Labour's Chris Hipkins has dismissed National's promise to halt "blanket speed limit reductions", saying he already narrowed the programmes's focus just months after becoming Prime Minister.
National on Sunday morning made several policy announcements designed to "accelerate New Zealand", including repealing and replacing legislation that lays out how speed limits are set and allowing motorists to drive up to 110km/h on more roads, like Transmission Gully.
"Under the guise of safety, Labour has exposed its anti-car ideology by slowing down New Zealanders going about their daily lives," National's transport spokesperson Simeon Brown said.
But Hipkins later responded that his Government had already made the transport agency reduce the scale of its proposed changes to speed limits.
"I don't think they got the memo," he said.
"I made an announcement on this earlier in the year, that we're reducing that work down to just the top 1 percent of the most at-risk roads in New Zealand, that's already happening.
"I understand that they've announced that they want to increase the speed limit on Transmission Gully, for example, that's already in process."
He said National was just "packaging up stuff that's already happening now and trying to make it look like it's their own".
"I think that we need to be continuing to focus on road safety improvements and there's been a big focus on road safety improvements during the time that we have been in Government and we will continue that focus."
National's policy includes replacing the current legislation with new rules requiring authorities to consider not just safety impacts, but travel time impacts and the views of users and the community when reviewing speed limits.
Different road types would have their own standardised speed limits, like 100km/h for rural highways and 50km/h for local roads. There would be "variations in between for different standards of arterial roads, unless it is unsafe to do so".
There would also be variable speed limits on roads approaching schools during pick-up and drop-off times.
Hipkins said Waka Kotahi - which has independence to make decisions - "has made some interesting decisions that I don't necessarily agree with".
"I understand Christopher Luxon was in the Wairarapa and I was over there earlier in the week and I said, for example, there's one relatively straight stretch of road where they've lowered the speed limit, which doesn't seem to make any sense to me. But those decisions are made by Waka Kotahi, they're not decisions made by the Government."
Labour MP for Wairarapa Kieran McAnulty told AM earlier this month that as associate Transport Minister he had asked Waka Kotahi to review the speed limit on State Highway 2 connecting the Remutakas to Masterton, which was recently lowered to 80km/h.
"They said 'no' and that was the end of the matter," he said. "They have statutory independence from ministers and we cannot instruct them what to do in terms of operational decisions."
McAnulty told AM the lowered speed limits are a "massive source of frustration" to the region and he's written numerous letters to the agency asking for them to change the speed limit back to 100km/h.
Waka Kotahi told AM between January 2010 and December 2019, there were 488 reported crashes on State Highway 2 between Masterton and Featherston. Four people were killed and 28 were seriously injured.
The agency said the new speed limits would help protect the lives of people who use local streets and roads.
"The decision to do a speed review only came after a thorough technical assessment of this section of State Highway 2 had been done. It looked at what a safe and appropriate speed for the road should be and if it was out of step with the 100 km/h speed limit that had been in place. Safe and appropriate speeds are recorded in the Megamaps database," said Emma Speight, director regional relationships for Waka Kotahi.
"During the assessment, we looked at the previous crash history, the average speed people were travelling at, the number of cars and trucks using the road each day, and what was happening near the road in terms of housing, urban development, businesses, and other activities."
