National is committing to building a second Waitemata Harbour crossing, connecting Onehunga and Auckland Airport with rail, building an expressway between Warkworth and Wellsford, upgrading State Highway 2 between Tauranga and Katikati, and building a tunnel through the Kaimai Ranges.
The harbour crossing would take the form of a tunnel for road and rail, likely between Esmonde Road and Wynyard Quarter. Work on this would begin in 2028. The project would cost $5 billion.
The vision is to connect Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga with four-lane expressways to create what National Leader Judith Collins described as an "integrated region of 2.5 million New Zealanders".
This would include the building of a tunnel under the Brynderwyn Hills to connect Ruakaka to Wellsford.
The Party is pledging to spend an average of $3.1 billion a year over the next 10 years on transport infrastructure, on top of what the Coalition Government has committed to – bar Auckland light rail and possibly the Northern Pathway across the harbour bridge.
It on Friday detailed how $17 billion of that $31 billion would be spent across the upper North Island. Details for the south are yet to come.
Funding
National said it would pay for transport infrastructure by enabling the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) to put more debt on its balance sheet, like Kainga Ora does.
NZTA is funded via the National Land Transport Fund, which derives revenue from petrol tax, road user charges, and motor vehicle registration and licencing fees. In this sense, it is a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model.
National would like to give NZTA the ability to top up this fund by borrowing up to $1 billion a year - about a quarter of its annual revenue - over 10 years. Its transport spokesperson Chris Bishop said this “intergenerational model” would “allow us to properly develop a pipeline of projects around the country and invest ahead of time rather than after an investment is needed”.
However, putting the debt on NZTA’s books, rather than on the Government’s books, would be more costly. Investors would consider buying “Transport Bonds” for example, more risky than buying New Zealand Government Bonds.
National would also direct $7 billion of unallocated funds from the $20 billion Covid Response and Recovery Fund towards infrastructure, and would reallocate $6.3 billion of National Land Transport Fund funding over 10 years.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson questioned what would be cut to free up this $6.3 billion. Interest.co.nz has put the question to National.
“The axe is hanging over projects like Skypath that Aucklanders want and that will create jobs in the next year, in order to fund projects that are over a decade away," Robertson said.
National said it wouldn’t increase fuel tax or road user charges in its first term and would repeal the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax.
However it would use tolls and is open to “revenue-neutral” congestion pricing.
The projects
The Crown would pay for expanding the existing rail network in Auckland. This would include:
- Building a third and fourth main line;
- Building a rail link to Auckland Airport from Puhinui and from Onehunga;
- Investigating a new rail line from Southdown to Avondale with construction to start from 2030 onwards;
- Electrifying the rail line to Pōkeno in the Waikato;
- Extending commuter rail to Huapai via a diesel shuttle to Swanson or Henderson; then investigating electrifying the line.
The other Auckland projects National is committing to include:
- Constructing the East West Link;
- Delivering Bus Rapid Transit from Onehunga to the CBD;
- Building Northwest Bus Rapid Transit;
- Adding a diesel rail shuttle to Huapai;
- Starting work on the Second Waitematā Harbour Crossing;
- Adding funding to upgrade Auckland’s Ferry Network;
- Introducing additional funding for Auckland Local Board priorities.
National’s upper North Island projects include:
- Building an expressway between Warkworth and Wellsford;
- Building the Hamilton Southern Links project;
- Building the Cambridge to Piarere extension of the Waikato expressway;
- Upgrading State Highway 29 to an expressway between Piarere and the Kaimai Range;
- Upgrading State Highway 2 between Tauranga to Katikati, including the Tauranga Northern Link;
- Upgrading State Highway 1 between Ruakaka to Wellsford (including a tunnel under the Brynderwyn Hills);
- Upgrading the State Highway 29 route from Tauranga to the Kaimai Range including a tunnel through the range.
National has previously announced the following projects:
- The Cambridge to Piarere expressway;
- The Belfast to Pegasus expressway including the Woodend Bypass;
- The Christchurch to Ashburton expressway.
RMA reform
National is pledging to replace the Resource Management Act with an Environment Act and a Planning & Development Act, most likely with legislation closely aligned to the models adopted by South Australia and Scotland.
See these National Party documents for more on funding, the Auckland plan, and the upper North Island plan.
Policy evokes a reaction from Robertson
Robertson said: “On the one hand, Paul Goldsmith is saying he will cut net debt to 30% of GDP within 10 years while at the same time saying he will spend more and take on more debt to pay for Judith Collins’ wish list.
“It’s also back-to-the-future with National again making empty promises about the RMA. New Zealanders heard them promise this for nine years when they were actually in Government while failing to deliver on one word of it.
“This Government has actually got on with the job. We already have an RMA amendment bill in front of Parliament, and passed the legislation for a streamlined consenting process for a number of projects to get them off the ground faster.
“The Government’s New Zealand Upgrade Programme and the roll out of our $3 billion of shovel-ready projects are underway now. They will create jobs in the coming months and years that New Zealanders desperately need now as part of our COVID-19 rebuild.”
188 Comments
Can we keek to obfusacation to a millenium please?
If we all went out and trashed each other's property, GDP would go through the roof. Christchurch was GDP-positive - but clearly a negative by any real count; they haven't fully 'recovered' yet. GDP fails to address depletion of resource, fails to measure pollution (and it's consequences) and is therefor a meaningless measure.
Period.
It is absolutely meaningless on its own. It's like sitting in a car and seeing that the speedometer is showing 100 km/h. But going where? In who's car? How far? How much fuel do I have? How much do I need? What's gonna be at my destination? Is the speedometer even working?
And that comment drips arrogance. The way I see it a GDP (Gross Domestic Production) is indeed reflective of a GPI (Gross Productivity Index). If productivity of the national workforce is up then GDP will be up. As a primary product exporter led country our GDP hides our mediocre productivity per capita. Your suggestion of a "happiness index" is straight out of the kuumbyeyaaa manual. Utterly subjective, difficult to empirically measure and therefore meaningless IMHO. Feel free to cast your pearls of wisdom, oh great sage, upon my barren plains of ignorance if you would stoop so low.
I suspect the future they assume will pay for it is not your children and grandchildren, but the 100s of 1000s of imported people. Until National states otherwise one can only assume their main method to grow the economy is a continuation of their population ponzi scheme. Plans such as these only reinforce such livelihoods - they would not be needed by a stable (or slowly growing) population as would be the case in the absence of mass immigration.
Money on key infrastructure should have been spent, as we increased our population through migration over the last decade or two. SO it is really just catch up. If Covid is going to be part of the future over the next decade, then public transport may not make the most sense at teh moment. Private EVs are green and allow people to travel safely in their own bubble.
So WI, tell me how swapping on mode of transport ( private CE'd car/ute) for another mode (private EV) is somehow going to reduce the congestion and the energy sapping delays of goods traffic (no EV trucks at the moment with the same goods capacity). Efficient and fast Public Transport is indeed the key in our large cities, coupled with increased use of Heavy Rail and upgrades to our woefully narrow and overloaded State Highways
You make it sound as if Kainga Ora is some sort of successful commercial enterprise. When over 60% of the income it receives is from government subsidies of rent paid for from the general tax pool its nothing more than a vehicle for government social policy. Therefore not much different from NZTA although the funding NZTA gets is at least from taxes collected on a user pays basis. Not that I agree entirely with either of these funding models - its still crown debt either way just moving it around a bit to get the Core Crown debt metrics sounding a bit nicer.
when i grew up there was very little and most familes could only afford one car, and we walked, biked and took the trolly bus.
also the suburbs where not miles and miles away from the city.
twenty five years ago i had a bet with ,my boss i could drive a truck from auckland airport to northcote for a pickup at 3.30pm on a friday in under 1/2 hour.
and i won the bet did it in 25 minutes, try that now
Fewer people in Auckland!
We've just re-built a brand new city in Christchurch.
How about we use what we've already spent billions on first before we set about spending even more?
Christchurch is an unbridled City on three flat sides - unlike Auckland that has natural barriers that all of these initiatives are set on fixing.
It has an International Airport.
It has a Port.
It has new Roads.
It has new Buildings.
It has a Railway line in existence.
It has huge areas to expand residential and business activity into.
Use Christchurch as the 'escape pod' for Auckland in every sense.
Haha new roads, one side of the city has been waiting since 2011 - maybe we need to get Gerry back to finish the job. We do have a congestion-free city centre because it is now just about undriveable due to the council's addiction to cycle lanes. In the nicest possible way we live in Christchurch because it's not Auckland.
And these places that are more exposed to flooding, the only place that floods as far as I know is what was once the suburb of Bexley - built on a swamp and had its'own pumping station which the council now doesn't utilise - understandable as it no longer has housing or roads and is slowly returning back to what it once was. A very small area when talking about the whole east side of Christchurch. So with your logic maybe we should roll it out across all sectors, health care would be interesting - what age would you no longer qualify for an operation?
Build light rail in every new suburb. Light rail on every main road in and out of the isthmus. Cross rail connections to the shore and south. Build rail alongside the motorway. High speed rail from Hamilton to Whangarei. Increase bus access and frequency. Increase the ferry transport. Subsidised taxis for the infirm and elderly.
Do National's policies for some reason not go through the same design and consulattion process as Labours?
Interesting opinion you have.
I'll tell you right now I'd rather we didn't give 32 billion dollars to an incredibly noncompetitive and powerful cartel of roading/transport infrastructure contractors.
Either/or. Take your pick. They both seem to get about the same amount of actual spadework done. Infrastructure in this country is a 'jobs for Wellington' programme which employs a lot of consulting engineers and people who prepare business cases over and over again, but very little actual construction considering the need for some of the projects in question.
And I'd rather we didn't give billions to cashed up companies for no reason other than they were able to work their books and show a 30% drop from a given month in 2019 to the same month in 2020. But I guess the "cartels" would be building something for us in return.
About 10 - 15% of those that took the wage subsidy actually needed it. The rest were better to either close (thus ripping the band aid off) or didn't need the cash. Our company didn't need the cash but we were eligible and we took it. Our competitors didn't need the cash, but they were eligible and took it (which is why we did). Heart sugeons didn't need the cash, but they were eligible and took it. Maybe you didn't understand how the whole scheme worked, but it was pretty easy for a lot of companies (particularly B2B) to defer invoicing by a month or two to show eligibility. What's bizzare is anyone who can't see the WSS being, for the most part, a total and complete waste of money.
There was the $80 odd million claimed and paid out by two large meat processing companies namely Silver Fern Farms and Alliance. If that's not crooked I'm not sure what the definition is. And if its not absolute negligence that the government paid out these sums without any questions then I'm not sure how you define negligence.
Ouch - looks like I hit a nerve there. Not a supplier and a net beneficiary of Grant Robertson's largesse are you? Funny then how Affco didn't need want it and actually said so. At the end of the day the same stock was killed over the season so where is the impact on revenue again? And a large part of the reason they were short on capacity was because of the drought. And if Tally's say they didn't think it was acceptable to claim the wage subsidy then you really know its not. Corporate bail out at its best of two marginally profitable and inefficient companies from Labour.
Like I said McNitty do some research. Silver Fern and Alliance are both CoOps for a start. Secondly they are considerably bigger than Affco. Thanks to the drought all companies were running flat out trying to process the drought cull and running double shifts to try (unsuccessfully) and keep up. Just because Talley's said they didn't need it means they are already running a stripped down enterprise (ask anyone who works for them) that was already understaffed. Easy to comply with the "distancing rules" when you already only have 1/2 the staff on. They also run a high level of robotics/automation.. hence less staff.
I really have hit a nerve haven't I. Subconscious guilt I suspect. SFF is only half owned by suppliers for a start after they needed a bail out from the Chinese (Bright Foods) so maybe you need to get your facts right. And why being a co-op (or being bigger) makes one iota of difference to the moral or ethical argument is lost on me. Your response that Talley's are running an efficient operation just confirms what I said. Alliance and SFF are unprofitable and inefficient. And again over a killing season how did they suffer a drop in revenue due to covid and how did any workers lose out on hours worked, which was what the wage subsidy was for?? You said the plant capacity issue was due to the drought - yes that's exactly what I said - this is just typical farmers holding off stock and then wanting full capacity at the same time everyone else wants it. Normal operating procedure for the industry, nothing to do with Covid, and why Alliance and SFF are in such a poor state.
Manukau is shallow with a shifting bar and is on the wrong side of the Island. All factors raised in the report. You've seen the push back on dredging Auckland Harbour.. Imagine what you'd see if you're dredging continuously, which was an identified requirement. Also you'd have to build Port infrastructure from scratch.. pretty pricey and convoluted with the current protest industry and RMA. Firth of Thames isn't a goer for the same infrastructure reason.. both Port and road/rail links
Exactly what we need. Brilliant foresight by National, with well-rounded arugments and common sense. JC is just crushing it; there is no way Labour could have come up with this let alone plan it. Just too incompetent. It's like Twitford got his light rail project inspiration from the Simpsons' monorail episode. We are going to face tough times and if we are going to print and/or borrow cash for stimulation, there needs to have a solid plan that bears results. Here it is.
Unrelated, but demonstrative of the thinking, when commenting on climate change "On the School Strike 4 Climate NZ protests: “They are very earnest and very truthful in what they believe. I don't know what they're going to do in 12 years' time when the world has not actually led to a MASS EXTINCTION OF HUMANS (my caps). I'm sure that they will have found something else… Another generation will come. Every generation has its thing.”. A complete lack of understanding of what extinction is, and a complete lack of understanding that the concern about mass extinction does not primarily include humans, but everything else on the planet. You could not make this stuff up, honestly. https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/122137025/five-things-…
It's just a fact that building any infrastructure project entails risk and big projects entails big risks. You therefore need big companies that have the financial strength to take on that risk. We only have two NZ owned companies that can do projects of this size but even they will JV with offshore companies to diversify their risk and get a combination of overseas know how and local expertise working on the design and build. This isn't "importing services from foreign corporations who get rich" its just common sense and commercial best practice. And as for who would be better off managing these projects? My pick is not Phil Twyford who would struggle to manage his way out of a soggy paper bag.
After 6pm , the traffic on most stretches of Auckland - tauranga , and Auckland Whangarei reduces to a dribble. Conjestion pricing of the existing roads would make far more sense.
And hopefully they dont reduce the rest of the countries roads to potholes to pay for these pet projects, like the did for the last 9 years .
They aren't killing govt kiwisaver payments, they want to stop contributions to the NZ super fund. There is plenty on the list outside Auckland:
Building an expressway between Warkworth and Wellsford;
Building the Hamilton Southern Links project;
Building the Cambridge to Piarere extension of the Waikato expressway;
Upgrading State Highway 29 to an expressway between Piarere and the Kaimai Range;
Upgrading State Highway 2 between Tauranga to Katikati, including the Tauranga Northern Link;
Upgrading State Highway 1 between Ruakaka to Wellsford (including a tunnel under the Brynderwyn Hills);
Upgrading the State Highway 29 route from Tauranga to the Kaimai Range including a tunnel through the range.
Well they (who, gov for council) plan to spend $16 mill or thereabouts, on a 800 metre walkway. in Christchurch. Yes that’s right about $20,000 per metre. Don’t even think it’s a four lane walkway. Some streets in Christchurch still EQ busted to be virtually unnavigable. Priorities, priorities, priorities where art thou Romeo.
Vivid. Yes. I'm guessing perhaps you might run also that dodgem course and have seen the near misses and only just avoided carnage that I many times have. It's thinking ahead to understand the significant financial benefit of widening this road. But I guess if you plan on decimating the mid Canterbury economy as CoL minister James Shaw is by cutting the dairy herd in half, then there is logic in continuing with yesterdays roading systems.
From the other story:
During a select committee on May 20, Goldsmith mentioned suspending Super Fund contributions, as well as winding back government contributions to KiwiSaver members as a means of cost-cutting.
Asked by interest.co.nz at the time whether this was in fact National Party policy, Goldsmith said, “They’re examples of things we should be thinking about in the short term.”
On Thursday, he didn’t mention cutting KiwiSaver contributions, but was more definitive about Super Fund contributions.
They're clearly thinking about it, and talked about it at the 2016 or 2017 budget IIRC, where they considered making kiwisaver compulsory and (for some reason) that means they would need to get rid of the government contributions, too.
Don't forget that National have already taken away the $40 annual fee subsidy from the government, and halved the government contribution from what it used to be.
Some good stuff here (the Auckland heavy rail stuff), and some clangers.. four lane highways all the way from Auck to Whg, Tauranga etc? Overkill, some more stretches of double lane to make overtaking safer and easier for sure, but the whole way.. nope.
Bus rapid transit from Onehunga to the CBD.. Why not use the train thats already there? or is it already at capacity, and can more services not be added?
Vision, decisiveness, details, timelines and commitment. The fundamentals of all successful enterprise. Middle NZ will lap it up. Especially northerners.
Just a quick question. Is there an example of building successful enterprise among this list of National Party politicians? Can you point to any that have driven infrastructure projects?
They haven't had much of a chance recently given Phil the hammer Twyford has been infrastructure supremo and serial project execution failure. Ardern's front bench of 12 is currently filled by 6 ministers during this time of national crisis, Collins has a full house ready to rock.
Look how well it's working with trying to reintroduce actual capacity into NZTA (cliff note - it's an utter failure). As much as I agree with your sentiment, we need to be practical and the world has moved on since then, politicians no longer respect engineers or allow asset planning to be carried out with integrity (or any autonomy). The people with the ability to deliver need the protection of the consulting organisations where we can provide independent advice, and the bureaucrats can act as the middlemen to the politicians, whose sole purpose is to make sure the whole thing continues to be as inefficient and indecisive as is possible, by changing projects and policies every three years.
Why , in NZ, does everything take so bloody long??
Starting stuff needed NOW, in 5-10 years. Pathetic.
All this extra population and bugger all provision and planning done to cater for them: massive failure of public administration from 2010 to date, by both parties.
Infrastructure requires more borrowing and vision and also more taxation on top 20%.
We have none of that and no one wants to talk about it.
Collins floats a "proposal" of creating 4 lane highways connecting Whangarei-Auckland-Hamilton-Tauranga
NZ needs a vision - That's a feel-good thought-bubble - that's not a vision
What is needed is a divided dual-carriageway from Whangarei all the way to Wellington. And put a high-speed wide-gauge rail-line alongside it while you're at it. NZ needs a purpose-built arterial transport backbone through the middle of the North Island. I began to develop such a proposal back in May 2020 here on interest.co.nz. got a few upticks but thats about all. Not much interest
See comment about the history of the Hulme Highway linking Melbourne and Sydney - 840 kms
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/104932/we-are-sudden-deep-recession-…
Ah the good ole National rhetoric of more roads = economic transformation...
You know what neither Nats or Labour understand? That affordable housing is the key to transforming the economy. And, that the solution is very simple indeed - build houses and sell them to FHBs at no profit
I do seem to recall more houses and less people being a cornerstone of the last campaign. Well, slowing the rate of increase of people, anyhow.
Not a lot of good choices though. FBB and AML are one thing this govt did deliver, if not kiwibuild and immigration, and I don't have much trust that the nats wouldn't promptly unwind those given the chance.
I like it, at least it's a plan to aim for. Time for the Adult's to take over. Arden is a brilliant leader in times of trouble without doubt but the COL really haven't succeeded in any of their election promises. Time for a change just like it was time for a change away from National after 3 years.
Well Shoreman, let's see. Instead of roads, you could build light rail. Fix the housing crisis National created. Fund the health system National deliberately underfunded to run a mythical surplus. Likewise the police, the education system, the public service - all stripped to the bone by National.
You could put more wrap around services instead of building more prisons. Addiction services. Aged care.
31 billion could make a huge difference - but it won't ploughed into tarseal on a promise of yesteryear.
"The harbour crossing would take the form of a tunnel for road and rail, likely between Esmonde Road and Wynyard Quarter. "
This would have to be accompanied by a congestion tolling cordon. There is no point providing another northern connection that simply shovels more traffic along an already congested SH1 south.
we have zero replacement growth in NZ so the only way to grow the population is to import people, but we have not voted on what level or what number we would like to see NZ at, that has been decided by officials and parties without feedback to the population.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/birth-rate-down-to-record-low
It is nothing but a ponzi scheme that you can't put a fullstop on, if you are using rapidly growing population as means to "grow" then there can't be an end to it. Even Japan with the high population there, have come to a grinding halt where births are concerned, you'd think they'd be fine to have a falling population, but it seems, no.
The answer to it is actually technology, but only if it benefits all.
Side note. I see a future where women begin to lose their rights to chose their life paths in an attempt to get birth rates up, it is already sneaking in in parts of the USA
And more to the point, without any consideration of, or consultation with, their Treaty partner;
https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0402/article_316.s…
Notice the date - 1994.
RE: RMA reform
Whether it is RMA removal or RMA reform it needs to be done.
NZ has had the largest increase in real house prices since 1980. We have simply bid up the price of land which is totally unproductive use of capital.
The aim is for sustainability. Something that can be kept going for more than, say, a generation.
The RMA has overseen the biggest rape of our life-support requirements that has ever happened, so it is clearly inadequate. The problem is that we need tighter regulation (by several orders of magnitude). The joke is that the Collins rabble want to unwind it firther - as they did when they had to sideswipe the Cant'y democracy to get at the water.......
But the tidal-wave is breaking; global events (too many people, not enough remaining resources, too much excretion/pollution) are overtaking this discussion. Rather like deckchair-booking for the day after the iceberg. Most of these need-to-be-bigger-to-assuage-the-growth-imperative projects will never be completed.
I agree.
Government after government has failed to put in place national environmental standards based by social cost benefit assessment.
Government after government has allowed the RMA to be applied like the town & country planning act, rather than being truly effects based.
It is now full of rules stacked as high as the skytower which have been written at the whim of planners who dont face the costs of the rules themselves, and which have not had individual cost benefit assessments undertaken on them.
The problem is that we need tighter regulation (by several orders of magnitude).
Agree. But I think what stuffed the RMA was a very early bit of case law referred to as the "overall broad judgment";
The overall broad judgment approach allows for comparison of conflicting considerations and the scale or degree of them, and their relative significance or proportion in the final outcome.
In my opinion, it turned the purpose (s5) from what I think reads and was intended as a triple bottom line to a weighting-based/(nearly) anything goes piece of legislation. It [the judicial precedent set with that particular judgment] took the law out of the hands of the written statute and instead, delivered decision-making to the courts.
The solution to that is land value tax. Decreases land values, improves productive and efficient occupation of land. Increases housing supply and reduces rents. Would also be good to shift the burden off GST and income tax. We don't want to disincentivise trade and productivity.
my thoughts
Building a third and fourth main line; Tick
Building a rail link to Auckland Airport from Puhinui and from Onehunga; Tick and then they should look at running it from onehunga alongside the motorway to connect up out west
Investigating a new rail line from Southdown to Avondale with construction to start from 2030 onwards; just do it
Electrifying the rail line to Pōkeno in the Waikato; should be to Hamilton why stop at pokeno
Extending commuter rail to Huapai via a diesel shuttle to Swanson or Henderson; then investigating electrifying the line. do electric dont piss around
The other Auckland projects National is committing to include:
Constructing the East West Link; no just not worth the cost other ways to do this most expensive road ever
Delivering Bus Rapid Transit from Onehunga to the CBD; double track the rail line
Building Northwest Bus Rapid Transit; look at new tech
Adding a diesel rail shuttle to Huapai; fail dumb idea
Starting work on the Second Waitematā Harbour Crossing; depends where they put this they need to do before the city from the south otherwise you will just bottleneck the inflows
Adding funding to upgrade Auckland’s Ferry Network; they need a ferries on the manukau to feed the airport and rail and buses at onehunga
Introducing additional funding for Auckland Local Board priorities. pork barrel
National’s upper North Island projects include:
Building an expressway between Warkworth and Wellsford; yes all the way to whangarei ( go around whangarei not through)
Building the Hamilton Southern Links project; yes good
Building the Cambridge to Piarere extension of the Waikato expressway; yes good
Upgrading State Highway 29 to an expressway between Piarere and the Kaimai Range; yes good
Upgrading State Highway 2 between Tauranga to Katikati, including the Tauranga Northern Link; yes good
Upgrading State Highway 1 between Ruakaka to Wellsford (including a tunnel under the Brynderwyn Hills); why a tunnel huge expense for trucks so they don have to go up a hill cheaper to cut through?
Upgrading the State Highway 29 route from Tauranga to the Kaimai Range including a tunnel through the range. why a tunnel huge expense for trucks so they dont have to go up a hill cheaper to cut through?
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