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Speaker 1: Now the Green Party wants lots of trains again. The

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Speaker 1: Transport spokesperson Julian Engina has launched a petition calling for

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Speaker 1: the restoration of passenger rail around the country and is

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Speaker 1: with us.

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Speaker 2: Hi, Julienne Kyota, how are you going good?

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Speaker 1: Thanks? Where do you want it?

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Speaker 2: Well, we're here in Torona today, so we're calling to

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Speaker 2: extend to WHOA services to be from Toronga, including Hamilton

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Speaker 2: and Auckland. We've also talked about a night train between

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Speaker 2: Auckland and Wellington with modern comfortable sleeper cars and the

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Speaker 2: Southerner down in the South Island probably crashurched to Dunedin

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Speaker 2: in the first instance.

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Speaker 1: And how much would that all cost.

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Speaker 2: Well, in the short term there's some operating costs, like

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Speaker 2: we could get to WHOA extended to Torona for maybe

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Speaker 2: two million a year two and a half million a year,

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Speaker 2: So we've budgeted ten million over four years, but it's

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Speaker 2: going to be a bit more to get the long

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Speaker 2: term total budget, which would be well. Total budget for

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Speaker 2: all the projects, including like a transformational improvement to the

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Speaker 2: round network, which would mean a two and a half

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Speaker 2: hour train journey between Torang and Auckland is about five

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Speaker 2: and a half billion over five years.

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Speaker 1: That's capex and operating. That's a lot more than I

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Speaker 1: was expecting. Like I was gearing up for like a

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Speaker 1: cool one to two and I was going to I

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Speaker 1: was going to call BS on that, but five and

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Speaker 1: a half. Hey, where you going to get that money?

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Speaker 2: Well, it's less than twenty percent of what the government's

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Speaker 2: currently planning to spend on its expensive highways program. And

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Speaker 2: there's a lot of potential funding methods, like you know,

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Speaker 2: because obviously rail development, if you're doing really transformation or

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Speaker 2: rail development, it's uplifting property values and it's usually leading

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Speaker 2: to a lot of development. So that would be one

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Speaker 2: of the tools. But basically in our budget, you know,

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Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw, we had a fully

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Speaker 2: costed oh budget now before budget so yeah, so we

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Speaker 2: we had some increases in taxation, but most of the

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Speaker 2: transports and was coming from a reduction in some of

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Speaker 2: the planned capex on highways. And the great thing about

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Speaker 2: investing in rail is it not only benefits the people

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Speaker 2: who take the train, it actually benefits the roads as well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, because there are a few people on anyway. Listen.

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Speaker 1: Wonderful idea. Thank you, Juliane appreciate it, Julian Gineto, Green

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Speaker 1: Party Transport spokesperson. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive,

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