Public Transport Management Bill

The meeting was actually in the lunch break, between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., and the member knows it. And that is all it was—a special meeting at lunch time. I was not in Wellington, so I was unable to participate, yet I had participated—

That’s not our fault.

Actually, it is, because Mr Gosche called the meeting at very short notice. All I can say to the Minister is that if she were doing her job properly, as a Minister should, she would have made sure that any advice from the Regulations Review Committee was taken into account by the committee, and it was not.

I want the Minister in the chair, the Hon Annette King, to tell us of one example of that ever happening in the past. I have done some research, and it is not known in this Parliament for a report to a subject select committee from the Regulations Review Committee, advising that it has some concerns that should be taken into account, not to have got through and for the Government to then say, when the report has got through, that it does not care and will not even let us have one day to look at it.

I repeat that that was the commitment—a watertight commitment—and the chairman cannot in any way say that National has ever broken its word on any commitment we have ever given to that select committee. We have always stuck by our word. We said we wanted the bill to come back to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for just one day so that we could look at knitting in the changes advised by the Regulations Review Committee, and that we would then report it back as is. It still could easily have been back before the House as needed. It could have easily gone through, given that the Prime Minister says we are going to box on into September, and probably even into October, as a House. So there was simply no need for the urgency and the rush. It is simply an example of appalling process. I do not think that any Parliament anywhere else in the world, other than maybe Zimbabwe, would tolerate such a—

Rubbish!

Gosche Hon Mark Gosche Link to this

The Minister keeps going on about this being rubbish, but she does not have a single example of such a situation ever occurring before. I have asked about it, and I can tell members that the advice given was that the best way to resolve this matter was for the committee that had heard all the evidence to look at it. The Minister should remember that. It should be looked at by those members who had sat listening to evidence on this very matter—a matter that New Zealand Bus, for example, had raised with Professor Taggart, whose submissions to the Regulations Review Committee concerned the delegation of lawmaking powers in the bill.

Those are all issues that the select committee should have had the ability to decide on in terms of how and where the changes, if any, would be knitted into the current bill, and it should have been done through a proper process. Otherwise, we are saying that the select committee process is a complete farce. The central issue was not put before us. Again, I agree that it was not anyone’s fault from the parliamentary side of it, in terms of any political party, but finding where the fault lies and saying: “Well, OK, we’ve now uncovered a massive snafu in the process—

It’s all fixed.

Mr Gosche keeps going on that it is all fixed, as though Labour has the right to decide what is fixed and what is not. This shows the sort of a steamroller dictatorship that this country is in. “All fixed”, says Mark Gosche, “like other members of the select committee, you don’t count. You don’t get to vote. You don’t get to have a say.” That is what he is saying to members of the select committee. He is saying that we do not get to do that—that it is all fixed because Labour has decided on doing something, which is a cosy little deal with the Minister putting forward a Supplementary Order Paper.

Where is the democracy? How does the Minister think the dozens and dozens of people who came to that select committee and made genuinely serious submissions on the bill will feel about the fact that an issue that is central to this legislation was not considered because we did not know about the Regulations Review Committee report? And how does she think they will feel about the fact that the select committee chairman, Mark Gosche, said: “Well, let’s not worry about it. Let’s not have the committee see it through.”?

It is not as though there is urgency, as such, for this bill to go through. This sort of issue has been floating around in the system for some time. In fact, Cabinet agreed to this particular legislation in February 2007. We cannot say this has been rushed legislation, because Cabinet agreed to it 18 months, or more, ago. Suddenly, in the very last week, when Labour members were trying to bang through a whole lot of stuff under urgency, they realised there was a snafu. Then the chairman, Mark Gosche, has the absolute cheek to say: “Don’t worry, it’s all fixed. We”—Labour, that is—“have decided how it will be and how it should be fixed.”

I say on behalf of the National Party that we find that a complete affront. Labour got the Minister to do a Supplementary Order Paper, and it is all done. We do not count, and we are not even allowed, as members of the select committee, to hear about it.

King Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Transport) Link to this

I advise the member that we are not in urgency. The House is having a normal sitting. Maybe the member was not told, because, unfortunately, he has been on leave—or absent—as National’s spokesperson on transport for at least 2 weeks. It is since he told the people of New Zealand that they would not mind paying $50 a week—

King Hon ANNETTE KING Link to this

I never said that.

Oh, yes, he said it. It is in the transcript from Radio New Zealand National.

King Hon ANNETTE KING Link to this

Have a look.

I have read it, and read it, and read it. He said he does not know of one person who would not be prepared to pay $50 a week in tolls. He has been silenced by Bill English. He is furious with Bill English. He is very close to joining the ACT party because he is so furious about the way he has been treated as the spokesperson for transport.

I thank the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, Mark Gosche, for his excellent chairing of that committee. I thank the members of the committee who participated in a constructive way. I point out to the people who are listening today that this bill is for the taxpayers, the ratepayers, and the passengers of passenger transport. If they listen to Maurice Williamson, they will find that there is one person, or one group of people, he has ever cared about—the owners of the bus companies. He has never had a policy that has passenger transport at its forefront. He never talks of passenger transport. He talks roads, roads, and roads. He does not care what the public said in submissions. He goes back to what the bus companies say.

Eighty percent of the money that pays for our passenger transport comes from taxpayers and ratepayers. They want to make sure that the money available for passenger transport is there for the benefit of the passengers, to give them a decent journey, and access to proper transport. All we hear from Maurice Williamson is about the process. We heard the explanation from the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and he put on the record what the process was. I tell Mark Gosche that I believe that that was the proper process. He did his best to rectify a mistake, not made by the committee, but as Maurice Williamson himself said “made by the politicians.” Mr Gosche did his best to rectify that; he called a special meeting to go over it. But because Maurice Williamson was not there and could not be there, he believes that somehow one should not count that meeting. Then, when they got the opportunity, the National members denied leave for the report. It is a word that starts with “h” that I am not allowed to use, when we have an Opposition member stand up in this Committee who rants and raves about the process, and then we hear the Opposition deny leave for a report to come back to this House. Well, I have to tell Maurice Williamson that he will have to do a hang of a lot better than that if that is the only argument he has.

Maurice Williamson has taken two calls on the process. Why does he not get to the substance of the bill? The public of New Zealand deserve decent passenger transport. We might argue about the level and the amount of money. I know the Green Party has always argued for more, and we are balancing that with the needs in transport. But we have a common goal, in that we want passengers to have a good journey, a safe journey, an affordable journey, and an accessible journey, and this bill enables that to happen. It enables there to be accountability for the money that taxpayers and ratepayers put into the passenger transport system, and enables us to have integrated ticketing—something Bill English said would not work. I say to him that if he knows a bit about transport let us hear it, because when he interjected on the second reading speech it was obvious he did not know anything about the bill. Having interjected, he got out of his seat, went and got the bill, and read it for the first time. I tell the National members to put the public first for a change, instead of their mates, who they think might give them some money for their election campaign. I tell National to put the public first when it comes to passenger transport, because they deserve good passenger transport in this country, and that is what they will get from this Government.

Locke KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this

The Minister is correct when she says the Green Party is always arguing for more public transport. We will continue to do that, and the Public Transport Management Bill will help us to do so. It is a very good bill. It will help regional authorities across the country to properly plan and provide public transport, particularly in the bigger cities where one needs to have integration of the various bus services. The Minister mentioned integrated ticketing, which is quite important to that, as well.

Jeanette Fitzsimons from the Green Party does have some amendments to this bill on Supplementary Order Paper 249 in her name. Some of them are under Part 1, and I will explain them. Essentially, they are to allow the regional authorities to plan the whole bus service and its connections with trains, etc. in a way that fits passenger needs. At the moment there is a distinction between subsidised services and commercial services. That does not give councils control over the issues of when and where services are run, and the timetables for the commercial services are often out of sync with those for the rest of the system. The amendments that Jeanette Fitzsimons is moving under both Part 1 and Part 2 address that.

Under Part 1, an amendment to clause 3(2) inserts paragraph (ba), which “confers powers on regional councils to require all or any public transport services in their regions to be provided under contract with them, and consequently to discontinue any commercial public transport services provided in their regions that are subject to such a requirement”. An amendment to clause 4 elaborates on that. Essentially that does not mean that one knocks out all the commercial services; some services may continue to be unsubsidised on very popular routes. There is not the same requirement to subsidise them in order to get an operator to bid for them and take them on, but there will be a requirement on the commercial operator to tie them in with the whole system.

In the report back on the bill from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, the Labour members noted that local government in Auckland is united in supporting the addition of option C, which is essentially what I have described in Jeanette Fitzsimons’ amendment. The report back stated: “We also received letters of support from other metropolitan regional councils supporting Auckland’s position.” I think that is true. The Greens would have written something like that as well if we had been represented on the select committee for that bill. We would have been very keen to do so, but having only six members in the Green caucus means that we cannot be on every committee for every bill. But that does not mean to say we do not think this is an extremely important bill for the progress of public transport.

That is particularly the case in the big metropolis of Auckland, where I come from—and I know Mark Gosche who spoke earlier comes from there, too. We have been grinding away on trying to improve public transport in Auckland. The patronage of the bus services has increased, and the next step is to plan them better, increase their frequency, increase their interconnection, and have integrated ticketing so that people can hop on the buses very quickly with their single ticket, hopefully in an electronic form. I think bus patronage will go up substantially if that is the case. But at the moment some people do not use public transport because of the lack of connectivity—they are waiting between bus services too long, etc. This bill is going to address that. I know that the people on the Auckland Regional Council are really keen to promote public transport. All the planners are ready to go, and once this bill is passed it will make a big difference to public transport in Auckland, which is particularly important.

There was a question in the House earlier about the price of oil—an exchange between Michael Cullen and Jeanette Fitzsimons. As the price of oil goes up—and although it may be dipping a bit now, it will continue in general to go up—and as demand outstrips the supply of oil worldwide, we will need to have better public transport systems in place.

Brown PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) Link to this

New Zealand First supports this bill, with the amendment in my name.

Bennett David Bennett Link to this

Whose name?

Bennett David Bennett Link to this

In my name.

Who is putting it up?

Bennett David Bennett Link to this

The member over there should learn. He has been here for 2 years. There is an amendment on the Table in my name. I have put it up.

Really?

Chauvel Charles Chauvel Link to this

Yes.

The National Party supports it!

Gosche Hon Mark Gosche Link to this

I think the National Party should look at it. I do not know whether the member over there can read, but he should take a damn good look at it and pay a bit more attention to what goes on in this Committee, and certainly pay a bit more attention at what goes on in select committees.

We do not believe that going down the Auckland Regional Transport Authority line is the right way to go. It is not necessary in Wellington, it is not necessary in Christchurch, and it is not necessary in Queenstown. The full contract system works in many other provincial areas because that is the only option, but we believe the Auckland problem could be solved with forward-thinking, as they have in Christchurch and in Wellington. When the Infratil people, the owners of New Zealand Bus, came to us, I have to say that I was absolutely, immensely impressed by their enthusiasm, their determination, and their competence. So we are amending this bill to allow for the private operator to have some say in the way the bus network works in Auckland. We are not prepared to go down the track where the regional council dictates what is what, because we value enthusiasm, determination, and competence, and we think this bill—[Interruption] Certainly, as I understand it, the Greens are going to move an option C; if option C comes into being, then it will stifle those three attributes.

We know Auckland needs integrated ticketing and integrated services. We know it needs a bundling of services, and we think those essential qualities can be achieved by dealing directly with the bus companies. I know that Auckland has had its problems in the past, but I believe there is a new will within the bus companies—in New Zealand Bus, in particular, but also in some others—to improve things for the public. New Zealand First is not prepared to stifle that enthusiasm and that ability to change or amend things, by supporting the Auckland Regional Transport Authority approach. New Zealand First will be opposing the bill if it in any way, shape, or form embraces option C.

In Part 1, the part we are dealing with now, there are a number of amendments in my name. They are minor amendments—technical amendments—and I know there are similar amendments in the Minister’s name on her Supplementary Order Paper 248, I think it is. We have to make a choice, and New Zealand First is determined to stick with the amendment in my name on behalf of New Zealand First, because we think it will improve the bill. The amendment will give the bus companies a fair go—a fair crack of the whip—and it will allow the Auckland Regional Transport Authority to have the umbrella-type structure it wants, but it will be compelled to deal with bus companies. As I said earlier, we are not prepared to have a regime in Auckland—even if it is not the capital city, it is a major city when it comes to bus transport—dictated to by a regional council, with no option and no obligation.

What concerns us is that the Ministry of Transport undertook a study with a consulting group and with the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, and did not make that information known to the bus companies, nor even to the select committee. We think that is the wrong way to go. There was some notation in a letter to the select committee, but that was all.

Wong PANSY WONG (National) Link to this

Talking about process and procedure is important in Part 1, because although the Minister is trying to bluster that this bill is all about passengers, the bill clearly states that it clarifies and extends the function and powers of regional councils. That is why National took the report from the Regulations Review Committee very seriously.

I want to put some facts right. A special meeting of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee was called in a hurry, as we heard from the Hon Maurice Williamson. Even after he had given a watertight guarantee that the bill could be referred back to the Regulations Review Committee and come back in a day, the chair and the New Zealand First member disagreed. They called another meeting, to consider the special report that our committee was never meant to deliberate on. So we met to consider the report, but once again Labour and New Zealand First ganged up together to try to ride roughshod over us. The reason why National cannot agree to a deliberation on the special report is very, very simple: we have major concerns that the recommendations from the Regulations Review Committee were not agreed to by the officials.

What are they?

Wong PANSY WONG Link to this

It is really disappointing to hear that the chairman of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee is not familiar with the content of the special report and does not realise that the officials did not agree to all the recommendations.

For a start, out of the six recommendations made by the Regulations Review Committee, three—one, two, three—have been taken up by the officials, and that is a worry in itself. Those recommendations include the deletion of the requirements for plans, the deletion of the ability to add to the definition, and the clarification of circumstances. The officials said that, yes, they would agree to those recommendations, but one recommendation of the Regulations Review Committee is about the deletion of the ability to add to controls by regulations unless there is clearly a need. The Regulations Review Committee said that unless a need was clear, and that people knew beforehand, regional councils should not be able to introduce a change.

But the officials do not agree to the recommendation being adopted. The reason is that they want to restrict the regional councils’ power to adopt a control in a relatively short time without the need to amend the primary legislation. Let us listen to this very carefully: this bill consists of a clause that would allow regional councils to introduce and adopt a control in a relatively short time without the need to come back to Parliament. That is a huge, huge power to give away, and the officials want to minimise that power by recommending the addition of a provision requiring only that the Minister of Transport should consult regional councils, public transport operators, and the New Zealand Transport Agency.

We all know by now that whenever consultation is used in this way, it usually means that the ministry has decided on a course of action. It says it will go out to consult, but that does not mean that it will actually adopt the results of the consultation with operators and all sorts of sectors. We all know by now, for example, that before this bill came into Parliament it was consulted on widely and the sector agreed to option B, but actually option B+ is being adopted in the final bill.

So there was a very good reason why we have stuck to our agreement. We agreed to the meeting, but we cannot agree to the deliberation of these recommendations, particularly—

Robertson The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) Link to this

Is the member calling again?

Wong PANSY WONG Link to this

I will just clarify that. We agreed to that short meeting, we considered those recommendations, but we cannot agree to ignore a very significant recommendation from the Regulations Review Committee not to give a power to councils to introduce a control at short notice That is abuse of authority.

National continues to be very responsible in making sure that process and procedure are being adhered to, because after all, this legislation has the implication that regional councils could exercise a control that could infringe on private property rights. We have talked about how private bus operators could work long and hard to develop a route into a commercially viable state but a council might be able to introduce controls, etc., to make it commercially not viable, and then use that excuse to withdraw the route. Then ratepayers and taxpayers would end up paying more.

National has very good reasons to be very suspicious of this legislation. When the bill was first introduced into Parliament, its purpose clause, clause 3, stated: “The purpose of this Act is to contribute to the aim of achieving an integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable land transport system.” It took us a lot of effort and deliberation to reintroduce the word “affordable”, and that word has now been reintroduced into the purpose clause of this legislation. There was a hidden agenda in the Labour-led Government—once again—with the aid of the Green Party and, possibly, to a certain extent New Zealand First, to drop the word “affordable” and to make commercially viable routes unaffordable, in order to make sure that public transport might become unaffordable, from the point of view of ratepayers or taxpayers in terms of subsidies. We could have bus routes that are really working well at the moment, but because of this desire to have overall control over every service, ratepayers and taxpayers could end up paying a higher subsidy—not for better services, and not for services that are responsive to passengers, but maybe just for planners who like to have a grandiose idea of how public transport should be administered or planned. So National is very happy that at least, after long deliberations, we have introduced the word “affordable” back into the purpose clause of this legislation.

Part 1 and Part 2 are really all about the controls, authority, and powers that will go into the transport authority. That is why the process and the individual provisions are very, very important. It is just as well that National has been there every step of the way; otherwise, we would have ended up with a public transport system that was not affordable because of that word not being included in the original purpose clause of the bill. Can one imagine that in New Zealand we could dream of implementing a public transport system that could be unaffordable for passengers, ratepayers, and taxpayers, just because some planners had a grandiose vision of how the public transport service should be run?

I want to put the record straight. Unfortunately, the advice from the Regulations Review Committee went missing. We are not blaming anybody for this, but we agreed in good faith for the bill to be referred back to the select committee so that we could examine those powers and controls.

Bennett DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this

As we have debated the Public Transport Management Bill, some serious issues of process have come up. The Transport and Industrial Relations committee, a select committee that had functioned quite well for a number of years, had a number of difficulties with regard to the information that was filed in front of it. The way that some parties on that select committee acted in respect of information and of their voting status, and the way that the select committee was not given due entitlement to discuss and consider all the issues, are really a reflection of what we are seeing from this Government.

The New Zealand First - Labour Government is a dying Government. This Government is in its last days, and it will do anything to pass what it sees as being its legacy for New Zealand. It is a legacy whereby the Government has not actually achieved the goals that the people wanted their Government to achieve. The legacy is built around personal ambition and personal reflection—not about the issues that count for New Zealanders—and it is based not on honesty and truth but on fallacy and the deception of the public, through a number of pieces of legislation.

This bill is another example of such legislation. It is an example of Labour rushing things through, saying one thing, and doing another thing. It is another example of Labour making an agreement with the commercial players in an industry, then changing its mind just at the time that it wants to enact legislation. It is another example of how New Zealand First works with industry and also with the Labour Government when it needs to, can do, and wishes to. The bill is tainted by both political parties that are together on this bill having changed their tack, to the detriment of passengers in the Auckland area especially.

There is an issue in public transport, and there are some major players there that the public need to be aware of. Those players are, firstly, the passengers themselves, who need a public transport system that provides them with alternatives for their transportation. Secondly, there are the players in the industry, who provide a lot of the transport networks and opportunities. Thirdly, there are the regional councils, who have a vital role to play in providing some direction to the services. All those parties need to work together, and it is the Government’s job to be the glue in between all of them and to provide some solutions.

The Government had a solution, which was agreed to by everyone concerned. But then, suddenly, Labour decided it had a better idea. Maybe it was influenced by the Greens. Maybe it had to do a deal with them and they tried to get a higher public transport component in the deal, which is why option C became a viable option. Then we had another option that sort of came out of the headwind of New Zealand First, for some unknown reason. The movement has been away from what had been glued together as an agreement between the main parties, and now we see a political debate between the ideals of what the Government wants, in terms of total control, and what New Zealand First is talking about, with regard to the bus industry having its own mandate.

Let us go back and discuss this issue in a proper way, in order to get a common solution that is for the benefit of public transport users in Auckland. Let us go back and look at the solution that was proposed and agreed to by the people involved. That is what the Government needs to do. We do not need to be debating a bill that reflects just one ambition or one desire and does not take into account the reality of what could be found to be a common solution. We face that real dilemma here today, and it is to the shame of this Government. This Government is passing legislation without due regard to what it could actually achieve. The Government is trying to pass legislation to give a mandate to its supporters, and to try to pay back people who have supported it. New Zealand First and Labour will be known as a Government that tried to pay back its supporters in the last month of its term, and they will go down together as parties that have been doing that together. That is a tremendous shame, because we believe that there is the option of implementing what the parties agreed upon, that we should go back to what everybody had agreed upon as a workable solution, and that that could actually provide the options that public transport providers and users wish to see provided.

When we look at the procedural aspect of what happened in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, we see that a mistake was made. There was not the information provided and the process followed that one would normally expect, and the Regulations Review Committee took the very unusual step of writing to our select committee and informing us of that. A special meeting was held about that issue, and the process involved left a lot to be desired. I do not blame my chairperson, Mr Mark Gosche. He was under instructions, I think, from higher up in the food chain of the Labour Government. He would have been told that whatever happened, it was up to him to get this legislation through. He would have been told not to worry about taking the approach that he would normally engage in to the select committee process.

Mark Gosche knew that he was not doing the right thing, but he had to do it because he was told he had a deadline to meet. He had only 2 weeks of House sitting time left, and he needed the bill to be passed before that deadline. There was no reason why Mark Gosche needed to call that meeting so quickly. There was no reason why he would want to push the legislation through, but he was told from on high that this bill was one thing Labour wanted to get through in its dying days, and that it was his job to beat the process, to go above the process, and to just do whatever was required so that the legislation before the Committee today would be passed.

It is a shame when someone uses the political process in that way. Why would people want to use the political process of New Zealand in a manner like that, just to fulfil their private ambitions of passing legislation, just to pay back their supporters, or just to pay back the interests that some parties in the New Zealand First - Labour Government feel they need to? This legislation is not about looking after passengers. Passengers need support and direction; they do not need a Government that just goes to one side of the argument. There are players involved in the decision making on this issue. Those players had together come to a decent solution that was in the best interests of passengers, yet the Government has ignored that. The Government has gone beyond that. It has abused the process of the select committee, and it has abused the process of this House, effectively, in doing so. The Government has done that just in order to pass its own legislation.

Mark Gosche’s career, which has had high pinnacles in this House, will now be in tatters after he had to use the select committee process in that way. He will not be a happy man—he is better than that, and he knows he is. He could have dealt with this legislation in another way: one that actually satisfied all the parties involved. His problem was that he ran out of time; he had only 2 weeks in which to pass this legislation. The Government has run out of time; it has only 2 weeks left. It knows that, so it is trying to do all the little quick-fix solutions that it can in its remaining time. It is just a shame to see a career like that of Mark Gosche being abused in this political environment to fast track legislation that needed time to be debated, and that needed to go back to the select committee so that we could relook at the issue and come to a full solution that would actually be in the best interests of the public transport users of New Zealand, especially those in Auckland.

Public transport users need that kind of support, and they need a Government that will provide solutions, listen, and be ready to work in the best interests of all the players—not just in the interests of certain political agendas and parties.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) Link to this

I want to carry on a little from where I got started in the first couple of calls, with regard to why National has put up a series of amendments to the Public Transport Management Bill. I make it absolutely clear now that if the Government were to support the amendments we have put up, we would support the legislation. I want to make it even clearer. I believe—I truly, truly believe—that the amendments I have put up are a complete and absolute reflection of what the Government agreed to at Cabinet in February 2007. I say that because I have looked at the Cabinet minute, I have looked carefully at what it says, and I believe that my amendments reflect exactly what Cabinet agreed to. This is not the National Party running its own agenda or—as some of the grubby little comments I have heard coming from some members suggest—some bus company’s agenda. I say to the Minister that if she can find anything in the amendments I have put up that is inconsistent with Cabinet’s agreement in February 2007, then I will accept that we are wrong.

I repeat, so that people listening out there can understand what I am now saying, that our amendments are to try to implement what I think was a proper decision—that is, option B, which then got cannibalised during the process of drafting up the legislation to an option B+, and is now in danger of getting cannibalised even further to becoming option C, which is what the Greens want.

For the sake of the poor old drive time listeners out there, who will not have a clue what these options are, let me try in a nutshell to give members of this House and the drive time audience a bit of a lesson about what is going on here. There are two forms of bus service in any city. If we take Auckland, for example, we see that there are those we call commercial services, where a private sector operator, like the very good Howick and Eastern Buses in my electorate—and even in yours I think, Mr Chairperson—operates. They decide that they will run those services because they can make some money by carrying passengers and charging them for it. They are commercial services, and for those commercial services they get no subsidy whatsoever. They just do it like any other company out there, like a taxi company or a supermarket decides to operate its business.

Then there are what we call contracted services. I say to those members of the public who understand how the public transport system works that there are specific routes and specific times of day on those routes where it is not commercially viable for a bus company to operate. If it did, it would just lose money and go broke—no one would do it. So there needs to be some form of a public passenger transport subsidy paid for those routes.

Again, National is fully supportive of that. We understand that if one wants a viable, integrated, across-the-network operation one cannot just have buses running between 7 and 9 in the morning and then suddenly nothing until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. So the regional councils are given very large sums of money—$350 million, I think, in this year’s Budget—to use as public transport subsidies. They go out and say that they want to contract with bus companies to provide certain services, and in return they will pay a per-passenger subsidy in order to make it viable.

I want members of the House to understand that those are two very distinct worlds. There is a commercial world, where companies put some skin in the game, where they invest in their own buses, where they decide what they will do, and where they go out and charge what fares they like; and then there are the contracted services, where the Government, or by way of its proxy Government agency, the regional councils, says that it wants certain contracted services and it will buy them by paying subsidies.

There is nothing wrong with those two worlds. What is wrong is the degree to which this legislation will now come in as heavy-handed, jackboot legislation—and if we go to option C it will not only be heavy-handed, jackboot legislation but it will be almost Trotskyite-type stuff—where we will be able to dictate to a private sector bus company not just the stuff that we are contracting with them and paying them a subsidy for. Again, that is quite proper and quite right—he who pays the piper should call the tune, and if I am the regional council, with several tens of millions of dollars of subsidy to subsidise the route, then I should have that power. But this legislation is also looking to at least encroach into the stuff that is not being contracted. If option C from the Greens gets in, it will give the regional councils total authoritarian power to dictate to a private sector operator who has put his own money at risk and who has built his own business.

I will finish this speech quite quickly—it will be my last call on this part. All I want to say to the Minister—I am sorry if it sounds like a cracked record, but I repeat again—is that we are not trying to get the National Party’s view through these amendments. The changes I have put forward by way of my quite extensive amendments, which have had a lot of thought and work go into them—

Ha, ha!

Well, the Minister laughs. Basically, if she thinks my amendments are not worth supporting, she is saying that Cabinet, which decided on these very issues back in February 2007, was a bunch of dunderheads. This will be really good—I ask those people listening to the debate tonight to listen carefully when the Minister takes the call, and to listen to her tell us why my proposed amendments are not a reflection of what Cabinet agreed to.

There is one last bit that we will get into a lot more in the debate on Part 2, but again I go back to the process. You see, when the Regulations Review Committee wrote to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, which never received that correspondence, it suggested some amendments that the committee might like to consider. I understand why, if those amendments were as simple as “delete clause 10”, that would not need any deliberation or consideration—it is just saying that clause 10 is wrong and to delete it. If that is the sort of recommendation that had come to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, I accept that the Minister is right and I accept that the chairperson is right: we could have just done it by a lunchtime meeting and said “Well, they say ‘take out clause 10; insert this; delete that’.” But the recommendations from the Regulations Review Committee have some things of a nature that I think members of the committee needed to put some work into. An amendment to clause 10(1)(a) was: “clarify the relationship between controls adopted under clause 12 and regional public transport plans to ensure that controls are subject to a consultation procedure before they are adopted.”

So the recommendation was not to “delete clause 10” or “add the following two words”. It was a recommendation of a very general nature, which the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee should have had an opportunity to sit down to consider and ask how best it could clarify that relationship. It is a nebulous recommendation, quite broad and far-reaching—and there is more. Yes, the committee went on to say we could amend clause 12 to include provisions, but it then said we could insert some criteria into clause 52(a)(ii) to, again, clarify the circumstances in which a commercial service may be exempt from these controls.

I say again to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Annette King, that those words are not definitive. They need some thought. How do we clarify that? Members of the select committee, who had considered this legislation and listened to all the submissions, should have had the opportunity to sit for one sitting day—given that this has been in the pipeline since at least February of last year—and ask how those words could be clarified.

Some other recommendations that came from the Regulations Review Committee were far more definitive, and I think they are fine. One recommendation is to delete clause 10(1)(j), unless a clear need for expeditious amendments to clause 10 by regulations is demonstrated. I think that is fair enough. Another recommendation is to amend clause 12 to include provisions for a merits-based appeal against the imposition of a control by an affected person. Well, that is interesting. I do not think it is all that definitive. I think there may be members of this House who have a different view on what provisions could go into that.

I repeat that this is a very sad day for the democratic process. I ask the Minister, and we will watch her like a hawk on this question, whether my amendments reflect what her Cabinet agreed to—not the National Party, the bus company, or anybody else whom the dreadful accusations might come flying at us from. Keith Locke from the Greens should listen carefully to this. This is what Cabinet agreed to in February, and I have put up those amendments in order to say that if that is where we go—and we agree with what Labour members put together as a Cabinet, and the minute reflects it—then National will actually support this bill in both the Committee stage and the third reading.

We were told about the stalking horse. Because Peter Brown made it clear he would not support option C, we were told, almost that night: “Oh, guess what? The Minister is doing a deal with the Greens. They’re going to stick up amendments to get option C. The Minister will make out that she had to go with it, you know, because the Greens are doing it.”

No we won’t. We’ll just go with it.

The Minister says they will go with it. Labour members are going with it, so now they have circumvented their old mates in New Zealand First, whom they no longer need. They can slap them on the scrapheap, and say “OK, you are not supporting us on this.” We knew all along that option C was going to come, either through a Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister, because that most certainly was being considered—

Gosche Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) Link to this

It is just amazing that three National members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee are getting up and flapping their lips for the sake of it, without making a single ounce of sense in the debate so far. They are concentrating on something from the Regulations Review Committee that I will reiterate. The Regulations Review Committee sent a letter. It got lost in the system. It was not the committee’s fault, it was not anybody’s fault, but it got lost in the system. We dealt with it last week. We gave notice of the meeting the week before.

A whole week?

A whole week. We said we would take this very simple stuff and look at it, and we did, and it took us 25 minutes. We had a report from the officials that said they agreed with what the Regulations Review Committee said, and that they would change the Public Transport Management Bill accordingly. There was one change they had an option on: whether to delete a clause or to put in a consultation clause. They have gone with a consultation clause. We have had all this debate from the National Party’s three spokespeople on transport—who have not got a clue.

We heard during the course of the submission process that there are three major cities in this country that spend big on public transport: Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland. All support the bill. Christchurch says: “We’re doing this now. Pass the bill so we can legitimise it, because we’ve been doing what the bill outlines, anyway.” Wellington said: “We need the bill as it is, and we want you to pass it.’ Auckland said—and this is something that needs to go on the Hansard record, because every territorial local authority and the regional council in Auckland agreed, which is something that Aucklanders love to hear, because they have not heard it for such a long time—that all of local government in Auckland agrees a further option needs to be added to the bill. It is called option C.

It’s only an option.

It is only an option, and Auckland can use it if it wishes to. All of Auckland agrees on it, except for the National Party.

So what did National members put up instead? Aucklanders are going to like this. Everybody says that if we are going to have a viable public transport system, we should have integrated ticketing and fares. Well, Bill English has had his way. He has rolled Maurice Williamson, who knows that to be the truth. Maurice has had to put up an amendment that says no, people can have other tickets as well. That is what his amendment says. Bill English has won the day, and Maurice has been rolled again, as he was on his toll roads.

I have to ask myself what has happened to Maurice Williamson. I have always known him to be extremely strong in his views and knowledgable on transport. Nobody else in National comes near him, yet Bill English, who would not have a clue because he has never seen a bus in Dipton, has won the day on this one, and integrated ticketing would go under National. National members also ask us to give hundreds of millions of dollars to the owners of these companies, but not make them accountable. I know that one of Mr Williamson’s amendments would say that ferries are exempt from disclosing that information. So the taxpayer and the ratepayer give those companies loot, and they do not have to tell them what they do with it, because National’s amendment would do away with that.

This is the real joke—2-hour bundling of services. Now, we know how it works at the moment. Someone can register a commercial route in Auckland that gives people one bus in the morning and one in the afternoon, and maybe one somewhere else. That is not the way to run a public transport system. It is a joke, and National wants it to remain a joke, because one of Mr Williamson’s amendments says we cannot bundle services in the way in which everybody who knows anything about public transport would bundle them. No, National members say we can only bundle services for 2 hours’ maximum. What an absolute joke! National members want do away with integrated ticketing and with the ability of regional councils to have a sensible bus service, train service, or ferry service. National members want to hand out money to the private sector with no accountability, and that is what they have come up with by way of amendments.

Absolute rubbish!

The member should read Bill English’s amendments—they have the member’s name on them—then he will understand them. We have already had a chance to look at them. Mr Williamson is saying we could have integrated ticketing but we could have other stuff, as well. That is what is wrong now and it is why the system does not work. The member knows that, because he has been around the world. He has seen London and how the system works there. Could Mr Williamson inform us whether London is running a system like option A, option B, or option C?

Option B.

Actually option C is the one that is run in London. The member has been there on the plane so often that he should know that.

Labour members believe in public transport. When Maurice Williamson was the Minister of Transport, $18 million went into Auckland public transport. Over $300 million now goes in. That speaks volumes for National’s commitment to public transport. Suddenly National is supposed to care about it. We heard David Bennett talking as if it was the most momentous thing this Parliament had dealt with in its last 9 years. I think it is pretty momentous to fix up the legislative mess that has been sitting there for a very, very long time. That is why I support the bill. I listened to the major councils from Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland and they all said “Fix it.” Well, we have been fixing it by putting in real money. We now want to have proper controls, the ability for integrated ticketing, and financial accountability for people.

When Aucklanders were getting only $18 million out of the Government we probably were not worried about disclosure, because there was nothing to disclose. There were no bus services to speak of. Those services were run down; they were a wreck. It was what Maurice Williamson gifted to Auckland—a public transport system that was carrying fewer passengers in 2000 than it was in 1955, when I was born. That was his victory. He made sure that public transport was destroyed, and that is because he does not believe in it. He gets a car. A bus is not something that he recognises—those big maroon things that go past the window outside his office. I have had to tell him a number of times in this Chamber that those things are buses and that ordinary people from his electorate get on them, pay a ticket price, and want to go into town to where they work. That is what is called public transport. National members could not give a hoot about public transport because they never use it and they could not care less. That is why they starved public transport of funds, and the bus companies know that, because they are now looking—

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Bennett DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this

As we are looking at Part 1, I think there has been a lot of talk about what actually happened in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee by members involved in that select committee process. One of the things that one looks for in a select committee is a transparent and accountable process, in that people know what is going on and can submit in the genuine faith that their submissions will actually make a difference. The last thing one would want in a select committee is for the decisions to be made through a process that does not avail the public of that ability to make constructive criticism and provide solutions. What is the point of a select committee if there cannot be consultation? We cannot just have select committee processes that are sped up for the last 2 weeks of the Parliamentary term, and then feel that we endear ourselves to the public and achieve the purpose of the process.

A lot of people in the industry will naturally be aggrieved at the process taken by the Minister in this case, and by the chair of the select committee under her instructions. I am sure that reflects the view mainly of passengers of public transport, because they are the real losers in this case. It is not the bus companies or the regional council; it is the passengers that lose, because the passengers do not get the opportunity to have put in front of them the best possible solution to this problem—a solution that would avail itself of a conjoint approach from Government, local government, regional government, bus companies, and also passenger representative bodies as well. I guess what the National Party finds so distressing in what has happened in the process leading up to this Committee stage is that we have actually missed out on some fundamental processes within a select committee. That means we will not have the legislation going forward that we should have had, and that the public of New Zealand have been let down by this Parliament once again during the term of this Government.

If we look at what has happened to some of the conceptual ideas that went behind the options that were portrayed throughout the discussion on this bill, we see that it had been a long enough process, but the reality of what people wanted to see happen in the legislation was not made clear. I think there were many agendas that were hidden, and the Government of the day was not prepared to come out and say what it actually wanted to achieve. It went into an agreement with other parties through a Cabinet process and then did not hold itself to its word. It made an agreement with commercial operators that would expect a degree of commercial sensitivity and, also, a degree of respect for the agreement. This Government has shown itself not to be willing to fulfil its agreements with the commercial sector, and we are seeing that publicly played out on the TV at the moment with the inability of the commercial sector and the Government to see eye to eye on how to do business deals. We are seeing that in regard to the funding of political parties.

The commercial world operates on a different basis from this Government. It operates on the basis of accountability and honesty. What it says it does, and it sticks by it. In this case we have a perfect example of a Government changing its mind—saying one thing and doing another. It will do this again in this process of the Committee stage. It will put up Supplementary Order Papers to bring option C back. It will do that again, and it will do something different from what it agreed upon. There will be other parties in this House that, for some unknown reason, may stick with some other options. But the reality is that there was an option that was decided upon. It was a constructive decision that would have been for the benefit of passengers, but it was not fulfilled. The political parties in this House need to look at that, and look at the way they deal with the consumer, and also the corporate sector, and stick to their word. If parties agree on something, they should do it.

No word was given to it.

Well, if there was no word, how come Cabinet agreed upon it?

No word was given to them.

So there was no agreement?

There was a process of Parliament to go through. The public are allowed a say.

But did the Minister not agree on something with it?

The public have a say, and this House decides.