Land Transport Management Amendment Bill

In this call I would like to specifically address Supplementary Order Paper 235 in my name. It is clear that the divisions across the Chamber on this bill, the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, are pretty strong. The Government has just the narrowest of majorities on this bill and the Opposition parties—and, in fact, even the Government’s support party the Māori Party—are opposed to this bill. I imagine that a lot of the debate this afternoon will be of a fairly political nature, but I do ask members to consider this Supplementary Order Paper closely because this is a constructive change to the legislation that has been asked for by regional councils that will need to operate under this legislation. It refers to transitional arrangements, moving from the current parameters under the Land Transport Management Act as it currently stands through to the new Public Transport Operating Model that is contained in this amendment bill.

Under the new provisions the regional councils will need to have in place a new regional public transport plan before they can contract any new public transport services. However, those plans are not due to come into place until 1 July 2015. That is the latest that the legislation allows for them to come into place. Having spoken to the regional councils, that is the appropriate time. There is a considerable amount of work required to get those regional public transport plans written up and in place. They will not be in place before then.

However, for at least seven of our regional councils their current contracts with public transport providers are going to come to an end after the amendment bill is passed but before the regional public transport plans are in place. That means they have some difficulty in determining under what parameters they are contracting those new services. In fact, in discussions with the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Government the regional councils have been advised that the best way forward for them is simply to roll over the current contracts.

In the first reading debate Julie Anne Genter talked about how the Public Transport Operating Model supports the current operators. It is monopolistic in its tendencies. This transition period is even worse for that because essentially the operators will be able to dictate terms to the regional councils about how those contracts are rolled over. There will be no competition at all if this transitional period is not agreed to, and that means that ratepayers are going to be paying far too much for their public transport. It means that the operators will have the regional councils over a barrel. I do not think that is the situation that anybody seriously wants to have happen.

In the spirit of constructive bipartisan efforts to try to make what is a bad bill as good as possible, I have tabled this amendment to bring exactly that type of transitional period into place, whereby the regional councils would be able to contract new services under the current arrangements provided for under the current Act up until the new regional transport plans are brought into place, and then those contracts can run through only until 30 June 2017, so by 30 June 2017 everybody will be operating under the new Public Transport Operating Model.

I think that reflects the consensus that the operators certainly believe exists out there. The regional councils want to work with the Government. They do not want to be kind of in opposition to the Government. They do not want to be seen to be working against central government; they want to work alongside it. But the only way for regional councils to effectively work alongside central government is for this amendment, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 235, to be passed. So I do ask that members give it serious consideration, particularly Government members. I know there has been a lot of conversation between the regional councils and the New Zealand Transport Agency, but this is an opportunity.

I will also speak to Supplementary Order Paper 235, brought to the Committee by Iain Lees-Galloway. I have to commend Mr Lees-Galloway for bringing this Supplementary Order Paper to the Committee. I do hope that the Government will be listening with an open mind, because I know that the Government says that one of its priorities is to get good value from the amount of money that taxpayers are putting into public transport, and also to get good value for money for those public transport passengers who are paying fares.

As Mr Lees-Galloway quite rightly explained, the impact of the transitional measures in this bill, the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, at the moment will be that many regional councils will have to roll over existing contracts for a period of several years. This could end up costing them millions of dollars. The only people who benefit from the transitional measures are the existing bus operators. They will essentially be in an extremely strong position where they will be able to negotiate what is good for them, at the expense of ratepayers and at the expense of taxpayers.

It is very perplexing to me that the New Zealand Transport Agency has not listened to the concerns raised by regional councils on this issue, as the New Zealand Transport Agency is using some of its own money to pay for public transport services. What we saw earlier this year was that the Otago Regional Council went ahead to tender for contracts for some of its bus services. It was able to negotiate savings in the order of millions of dollars. Then the New Zealand Transport Agency told the Otago Regional Council that it would not be providing the council with a subsidy for its public transport services, which normally it has as of right, because it did not follow the model that the agency had decided to go with. That would have meant rolling over contracts for the Otago Regional Council until 2016 rather than going to competitive tender.

If this Government actually believes in competition and in getting good value for money, then I think it must support these absolutely reasonable changes put forward in Supplementary Order Paper 235, because they will enable regional councils to tender for contracts in the interim period until they have gone ahead and established their new public transport plans and are able to contract under those in several years’ time. At stake is millions of taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ dollars. It is really an opportunity, I think, for the Government to show its commitment to value for money and to demonstrate that it is not actually going to simply listen to the demands of profitable bus operators that do not want to have to compete.

Speaking to other parts of Part 1, I would like to raise the issue of the purpose of the Land Transport Management Act. A number of submitters on the bill understood the Government’s interest in simplifying the existing purpose, but it is important to realise that, actually, the land transport system has a wide variety of effects on New Zealand’s well-being. The land transport system cannot be considered alone when, in fact, the land transport system—the roads that we put in place, the public transport that we have in place, the rail network, all of that—contributes to a number of other areas that the Government is directly responsible for. For example, in the area of public health there has been an enormous amount of research demonstrating that the transport choices that people have available to them impact directly on their health. This is a ticking time bomb for the New Zealand public health system, because in neighbourhoods where children are unable to walk and cycle safely to school and they have to be driven, they are much more likely to be overweight and to not get enough activity. Therefore, in the future they are much more likely to suffer from chronic diseases, and we all know that chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease are on the increase in New Zealand. They are on the increase in most rich countries, and a certain portion of that increase is directly due to the lack of activity that happens when you have a transport system that is entirely or overwhelmingly reliant on private vehicles—there are decreasing levels of physical activity. I encourage the Government to listen carefully to the recommendations of doctors, nurses, and other public health professionals associations that have been speaking out on this issue and saying that, actually, we do need to take into account the health impacts of our transport system.

There are a number of other co-benefits that need to be taken into account when we are deciding what transport projects we invest in and prioritise. One of these is carbon emissions. Our transport sector is the single biggest contributor to our carbon emissions. It has been the fastest-growing area of carbon emissions, and the overwhelming majority of our imports of oil goes on transport. This has a wide variety of impacts, such as the need we have to reduce our carbon emissions in the future—that is undeniable. We will have to do that. We need to take that into account when we are planning transport projects that are going to last 30, 40, 50, or 100 years into the future. How are they going to enable New Zealand to reduce its carbon emissions?

But there is an added economic benefit to reducing carbon emissions, and that is that we reduce our oil imports. New Zealand’s oil bill last year was $8 billion. For the past decade we have not increased much, if at all, the amount of oil that we have been importing. We are using the same amount of oil that we did in the early part of the last decade, but we are spending more than twice as much on it. Our oil imports have gone from under $4 billion to $8 billion last year. All of that contributes to our current account deficit. It is not good for the New Zealand economy to be so reliant on imported oil. If the value of the New Zealand dollar was more realistic than it is at the moment—it is hovering towards 0.9 on the US dollar—petrol prices would be through the roof, and we would have significant harm to our economy because households and businesses simply would not be able to get where they need to go without spending a ton of money on petrol. We are already spending a lot of money on petrol—$8 billion. We would be spending even more if the New Zealand dollar was at a more realistic exchange rate.

So changing the purpose of the Act to consider only a few narrow transport criteria rather than the broader impacts that transport has on our public health system, on New Zealanders’ well-being, and on our economy is very short-sighted. Unfortunately, it is quite a typical characteristic of this Government to not understand the interrelationships between the different things that we are doing. It may make decisions now that seem to make sense from a transport point of view, but, actually, they do not, because the vast majority of the transport budget is being spent on a few big motorway projects that do not even come out good on the Government’s own narrow assessment of transport benefits. Those projects have very low benefit-cost ratios, even when you do not consider the wider impacts. So maybe it is not a problem of the Government not understanding the interrelationships but one of simply not caring about what the economic impacts of our transport spend are going to be, and instead wanting to build a few big, shiny new projects because it thinks they will make it look good.

I was really struck by the submitters who came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, who all seemed to sing from the same song sheet. Submission after submission after submission said that it is really important to consider the wider impacts of transport in the purpose of the Land Transport Management Act. Amending the purpose of the Land Transport Management Act to reduce it to get rid of words that are really important, like those about affordability and about the impact on public health and environmental sustainability and safety, is going to very much narrow the considerations that should be and can be taken into consideration when we are prioritising our transport budget for different projects. Thank you.

Taloha ni, Mr Chairperson. Thank you very much for the chance to speak at this Committee stage. Iain Lees-Galloway and Julie Anne Genter started their contributions by speaking to Supplementary Order Paper 235, I believe, but I would like to start by addressing Supplementary Order Paper 234, which is still in the name of my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway. It talks about the amendments that are being made in the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill around the purpose.

So I am starting at the start—a good place to start. At the moment, the bill, as reported back from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, has the purpose set out as: “The purpose of this Act is to contribute to an effective, efficient, and safe land transport system in the public interest.” We are not happy with that on this side of the Chamber, obviously, so that is why Iain Lees-Galloway has put forward this amendment in Supplementary Order Paper 234, where the purpose should read—and we would hope that the Committee would adopt this—“The purpose of this Act is to contribute to the aim of achieving an affordable, integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable land transport system.” It is a very good amendment and we do hope that during this debate—and perhaps a Minister in the chair could comment on whether the Committee could pick this up.

I want to look at each one of these aspects that Iain Lees-Galloway has put in his Supplementary Order Paper on changing the purpose to affordability, being integrated, being safe, being responsive, and being sustainable, and I want to put that into the context of the Kapiti Expressway, which the Government is forcing upon the people of the Kapiti Coast.

Let us start with the first one, and that is affordability. As I said earlier in the previous stage of this bill, the Government is spending $515 million on this Kapiti Expressway, and a leaked report from Beca Group last year revealed that the benefit-cost ratio for this investment was $118 million over 30 years. The rough maths in my department says that that is a benefit-cost ratio of somewhere around 0.2:1. So, in terms of an investment, it is a dog. The economics case, or the affordability case, in terms of Mr Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper, does not stack up in that sense.

When you put that next to what was proposed before the Kapiti Expressway—when Steven Joyce changed the tack of the National Government—the plan before that was the Western Link Road, which was costed at around $300 million, I believe, and was fully consulted on with the people of the Kapiti Coast. All the permits and all the official documents were signed off, and things were pretty much ready to go, and everyone on the Kapiti Coast thought that this Western Link Road would go ahead. But, no, in December 2009 Steven Joyce rolled Ōtaki MP Nathan Guy and decided to go with an option which we now know as the Kapiti Expressway, which is roughly $200 million more than what was planned.

When you put that into the context of the Government being quite tight in the fiscal department, especially in terms of land transport—and this bill itself allows the Government to borrow more for transport—and when you go from a $300 million project to a $500 million project, that makes the project much more unaffordable for the Government. So to help the Government, Iain Lees-Galloway has put forward this Supplementary Order Paper to ensure that any project that it undertakes is affordable. So there you have it.

In terms of the Kapiti Expressway, we could have saved the Government $200 million in one fell swoop by making sure there was a roading solution that was not just a big concrete ribbon through the Kapiti Coast, but it was an upgrading of State Highway 1, it was a local road for the locals, and it was making sure there was a better focus on public transport through the increased electrification of the rail network on the Kapiti Coast. So in terms of affordability, that would have been a much better option for the people of Kāpiti, but the Government of the day has chosen to ignore that and go ahead with the Kapiti Expressway. We will not quit in our opposition to—you know, there are some people who should be quitting—this expressway, because in the affordability stakes it certainly does not match up.

The second point that Mr Lees-Galloway makes in Supplementary Order Paper 234 is about an integrated transport system. I have already touched on this ever so slightly earlier—[Bell rung] I am only on point two of five points, so I had better get a move on. In terms of integration, the solution for the Kapiti Coast would have been what Labour had proposed towards the end of 2008, and that was to upgrade State Highway 1, to build a link road for the Kapiti Coast—so we separated the local traffic from the through traffic who are dead set on heading further north, even though they should have stayed and spent some money on the Kapiti Coast—and also to upgrade the rail link and make it much more accessible and, I guess, affordable for those people who are going to use public transport.

The Government has gone against that. It is gone against integration. What it has done is say: “We only really care about the big stuff, the big traffic, so we are going to build this $515 million road through the Kapiti Coast.” So what you have now, instead of integration, is the local and the through traffic going on a four-lane motorway that has crashed right through the Kapiti Coast. Anyone who knows the Kapiti Coast well will know that there is a mixture of both young and old. A lot of people head up to the Kapiti Coast to retire. What you are going to get now is, unfortunately, some people, who would probably prefer not to go on a four-lane monstrosity, mixing with the big trucks that are heading either north or south through the Kapiti Coast, and probably feeling very worried about that. So that is not necessarily the best in terms of safety and not the best in terms of an integrated service.

Also, the Government is not looking at upgrading the rail network. There is no focus on that, and I think that is a real loss given the number of people who are now making their homes on the Kapiti Coast and are commuting to Wellington—which is not a dying city, I should add; it is not dying city—heading south, to work. More and more people are doing that and more of them would prefer a much more integrated public transport system. Our option, the Western Link Road, would do that. If the Government did have integrated transport systems at the purpose and at the very heart of this bill, then maybe it would have been able to do that with the Western Link Road plan instead of the Kapiti Expressway.

No. 3—I think I am a bit behind—is safety. I have already mentioned the fact that this road that the Government wants to build is a four-lane monstrosity. Everything will be travelling on it, as opposed to what I said before—you know, the local traffic on the local road, and State Highway 1 being for a lot of the commercial traffic heading further north or further south. In a safety sense, I would prefer, if I was a local, to be on the local road, not mixing with the two-rig trucks that are speeding at 100 kilometres an hour—or maybe a little bit more—down State Highway 1. I think that is awful, in terms of a safety sense. The Western Link Road addressed that, because the locals did not want to be mixing with that through traffic, but the Government has decided to go against that in terms of safety.

Now, on to responsiveness. With me here I have the signatures of 4,072 people from the Kapiti Coast. These are the people who were pretty much opposed to—not pretty much, but dead against—the Kapiti Expressway. Instead of being responsive—

💬 Mike Sabin: Did the Greens help collect those?

—the Government ignored these people and is still going through with the Kapiti Expressway. Mr Sabin wanted me to choose a page, so I will for his pleasure.

💬 Mike Sabin: A random one.

I will choose a random one. Here we go.

Terry Smith from Wellington—a very good man, Terry Smith; could be a lady—said: “Bad idea. High impact on local community. Already have transport corridor.” Good on you, Terry. That is a very good representation of what the situation is. OK, let us go over here. Susan Ansell from Kāpiti in New Zealand said: “You can serve the needs of the local community and provide an efficient, sustainable transport solution, improve rail, two-lane Western Link Road improvements to make...the community has not been fully informed on the effect of a four-lane highway. Many are unaware of the negative impact it will have on their community at all.”

So, in terms of responsiveness, this Government has absolutely and utterly ignored the people of the Kapiti Coast. Sure, they want a transport solution, but what this Government has put in front of them and will force on them is not what they wanted. What they wanted was the Western Link Road route, the one that would have had a local road, an upgrade of State Highway 1 for safety and also for capacity, and also an upgrading of the public transport route. This Government—

I rise to speak to this Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. There are two issues that I wish to cover, and in the course of addressing those two issues I want to refer to the situation in Nelson. I trust, Mr Chair, that you will bear with me as I explain it a little bit for the benefit of members, so that they can see why this applies, and why this particular bill causes members on this side of the Chamber such anxiety.

It certainly causes me anxiety on two counts. One is about environmental provisions, and the other is to do with the curtailing of local community input. So it is those two points that I wish to make in particular.

I see this bill as a Trojan Horse. It is a Trojan Horse because there are provisions in it that although they may not apply to examples such as those my colleagues have already given, they are absolutely critical for proposals that may be considered in the future.

The example I am thinking of in particular is a southern motorway through the Victory community in Nelson. The Hon Nick Smith, the member for Nelson, has been defeated three times in his desire to get a southern motorway through this Victory community centre. On two occasions he has been defeated by the council, which has gone out and done its homework, consulted with the communities, measured traffic flows, and decided that such a motorway is not required. The trouble is that the main road, State Highway 6, which goes through Nelson, goes round the beautiful waterfront. Who owns the houses on the beautiful waterfront? Well, squillionaires own the houses on the beautiful waterfront. Many of them are very strong contributors to Nick Smith’s campaign funds, and they vote National. But I have to say that not all of them vote National. Not all of them vote National, but they will not tell Nick that. They will not tell Nick that, because—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! The member’s full name.

I am sorry. They will not tell the Hon Nick Smith that, because they know that they are surrounded by his supporters in that area. So their push, and it is renewed time and time again—in fact, as recently as just a week ago or 10 days ago now there was another front page article in the Nelson Mail about how they want to get the logging trucks off State Highway 6 and, in fact, resurrect the idea of a motorway through the southern link road.

This bill does two things that make the Hon Nick Smith’s desire to please the wealthy funders of his campaign possible. The first, and the most dangerous, is the limitations to community input. The bill gets rid of the obligation to consult communities on regional transport plans, arguing that consultation is done anyway under the Local Government Act. It removes from regional transport committees representatives of the social, environmental, and safety criteria, leaving just elected representatives from the councils.

There is a vibrant community called Victory in Nelson—and you can join the dots easily enough to see why it is called that, but that is an aside—which comprises people who are in lower socio-economic areas, which houses most of our refugee and migrant population in Nelson, and which really deserves to be consulted and to have a proper and adequate say in whether or not a roading project of the future should go through the middle of its community. This bill is just what Nick Smith needs in order to ensure that there is no input, or minimal input, from local communities, and that there is every chance that central government could nominate that as a road of national significance, change the designation of State Highway 6 from Rocks Road to this new project, and drive a motorway through the Victory community.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Better not.

It had better not, as my colleague Trevor Mallard says. That is absolutely right.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: There should have been a railway there.

Indeed. What I am concerned about, in addition to this impact on community input, is the environmental impact, and this goes to the point in the bill that takes out the original purpose of the Land Transport Management Act, which had as its purpose statement the requirement for an integrated approach to the transport system, including environmental responsibility and rail and coastal shipping. That disappears.

Rail, coastal shipping, and care for the environment are things that would impinge directly on the development of Rocks Road. Rocks Road is a shabby little road. It does get logging trucks up and down it, but it could be beautiful. What is beautiful about it is its view. It keeps getting torn up by logging trucks, that is true, but things could be done if we were to have an integrated transport system, and not a Land Transport Management Act whose purpose is “to contribute to an effective, efficient, and safe land transport system in the public interest.” Gone are environmental responsibilities. Gone is the imperative to integrate transport options. Coastal shipping in Nelson is absolutely a possibility. It is entirely possible to shift logs by sea. It is possible to reinstate a railway.

This bill is a Trojan Horse. Although my colleagues have outlined particular current proposals that are on the drawing board, such as the Kapiti Expressway, which Kris Faafoi mentioned a moment ago, there are proposals that are not on the drawing board yet but are a twinkle in the eye of the Hon Nick Smith and his supporters in Rocks Road who fund his campaign. His campaign would struggle for funds if it were not for these people in Rocks Road. He depends on them. This is exactly the kind of legislation he requires in order to push through something that is hugely unpopular. If he can limit and restrict the input of community groups through the provisions of this legislation, then he will—he will.

I can see the Hon Nick Smith’s fingerprints all over this as well. He will just be biding his time and waiting for the next opportunity when he cannot put additional funding into beautifying the Nelson waterfront, which is entirely possible now with half the contribution from the Nelson City Council and half from central funding because it is a State highway. No, he would like the State highway to go through the middle of a community that, in large measure, does not vote for him. That should not be allowed.

This bill can be used for destructive purposes, and I would ask the members opposite to consider that and consider whether what they are setting down here for the future is going to be constructive or destructive. Take away community input, take away environmental responsibility, and we are left with a roading programme that detracts from our environment, that ruins our environment, and that does not advance alternative and integrated systems of transport. We are left with an impoverished future as a result. Thank you.

I rise to speak on Part 1 of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, particularly right now on clause 9, which amends section 10 of the principle Act to allow the Government to borrow for the National Land Transport Fund. I would like to talk about my concerns about allowing the Government to borrow to pay for projects in the National Land Transport Fund.

Firstly, at the moment the Government has a very unbalanced transport spend. Over $1 billion is being spent on new State highways. That is over a third of the total transport budget, and very small amounts of money are being allocated to all the other areas that we need to attend to as part of our transport network. That includes the maintenance of our existing local roads, the maintenance and renewals of our existing State highways, and there is a tiny, tiny proportion of money going into walking and cycling.

If you look at the National Land Transport Plan for the next 3 years, there is actually almost no money being put into new public transport infrastructure. At the moment we have a Government that does not understand that the transport system is a network, and the best way to get a good outcome from a network is to make sure that it is balanced. The best way to free up our existing roads for those who need to drive is to allow a small number of people to be able to walk and cycle safely—like children walking and cycling safely to schools so their parents do not have to congest the roads at peak time because they have to drop them off—and to allow a small number of people in our congested urban areas to switch to public transport. Not everybody needs to use public transport, walk, or cycle to benefit from the investment in having that alternative. Unfortunately there is no evidence anywhere in the world that expanding road capacity or building new roads will improve economic productivity or reduce congestion. In fact, there was a letter written to the secretary of transportation in the UK, just a few months ago, by 32 leading transport professionals and academics, people who have worked in this industry for 40 years, saying actually “We are concerned that our current methods of planning for transport infrastructure and evaluating the economic impacts do not take into account the reality that has been observed everywhere that building new inter-urban roads worsens congestion and does nothing to improve economic productivity.”

So, essentially, by allowing this Government to borrow to pay for its unbalanced and backwards transport priorities, what is going to happen is future New Zealanders and future Governments will have less money available to spend on the transport projects we actually need. That is because none of the projects the Government is proposing and is going to spend billions of dollars on will actually generate new revenue. Although in theory it may make sense, for example, to borrow to pay for some of Auckland’s transport infrastructure because we are expecting huge growth in Auckland and therefore there will be future ratepayers and taxpayers who will benefit from that infrastructure investment, and we need to plan ahead of that growth, what the Government is planning to do is to borrow to pay for Transmission Gully. It is going to borrow through the private sector through a private-public partnership, which actually is essentially just taking out a loan from the private sector. So instead of paying 4 percent—and the Government could realistically borrow at 4 percent—it will be paying 12 percent to 14 percent or 10 percent to 12 percent so that the private investors have a guaranteed return for the 25 years of the life of the project.

What National is doing is spending future taxpayers’ money now. It wants to expand the amount of money available to them to throw away at senseless transport projects that will not benefit the economy, unfortunately, and yet future taxpayers will have to pay these back with interest—with excessive interest in the case of the public-private partnerships—and they will not have the money available to maintain our existing road network. They will not have the money available to invest in the very vital alternatives that people in urban areas are crying out for. Everywhere we have invested in congestion-free public transport alternatives, it has been wildly successful. We can see that with the northern busway and we can see that with the investments that have been made in the Auckland rail network so far. We have had huge growth in both of those areas, much higher than what was modelled. That has led to declining traffic volumes on State highways, which means there are fewer problems with congestion.

I note that no National Party member contested the call with me. I note that no National Party member is prepared to defend Gerry Brownlee. I note that no member with any responsibility for the transport area has bothered to sit in the chair or to defend the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. That is probably because it is more or less indefensible, and they are waving the white flag on it.

I do note the comments that my colleague Maryan Street made with regard to the Victory area. As the successor to the member for Pencarrow I note that my predecessor Sonja Davies cut her political teeth on the ripping of the railway line out of the Victory area. Now, I understand Nick Smith wants to put a motorway through there. I think we might be past putting a railway back into that part of Nelson but I think this is the sort of bill that would allow a motorway to go through that community, and that would be something that would be absolutely wrong.

In making that comment my colleague was referring to the importance of integrated transport planning and spending. I do want to commend the Greens speaker who made the last speech, Julie Anne Genter, because I think she has got her head around the importance of having integrated planning as far as transport is concerned. I think all of us in our electorates have areas where if things were done more logically, we would have less spending on roads and more on the alternative to roads.

In my electorate, Hutt South, clearly an increase in public transport is warranted. An increase in alternatives to our roads would include in my area the Wainuiōmata Hill bridge—a bridge across the top of the hill that would mean that people could walk over the hill, take the bridge over the top of the road, and then walk down the other side. At the moment people have to dodge their way across the road, slightly blind to transport coming from both directions, and it is quite dangerous for people to either bike or walk on the paths and to cross at the top. A bridge was going to be available and was heading for the top of that hill—I think a bridge actually used to be proposed at Pētone before they made the changes at Pētone—and the National Government changed the rules as to the alternatives to roads. It meant that the money that would otherwise have been available was no longer available. I just think that that is wrong. It creates danger for individuals and it means that a lot of people who would bike do not bike because it is seen by them to be dangerous.

In a similar way the focus on having more and more motorways means that some of the logical things, such as the improvement of the railway links around the Wellington wharves, have not happened. I think for a long time now, probably for at least a decade, there has been a focus on getting grade separation—that means bridges and overpasses—around the ferry terminal in Wellington in order to be able to bring in much more freight into the Wellington waterfront by way of train rather than truck, thereby freeing up the motorways and freeing up the road from the Wairarapa so that things can come down—logs, in particular—on the train and be there immediately in time for the ships. There is a lot of logic to it, but the problem at the moment is that the trains and the road traffic conflict, and when a train comes in, you have a massive traffic jam. What is needed, obviously—[Interruption] Sorry?

💬 Simon O’Connor: A log jam.

The logs are jammed up in both senses. Both the ones on the trucks and the ones on the trains end up getting jammed up, and as a result of that there is clearly a much more logical way of using the money.

The changes in the ratios mean that the Cross Valley Link, which would take a lot of traffic off The Esplanade, which is, again, another jammed-up point in the Hutt Valley, and would feed across Whites Line East, off the Wainui Hill out of Naenae, and across a new bridge and into the Dowse Interchange—$40 million spent on the Dowse Interchange—

💬 Brendan Horan: How much?

Forty million dollars was spent on the Dowse Interchange, and what is it? It is an interchange to nowhere, because the road that was meant to come off it has been cancelled by the National Government—cancelled by the National Government. You know, it is just a silly approach.

The last point that I want to make I make more with my sports spokesperson hat on. I refer to the definition of “event” here and the change in policy with regard to sports events, which has been very recently drawn to my attention. Previously, what used to happen—and I think this was probably under the leadership of the Hon Annette King, although it possibly happened earlier—was that there was some funding going out of the land transport budget and into the police budget for the police to do safety work, which included work around sports. I, as members know, have an interest in cycling. But that funding has been changed by the National Government from, I understand, only about 1 March this year, or it might have been 1 April this year, so that the police are no longer contracted—they are no longer funded—in order to do their police work around sporting events.

I have got an example of this. It is one of the long-term examples, just north of Mr Faafoi’s electorate, Mana. For years, during a local cycle race that goes round Akatarawa and up the Paekākāriki Hill, the local policeman has come out for about an hour and overridden the traffic lights to let the cyclists through as they come through in bunches in order to not have 400 or 500 people together in a group on the road as a result of the lights turning red and the cyclists having to stop. This was a logical safety measure that allowed the traffic and the cyclists to flow and not to end up being many abreast and becoming a massive safety factor.

The ruling of the Government means that that work is no longer done. At the first instance of that race happening after that ruling, about 5 kilometres down the road afterwards, because of a massive bunch of cyclists and the pressure from cars and trucks, there was an accident that involved, I think, about 37 cyclists—37 cyclists—being knocked out of the race, and two of them being hospitalised. Four ambulances were required and two of the cyclists were hospitalised, all because the National Government, in order to try to save a wee bit of money in this area, said that the local policeman was not allowed to go there for an hour to do the safety work for which the police had previously been contracted.

These people opposite know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I am not even going to say that they were conscious of the effects that they were making when they changed their rules, because I am not sure that they actually read the papers that are put in front of them that make this sort of change. I appealed to Hekia Parata. I would have thought that Mr Brownlee, the current Minister of Transport, would have been across it—although it might have happened in the time of Steven Joyce, and we knew that he did not read his papers properly. That was certainly the case with him. But we have got to know that safety is important to this Government. We have got to know that we have integrated transport planning, and this bill gives us no hope whatsoever that the Government knows what it is doing.

I move, That the question be now put.

Speaking to Part 1 of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, I must say that I absolutely agree with all of the speakers on this side of the Chamber, and—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: We’re the only ones who’ve spoken.

Absolutely, but I think they would still be the only ones whom I agreed with. However, as did the honourable Mr Faafoi, I would like to speak about the change from an affordable, integrated, safe, responsible, and sustainable land transport system to—and this is where they just play on those words, over on that side—“an effective, efficient, and safe transport system in the public interest.” What is the public interest? Well, the public interest is certainly not the danger of having this collapsed funding for sustainable transport and sustainable transport programmes. In the city that I dwell in, Tauranga, that would wipe out walking school buses for children programmes, kids on feet programmes, kids on bikes, bikeways, and everything that is associated with getting rid of the congestion around schools and with making it safer around schools and making our children safer. This bill has the potential to completely collapse that funding.

The Government does, however, talk about exhibiting a sense of social and environmental responsibility, but again it is just talk, and it is not in the objectives statement. The new Government policy statement also removes affordability, which may enable the Government to justify building new roads that do not have a cost-benefit ratio factor outcome, like the Auckland “Holiday Highway”.

I think I will touch on some of the roads around Wellington, because it is obvious that members on that side of the Chamber know very little about Wellington, and I will say that the only thing dying in Wellington is support for the National Party. But let us talk about Transmission Gully and the Porirua bypass. When we talk about Transmission Gully, the only way that fits into the cost-benefit ratio is when you extend it through Ōtaki and all the way to Taupō, and then it fits and then you can have it. If we look at the Porirua bypass, what about the people from Porirua and some of those areas who may not be able to afford the road toll that is inevitably going to be thrust upon unsuspecting motorists there? They are going to have to do this massive dog-leg to get into the city. I mean, it is absolutely ridiculous.

I would also just like to touch on the undemocratic way in which this Government seems to be operating. I would like to ask some of our Labour members, who are far more experienced than me, whether they have ever heard of a Minister preventing a local MP from getting a traffic briefing from the New Zealand Transport Agency on the future of roading in their area, because that is what happened to me. The Minister of Transport stopped the officials from briefing me on the plans for roading in the Bay of Plenty and the Western Bay of Plenty. I think that is just another indication of what this Government is all about. It is just trying to railroad through bills with very little scrutiny. At the end of the day it is New Zealanders who pay the cost, and it is a massive cost. I would say, please do not play with the safety of our children and the future of New Zealand.

First, I would like to say that in my first contribution on this Part 1 of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, in the first 5 minutes that I got, I spoke to my Supplementary Order Paper 235. That is a very serious Supplementary Order Paper. It is a serious amendment that regional councils want to see happen and I think that the Government members owe it to regional councils to get up and say what their position is. So whether you are for it or against it, please let us know and please let local government know what your position is, what the position of the Government is, and why. I think that is the very least that Government members could actually undertake. But, no, what we have had is Mr O’Connor taking a closure motion, and it looked like Mr Sabin was quite keen to take one as well, without a single member of the Government benches taking a single call on this bill. That, I think, tells you exactly how ashamed they are of this legislation, in the fact that they do not even want to get up and tell us about it.

I want to talk about my other Supplementary Order Paper 234, which would restore the original purpose of the Act. Basically, what National is doing by changing the purpose of this Act is giving central government absolute control over what roading projects—sorry, a slip of the tongue there, but it really does reflect what this Government wants, which is roads, roads, roads, and mega-roads. Actually, it is not about roads; it is about mega-highways, and that is it. That is what the purpose is.

The word in particular that I think is really missing from the new purpose, which would be restored if my amendment was adopted by the Committee, is that word “integrated”. Probably the most important word that is going to be missing from the Act now is having an “integrated” transport system. I thought that some of the contributions from the National Party members in the second reading of this bill were a bit thick, to be honest—a bit thick. I know what they are trying to do. They are trying to position Opposition parties and trying to play politics here. But let us have a sensible serious conversation about our transport needs, because what David Bennett tried to say is that the Opposition parties hate roads. Well, guess what, Mr Bennett? Under that Government, under the National Government, local roads up and down this country are being completely overlooked. There are roads in my electorate that need to be built and need to be maintained and they will not be. The New Zealand Transport Agency has turned down the funding, it has said no to the local councils, because all the money—all the money—is going to the roads of national significance.

So I do not accept it when National Party members get up and say they are interested in roads, and they are interested in economic development, and they are interested in supporting the regions, when regional roads and local roads up and down New Zealand are falling apart and not being supported. This Government does not care about an integrated transport system. It does not care about an integrated transport system and it refuses to have a law that says that when funding decisions are made about transport, the economic viability, the environmental viability, and the social sustainability of infrastructure need to be taken into account—not even economic viability. Of course, we know that the only projects that this Government supports—its monster motorways—are not even economically viable, let alone considering their impact on the environment or their impact on local communities. That is why this Government does not want to support the idea of having an integrated transport system.

Any transport system needs roads. If you look at a transport need and you look at the variety of solutions available, sometimes it will be a highway. Sometimes that will be the right response. Sometimes it will be a road. I think of the Western Link Road, which Mr Faafoi’s electorate is not going to get—the Western Link Road, which Mr Faafoi’s electorate is not going to get. There are the roads in Palmerston North that would support the central distribution transport hub, which we are not going to get. There is the road that Andrew Little wants in Taranaki, which Taranaki is not going to get under this Government. All the Government is interested in are the roads of national significance, not local roads, not regional roads, and certainly not rail or coastal shipping—certainly not rail or coastal shipping. Sometimes those will be the answers as well. Sometimes, if we think about the economic benefits or we think about the social benefits, or we think about the safety of getting freight off roads and on to rail or on to coastal shipping, that will be the right answer.

But what this bill does is it creates a situation where that will never be the answer. The analysis that the New Zealand Transport Agency has to undertake will never come up with the answer that a railroad is the right answer or that greater use of coastal shipping is the right answer. That is because the National Party wants to control the National Land Transport Fund so that it can look after its mates—its mates in the trucking industry and its mates who want to make money out of public-private partnerships.

The other thing that this bill does is it supports greater borrowing to pay for those unaffordable roads and it supports uneconomic, ludicrous, economically mad public-private partnerships like the one at Transmission Gully. Let us look at Transmission Gully as an example of the foolishness of this Government. Labour actually supports building Transmission Gully. Labour supports building Transmission Gully; it is something that we would do. But we think it should cost $1 billion, not $3 billion. The National Party wants it to cost $3 billion. It wants to charge New Zealanders $2 billion more than is necessary to build Transmission Gully. Why? So it can do it by public-private partnership. There is no evidence. The Government has not been able to produce a shred of evidence that building Transmission Gully by public-private partnership will be safer, more efficient, more effective, or, most important, cheaper. It cannot demonstrate that. In fact, Government members are so nervous about this that when the Labour Party requested information under the Official Information Act, they gave us information but they removed the public sector comparator. They removed the bit that says how much it would cost to build under the traditional procurement model. I wonder why that is. I wonder why they are not prepared to tell us that number. I bet—I bet anything you like—that the reason is that the public sector comparator comes out much, much better than the public-private partnership. You do not even need to guess at this. You have just to look at the New Zealand Transport Agency’s predictions for transport costs over the next 30 years. It put in a special line that accounted for building Transmission Gully by public-private partnership, and that line showed that it was going to cost $2 billion more than building it under the traditional model.

So the New Zealand Transport Agency knows it. Government members know it. Why on earth are they doing it New Zealanders can only guess, but I would like to offer one possibility, and that is that they like providing low-risk, high-return investment opportunities to their mates in the banking sector. That is what they have done with Mighty River Power and that is what they are doing with the Transmission Gully public-private partnership. This bill is all about National tightening its control over the land transport system so that it can look after its mates and cherry-pick projects for itself, not run a sensible analysis of each project and choose them on their merits.

David Bennett was going on about the Waikato Expressway and my position on that. I came to Hamilton, I spoke to people, and do you know what I said? I said: “We have to take a look at this, Mr Bennett. We have to take a look at this and we have to run a sensible economic analysis of the project.”

💬 David Bennett: You’re not going to do it.

If you do not like that, Mr Bennett, if you do not like the idea of a sensible economic analysis being run on a transport project, that simply reveals that this Government just wants to cherry-pick projects whether or not they make sense, whether or not they are good for the taxpayer, whether or not they are good for local ratepayers, whether or not they are good for the environment, whether or not they are socially acceptable, and whether or not they are the socially right thing to do. This National Government just does not believe in evidence and proper analysis; it just picks ideas out of the air and picks and chooses its own ideas. That is what this bill is all about. We had a system whereby the New Zealand Transport Agency had to sit down and do a rigorous analysis of what projects should be supported. That is what Labour had to bring in after 10 years of National building road after road after road after road. Labour came in and said we needed an integrated transport system and that is what we set up. But all this does is go back to the old days, the fossilised view of the National Party of the 1950s—

I move, That the question be now put.

I appreciate the ability to take a call on this Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, particularly given that I have Supplementary Order Paper 238, which I would like to share with the Committee and which relates specifically to the notion of exempt services. I have not heard too much discussion, in the time that I have been in the Chamber, around the debate that I am sure was had amongst Transport and Industrial Relations Committee members on exempt services, but it is an area that has the potential to derail our ability to create integrated public transport in critical areas like Auckland. New Subpart 2 in clause 69 of the bill contains the detail around exempt services. They are essentially those services that will not be able to be required by councils to be privy to all of the things that they have in their transport plans.

Previously, before the bill went to the select committee, the criteria for an exempt service were contained in new section 129(2)(a) through to (e) in new Subpart 2, in clause 69. They have been struck out. Previously an exempt service included “a ferry service registered with the regional council as a commercial public transport service under the Public Transport Management Act”. It then included certain types of bus services, and so on. They have been struck out. Now the criterion for an exempt service is a public transport service that, for instance, operates without a subsidy for the provision of the service. That is a key little indicator in there that no longer are we being explicit about exemptions being specific to ferry services. Now we are saying that one of the main criteria is that you do not receive subsidies.

The reason I raise this is that there is a somewhat controversial provider of transport in Auckland that provides ferry services to Waiheke Island. Waiheke Island is predominantly serviced by a sole provider. Some will argue that there are other options. Those who take that service daily will argue that they have very few options other than those provided by Fullers ferry services. Fullers ferry services, very early on in the discussion around this bill, directly approached Steven Joyce and asked Mr Joyce whether it could be exempt from the provisions of this bill and be considered an exempt service. Clearly, it was given an indication by Mr Joyce that that was going to be acceptable, because when Fullers then went to the select committee, it included in its submission that it had already been given assurances that it would be an exempt service, to the degree that it had purchased additional infrastructure, which, it implied, it otherwise may not have invested in.

Why is this interesting? Well, for one thing, some people would think that Fullers actually does receive a subsidy from the Government. It receives a hefty amount through the SuperGold Card. Many SuperGold Card holders use Fullers ferry services. Secondly, by being exempt from this bill, we will continue to have an operator—with Auckland Council having very little ability to ensure that the operator provides the kind of service that commuters require. If Fullers was not in the game of providing that service, the council argues that in some form it would have to step in.

The council argued on that basis that Fullers should not be an exempt service, but, unfortunately, that was an argument that, given Fullers had gone directly to the Minister, clearly was lost. Why? Why should it not be an exempt service? It would argue that it is a private operator, and there is no reason why it should be included.

Well, when you look at what the content of a regional public transport plan includes, it includes the ability to provide an outline of the routes, the frequency, and the hours of operation. It would give, for instance, Auckland Council the ability—if for any reason the service dropped below what it would consider necessary for a fully integrated public transport network to be sufficient, it would at least have some grounds for engagement around that. Secondly, for those that are included and covered, which an exempt service would not be, it allows the council some ability and say over accessibility, quality, and performance—an issue that is of major concern for commuters from Waiheke Island who do not always believe that they get that level of service.

It also allows transparency around fare setting, the method or formula, and around the reviewing of fares. This is not to say that you suddenly have the council coming in and being able to set the service’s fares, but it at least adds a layer of transparency around that. That is certainly something that has been demanded for some time.

I think Auckland Council was right to say Fullers should not be an exempt service. My Supplementary Order Paper would remove it from being an exempt service. It would allow for integrated fare structures, and that is what I think we need.

I move, That the question be now put.

No. I am going to hear from Dr Megan Woods.

I am very happy to take my first call on this Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, because I think it is really important and I think it is important for us to get on record why it is that, all over the country, Labour has a problem with this bill. My main two problems, actually, are covered by my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Papers 234 and 235. I want to focus particularly on this: the constraints within the purpose of the bill and the limits of local input—so Supplementary Order Papers 234 and 235—and to talk about these particularly in relation to transport planning, which is integral to the rebuild of Christchurch, and the transport planning that is happening there at the moment.

If we have a look at the first of these, the bill as it currently stands removes the purpose statement of the Land Transport Management Act, which sets out the integrated approach to the transport system. Many of my colleagues have talked about this and what it will mean at a local level and the problems that this puts in place. We have specifically touched on how removing the integrated approach to transport—including the environmental responsibility that goes with that, along with rail and coastal shipping—is a backward step, and I want to show how this will be the case in Christchurch. The other thing that I want to touch on is the changes to the make-up of the regional transport committees and talk about the importance of local community input into planning effective transport systems that will operate well in certain localities. After all, Labour does believe very strongly that local communities need to have a strong say in their local futures, and transport is very much one of those areas where we would like to see this happening.

In Christchurch, as we plan our recovery, we see transport as absolutely central to this recovery. One of the key things that we are grappling with, and that the Government opposite is grappling with as well, is how the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, the New Zealand Transport Agency, Environment Canterbury, and the Christchurch City Council are all going to fund different elements of the transport recovery strategy and the transport recovery plan—different agencies have different responsibilities for different parts of this—and how all this is going to fit together. I think the case of Christchurch shows very clearly the need to have this very integrated approach to transport, because we cannot think of just one mode of transport as we think about transport recovery.

So the Christchurch Central Development Unit has just drafted a transport chapter as part of its plan for the recovery of the central city of Christchurch, but within this—I mean, in many ways there are some very positive steps about what transport in a recovered Christchurch is going to look like. But one of the things that we in Labour have signalled as a really strong concern that we have with this chapter is that there is no detail about how it connects up with other elements of planning within transport. So how does it connect with Christchurch City’s transport strategy? How does it link with the Canterbury Regional Land Transport Strategy? How do all these things go together?

Going back to my colleague’s second Supplementary Order Paper, in terms of the make-up of the regional transport committees and the need to have this local input into them, we have real concerns. One of the things we know is that the majority of submitters who came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, including representatives from the regional transport committees, really wanted to maintain the status quo of requiring specialist experts, including the police, disability experts—and I would like to come back to that, about the need to have a city with very accessible transport in the 21st century—and representatives from walking and cycling groups on regional transport committees, as they have valuable input to make. Having this wide variety of experts and perspectives in the transport planning and funding process at the outset ensures that far more robust discussions are had about priorities and about projects. But the concern is that if the funding is not there, it is not actually going to have this diversity of views that will lead to the integrated approach to transport.

So what is it that we are hearing from Christchurch residents on what they want in their recovered transport plan? Well, one of the things that we are hearing very loud and clear, and that the Christchurch City Council heard really loud and clear, and also the Christchurch Central Development Unit, when it put its transport chapter out for consultation, is that Christchurch citizens very much want—

I am pleased to take a call on Part 1 of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. What this bill seeks to do is very important, particularly when it comes to local input into roading priorities. That is a system that has been very important in the last few years, as regional councils and district councils have come together with their roading committees and with local interested groups—the Road Transport Forum, I know, in Taranaki plays a big role—and other interested parties to discuss what should happen in our roading priorities in the area of Taranaki. This bill will take that away.

This bill will take away the stake that those people—the major users of roads, whether they are commercial or non-commercial users—have; their right to have a say on what those priorities should be. That, in my submission, is what damns this bill. For all the good parts in it—the public transport operating mechanism that is provided for in the bill, which is not a bad thing—it is the failure to allow local and regional input into roading priorities that is fatal, along with the much narrower brief, drive, and purpose of the bill that is provided for there. It is for that reason that I support Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Papers 234 and 235, which seek to change those provisions of it.

Maintaining the quality and the standard of roading, whether it is new roads—and the Green Party certainly has a view about whether or not we need to break into new roads—or existing roads, and, above all, the safety of them, still remains a crucial responsibility of the Government, and because the funding comes through central government, it is the responsibility of central government. This bill takes away the opportunity for local solutions, even for roading upgrades and roading improvements, by abolishing the regional fuel taxes. That is not an option that has been widely taken up since it has been on the statute book, but it has always remained a possibility, as something that is there.

I know that over the last 3 or 4 years the regional councils have been grappling with roading issues, and roading priorities have had to use the regional funding that they have had access to, effectively to work on State highway roading that is properly the responsibility of the New Zealand Transport Agency. So they had less to put into what are truly regional roads.

I come back to the issue I raised about State Highway 3—certainly, that section north of New Plymouth. That is becoming an issue that is demanding great priority. It is screaming out for attention, and yet of all the Government MPs who live in and around that area, not one has seen fit to address this House and give some reassurance to this House and the people of Taranaki / New Plymouth that they are taking that issue seriously—not one MP from that area, except me. I am the only MP in this House connected with Taranaki who is prepared to stand up and argue that State Highway 3, north of New Plymouth, must be a priority for the New Zealand Transport Agency and for this Government.

Dr Cam Calder stood up earlier today to apologise for the failure of the Government to give it proper attention. He is an apologist. He has become an apologist for doing nothing, as, indeed, has Jonathan Young, as, indeed, has Shane Ardern, as, indeed, has Chester Borrows—apologists for doing nothing. David Bennett, who lives in Waikato, is an apologist for doing nothing for Taranaki because he knows that if he can suck up as much money as possible for the Waikato Expressway, that is all good for him. Well, it is not good for the people of Taranaki, and, frankly, the people of Taranaki deserve better. They deserve better. They deserve a better bill. They deserve a bill that allows for much greater local input, leaves the opportunity and the options for genuine local solutions in place, and provides in its purpose a provision that will allow a broad range of solutions—roading and integrated transport—to be considered at a local level. This bill does not do that and that is why we remain opposed to it. It is a bad bill and it should be opposed.

I am very pleased to have another opportunity to take a call on Part 1 of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, as there are so many different changes happening in Part 1 of this bill. I have already spoken about my concerns with the changes to the purpose of the principal Act and the lack of the Government’s willingness to listen to the many submissions that were opposed to that. I have talked about our concerns with the transitional measures and other elements of the Public Transport Operating Model that are going to entrench existing bus monopolies. I have talked about the problems with borrowing or going to public-private partnerships to fund transport priorities, when those new projects do not generate new revenue.

Further concerns that I have are to do with clause 14 and clauses 66 and 67. These are related to the core requirements of the regional land transport programmes prepared by regional transport committees and the make-up of the regional transport committees. During the select committee process we heard from a number of regional councils, people who have sat on regional land transport committees, and, in almost every single case, perhaps every single case, they said that they benefited greatly from the additional members, such as representation from the police, representation from the disability community, and representation from cyclists and walking advocacy groups, because all of those different perspectives were able to provide the regional transport committee with solutions to problems before projects were implemented. So, even though it may have taken a little bit more time, having that broad perspective from a number of different areas resulted in more robust decisions being made. When we see the sort of horrific accident that happened at the KiwiRail level crossing in Morningside, where there was not adequate disabled access and a woman in a wheelchair was trapped and hit by a train, that sort of problem with the design of transport projects is exactly what can be avoided if you have robust input into the projects and into the prioritisation of projects.

Although I expected regional land transport representatives to tell me that there was some problem with having these additional representatives on their regional and transport committees, in fact, every single one of them, when I asked them about it, said that, no, they really valued it, and they did not want the change that the Government was proposing. So it does not seem like there was actually any problem with having that broad representation or requirement for broad representation in the principal Act. The problem, or perception of a problem, came from the Government, which simply wants to streamline everywhere. The results of streamlining and making this change, despite the fact that the individuals directly involved said that it was beneficial, will be that we will see more of these problems where regional land transport committees will not have the diverse interests of end-users put into the planning and programming of the regional land transport priorities.

A further problem that was raised by my colleague Andrew Little just a moment ago was the fact that there is actually a downgrading of the ability of regional councils to set their own priorities. We see this in clause 14 with the changes to the core requirements of regional land transport plans. They are going to be required to be consistent with the Government’s Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding. So what the Government is essentially doing with this bill is concentrating more and more decision-making power at the central level, as to which transport projects will get funding.

There are a couple of different problems with this. Firstly, regional and local ratepayers are major contributors to the money that is going into transport projects. They really should have some say as to what their priorities are. But, secondly, it is actually taxpayers all over the regions who are paying the road-user charge and the fuel taxes that are going into the central government’s transport budget. Ironically, when the previous Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, asked the Ministry of Transport for advice on the amount of vehicle trips that were being taken on local roads, which are half-funded by ratepayers, not by road users, and how many were being taken on State highways, which are 100 percent funded by the Government but are, basically, funded by road users everywhere, asking whether they are driving on local roads or on State highways, what it showed was that the number—

It is a pleasure to take a call on the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill as a new member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, which considered the bill. I am sad to say, though, that I rise to reiterate Labour’s opposition to this bill because of the narrowness for which this Government has now become famous in terms of how it deals with many issues locally. We know that it narrowed the local government bill down so that social well-being and people’s wellness were not part of what was taken care of, and here it goes again with land transport management.

I want to speak specifically to Supplementary Order Paper 234 in the name of my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway and support this Supplementary Order Paper being voted through. This would actually fix up the very problem I have just highlighted. What Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper 234 does is restate what the purpose of land transport management legislation should be. It would bring back the purpose of the Land Transport Management Act to being “to contribute to the aim of achieving an affordable, integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable land transport system.” Why would any Government not vote for a purpose statement like that for land transport management legislation? Why would it not vote to make sure that our land transport management system achieved affordable, integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable land transport?

If we think about sustainable land transport systems in the Waikato area, where I come from, it reminds me of a push that has come locally to have a commuter passenger train between Hamilton and Auckland. This is so popular that 13,800 people signed a petition asking the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to look at the issue of establishing such a service. That member opposite, the chair of the select committee, David Bennett, who is from the area, actually made sure that the select committee did not hear that petition. He, as a local Hamilton member, made sure that those 13,800 people did not have their views heard in front of the select committee. I think that was a sham in terms of democracy. I have never seen a select committee that has turned down and stopped so many petitions from being heard as the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee under David Bennett’s chairpersonship. It has been quite shocking. Those 13,800 people were after a sustainable land transport management system.

David Bennett likes to go on about the billions of dollars spent on the Waikato Expressway, which actually, by his own Government’s admission, would save only 10 minutes’ drive time between Hamilton and Auckland in 10 years’ time—in 10 years’ time. That is the thing that we are spending billions of dollars on: saving 10 minutes’ drive time between Hamilton and Auckland in 10 years’ time. Well, if we spent a tiny, tiny proportion of that actually supporting a commuter passenger train service between Hamilton and Auckland, we could save 10 minutes right now. We would not have to wait 10 years for it. We could save 10 minutes’ drive time right here, right now, with much less taxpayer money being spent on it, and have a sustainable transport system, with road and rail working together to complement each other.

When people get on the Waikato Expressway and in 10 years’ time save their 10 minutes’ drive time, only to sit in that southern motorway car-park—the great car-park at the end of the southern motorway; it is clogged up because they have not got public transport working well in Auckland—there will be no benefit whatsoever. They are going to spend 10 minutes more sitting in traffic on the southern motorway to get to work in Auckland in the morning, even though billions of dollars will have been spent on the Waikato Expressway. It just is not the best spend of money that could be happening—it is not the best spend of money. We could have already fixed it in the time that it took David Bennett to stop those 13,800 people from having their voice heard over getting a passenger train service in place.

I move, That the question be now put.