Our children will foot the bill for roads they can't use

Michael Cullen's announcement that the Government will borrow $300 million in infrastructure bonds for 'the largest road building project the country has ever seen' is a plan to charge our children for our investment in unsustainable transport patterns, the Green Party says.

"Oil prices, while temporarily stabilised, can only increase in the future. This has already led to a reduction in traffic on key Auckland motorways," Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says.

"It is well known among international transport planners that building more roads encourages people to drive further and reduces the incentive to take public transport or live closer to work.

"For a government that wants to be 'carbon neutral' it is taking us in exactly the opposite direction.

"Not only is this wasteful unsustainable expenditure being planned, the cost is being charged to future generations who will have to cope with the challenges of accelerating climate change, rising oil prices, a price on carbon, paying belatedly for the public transport infrastructure that should be being built now, at the same time as paying for our roads which they will not be able to afford to use the way we do.

"Our children and grandchildren will curse us for our lack of foresight and our selfishness.

"The Government is consulting widely on climate change and speaking many fine words. But its real commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be judged from its roading programme.

"If this plan goes ahead all its climate change rhetoric will be just so much hot air," Ms Fitzsimons says.