Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Annual Awards Dinner
Good evening, I would like to acknowledge the theme of your forum, The Next Decade - Challenges and Solutions - Innovation Meets Experience. Your organisation represents a wealth of experience in areas such as road transport, shipping and ports, public transport, airports, transport engineering, and central and local government.
This experience is crucial to the success of our transport sector both now and in the future. Equally important is the need to ensure that talented people are entering the transport industry.
For this reason I admire your efforts to foster excellence among the younger generation of transport practitioners. You have recognised the need to encourage a new generation to work and succeed in transport. We are seeing this tonight, through your Young Achiever Award and through student awards.
I know that your organisation also works alongside tertiary education providers to ensure there are opportunities to study integrated logistics, transport and supply chain management throughout New Zealand.
In addition, the Auckland section of your Institute has an ‘Under 35s group' which provides a platform for networking, and offers opportunities for personal growth. I understand you are looking to extend this group throughout all sections of the organisation.
Training and development opportunities such as these are important for young members to develop their skills and succeed. They cannot do this without the support of the industry. Fostering talent today will ensure we continue to have a wealth of experience tomorrow.
With transport key to Government plans for accelerating economic growth, there is no better time to be working in this field. Looking to the decade ahead, there are some exciting opportunities before us, and of course some challenges.
The Government is working hard to give New Zealanders the transport system they need. We have identified investment in transport - particularly the State highway network - as crucial for giving our economy a kickstart in the short term and for boosting productivity in the long term.
The roading network will remain the core of our transport system and we have allocated $10.7 billion over 10 years for investment in the State highway network. The recently launched National Land Transport Plan or NLTP is the first step of this, delivering targeted investment where it is needed most.
The Plan prioritises routes that need work to reduce congestion, improve journey time reliability, and to improve key freight and tourism links.
This includes those routes identified as Roads of National Significance, and I can tell you that we will see progress on the majority of these vital routes over the next three years, with all seven significantly progressed within 10 years.
Other modes will also be important to help in particular areas, for example, rail for moving people in our cities and helping ease the load of road freight. We are also seeing a shift to more environmentally friendly fuels. Innovation in this area will help us meet our environmental challenges.
Safety is also a transport priority for our Government. And again, looking to the decade ahead, it is appropriate that I speak about our work on a road safety strategy to guide New Zealand to 2020. We have been seeking the public's views in the development of this, with consultation finishing earlier this month.
Public buy-in on this is important and reflects the fact that we all have a responsibility for road safety, whether we are working in transport, making transport policy or using the roads.
We plan to launch our new road safety strategy towards the end of this year. It will set out the actions that have been agreed by the Government after public feedback has been considered. You can expect to see initial actions implemented over the next year or two.
So there is no doubt that there is, and will be, plenty going on in transport. As always expertise in transport and logistics will be key to having an efficient, productive transport network that helps our economy to grow. The Institute and individuals members have a big role in helping to create a more prosperous New Zealand.
In closing, I would like to commend your efforts to recognise excellence in the transport and logistics industry and to foster new talent. I would now like to hand back to Tim Shadbolt for the presentation of three very special awards. Thank you very much.