Last blast of big rigs

By MICHAEL LAWS

In A week when Auckland mayor John Banks tried to convince this government that thieving from taxpayers was the best way to bail his inept council out of its leaky home debacle, the former Whangarei wet was welcoming the truckie protest down Queen St.

Not content with his "up yours" to Prime Minister Helen Clark, Banks described her administration as a government with a death wish. As an exercise in especial lobbying, this was favour ferreting at its very worst.

Not that the truckies did not have a point with their act of transport terrorism. It's just that they had to inconvenience the rest of us to prove it. The first law of lobbying is not to back the government into a corner. The second law is not to piss the public off as well.

Yes, we know that they've suddenly suffered an excise impost. But that does not excuse truckies blocking ambulances, delaying fire engines or frustrating countless commuters. This was selfishness both dirty and noisy.

It is a measure of this government's lack of popular appeal that no one appeared to get too upset. For the average punter, getting an unplanned long weekend was justification enough. But it may not be when the boss docks the day as unpaid leave. At that point, the protest becomes pointless.

And it was just so Auckland that they abandoned the idea of a sanctioned V8 spectacular but gave a civic welcome to truck protesters. This is a genuinely screwed up city - dear God, don't amalgamate all their petty boroughs... just let Hamilton or Thames take them over.

But then protest action is like that. No matter how virtuous the cause, the very act of withdrawing one's labour or flooding the streets with eighteen wheelers, instantly alienates the average Kiwi. New Zealanders eschew public spectacle. We like disagreements to be domestic - settled in private with a bit of banter and biff.

Of course the truckies also perceive that they are the only ones suffering from New Zealand's sudden recession. But ask anybody with a declining house price, increasing mortgage costs and the sudden uncertainty of the job market. It is tough for everyone.

Part of the problem though is the lack of transparency between road taxes, excise taxes and the roading network. As a general rule it is a user pays system, but no one is quite sure which user pays what for exactly which benefit. As a result, truckies are now convinced that this week's impost - and the nationalisation of Kiwi Rail, are interconnected.

In a sane world, they would be. But suggesting that one arm of the public sector knows what the other is doing is to stretch credulity past breaking point.

The timing will be a coincidental cock-up but it won't stop the Ian Wisharts of this world doing their mad conspiracy act.

Frankly, there are too many trucks on our roads. And too many are dirty and dangerous. They hog the centre line, go over the speed limit and have a fine disregard for breaking distances.

Rural truckies are the worst - half the effluent of the national sheep herd is discarded over our roads.

And although their national lobbyists tried to paint Friday's protest as an empathetic rebellion on behalf of the beleaguered consumer, I'm still trying to equate that empathy with the day's wages most of us lost.

Indeed the real winners of Friday's action were the environmentalists and greenies. This was the preliminary meltdown that most had been predicting as peak oil starts to bite. The days of cheap fossil fuels are over and the big rig has always been their especial fetish decoy.

For them the truckie protest was like the last gathering of the dinosaurs.

Certainly there is a growing sense of bewilderment that the greenies might be right after all.

As oil soars past $US140 a barrel, that $3 a litre petrol price creeps closer. And given that there is no dampening of international demand and no great desire of Opec nations to cash in on their windfall, then it is clearly not going to get any easier any time soon.

Despite Friday's gridlock, the arterial routes of Auckland are already starting to unclog. I make a weekly trip north and can now drive from the airport to Ponsonby, at rush hour, in a little over 30 minutes. It is a trip that, three months ago, would take twice as long.

One also sees the mopeds, scooters and huddled masses at the bus stops. Dear God, even the return of the bicycle which, in Auckland, has always been an invitation to suicide. And even more amazing - you can now see two people in a car in Auckland.

Of course then the greenies spoil it all by suggesting that these straightened financial times must hasten in a new self-sufficiency. The more extreme are expecting food shortages, breakdowns in civil order and are petitioning local councils to grow fruit and nut trees in public reserves, and start communal gardens. For them the oil crisis is an entree to the ohu.

Indeed there is nothing worse than being preached at by ageing hippies, crowing that they were right all along. It makes you want to do a boy racer and blat around the CBD on a Friday night.

Which is the upside to petrol prices, I guess. According to latest social statistics, the new poor are likely to be young and single. They have no welfare net or Family Support to catch them when times get tough. They pay all the price increases - particularly for food, rent and petrol - and watch their disposable income dispose.

Boy racers fit all these criteria and a few more. Every time they put their foot on the pedal, they are burning what little money they have left. I'm not sure the world deserves that kind of poetic justice but it will certainly inhibit the next generation of wannabes.

Which made Friday's protest even more poignant for all those truckies. The economy is heading into recession, rail is coming back and fuel prices aren't. Friday was an unwitting celebration of the end of the good times. It is a bleak winter that awaits.

 

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