Transport Legislation Bill

I move, That the Transport Legislation Bill be now read a second time. I would like to thank the members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for the excellent work they have done on this bill. Regulation of the civil aviation, land transport, and maritime transport sectors is carried out under the Civil Aviation Act, the Land Transport Act, and the Maritime Transport Act. This bill amends all those Acts.

The select committee listened very carefully to the submissions that were received and has made a number of changes to the bill as a result. I support those changes. This is an important bill. The Government is committed to achieving the New Zealand Transport Strategy’s vision of an affordable, integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable transport system by 2010. The Government’s achievement of this vision will see New Zealand moving again.

This bill implements key recommendations of the Government’s transport sector review. The review is conducted to ensure that the Crown transport sector is well placed to help the Government to achieve its transport vision. The bill as introduced contained measures to broaden the objectives and functions of the Civil Aviation Authority and the Maritime Safety Authority to align with the New Zealand Transport Strategy, to dissolve the Land Transport Safety Authority and Transfund New Zealand and replace them with a new Crown land transport entity—Land Transport New Zealand—and to integrate safety funding with other land transport funding.

It was pleasing to see that most submissions supported the bill, albeit with some qualifications. I take this opportunity to discuss some of the changes made to the bill by the select committee as a result of the submissions received. The transport sector review recommended that the focus of the various transport entities be expanded beyond safety to the broader approach in the New Zealand Transport Strategy. However, the review also emphasised the need to ensure that safety remained an important priority. The committee heard from a number of submitters who, although generally supporting the broadened focus of the New Zealand Transport Strategy, were concerned that the bill diluted the focus on safety.

The committee took these concerns very seriously. It has therefore recommended a number of changes to ensure that there is no doubt that safety remains a priority for the Minister and the transport entities. I endorse these recommendations. Among a number of technical changes to clarify the hierarchy between the Minister’s objectives and functions and those of the transport entities, the committee has recommended that the Minister be given a new function under the various Acts to promote safety. This new function would mirror the functions of the transport entities, which must also promote safety.

As well, the committee has recommended that the criteria that the Minister must take into account when establishing rules be strengthened with regard to safety. These criteria list a number of factors that the Minister must take into account, including the costs that particular rules might impose on the industries that are subject to the rules. Rather than taking into account the need to assist safety, the committee has proposed that the Minister take into account the need to maintain and improve safety. The committee has also recommended some refinements to the powers of the various directors who have regulatory functions under the various Acts.

In addition to the changes suggested in this safety context the committee has also recommended a number of clarifications to take into account the fact that, in the future, rules will be made for purposes other than safety. A significant policy initiative of this bill is to integrate safety funding with other land transport funding through amendments to the Land Transport Management Act. To achieve this integration, the requirement for a safety administration programme is being replaced by a new requirement for Land Transport New Zealand to complete a land transport programme. Land Transport New Zealand’s land transport programme would contain all those activities that it and the New Zealand Police wish to undertake, including those previously contained in the safety administration programmes—for example, safety information campaigns and road policing.

The funding of this programme will then be determined in the broader context of land transport funding decisions made by the new entity. In the interests of promoting integration the bill allows approved organisations, such as local authorities, to include Land Transport New Zealand’s proposed activities in their land transport programmes. This means that proposed activities of Land Transport New Zealand and the New Zealand Police can be considered in the context of, and at the same time as, the activities being considered by approved organisations.

Approved organisations must consult on their land transport programmes, as must Land Transport New Zealand on its programmes. The committee wanted to make it clear that Land Transport New Zealand need not consult on any activity included in an approved organisation’s land transport programme.

The committee has also recommended a new name for the Maritime Safety Authority. Instead of the name proposed in the bill, the committee has recommended the name “Maritime New Zealand”. The committee has also recommended that the name change be delayed until 1 July 2005. The new name is broad enough to encompass safety while encompassing broader maritime objectives. Some submitters were concerned that a name change could compromise the Maritime Safety Authority’s relationship with industry. The delay in changing the name is sensible because it will ensure that the change process can be managed well and allows plenty of time to communicate the new name to the industry.

I intend to move amendments in the Committee stage and to lodge a Supplementary Order Paper at an appropriate time. One amendment, by way of a Supplementary Order Paper, will give the Minister responsible for the Maritime Transport Act the additional function of protecting the marine environment. Another amendment clarifies that the regional land transport committees must have a membership that reflects the balance of the five objectives of the Land Transport Management Act and that people appointed to represent those objectives should come from the wider regional community, rather than from regional councils or territorial authorities.

Once again, I thank the select committee for the work it has done on this bill.

If ever this House wanted to hear from a Minister a speech that contained raw passion, if ever this House wanted to hear a speech from a Minister who was committed to his portfolio, if ever members of this House wanted to be riveted to their seats by a staggeringly focused speech, that speech was not it. That was the dullest defence of any legislation before this House that I have heard, from a Minister who is clearly bored with his portfolio.

The National Party is very sad about this legislation because we could have been happy to support the vast bulk of it. It was a review of the transport organisations and a review was required. We still support some of what has been done on this bill, even though we will be voting against the legislation. I will come to the specific reason that we will vote against it at the end of my speech, but I will start with some of the good bits. I think the first really, really good bit is that it takes the policy advice functions away from the Land Transport Safety Authority and moves them back into the Ministry of Transport where the Minister has some—and I will not be so bold as to say a lot—of say over the way the ministry functions. From my experience as Minister, the Minister had almost no control over the Land Transport Safety Authority. It was a law unto itself and did what it wished. That is a good move and I think we should give the Government a tick in that column. Moving policy staff back to the ministry, where they will have to work hand in glove with the Minister about what is going on, is a good move.

The second move, obviously, is to take Transfund—which I am very proud to take the credit for setting up—split it away from Transit, and move it into the combined organisation called Land Transport New Zealand, which is a combination of the Land Transport Safety Authority and Transfund. There is some merit to that as well. We do not need two boards, two bureaucracies, two chief executives, and so on if there will be just an operational unit, which is what Land Transport New Zealand will be. Again, the National Party is happy that those two bodies have been merged. We were nervous that Transfund’s focus on what its job was would be muddied by this, but it has not been. It is a good move. We will see Land Transport New Zealand become far more focused on land transport outcomes. It is a move that we support.

Some of the legislation, I have to say, is a little bit silly. We have got to the point of renaming the Maritime Safety Authority. The debate that went on in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about different acronyms had to be seen to be believed. I will not even give some of them, because they ended up being so rude when all the letters were put together. Well, Mark Peck screws up his face, but I will tell him later what some of the words turn out as, if one takes the words “maritime”, “safety”, “authority”, and a few others. However, I will not put them in, because I will be tempted to give what the words were. But, no, we have come to the momentous decision—and this is something that New Zealanders have been lying in their beds at night worried about—that the Maritime Safety Authority’s new name will be Maritime New Zealand. It will rip a whole part of our society’s fabric to pieces, because of that renaming.

What I was interested in and was really looking forward to was the Labour Party’s promise from the 1990s that it would repeal the Maritime Transport Act. I was looking to see Mark Peck and the submarine Plimsoll line brigade who waged war in this House for months about the disgraceful Maritime Transport Bill. They said that when they became the Government of New Zealand, they would repeal it overnight. It would be gone, not by lunchtime, but before breakfast. It was that dreadful Maritime Transport Bill. Where are we? Have we passed Labour’s 5-year anniversary? No, it is coming up to the 5-year anniversary of the Labour Government, and there has been not a mutter, not a murmur, and not a sausage has changed from that legislation. Labour members said that it was—and many people can check Hansard if they want to look at it—the most obnoxious, disgraceful, and evil legislation in maritime transport history. I looked with great passion at this Transport Legislation Bill, and thought: “Well, obviously my good work in the mid-1990s in terms of the Maritime Transport Bill will go for a burton, once the Labour Party gets its hands on it.”, and 5 years later, those members have not touched it.

The reason the National Party is opposing this bill can be seen in our minority report in the commentary on the bill. I will read from it so that those thousands of listeners out there in drive time can hear the reason. “This legislation removes the wording ‘a cost is a reasonable cost where the value of the cost to the nation is exceeded by the value of the resulting benefit to the nation’ from all civil aviation, maritime and land transport legislation.” That is what has always been known in the vernacular as “safety at reasonable cost”. Why would one be opposed to that? Why on earth would one not want that to be the talisman touchstone of the legislation? Some lunatic Minister in the future, maybe from the Greens or whoever, could decide that: “I know what I’m going to do. I don’t care what it costs the nation. I don’t care how much the cost is, and there are almost no benefits. I’ve decided that we’re going to move logs by pushbike in this country.”, and that is what that Minister could go ahead and do. Members of the Labour Government laugh, but we must have no doubt about it. If the Greens get some control in a joint Labour Cabinet, that is exactly how logs will be transported—over the Kaimais on pushbike.

But the Government could have kept what was, as I say, the touchstone of all transport legislation. People appeared before the select committee, like Tony Friedlander from the Road Transport Forum, who was quite complimentary. He said that he thought the legislation was OK, but he asked why on earth we were removing the criteria for safety at reasonable cost. It is just a barrier; it stops ludicrous behaviour. So when a Minister wants to do something new in the transport sector, he or she has to sit down and do the numbers. The Minister will say that: “The cost of doing this is X million dollars, and the benefits to the nation are Y million dollars, and as long as Y is bigger than X—that is, the benefits are greater than the cost—let’s go to it.” But if one does the currents under this legislation, if it goes through, one can see that where the cost will be X million dollars and the benefits might be zero, the Minister can still allow it to proceed.

National’s minority report further states: “New Zealand National has serious concerns that the safety at reasonable cost concept has been significantly diluted. The new and undefined concept of ‘sustainability’ …”—and I will repeat that; it is “undefined”. We hear so many speeches from the Labour members about sustainability of transport, and it is a wonderful word, and it is a beautiful and warm, warm word. Many of us spend our weekends with sustainability on our mind, but it does not provide any definition, and it does not provide the longstanding economic discipline that was enforced through the safety at reasonable cost provision.

Finally, if this House wants one better reason to vote against this legislation, I refer members to clause 30, which inserts new subsection (4A) of section 15. Members should listen to this, as it is a blinder. Subsection (4A) states: “When preparing a land transport programme under section 12A, the Authority must—(a) consult—”, and I will go through it. For members of the Labour Party who do not even know how to spell land transport programme, it is to do with what roading and other transport initiatives will be conducted that year. The Land Transport Authority must consult “(i) Transit; and (ii) every affected regional council; and (iii) every affected territorial authority; and (iv) every affected approved organisation; and (v) the Ministry of Health; and (vi) the Accident Compensation Corporation; and (vii) the Commissioner; and (viii) the Secretary; and (ix) the Ministry of Justice; and”—it all sounds fine—“(x) land transport users and providers; and (xi) affected communities; and”—

💬 Mark Peck: Yes.

I am with Mr Peck so far. There are ticks all the way down. Then the next one is: “(xii) Māori; and (xiii) the public; …”. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean that Māori are not members of the public? Does that mean that they are not represented by their territorial authorities and so on? This is the same Government that preached and screamed: “We do not have racist legislation on our books. We do not tolerate racist legislation. We do not want to target any group because of their race.” But in this legislation, the Government is picking Māori out for special consultation on a road programme, far, far above any other member of the public.

I will not speak quite as loudly, but hopefully with close to the passion of the Hon Maurice Williamson, a former Minister of Transport. But it was sad to listen to that speech. He does identify the major components of this legislation, which will further improve our transport system by, amongst other things, creating a new agency: Land Transport New Zealand. Mr Williamson agrees that it is appropriate that the Land Transport Safety Authority of New Zealand and Transfund be merged into this new organisation. It is important that the policy arm of the Land Transport Safety Authority come under greater control of the ministry and, therefore, that we have a more accountable government for the transport industry as a consequence.

We are helping to fix the transport industry in New Zealand. We are unlocking Auckland roads. Despite the major parts of this legislation being favoured by the National Party, those members say, because of politics—although they do not say that it is because of politics, it is because of politics—that they will vote against the legislation. This is good legislation. I encourage National members to follow up on what they say about the merits of the fundamentals of this legislation, and to cast their votes in favour of it.

I just listened to David Parker make a comment about unlocking Auckland’s roads. Really, Mr Parker ought to go up to Auckland some time and just see how difficult it is, and how difficult it will be, to unlock Auckland’s roads, as he says. This legislation will not unlock them. One of the problems with this legislation is that it has too many flaws in it. Unfortunately, the flaws do not overcome all the benefits. The main benefit of this legislation is that it will provide safety mechanisms, and that is one of the areas that New Zealand First has to support in this legislation. It is safety first. Unfortunately, the Minister has allowed this bill to be worded in such a way that it removes safety at a reasonable cost. Why on earth would one want to remove that part of the legislation and allow safety to be put into a numbers and cost basis?

What will happen with this legislation is that it will provide competition, and one of the disadvantages of competition is that something has to give. The thing that gives under competition is safety, and safety mechanisms. Sadly, the Minister has allowed safety at reasonable cost to be removed from this legislation.

New Zealand First hopes that the Government’s new Land Transport New Zealand will be more of a business model and business operation, that it will be progressive in its thinking, and certainly progressive in the way that it approaches New Zealand roads, to bring it into a satisfactory area for the 21st century. Without decent roads in Auckland in particular, and throughout the country, land transport in this country will grind to a halt.

The legislation also covers maritime transport. It is an area that we find rather strange when we consider what the difference is between land transport and transport by land. They are quite different when we consider that in this bill “transport by land” includes coastal shipping and also includes transport by means of harbour ferries. I wonder at what stage the harbour will dry up so that we will be on the land. It is one of those sad anomalies that the Minister allowed such legislation to include the wording as it is. That takes away from the whole—

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: If it is a bridge between the two islands it is OK, but if it isn’t, it is not—is that what the member is saying?

The real transport Minister, Harry Duynhoven, has made the comment that if we fill in the gap between the North Island and the South Island, then we will not need the ships across there—it will just be land.

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: You have just answered your own question because you are not very bright on this.

Mr Harry Duynhoven has made comments on filling in the strait.

New Zealand First has major concerns about this bill. The concerns are such that we hope we can work through them. We consider that safety is paramount, and we are sad that the phrase “safety at reasonable cost” was removed, therefore allowing for competition. I will go back to the matter of competition, because where it endangers the lives of New Zealanders, it is, I think, a dangerous line to take. We hope the Minister will reconsider this and look a little bit closer at the potential for competition and the fact that he has removed “safety at reasonable cost”.

I conclude by just saying that New Zealand First will have to support this legislation because of the safety mechanisms, but we are disappointed that “safety at reasonable cost” has been removed.

New section 14 inserted by clause 5 states that the objectives of the Minister under this Act are “(a) to undertake the Minister’s functions in a way that contributes to the aim of achieving an integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable transport system; and (b) to ensure that New Zealand’s obligations under international civil aviation agreements are implemented.”

I want to concentrate on paragraph (a) and, in particular, focus on the sustainability provisions. During the hearings and deliberations on the bill, much was made of the emphasis on sustainability. There is little doubt in my mind that efficiency and cost-effectiveness will inevitably be considerations when deciding on our transport solutions. There can be no such certainty, going on past experience, that the sustainability and the impact of our transport solutions on the social and environmental fabric of our communities will get the same consideration. In fact, there is little evidence that any attention has been paid to the impact of New Zealand travelling habits on the lives of the travellers, or on the environment through which they travel, or to the contribution of those travel habits to the twin threats of peak oil and climate change.

The Western World’s fascination with roads and automobiles continues to constitute the greatest contributors to global warming and the depletion of fossil fuel. Nothing else has the same contribution. While motorcar devotees wax lyrical about the convenience of the private motorcar, it is worth noting that we have never spent so long in getting to the places we need to be, or so much time or money on travel.

In my childhood many of the products we bought and used were sourced from our own communities, and most people were wise enough to live close to the places where they worked, played, shopped, and went to school. Those factors alone contributed greatly to the amount of leisure that people enjoyed, the safety of our streets, the quality of our air and water, and our ease of access and participation in the lives of our communities.

Some of us saw in the Land Transport Management Act not merely a revolution in transport management, but the possibility of addressing many of the other absurdities of 21st century living. The Act alone was unlikely to be sufficient to deliver the necessary changes, without changes to the authorities charged with administering it. This bill provides some of those changes.

The very least we could hope for is an improvement in public transport services, and in cycle and pedestrian facilities. But if we go no further than making it possible to continue moving people and products unnecessarily, even by more efficient means, then we will have missed out on an opportunity to create communities that genuinely enhance the quality of our lives and the quality of our surroundings. More important, we are likely to have missed out on a last opportunity to make a meaningful contribution towards avoiding the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Climate change is a reality, is already happening, and is already affecting the weather in our country, but much more seriously in other countries, and that can only increase exponentially. I barely deliver a speech these days—I do not think I have delivered one for some months—without commenting on the extent of global warming. I think it is worth remembering that in the last 240-odd years carbon dioxide levels have increased by something around the vicinity of 90 parts per million—a one-third increase in the space of 240 years. This century, if we are lucky, it will double. It may travel to the highest levels in something like 40 million years, when sea levels, I might add, were 12 metres higher than they are now. It may not happen, but even if there were the remotest chance that it would, I would have thought we would be a little more careful. This bill is part of the measure to be a little more careful.

It is doubtful whether Transit New Zealand, with its very considerable skills in road building, or the Ministry of Transport, has the expertise or the experience to attempt the more ambitious goal, but the Green Party’s support for this bill is predicated on an understanding that the Minister is fully aware of the lack of expertise, and committed to finding it.

So what are the new skills? Well, most of our communities have never had to look beyond providing roads, and many have not begun to think beyond the needs of those with motorcars. The Land Transport Management Act obliges them to look at public transport and cycleways, and the needs of those who choose not to drive, or who cannot drive—they can no longer be ignored. However, it is unreasonable to expect each local authority to come up with the kind of expertise that it requires to wean people away from generations of motorcar dependency. It is not enough to provide services; genuine demand-management requires that we go out into the schools, the homes, and the workplaces to find out what the travel needs of people are, to make sure that the alternatives are in place, and to craft, if necessary, individual transport plans for the people in those communities—in our communities.

It is already happening in other parts of the world—Western Australia does it well, Perth has done it, by going out and doing just that: going into the neighbourhood and asking where people go, what time they travel, and when they come home again, and then pointing out that there are other ways of doing it. We are talking about a culture shift, a behaviour change, a move away from age-old practices that perpetuate, as ought to be patently obvious, what is bizarre and unsustainable.

I am delighted that Maurice Williamson foresaw the possibility of Greens having a greater say in transport management. We share his optimism. Brent Catchpole talked about the importance of roads. Unfortunately, that is what we have done whenever we have thought about transport in the past—we have assumed that that meant building more roads. I was up in Auckland recently. I was looking at its transport management, which is a very carefully managed transport system. For $180 million Auckland will get 20 kilometres of busway. That 20 kilometres of busway will potentially carry as many people as four lanes of motorway. I also saw 3 kilometres of motorway proposed, costing $160 million. Compare that with 20 kilometres of busway costing $180 million. The value is fairly clear.

He also made references to coastal shipping, as if somehow that was strange. If, in fact, shipping provides a smarter way of moving products, then that is the choice that communities need to make. If barges provide it, that is a choice that communities need to have open to them. If ferries are the choice, that is the choice that people need to have open to them, and this bill provides for that.

Each community will have the task, and has the task now, of preparing its land transport management strategy. These strategies are obliged to assist economic development, assist safety and personal security, improve access and mobility, protect and promote public health, and ensure environmental sustainability. The authority that oversees these has a responsibility to make sure that those transport plans do that. I am concerned that that expertise will be there so that they can make sure that these land transport management strategies are adequate.

My experience of writing these in the past is that they have been ignored more often than they have been observed. But under the Act, and this legislation, we in the Green Party are hopeful that we are making a step in the right direction, not merely in providing good transport, but in providing the kinds of communities that have a future. The kinds of communities and the kinds of behaviour that we are part of now probably do not have a future, certainly not an affordable future.

We found out last year, when we began the land transport management legislation, that, in fact, the Auckland mayors were asking for $5 billion to solve their transport problems. Most of that was aimed at building roads. By the end of the year, I think the figure they were asking for was $8 billion. By May of this year they were asking for $10 billion. If one is prepared to spend that kind of money, then there have to be smarter ways of spending it. Persuading people to change the way they travel rather than simply perpetuating the kinds of unsustainable habits that we have become accustomed to has to be the way to go.

So the Greens are supporting this legislation. We are delighted to have supported it all the way through. We are delighted to have supported the Land Transport Management Act, and we believe that it points to a future that my children deserve and that I think the world is actually crying out for in terms of examples of how we might live.

I rise on behalf of the ACT party to say that we supported the referral of the Transport Legislation Bill to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, but as it is still bad legislation we are voting against it. The bill was meant to focus on the reorganisation of the Crown entities involved with transport, but it has gone far too far and it actually codifies the New Zealand Transport Strategy. People may remember that strategy was written by the Greens and Heather Simpson—that is the worst-kept secret in New Zealand—and it completely refocuses transport. People will be listening to Parliament and thinking: “Goody—more transport legislation. We are going to get across Auckland and get to our appointments on time. We will be able to pick up our children on time. We are going to be able to have a life, instead of sitting in monstrous parking lots.” With every piece of transport legislation that goes through this House, the ending of the gridlock in Auckland and Wellington—Wellington is getting just as bad as Auckland—gets further and further away, because of all the increased consultation and because of the magic words that were brought into the New Zealand Transport Strategy and that are now being codified in this legislation: that we will have an affordable, an integrated, a safe, a responsible, and a sustainable transport system.

The issue is the use of the word “sustainability”. There is a sustainability filter through which all legislation must now pass. We are seeing the problems out there now because this House passed legislation that had to go through the Treaty of Waitangi filter. We are paying the price for that now, and in 5, 10, or 15 years’ time people will still be sitting on the motorways in Auckland, and they will still be trying to get busways on the North Shore. The Greens talk about buses, but there is no busway in sight for the North Shore.

💬 Hon Judith Tizard: Rubbish!

That member over there says “Rubbish!”. That member is the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues, and she told a suburban newspaper on 4 September 2002: “I am not convinced that the eastern corridor is the best solution, just so all the people in Howick can have an extra half-hour in bed.” Now the good people of Howick will be very interested to know that they do not count as Aucklanders; they are of very little concern to the Minister who is paid to represent them.

💬 Hon Richard Prebble: No concern.

No concern, at all. This legislation—and we will see more transport legislation come back to the House, because legislation that amends the legislation passed only last year is to come back in the next few weeks—will not build one new road. We heard submitter after submitter at the select committee who did support, as ACT supports, the reorganisation of the Crown entities, but the submitters had huge concerns about some of the issues in this bill, the main one being that the bill gets rid of safety at reasonable cost and replaces that term with sustainability. Sustainability is totally undefined. We had the officials come back to the select committee, and I asked them to define sustainability. I asked them what that term meant—whether it was a sustainable yield, or a benefit-cost ratio. The answer was: “No, no.”

If we go back to the New Zealand Transport Strategy, which brings in the magic word “sustainability”, we see it is not defined at all. Reasonable cost is defined—there is a definition of that. A cost is a reasonable cost when the value of the cost to the nation is exceeded by the value of the resulting benefit to the nation. Let me put the concept of reasonable cost in the words of the submitter to the select committee from, I think, the Bus and Coach Association. He was a very rational and intelligent man, and he said that every year at the beginning of the school year the issue arises of putting seat belts in buses. People argue that all seats in buses should have seatbelts. Now that is a good safety measure. It is a good thing to think of—it sounds good. But he said that when one actually goes into it, one finds it would cost something like $30 million to put seatbelts in buses, and that does not include the cost of putting on extra buses to carry all the people who can no longer stand in buses. So that is what we mean by safety at a reasonable cost. We need to have an objective basis for arguing as to which changes can be made, and that is the cost-benefit ratio. That is in the current law. It is an objective basis on which the Minister and the officials can work out whether or not we should take a safety measure. If we take that out of the law, then it becomes a situation of jokers wild, and such decisions are just based on someone’s belief or opinion.

The transport industry is already very highly regulated. It is an industry that more than any other, I would say, needs any increase in compliance costs that are forced upon it to be done on an objective basis, and that is absolutely not happening with regard to this legislation. That has just gone out the window. The fact that the Government would not take any notice of the submitters who came in to see the select committee is appalling. We heard submissions from the maritime industry. The maritime industry told us that the New Zealand Transport Strategy—and we are talking about ships here that move cargo and people around, and thinking of ships, barges, and ferries as transport; but no, this Government does not think in that way—mentions the maritime industry only twice, and the fishing industry only once. It does not acknowledge the huge advances that have been made by the maritime industry and the fishing industry, in terms of reducing deaths and accidents. Whenever there is a terrible accident at sea, like the one we read about recently where a man was caught in a crusher, the industry goes to extreme measures to protect its staff and workers. There are 1,750 fishing vessels in New Zealand, and they were mentioned only once in relation to the New Zealand Transport Strategy. The Government does not care about fishers, motorists, truck drivers, or small businesses. Most businesses in the transport industry in New Zealand are small to medium businesses, and they will have extra compliance costs forced upon them.

I finish by saying that the other appalling provision in this legislation that we have to consider is that there will be more consultation now with Māori when it comes to drawing up a land transport strategy. I would like to know why this Government thinks that Māori are not included in the public. Under the individuals, authorities, or entities that an authority must consult with when it is preparing a land transport programme, the Ministry of Transport, the Accident Compensation Corporation, the Minister of Justice, affected communities, the public, and Māori are mentioned. I am sure that it is a surprise to Māori to know that they are, first, not members of the public, and second, not affected communities. This bill is politically correct social engineering at its worst, and the ACT party does not support it.

I inform the House that United Future will support the second reading of the Transport Legislation Bill. It really is one further part in the process of reform and of expediting the development of our land transport system in New Zealand. Although the bill is not to be seen as the silver bullet that will solve all our problems, it is an important part of making sure that our transport network—our transport system—functions to the best of its ability, without being overburdened by unnecessary bureaucracy, and that ultimately we build a network that serves our economy and residents efficiently.

The bill gives effect to elements of the New Zealand Transport Strategy, which is the Government’s transport sector review. The Ministry of Transport will be strengthened in order to take over the policy functions currently being undertaken by the Land Transport Safety Authority and Transfund. Both the Land Transport Safety Authority and Transfund are to be abolished. It has been United Future’s policy for some time that the Land Transport Safety Authority be abolished. In fact, when Peter Dunne was here in the House on his own as the sole member of the United party, he campaigned strongly for the Land Transport Safety Authority to be dissolved. Since that time we have seen an improvement in the authority’s ability to carry out its functions, because of new leadership in that organisation. However, we still believe that there are too many policy people in the authority, and that it will be a wise move to transfer them to the new organisation. A new slimmed-down Crown entity called Land Transport New Zealand will be established to carry out the residual operational functions currently being undertaken by both the Land Transport Safety Authority and Transfund.

Several efficiencies will be gained from the restructuring of the Government transport sector—in particular, by clarifying that the Ministry of Transport is the lead transport agency. By giving the ministry the necessary policy-making resources, the duplications and contradictions caused by having policy functions distributed among more than one agency should be eliminated. Also, merging the two current land transport funding programmes—the national transport programme currently administered by Transfund, and the safety administration programme currently administered by the Land Transport Safety Authority—will streamline the funding allocations and better align such allocations with the New Zealand Transport Strategy. The bill also resolves a longstanding issue over which agency should have primary responsibility for undertaking search and rescue coordination. Currently, the Civil Aviation Authority alone has the legislative authority for that, but this bill gives that authority to the Minister of Transport so that integrated coordination can occur between more than one agency.

The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has done a very fine job on the submission process, and has recommended the bill back to the House with some changes, most of which are largely technical in nature. When one reads the committee’s report one does get the sense that it was largely unanimous in its deliberations, except for the issue surrounding safety at reasonable cost, which was mentioned by some of the speakers before me. It is important to see the amendments recommended by the committee in order to strengthen the emphasis on safety in the bill, and United Future welcomes that. All New Zealanders, I believe, want to see travel around New Zealand carried out as safely as possible. Too many New Zealanders still suffer unnecessary tragedies as a result of accidents on our transport network, so we are pleased to see that an emphasis is being placed on safety. I believe that that will ultimately move the Minister to be more active in building better roads within New Zealand, because only so much can be done to improve safety on our roads by the enforcement of rules and by better driver education, without also building better roads. Ultimately, it is only when we have First World - standard roads, with divided highways and fewer curves, bumps, hollows, and so on, that we will be able to travel more safely. One can never prevent someone drunk from getting behind the wheel, but he or she will not be able to cross the centre median if a decent amount of concrete, or at least a wire barrier, is there to stop him or her from hitting oncoming vehicles. So we welcome the strengthening of the emphasis on safety by the select committee.

We understand the concerns expressed by some submitters, particularly those in the transport industry, who wanted to see the wording “safety at reasonable cost” held within this new legislation. We know their concerns about how it would perhaps be possible to impose rules upon the transport industry without necessarily doing a decent analysis of how the cost benefit of that would flow on into real safety gains. However, on looking at the bill, and in particular at the requirement for the Minister and the agencies to consider safety in the light of how any proposed rule will assist economic development, I believe it gives assurance, or at least some satisfaction, that the Government will not be able to run amok with rules, without considering their effect on the economic development of our nation and on the economic efficiency of transport organisations operating within it.

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: And the rules process itself requires significant consultation with the industry involved.

That is correct, as the Minister has added for my benefit. I thank him. We will not be making that a die-in-the-ditch issue over this legislation. It is understandable that the transport industry, being assured by the officials that, in fact, safety at reasonable cost was contained within the bill, then questioned why it just could not see it in the legislation, in order to be sure. However, things have moved on in our transport legislation. We have now adopted new wording and phrases within it, and it is important to keep a consistent theme throughout all the reforms that are taking place within the transport sector.

We will be happy to support this legislation through its second reading, so it will move on to a Committee stage. I believe that all New Zealanders can be encouraged by the progress that has been made in this term of Parliament in many different areas, in order to address the needs that New Zealand motorists and the transport industry as a whole have been longing to have addressed over the last couple of decades, which are that we would build a better transport network, operate safely and efficiently, assist economic development, and improve access and mobility around the country.

A number of speakers have mentioned issues such as buses and the ongoing debate about whether the country needs to build more roads. I will conclude my speech with a few remarks about that, because we must not lose sight of the overall goal of dealing with the congestion that is creeping up on us in many areas around the nation. The issue of congestion faces, in particular, Auckland, and other cities like Tauranga and Wellington. The Greens continually harp on and say that the problem can be solved without building more roads. One almost gets sick of hearing that. We all accept the Greens’ point that just building more roads will not address the transport problems. We all accept that a multimodal approach is needed. We all accept that—

💬 Hon Richard Prebble: Don’t speak for us.

Except for the ACT party, we all accept that there is a place for public transport. Buses do have their place, but, of course, they run on roads. It is clear that we need to improve the roading network, that we need to continue to expand our motorway network, and that our State highway system does need constant upgrading. United Future is committed to working with the Government to see that accomplished, and we consider that this legislation takes us one step further in that direction.

I have listened with interest to some of the contributions made this afternoon, and I would like to say that in the East Coast electorate we are probably not calling out for a large additional number of either buses or bicycles. What we would like to have is some legislation that addresses the problem we have: an increase in the number of logging trucks, and the inability of our roads to deal with what is very much a new use of them. The people of the East Coast welcome this legislation as the Government’s response to the needs of the transport industry, not only in areas like Auckland but also in rural areas like the East Coast. We are very happy to support the legislation.

About the best thing one can say about this transport bill before the House today is that it is like a looking glass. It is a looking glass into what life would be like under a Greens-Labour Government. My goodness! What a slow pace of life there would be if the Greens were to get into power with Labour! I make this simple prediction: if this bill becomes an Act it will be repealed.

💬 Mark Peck: No way.

Yes, it will. It will be repealed by the time you get a job down south—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am not looking for a job. The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate.

I am sorry—this legislation will be repealed by the time the member loses his current employment and gets a new job, and it will be gone because, by its very nature, it is fundamentally flawed.

💬 Mark Peck: No, it’s not.

The chihuahua over there is chipping away.

💬 Mark Peck: Ankle-biter.

The ankle-biter is chipping away. I want to tell the House why this legislation will be gone, before the ink is even dry on the paper. The reason has been highlighted by many submitters who appeared before the select committee, and it is very simple. This bill is predicated on the Government transport sector review, which led to the New Zealand Transport Strategy. That is code for the sneaky little deal that Heather Simpson did with the Greens.

💬 Mark Peck: No, no.

That is what that was all about. That is what Heather Simpson managed to do in the dark of the night when she was absolutely desperate to keep the Greens sweet, because she had cut a deal with a couple of other people who had managed to get more numbers. The first thing the select committee was told was that it was highly unusual and inappropriate to put the Minister’s objectives into a piece of legislation. We are codifying in legislation what Pete Hodgson thinks is a good idea. It would not be quite so bad if it was what he personally thought was a good idea, but it is actually what Heather Simpson, a paid bureaucrat, thinks is a good idea. In the dead of the night she was doing a coalition-type deal with the Greens over something she thought was a good idea. That is why this legislation will be gone before the ink is dry, when National gets into office.

💬 Mark Peck: Even that member doesn’t believe that National is going to win.

This member is absolutely sane and rational in discussing the situation! Let us have a look at the parts of the New Zealand Transport Strategy—devised by Heather Simpson as a sop for the Greens—that will be codified into this legislation. The first objective is that transport will be affordable. Well, how will it be affordable when the Government does not want to use the private sector—a cheaper provider—to do anything in roading?

💬 Mark Peck: Where does it say that?

That is what it says. The member should read it before he supports it. He is going from this place, so he should cross the floor. He should take the opportunity to go to his colleagues and say: “I know bad legislation when I see it. I’m out of here! I’m going to cross the floor on this one.” As I said, the first objective mentioned in the transport strategy is that the vision must be affordable. In New Zealand that means that we cannot use the private sector to do anything.

💬 Mark Peck: Where does it say that?

Well, the Government passed the Land Transport Management Bill. That was a complete and utter waste of time, because it virtually barred the private sector from involvement. So transport in New Zealand will not be affordable—that is point one.

The second objective is that transport must be integrated. Let us have a look at what is happening in the transport situation in Auckland as a result of this. We now have people out there trying to build train tracks and trains when there will be over a billion car trips in Auckland and a couple of million trips a year by trains. We are going to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on subsidies, and billions of dollars electrifying tracks and buying new trains, and this is going to be integrated and affordable! Well, I think points one and two are in conflict. Quite a lot as been said about the issue of safety, and I will come back to that subject and have my 2c worth on it.

The third point, the real doozy—and Mr Peck will have noticed this; it is probably one of the reasons why he is tossing in the towel on this Government, which will be gone in just a few months—is that it must be responsive. Responsive! Judith Tizard, the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues, is laughing. She lives there and she has seen that the Auckland motorway network has not been completed since 1965. It certainly will not be happening under the Land Transport Management Act and it certainly it will not be happening under the Transport Legislation Bill. As I said, the third point is that it must be responsive. What does “responsive” mean? Responsive to what? It is responsive to Heather Simpson’s demand to keep the Greens sweet—that is what it will be responsive to. It means: responsive to the fact that the Government might not have to be propped up by someone whom its current support partner has absolutely no time for—and frankly, probably neither does its major coalition partner. That is the responsive bit. But in terms of getting some action on Auckland’s roads there is absolutely nothing responsive in this legislation, at all.

Now I come to the really blatant bit. It was late at night as Heather Simpson was devising this policy with the Green Party, and she just could not help herself. The Greens said: “This is the bottom line—‘sustainable’ has to be in there.” So the fifth objective of the strategy is that it must be sustainable. Mr Peck is wondering why this legislation will be turfed out by any Government that is sensible at all. The strategy is certainly not affordable, it is certainly will not be integrated, it is certainly not responsive, and it is certainly not sustainable. So it will be absolutely gone. This bill means that a Minister’s objective will be codified in a highly unusual Act of Parliament. I think that parliamentarians should be worried about that.

I am very surprised that United Future is supporting this bill. It is a party that argues for common sense. What is sensible about codifying what the Greens and Labour did, late at night, to hold together some coalition talks? Why do they want to do that? Why does United Future want to do that? There is nothing sensible about that. But I want to move on to “safety at reasonable cost”. This bill will remove the requirement for “safety at reasonable cost”. I want members to think about this for just a moment. New Zealand, rightfully so, followed many international jurisdictions when it added seat belts as a necessary requirement in cars.

💬 Hon Rick Barker: Is this member opposed to seat belts?

I am not opposed to seat belts at all. But this is my point—

💬 Hon Rick Barker: You like seat belts?

I like seat belts. I always wear my seat belt. Seat belts save lives. I would never let anyone go in a car without wearing a seat belt. But—and this is the point—when “safety at reasonable cost” is removed by legislation it may mean that we want to have the 6-point seat belts that we see “Top Gun” flying in. Would that make cars safer in New Zealand? The answer is yes it would.

💬 Hon Rick Barker: Could you have seat belts on motorbikes?

Yes, there could be seat belts on motorbikes. Mr Barker is quite correct; his mind is going in exactly the same direction as mine, which is quite a scary concept. [Interruption] Yes, it would not be too long before we have ashtrays and seat belts on motorbikes.

💬 Deborah Coddington: Crash helmets in cars.

Yes, crash helmets in cars. So “safety at reasonable cost” is a very interesting point, because let us not forget that this is a Government that, if it could get away with it, would have traffic officers hiding behind bushes to issue parking tickets and speeding tickets to people, on the basis of safety. We all know that that is a complete and utter hoax. This is not sensible legislation. This is legislation that is codifying the whim of a Minister, and which is fundamentally flawed. It has this crazy issue of removing “safety at reasonable cost”. It will be gone—probably faster than Mr Peck will be, back to his electorate.

I want to tell that member that after another 20 years in Opposition he might be able to revisit this matter. It is a good bill, and I support it.

I had the pleasure of being on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and I know the sorts of submissions that were made. The Minister over there—

💬 John Key: Which one?

—well, both of them actually—I imagine did not read the submissions. They would know, if they had read them, that there is deep and sustained opposition to the measures in this bill from the very industries that it purports to affect. We are talking about the aviation industry and the land transport industry.

Mr Duynhoven says that, oh well, yes, they are just talking about self-interest. One of the leading aviation companies in this country is Air New Zealand. This Government owns 80 percent of Air New Zealand. It is opposed to the elimination of the test of benefits at reasonable cost. This is a business that knows the importance of having reasonable and sustainable legislation, and it takes great pride and care in its reputation.

Air New Zealand knows, self-evidently, just how damaging aircraft accidents are to public confidence in the industry, so it is in a balancing act. It does have to analyse what is reasonable and what is not reasonable. This Government, and the Minister for Transport Safety, are likely to impose unreasonable and undue burdens. The reason I say that is that this Minister is the one who is promoting these changes. I have to ask this very simple question of the Minister: what was wrong with the old legislation, the legislation that this Government is now seeking to repeal, which he wants to change in order to introduce some scheme that will have people in the industry quaking in their boots? The Minister has a certain reputation around the place for enthusiasms—I think that would be a polite way of describing it. The Minister is actually quite proud of that fact. In this instance, those enthusiasms have the potential to impose hundreds of millions of dollars of unnecessary costs, to achieve almost nothing. That is the kind of thing that can happen.

It is one thing to have enthusiasms about restoring one’s own historic Porsche. That is fair enough. It is a private thing. It is quite another to exercise the power of the State, aided and abetted by its yapping lapdogs, known as United Future, to impose those kinds of enthusiasms on some of the most important industries in our country.

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: Has your aeroplane got a radio in it?

Several. That is why we are opposed to this change in legislation.

I also want to draw the House’s attention to one other important issue in this legislation, and the National minority report refers to its specifically. I want to read this out and put it correctly on the record: “New Zealand National does not agree with the separate identification of Māori in preparing a land transport programme. New Zealand National considers this is preferential treatment. New Zealand National believes preferential consultation provisions on matters of general interest will ultimately damage the health of our democracy.” I wrote those lines, on behalf of my colleagues. They come down to some very fundamental issues about how our country is governed.

This week the Government has announced that it is going to have a special committee. We do not know who will be on this committee and we do not know who it will consult, but this committee apparently is going to deal with treaty issues. Yet we find already that the Government is predicating how it views the world. The ACT party has from time to time, in somewhat amusing terms, referred to the two-world view. I guess we have all been amused at the lilt in the way the questions have been asked in this House. I say to the ACT party that this is Labour’s two-world view in action. Labour believes that the best way to develop public land transport policy is to have specific consultations, on the basis of race, on land transport.

As I travelled to the airport this morning I was listening to Mr Shane Jones on the radio. He is going to be the Labour candidate for Northland. I can assure him that he will not win that seat, so he need not put too much effort into it. He knows that, and that is why he is going for a high place on the Labour list. He is deeply concerned about the creeping way that the treaty is insidiously getting into all aspects of public policy. We are not talking here just about Māori land, language, culture, and things like that. We might expect the treaty to have some relevance around settlements. We are talking about issues of general policy. He said that that view is so 20th century, so last century.

That tells us something about the thinking of this Government, does it not? These are people whose ideas were formed in the universities and the polytechnics in the 1970s and 1980s. I have read Steve Maharey’s book Alternatives: Socialist Essays for the 1980s. Those were the formative days of this Labour Government. It is that kind of thinking that has permeated its way into contemporary legislation, not just on things that directly affect Māori and in which there are special Māori interests, but rather on all things that affect New Zealanders in a general way. That causes me profound concern.

For the last 12 months we have had a Coordinating Minister, Race Relations who has talked about policies on the basis of need not race, and a Government that, purportedly, is trying to give to the public the impression that it is on to these issues. In fact, what it is doing by way of clause 30(2) is quietly and in a sneaky and devious way inserting subsection 4A(xii) into section 15 of the principal Act, specifically stating that Māori are to be consulted. They are a group different from those of “affected communities” and “the public”, both of which are also specifically mentioned.

How can the public have any confidence that the Government’s review of the Treaty of Waitangi will be an honest, open-minded, and fair one, when, in the very week it makes that announcement, it inserts a provision like this into legislation? It is surely undermining the confidence of New Zealanders that we do not have a Government that will govern for all equally, without favour to any particular group, on issues of general interest—and the transport system is surely that.

One can understand treaty references on issues like settlements, on languages, on the Māori Land Court, and on other such matters—one would expect that—but in this area where it is a matter of general applicability, that is where the line is drawn. Mr Shane Jones, who I imagine will be a member of the next Parliament, has said very clearly to Labour members to think about what is required for modern New Zealand and to look forward to the future, not the past, because that is the only way we will build progress in this nation.

That last speech left me with the overwhelming impression of sliding ever downwards into a quagmire of cold, sticky porridge—words, words, words, no substance, no strength, nothing. That speech is a very good metaphor for why the National Party will be in Opposition for, as my good colleague Mr Peck says, over 20 years. The National Party is about being muddled and befuddled, and taking no action. This Government is about having clear ideas and taking action. That is why I support this bill.