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Speaker 1: A few years ago, we had a bunch of stories

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Speaker 1: about Santa parades getting canceled because of red tape and

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Speaker 1: traffic management, all sorts of horrible stuff. NZTA was the

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Speaker 1: Grinch that stole Christmas? Do you remember this? Guess what?

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Speaker 1: Two years on, despite a change of government, despite a

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Speaker 1: minister and Ministry of Regulation, despite the road cone tip line,

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Speaker 1: the Grinch is back. This is one of those stories.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of like the working from home in the

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Speaker 1: public service, you know, one of these stories where the

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Speaker 1: government's almost powerless and the bureaucrats win. This time, it's

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Speaker 1: peel Pul population around five hundred. It's rural State Highway three,

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Speaker 1: North Island. They want to close the road on the

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Speaker 1: main drag, which is their usual route. They want to

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Speaker 1: close this road from five point thirty pm to eight pm,

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Speaker 1: two and a half hours for you know, kids get

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Speaker 1: to see the Santa sleigh riding through town. Lollies presumably

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Speaker 1: would be thrown from the floats. Or do they still

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Speaker 1: do that if you had a child or you arrest

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I digress, but you get the idea.

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Speaker 1: We've all been to one and they're great fun. Guess

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Speaker 1: how much it was going to cost them because of

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Speaker 1: the Grinches traffic rules and the resulting bill for traffic

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Speaker 1: management costs. It would normally put them back about one

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars this year. Wait for it, between ten and

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Speaker 1: fourteen thousand dollars for two and a half hours. Now.

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Speaker 1: You might balk at that, and I did. If you're

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Speaker 1: organizing a Sanda parade or an Anzac parade or a

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Speaker 1: community event, don't worry. The NZTA website has a helpful

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Speaker 1: guide for you. It's New Zealand's Guide to Temporary Traffic Management.

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Speaker 1: It's eighty eight pages long. I read it last night.

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Speaker 1: Well no I didn't. I read the first page and

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Speaker 1: I thought, this is absolute nonsense. The only thing you

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Speaker 1: need to read is the first sentence of the foreword.

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Speaker 1: Yes there's a fore word. Wakakotahi. New Zealand Transport Agency

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Speaker 1: is committed to Road to zero, a safe for altiro

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Speaker 1: in New Zealand where no one is killed or injured

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Speaker 1: on our roads. I hate to be the bearer of

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Speaker 1: bad news, but this is an absolute pipe dream of

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Speaker 1: a god and will never happen. Aiming for the outcome

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Speaker 1: is mad. What you get as a result is eighty

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Speaker 1: eight pages of bs and a fourteen thousand dollar bill

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Speaker 1: to get Santa on a sleigh for two hours. It's

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Speaker 1: madness and it continues. The organizers don't worry. They say

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Speaker 1: they have a Christmas meet and greet, but no actual parade.

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Speaker 1: Christmas is the season to be jolly. It is the

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Speaker 1: season forgiving, and NZTA is giving grinch vibes and a

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Speaker 1: bad attitude in my view. For more from Early Edition

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Speaker 1: with Ryan Bridge, listen live to News Talk Set B

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Speaker 1: from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio