Associate Finance Minister and National Party Campaign chair Steven Joyce is simply dishonest in claiming that Labour's plan to fund half the City Centre Rail Link will add to borrowing, says Labour's Transport and Infrastructure spokesperson Shane Jones.

"The closer we get to the election, the more dishonest National's claims are becoming," Shane Jones said.

"Labour plans to fund half the rail link by cancelling National's holiday highway north of Puhoi, but today Mr Joyce claimed that because construction funding for the highway is not scheduled to start until 2014/15, and construction will take eight years, that Labour will have to borrow $530 million over four years to meet Auckland's rail timetable.

"That's absolute nonsense, and Mr Joyce knows it," Shane Jones said.

"The truth is that the holiday highway money has not been allocated to specific years. It's just pencilled in to come from the National Land Transport Fund at some point.

"Labour may take money from that fund for the rail loop in different years than National would have done for the holiday highway, but the fact is that the timing of on-going transport projects drawing from the fund can be adjusted so that funding for the rail loop stays within the pool of money currently available in the fund," Shane Jones said.

"Mr Jones's dishonesty on the rail link is not occurring in isolation, however.

"National's new campaign advertisement on its infrastructure achievements is a remarkable example of deception and dissembling," Shane Jones said.

"The ad opens with shorts of Newmarket Railway Station. Labour planned and funded this station. Former Labour Transport Minister Annette King turned the first sod.

"The next shots feature Hopetoun Street Bridge and the ALPURT B2 extension to the Northern Gateway Motorway, both built and completed under Labour. The ad then shows John Key inspecting the Victoria Park Tunnel, but that valuable addition to Auckland's infrastructure was planned and consented under Labour," Shane Jones said.

"No wonder people should take anything National claims with a large grain of salt."