wood has announced the Government will build a rail line from Auckland’s CBD to Mangere Airport that avoids Dominion Rd by digging a tunnel from the Wynyard quarter all the way to Mt Albert. It is also bringing forward a second harbour crossing decision to election year.
National’s Simeon Brown wants the airport rail project dumped and two new motorways built instead.
I’m curious to see how many thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions are reduced by the chosen plan before 2030, which is how and when we should judge these projects. The detail wasn’t immediately available this morning. The draft options released in October showed emissions increases of 10,000 to 60,000 tonnes by 2031 because of the time taken and the carbon embedded in steel and concrete, as I wrote then and is shown in the chart below the paywall fold.
As I wrote in September, the Government’s transport plans have yet to address the urgency of the need to reduce car, ute and truck emissions dramatically in the next eight years, which is when scientists say the cuts are needed to keep planetary warming at less than 1.5 degrees celcius.
Meanwhile, the debate will rage on about who to blame for Aotearoa-NZ’s higher inflation rate and what to do about it. The monopoly and duopoly powers of price setters such as Fletcher Building, Foodstuffs, Woolworths, Z Energy others should be included in that discussion, I argue below the paywall fold.
Elsewhere in the news this morning here and overseas;
The NZ dollar fell to a fresh 15-month low under 66 USc last night as global markets priced in the hawkish comments of the US Federal Reserve Chair yesterday, which would push up US interest rates and make the US dollar more valuable;
Bank economists are calling on our Reserve Bank to keep increasing interest rates after CPI inflation rose to a 30-year high of 5.9% in the December quarter from a year ago. This was above market expectations and Reserve Bank forecasts for 5.7% inflation, however the Reserve Bank’s preferred measure of core inflation (the sectoral factor model) rose to only a 13-year high of 3.2%, which is only just outside the bank’s 1-3% target range;
The first OneNews/Kantar poll of the year found a slight narrowing of the gap between the centre-left and centre-right blocks to six percentage points (49% to 43%) last weekend from eight points in early November (50% to 42%), while support for Jacinda Ardern’s as preferred PM fell to a record low 35% and Christopher Luxon rose from 4.0% to 17%;
On the eve of ANZ’s consumer confidence survey release for January due later today, the OneNews/Kantar poll also found 49% voters saw a worse economic outlook, up from 47% in November, 29% in March last year and the lowest confidence level in the survey’s 12-year history;
The TOP Party announced former UK investment banker and Christchurch City Councillor Raf Manji was its new leader as TOP’s support in the OneNews poll rose from 1.2% to 1.6% over the last two months; and,
The US Bureau of Economic Analysis reported overnight US GDP grew at an annualised rate of 6.9% in the December quarter, which was up from the delta-hit September quarter’s 2.3% and above economist expectations for 5.5% growth.
Paid subscribers should look out for my weekly Ask Me Anything thread at midday and look below the fold for the link to my weekly zoominar with Peter Bale on the news of the week at 4pm today.
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