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Speaker 1: Construction on the first Road of National Significance is underway.

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Speaker 1: Ground has been broken on the Hawk's Bay Expressway, which

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Speaker 1: is a twenty seven kilometers four lane highway set to

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Speaker 1: carry around twenty nine thousand vehicles a day. It's hoped

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Speaker 1: starting work early, we'll get the job done sooner. Alan

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Speaker 1: McDonald's with the Employees and Manufacturers Association. Allan, Good morning,

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Speaker 1: corning Eran, good to have you back on the show.

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Speaker 1: This is quite an important route. Tell us who uses it?

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Speaker 1: Why it's important in connecting to the port there.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think you've kind of nailed it just in

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Speaker 2: the intro. Ryan. It's important because it does link up

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Speaker 2: into the port, and if you look at a number

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Speaker 2: of the roads of National significance and the number of

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Speaker 2: the ports and the fast track application process for consent,

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Speaker 2: it's showing a bit of joined up thinking where we're

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Speaker 2: improving access for freight and for people around the ports

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Speaker 2: and those critical links into some of the more critical

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Speaker 2: economic areas of the country's growth and infrastructure.

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Speaker 1: They reckon starting early will help reduce the overall construction

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Speaker 1: time and they should have it done twelve to fifteen

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Speaker 1: months sooner than planned. Are you you know quietly confident.

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Speaker 2: I think with all of these things that any big

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Speaker 2: piece of infrastructure, the quicker you get it going, the

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Speaker 2: less chance for big cost overruns, I think is probably

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Speaker 2: the best way to put it, because they never get cheaper,

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Speaker 2: so the longer you leave them, the more they cost.

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Speaker 1: Is this something that you can say, this will reduce

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Speaker 1: the cost of goods by x y and z, or

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Speaker 1: this will increase efficiencies by x y z, or is

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Speaker 1: it more The more of the stuff that we do,

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Speaker 1: the more attractive we are to businesses, the easier and

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Speaker 1: cheaper things should get.

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Speaker 2: Oh, look, there will be gains both ways. I mean

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Speaker 2: there will be some travel time gains and things like that.

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Speaker 2: There's only a thirty case section of road twenty nine ks,

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Speaker 2: so you know those gains are does that, but they're

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Speaker 2: not huge in terms of efficiencies. But it's again it's

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Speaker 2: about linking in all the various regional parts. So if

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Speaker 2: you look around that Roads of National Significance program, it's

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Speaker 2: all designed to make connections between the economic hubs of

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Speaker 2: the country better so that you can move stuff around better,

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Speaker 2: move freight between the ports, move freight to the ports,

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Speaker 2: all of those good things that just signal that we're

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Speaker 2: making progress on some of our infrastructure and it will

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Speaker 2: be easier and better to do business and move stuff around.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, big job at here, doesn't that Alan? Thank you

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Speaker 1: for that. Alan McDonald the Employers and Manufacturers Association.

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