- By Andrew Bayly, Port Waikato MP
I hope you all had a wonderful break over the summer holiday and a great start to the New Year.
Our government is certainly looking forward to 2025. One of our objectives is to bolster supermarket competition to tackle high supermarket prices and drive down the cost of living. When competition is working well, New Zealand businesses, both big and small, can thrive. The benefits for shoppers include greater choice and lower prices for the likes of fuel, groceries and banking.
In December last year, we launched a review of our competition settings, a key part of which is on merger settings. Over many decades, New Zealanders have felt first-hand some of the effects of mergers and unhealthy market competition. These include reduced innovation, a smaller range of goods and services, and increased prices.
Many of these could have been avoided if we had more robust merger controls in place.
You’ll hear more about the next steps in this process in due course.
We are also progressing the changes needed to be able to build the infrastructure our country desperately needs, with the overhaul of the Resource Management Act well underway and the introduction of the Fast-Track Approvals Act late last year.
I was delighted that the Papakura to Pukekohe rail electrification project was completed in late January and passenger train services returned on February 3. People can now travel from Pukekohe into the Auckland CBD on Auckland Transport’s modern electric trains.
It’s also about to become easier for people and freight to get from A to B as quickly and efficiently as possible. The Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2024 requires NZTA and local councils to reverse all speed limits lowered since January 2020 on several categories of roads back to their previous limits by July 1, 2025.
At the time of writing, I expect Auckland Transport and Waikato District Council to announce by early March the specific roads that they control (which is anything other than a state highway) where the speed limit will be reversed under the new rule.
For electorate issues, contact me at andrew@baylymp.co.nz
