Land Transport (NZTA) Legislation Amendment Bill

I move, That the Land Transport (NZTA) Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 24 April 2020.

Safety is this Government’s top transport priority. I want to make sure that people who are going to and from work and using the country’s roads and highways get home to their families safely at the end of the day. Every Kiwi has the right to travel around our country, to use the transport system, and arrive home safely to their family, and safety lies at the heart of this bill.

This bill will strengthen and clarify the New Zealand Transport Agency’s (NZTA’s) regulatory function and leadership role within the land transport regulatory system. There are three key components that are proposed by this bill. They include establishing the role of Director of Land Transport; strengthening the regulatory function of NZTA—this involves clarifying its regulatory role, objectives, functions, and funding while also supporting key regulatory interventions; and, third, one of these key regulatory interventions implements measures as part of the Tackling Unsafe Speeds programme. This is an important component of the Government’s soon to be announced new Road to Zero safety strategy.

As New Zealand’s land transport regulator, the NZTA exercises regulatory functions to promote a safe, efficient, and effective land transport system. In October 2018, the NZTA board announced that the NZTA had not been performing its regulatory function properly and, in particular, that it had been too focused on education and self-regulation. This came to light through the board discovering a backlog of 850 regulatory non-compliance cases that had not been adequately managed by the transport agency. We’re talking about compliance files that had been sitting around that had been left open and not properly followed through. One of these cases involved a man from Dargaville, Mr William Ball, who was killed in a vehicle that had not been properly inspected by a non-compliant vehicle inspection agent.

In response to all this, I commissioned a review into the regulatory capability and the performance of the New Zealand Transport Agency. The review was conducted by the agency’s Government monitor—the oversight agency responsible; that is the Ministry of Transport, who were assisted by the consultancy firm MartinJenkins. The ministry’s final report was made public in October last year and it found that the New Zealand Transport Agency had failed to properly regulate the transport sector under the last Government. The former Government, in my view, was asleep at the wheel while the agency treated the people that it was mandated to regulate as its customers. This meant that cowboy operators could get away with not doing their job properly.

For more than a year since the October 2018 NZTA board announcement, the agency has undertaken work to build its capability and the systems to deliver its core regulatory functions, including strengthening governance, decision making, its people capability, and operational delivery. However, even with these organisational improvements, more changes are needed to ensure that this failure is not allowed to happen again—and that’s what this bill does.

The Ministry of Transport report recommended the establishment of a role called Director of Land Transport. This bill establishes that role. It makes it a statutory role. I note that such a role is already in place in the maritime and aviation sectors with Maritime New Zealand and Aviation New Zealand. The Director of Land Transport will provide a greater focus on regulatory delivery and drive more accountability for regulatory outcomes and decision making in the transport agency.

The director will be accountable under law for the delivery of key regulatory functions and powers that are currently held and exercised by the board of NZTA under the New Zealand Land Transport Management Act. This includes statutorily independent functions such as issuing licences, compliance, and enforcement of all regulated parties in the land transport system. I want to underline how important it is to have—in an agency that is responsible for both building much of the infrastructure for our transport system, for co-funding infrastructure and transport services with local government; an agency that is focused on building the transport system that will deliver the mobility, the productivity, the quality of life that we demand as a country—some statutory independence that ensures that those powerful drivers to build infrastructure and deliver services are not allowed to overpower the statutory mandate to deliver a proper standard of safety regulation.

I now come to the second major component of this bill, and that is that it will refresh the independent regulatory functions and powers in the Land Transport Management Act to ensure that they are fit for purpose. This includes refreshing the NZTA’s regulatory objectives and its remaining functions and powers in the Land Transport Management Act. It will provide a greater focus on the NZTA’s regulatory role and make sure that its existing land transport planning, investment, and delivery functions are adequately articulated.

The bill provides for some specific additional powers to support the NZTA to perform its regulatory function. This includes functions such as providing the NZTA with the ability to place conditions that address safety risks amongst transport service licences. Second, the bill requires the transport agency to develop a new strategy to strengthen regulatory delivery and to establish a new regulatory operating model to implement the agency’s regulatory strategy. The strategy and the operating model are critical in driving the transport agency to articulate how it will be an effective, responsive, and risk-based regulator.

The review of the NZTA found that resourcing was a key barrier affecting the agency’s ability to perform its regulatory function. There’s no question that the transport agency needs additional capability and capacity to lift its regulatory performance, but I do want to note over the last year what progress has been made within the transport agency under the leadership of interim chief executive Mark Ratcliffe and the new chair of the agency board Sir Brian Roche, in beefing up the capacity of the regulatory function with the agency.

To address this issue, the bill proposes further to allow the Crown to fund NZTA’s regulatory activities and the Ministry of Transport’s associated monitoring activity up to amount agreed by the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Finance from land transport revenue—so that is from the National Land Transport Fund that is replenished every year through the revenue that’s generated from the fuel excise duty and road-user charges. These new changes, coupled with the recent board appointments at the agency, will support the NZTA to become an effective, modern, and risk-based regulator.

Fourth, as part of the key regulatory interventions, the bill supports the implementation of the Tackling Unsafe Speeds programme. These include enabling the NZTA to issue infringement notices for offences detected by safety cameras, requiring the transport agency to establish a speed management committee which will conduct independent reviews of the transport agency’s speed management plans, and establishing a centralised register where there will be a single, definitive source of information about speed limits on all New Zealand roads.

I want to underline how important this is. Over the last decade the number of deaths and serious injuries in this country blew out by more than 50 percent, far beyond the increase in vehicle kilometres travelled or population growth. At a time when so many other countries that we often compare ourselves to have succeeded at reducing the number of deaths on their roads, New Zealand’s been going in the opposite direction.

I want to acknowledge the work of Associate Minister Julie Anne Genter, who’s been leading the Government’s safety work in this area. It is a comprehensive programme of reform right across the design and the building of infrastructure. These changes will make sure that NZTA can do its job as a safety regulator for the land transport system. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 24 April 2020. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, but the only Minister who’s had a worse year as a Minister than Phil Twyford is Julie Anne Genter. So it was a bit strange to hear the Minister of Transport thanking and congratulating the Hon Julie Anne Genter, because she’s had a shocker. It was interesting to hear him talk about road safety improvements, which she’s in charge of, because one of the things we discovered at select committee last week—and I see my colleague Jamie Strange peering intently at me. He will remember this from the select committee as we had the transport agency before us. It turns out that in the last year—guess how much money from their budget they’ve spent on road safety?

💬 Andrew Falloon: Oh lots! Surely lots!

Forty-eight percent. So they spent only half. This is a Government that trumpets road safety. They’re always banging on about it. It is very important. They’ve transferred all this money out of the State highway budget into road safety improvements and they’ve stopped all the four-lane expressways which actually save lives, and they’re putting it into median barriers and wire ropes and all the rest of it. That’s good, except the transport agency’s spent only 48 percent of the money. So, for the Minister to describe Julie Anne Genter as having done a good job of administrating that, I think, frankly, beggars belief. That’s before you get into the debacle of the other elements of her portfolio.

But, look, we will be supporting the bill to select committee. It is largely non-controversial—or I would like to think it is non-controversial. It’s amending the Land Transport Management Act, the Land Transport Act, and the Railways Act to strengthen the regulatory leadership of the Transport Agency. We support the establishment of a statutorily independent Director of Land Transport and we support the changes that the Minister has outlined. We want to have a good look at the bill at the select committee, and in particular we’re very keen on looking at the changes around speed limits, essentially the processes around speed limit changes, and there is a clause in the bill. It looks like a reasonably uncontroversial clause. It’s one of those classic ones where it sort of looks anodyne at first glance, but you’ve just got to make sure the officials aren’t—

💬 Jamie Strange: Don’t be suspicious.

Well, Jamie Strange says I’m suspicious. Well, look, I’ve worked in and around Government for a while. You’ve got to be a bit careful sometimes, Mr Strange. You’ll learn this, young squire. You’ll learn as you go forward that sometimes the officials—

💬 Hon Tim Macindoe: I think he’s older than you are.

I think he is, actually. That’s embarrassing. I was his captain on the parliamentary cricket tour, and—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Co-captain.

Co-captain, that’s right. But Mr McAnulty couldn’t keep him in line. It was left to the National MP to keep Jamie Strange in line over in the UK.

💬 Hon Tim Macindoe: We have the same problem in Hamilton.

Doesn’t David Bennett sort him out? I heard the Hon David Bennett sorted it out. Anyway, we’re somewhat away from the bill, but I’m just making the point that we’re going to want to have a good look at that change. It looks anodyne and we just want to make sure it actually does exactly what it says on the tin.

The Minister has rightly talked about the transport agency strengthening and bolstering its regulatory obligations and its regulatory functions. We support that, and we support those changes. Obviously, we’ve has the somewhat damning review that was done by MartinJenkins into regulatory stewardship by the transport agency. The Minister, I think, has quite unfairly tried to sheet that home to the last Government’s Ministers and tried to blame Ministers for directing the transport agency to not focus on regulatory stewardship and effective enforcement of its regulatory powers. Nothing could be further from the truth, and, again, quite misleadingly, the Minister has basically said the MartinJenkins report actually says that, which it doesn’t if you read it.

So I think that’s been regrettable from the Minister, because, actually, there’s bipartisan support across the House for the Transport Agency being able to effectively discharge its responsibilities, and we will, of course, support any measures that improve the ability of the transport agency to do that—to allow it to do its regulatory interventions around speed management and around enforcement and centralisation of its regulatory authority, which is in the purpose of the bill. So we support the bill to a select committee. There are a few things we’re going to want to have a look at.

Unlike the Justice Committee, the Transport and Infrastructure Committee does not have a lot of business, and we’re going to get into this. The Justice Committee, I think it would be fair to say, is overburdened. It is encumbered with a lot of work. It’s funny—they’ve just finished the inquiry into the 2016 local body elections and they’re about to start the 2019 inquiry. That’s how busy they’ve been. But the transport committee is not so busy, and we will get into it. We will have a good look at it, and we look forward to coming back in the new year and examining the bill in more detail. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to the Land Transport (NZTA) Legislation Amendment Bill. As a member of the hard-working, heavy agenda - ridden Transport and Infrastructure Committee, I’m certainly proud to speak on two bills on the same day. Can I just acknowledge the Minister for the hard work around really fixing up a bit of a mess that was inherited, just to be frank. I will just say that on the quiet because what we’ve got here is a coalition Government that’s putting people and transport first, and we see that here, with safety at the top of the agenda.

One of my many constituents came into the office last week, in fact, and he said that—no, it was yesterday. I was in the office yesterday and he said that they’d actually read the document put out by those on the other side, and he said it just mentions the word “transport” nine times. He felt there was a spelling mistake on page 22. I said I had a tonne of other things to read, much more high-quality documents coming out of this side of the House. So I said, “Look, I won’t verify that but I’ll certainly make mention of it in the House next time I talk on a transport bill.” So that’s what we’ve got here today. That’s the context.

It’s about time that the statutory Director of Land Transport role was established. We heard how there’s one in place already with maritime and aviation. And what this does is put the steel behind ensuring that an agency, a Crown entity like the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), has the absolute reinforcement to deliver on that regulatory function. Despite calls that the agenda has been light, can I say that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee has had many a debate around these entities. We’ve often politely asked NZTA, the Ministry of Transport, and the regional council, including the city, to come in and explain themselves around a whole range of things. This fixes and helps them to do their job properly, and I’m proud that the Minister had prioritised this.

We see that it supports the implementation of the Tackling Unsafe Speeds programme. This will just put the icing on the cake. It fixes up the mess that we quietly inherited, but as the humble, hard workers we are on this side of the House, we’re getting on with the job, fixing those long-term challenges and making a decent run at the transport sector. I commend this bill to the House.

As our transport spokesman, Chris Bishop, has mentioned, we intend to support this bill through to the select committee. I certainly hope that, as we look at progressing an improved regulatory system, as the Minister describes it, it will be matched alongside of investment into infrastructure and roading. There is a great concern that, in order to make our roads safer, instead of making them better roads, we slow down the traffic, and there would be some concerns around that.

There are a number of organisations that utilise the roads not just for their livelihood but also to supply logistically our cities and regions. Of course, I’m speaking about the Road Transport Forum. They said their view is that road safety is about more than just a strong regulatory approach; you need infrastructure and investment to ensure safe roads in the first place. So we certainly hope that part of that $6.8 billion that the Government has set aside to go into transport is going to do that. We are concerned, along with the Road Transport Forum, that they don’t put all their eggs into the regulatory basket. It’s imperative to have equal weighting given to infrastructure and investment.

In fact, the Minister was up in my region probably a year ago, and he made an announcement that I think all the people of North Taranaki appreciated about some infrastructure improvements between Bell Block and Waitara. We have been waiting a considerable period of time, and we still wait—still wait. We’re into our third public consultation, and I’m sure that the Minister wants to put that project in as part of the $6.8 billion spend. Certainly, I will be putting the pressure on him that he needs to do that because that piece of highway has cost 12 lives in the last little while, and it’s certainly very, very important.

We do feel that transport ought to be something that we can support, and we are prepared to do so, but we will be looking very, very carefully at what the Minister is proposing, and we look forward to the submissions that come to the select committee. We do want ample time for those submissions to be adequately reviewed, and, certainly, we want to have a system of transport in our country that offers the very best of safety, and that is not just around regulation; it’s around the construction, the camber, the quality of the roads which New Zealanders, and particularly heavy transport operators, drive on. So I’m happy, sir, at this point in time to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. New Zealand First also rises to support this bill, and, of course, reinforce the messages that we’ve heard already about the importance of road safety—far too many tragedies. As we head into the holiday season, we hope that people will drive safely around the country, but what we’ve had—and it was interesting, Chris Bishop, in his contribution, sort of kicking for touch. I mean, the MartinJenkins report was scathing of the New Zealand Transport Agency and its oversight of the regulatory functions and warrants of fitness. Quite how that can be glossed over, I’m not sure. It’s a bit like in the agriculture space with the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak—the NAIT system was similarly exposed to having no oversight, and we paid the price for that as well.

So this bill does a couple of things—re-establishing the Director of Land Transport role so there’s someone for whom the buck stops and that can have proper oversight of this. It does a few other things: I note there’s some stuff around a central registry for speed limit changes, speed management plans, and the like. I’m sure the Transport and Infrastructure Committee will go through that under the wise guidance of chairman Darroch Ball with his Mensa-level intelligence. He will guide that through wisely, I am sure. The other stuff is around the regulatory functions, just strengthening those and refreshing them a little bit to make them fit for purpose.

So this is a good bill. I’m pleased it’s getting cross-party support and we look forward to seeing it through to select committee. Thank you.

Just a short note to support this bill—we’ll support it to select committee anyway. I understand that there was a review and that some of the functions with the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) were found wanting. So this bill will address some of those issues if it goes through the process and if the job’s done well.

I do want to have a little plug for the NZTA, because one of the big jobs that we gave them was building roads and bridges, and they were doing that tremendously well. In the area of Northland they—so, throughout the country, the job was to build these roads of national significance. Along comes a new Government and, basically, pulls the rug out from under them. They had all these plans, 20-, 30-, 50-year plans to build four-lane highways, which is what the rest of the world are doing. It’s the bare minimum. Before you worry about any other forms of transport, you build four-lane highways, especially in Northland; no point in having trains up there if you don’t have a four-lane highway. I fly over that spindly little road that goes up North and I’ve driven up it hundreds of times in my lifetime and it’s not fit for purpose. So a four-lane highway is a basic requirement. Before you move any port, you’ve got to have that four-lane highway.

So NZTA have been doing a great job on that side of things, and along comes this Government and changes all the rules. I know for a fact, having spoken to many of the NZTA staff, that they are really frustrated with what’s going on because this Government doesn’t know where it’s going.

So next year they’re going to announce some more road funding, and I would like to hope that they would give the green light to some of our four-lane highways. I hope that they don’t do what I’m guessing they might do, and that is build another two-lane road next to the existing one at two-thirds the price of a four-lane highway—a totally separate four-lane highway. From Whangarei out to Northport, they built a two-lane road next to the existing two-lane road at two-thirds of the price; it makes no sense. So we hope that they see sense and that they start four-laning with that big surplus that they’ve supposedly got. So, if they do, I hope they really consider Northland—I’m thinking a bit of pressure will come on from New Zealand First. So they may end up spending a bit of money on roads up North. If they do, kudos to them—somehow I doubt it, though. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui, ki a koutou, kia ora. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support the Land Transport (NZTA) Legislation Amendment Bill. I’m speaking on behalf of my colleague Julie Anne Genter, the honourable Minister, and I acknowledge the kind words of the transport Minister, Phil Twyford. The Green Party is proud to support this legislation, which is improving outcomes for New Zealanders.

Now, when it comes to the New Zealand Transport Agency’s (NZTA’s) regulatory responsibilities we have to be cognisant of the facts of history, and what we have seen in New Zealand in the past—it has had fatal consequences. If I could take the opportunity to acknowledge the tragic death of Mr William Ball of Dargaville, what we have seen in this country is cowboy operators and an agency which I think, quite frankly, was asleep at the wheel, not doing the responsibility that every New Zealander deserves so that, when they hop in a vehicle, they know that it’s got the safest standards possible. So this legislation is improving the standards; re-establishing the Director of Land Transport role beefs up this responsibility for the Transport Agency, and I acknowledge the changes that have also happened in regards to the board as well. We think it’s important that the NZTA steps up and that we can have confidence in our regime.

Lastly, I’d really like to single out the Tackling Unsafe Speeds programme and the changes as a result of this legislation. We know that speed kills, we know it’s dangerous, and we know we can do more to tackle it. Part of the road to getting zero deaths on our roads—obviously, it’s going to take time, but it is about the journey and it’s about acknowledging that drivers are going to make mistakes and that, through infrastructure, through education, through road planning, we can mitigate that. This has been so successful overseas. So the Green Party is very happy to support this very positive step forward. Kia ora koutou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As we’ve already heard on this side of the House, we will support this piece of legislation. Anything we can do to help bolster the regulatory function or to strengthen the ability of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) to carry out their functions is a good thing, and we support that. We’ve seen over the last couple of years that they have struggled somewhat. I think that’s a fair characterisation of the NZTA’s ability to conduct what was expected of them over that time. I think we saw, obviously, a significant shift when we had a change in Government with the new Government policy statement coming in around the priorities for NZTA, refocusing and redirecting their attentions off the back of that.

Now, through that time and subsequently, we’ve seen a number of challenges in their ability to deliver what has been expected of them. Now, quite frankly, that hasn’t been good enough. There are a number of areas where they have not met the expectations of constituents around the country. The Waikato is one that I would point out. Some of the safety upgrades that were planned for State Highway 1 through to the Piarere intersection—those projects were meant to be delivered by May this year, four pieces within those particular projects. None of them were delivered by May. Those sorts of examples can be found around the country. For a Government that highlights safety as its priority, they’ve clearly been unable to deliver on that. We just heard from Mr Bishop before that the NZTA only spent 48 percent of their budget, in terms of these safety aspects, over this last year. That simply is not good enough.

So this bill to help strengthen some of those regulatory functions, I think, will go a long way towards supporting their ability to respond, to adapt, and to focus on getting the best transport outcomes for New Zealanders, because absolutely, without a doubt, that will continue to be a strong focus for us should we be fortunate to get back into Government; we will expect NZTA to step up to the plate. There will be a significant number of roading projects that we will be reinvestigating with haste with the expectation that we can deliver those as quickly as possible for New Zealanders in both islands—a number of different projects; 12 that were cancelled by this Government when they came in; projects that simply make sense. They have strong economic business cases and significant safety benefits as well, and when we hear repeatedly that the NZTA’s number one focus under the new Government policy statement is safety—we’re simply not seeing the delivery of that. So these roading projects are critical, and for that reason we will be refocusing on those should we be back in Government. Absolutely, we need a strong NZTA with the right functions and powers to enable that to happen once that occurs. So, on that basis, we support it through to select committee and look forward to it progressing from there.

This is a split call.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m delighted to take a call on this excellent piece of legislation. I’d also like to acknowledge the work that the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) do—I acknowledge that they have had some challenges, but they do an excellent piece of work for our country. The total investment that we have in roads, we heard at the select committee, was around $50 billion—so that’s a $50 billion piece of sunk infrastructure. Keeping those roads safe is an important aspect of NZTA’s brief, and they’re certainly working very hard on that. We also heard at the select committee that, over the summer months, they’ve put a record amount of investment into road safety. This bill helps to enable road safety. This is what it’s about. This is about keeping our families safe. It’s about bringing people home at night. We do have a record of deaths and injury on our roads. That must be improved, and we are working hard to improve that.

I’d like to touch on the aspect there that the Minister, Phil Twyford, mentioned there in his opening speech around Tackling Unsafe Speeds—the implementation of the programme that this bill supports—and it’s around enabling NZTA to issue infringement notices for offences detected by safety cameras. Now, safety cameras are there for a purpose. I know that, at various times when you’re driving along, someone coming towards you might flash their lights to tell people that there’s a safety camera; I personally don’t do that, because I think that the safety cameras are there for a purpose: to keep people travelling at safe speeds. So it’s an important aspect there around the safety cameras.

The second one—and I’ll just take a brief call because a lot of these points have been canvassed—is the aspect around speed limits on New Zealand roads. The bill establishes a centralised register where there will be a single definitive source of information about speed limits on all New Zealand roads. I personally believe that many of our speed limits are too high, particularly on some of the narrow rural roads, and people travelling along those roads at speeds that are simply too high. So I certainly welcome that as a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

If this bill is sent to our select committee, I look forward to supporting this bill as we hear from submitters out there. Thank you. I support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll just be taking a short call this afternoon on this Land Transport (NZTA) Legislation Amendment Bill. As we’ve heard this afternoon, the National Party will be supporting it—at least to first reading—and the real reason for that is because we do recognise that the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) does have a number of challenges ahead of them. Probably, from my perspective, one of the biggest challenges they have, unfortunately, has been this $5 billion cut they’ve had to face to their State highway budget, and what that’s meant is that they’ve had to scale back dramatically on some of the projects that they would have liked to do. The one that sticks out in my mind, as I’ve said in an earlier contribution this afternoon, is the ride between Ashburton and Christchurch, which unfortunately is the second most dangerous highway in the country for fatalities and serious crashes.

What’s interesting—as we also heard in the debate earlier this afternoon—is that what came out of the select committee appearance by the NZTA last week is that they’ve spent only 48 percent of their road safety budget. Now, this is a Government that, when they came in, cut all of this money out of the road safety budget. They literally said that road safety is “our number one priority”, and yet the NZTA has spent only 48 percent of their road safety budget. That’s had a real impact, unfortunately, all over the country of course. But I just think about one intersection in my electorate, in particular, and that’s the intersection between State Highway 79 and State Highway 1. That’s, essentially, where the traffic from Queenstown and Mount Cook comes through Geraldine and then turns on to the main highway and generally heads north through to Christchurch. What we know is that that intersection’s had more crashes on it this year than the last five years.

So I’ve written to the NZTA numerous times—because I’m no longer allowed to meet with them, according to Phil Twyford, the Minister opposite; he won’t let me anymore—asking for them to upgrade that intersection, to do some proper work on that intersection, to square up that intersection, because what we know is that far too often people are turning left out of that intersection and treating it as a merging lane and not as a proper intersection, and that’s unfortunately leading to far too many crashes. Unfortunately, they haven’t done that; they’ve claimed they don’t have the money for it—but now, of course, we know that they do. Now, of course, we know that they’ve spent only 48 percent of their road safety budget. So they do have the money to do it. It’s an extraordinary failure by the NZTA to make our roads safer. But it’s no surprise, because it sounds like the NZTA is pretty chaotic under this Minister. We know that they’ve lost a chief executive, they’ve lost a chair, and, in fact, the Minister has sacked the entire board of the NZTA in recent months.

So we will support this bill because we see it as one small opportunity, perhaps, for the regulatory environment in the NZTA to be improved. I can only hope that that happens under this Government; if it won’t, then certainly under the next. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a short call in this first reading debate on the Land Transport (NZTA) Legislation Amendment Bill. We heard from the Minister, Phil Twyford, previously that there are, basically, a couple of components to this bill: establishing a Director of Land Transport role, and strengthening and clarifying the New Zealand Transport Agency’s (NZTA’s) regulatory function—I think that has been outlined, pretty much, in the previous speeches.

What I do want to talk a little bit about is the fact that safety is at the heart of this bill and the heart of these changes so that we can ensure that all New Zealanders can be safe on our transport system when they are travelling. It is good that we bring the focus back to safety, because what the independent review actually found is that, under previous transport Ministers, the NZTA had been directed to focus on building roads, and that came at the expense of keeping people safe. So what this Government is doing is clearly putting the priorities and the focus back where they should be: making safety our top priority.

On that note, the previous speaker, Andrew Falloon, was mentioning some of the roads that he believed needed to be built. Well, I had a quick scan through yet another discussion document that the National Party brought out a couple of days ago: their transport, infrastructure, and housing plan. Very clearly that plan, where they listed some of the roading projects, was missing Penlink. I was quite surprised to see that, because, yes, Penlink is not showing in there—

💬 Chris Penk: No, that’s next year—next year we announce the projects.

Well, Mr Penk, whatever your party is thinking of announcing as yet another unfunded project, I just wanted to make it very clear that this Government has put the funding aside for Penlink. We will ensure that it will get built, and I’m sure that, at the moment, we are looking at maybe bringing that forward—hopefully; fingers crossed.

But this Government is building roads as well as building more safety into our roads. So we have our priorities right, I would say, where the National Party has it all wrong. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

In taking this call, again, I’m at the back end, being the last speaker for the National Party. We’ve boarded the bus as we talk about this omnibus bill. This bill—I’m a lawyer, so I have to go through and state what specific legislation is part of this omnibus bill that we’re all on board with—amends the Land Transport Management Act 2003, the Land Transport Act 1998, and the Railways Act 2005. It’s about strengthening the regulatory leadership of the NZTA—the New Zealand Transport Agency—and setting up a new regulatory structure establishing the position of the Director of Land Transport, centralising that regulatory authority, and strengthening the NZTA’s role in relation to its interventions, including speed management and enforcement.

I’ve heard in the House this afternoon about the importance of safety. National is unashamedly focused on building safer and more efficient roads because safer roads do save lives. This bill—legislation soon to be—supported by the National Party is about safety, is about efficiency, and is about the interests of our community. I think that encapsulates and sums up what the National Party is about, as well.

Look, I’ll keep this brief because my colleagues have addressed, before the House, what this bill is encapsulating, but I’m just going to reflect on the comment that was shared by the MP for Rongotai, Paul Eagle, who talked about walking trackside in Aramoho in Whanganui a few weeks ago, along the railway tracks. So I’m hopeful that, during that sojourn, you saw on the back of a bus—talking about omnibus and all, and me being the last speaker for the National Party at the back end—that you reflected and saw my image as it was traveling around Whanganui and promoting safer communities, promoting the fact that I value our communities. I glance across the room too at the Hon Willie Jackson, who, I’m also aware, was in Whanganui. So I’m sure that as you may have manoeuvred around my fine and fair city in Whanganui—noting we’ve also got a slight obstacle at the moment with State Highway 4, and the NZTA are being certainly prompted and promoted to come to the party on this one as well, to open up the roadways and ensure the safety of our road users.

So this bill is very much about the statutorily independent Director of Land Transport leading the charge in terms of the regulatory function and decision making in that role. In closing, this bill is commended to the House and supported by the National Party.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. After listening to members who spoke earlier, especially the Minister of Transport, the Hon Phil Twyford, and National’s spokesperson Mr Chris Bishop, it’s understandable where the members are respectively coming from. Quite the contrary to Mr Bishop’s view, I think Minister Twyford and his Associate Minister Julie Anne Genter have done a tremendously good job. I want to congratulate Minister Twyford on his leadership.

This bill is about safety. Safety is this coalition Government’s top transport priority, and this bill seeks to achieve that by strengthening and clarifying the regulatory function of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA).

In October 2018, NZTA announced that NZTA had not been performing its regulatory functioning effectively and that, in particular, it was too focused on education and self-regulation. This came to light through the backlog of 850 regulatory non-compliance cases that had not been managed properly by the NZTA.

One of the cases that some of the members touched earlier involved the tragic death of Mr William Ball, who was killed in a vehicle that had not been properly inspected by a non-compliance vehicle inspector agent. We’re not simply dealing with statistics; we are talking about people’s lives.

While speaking on a transport-related bill, it is correct and appropriate for the Minister and other members to say that the former Government was asleep at the wheel and that this bill seeks to remedy the situation. We are putting people and their safety and their lives first and foremost.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

I move, That the Land Transport (NZTA) Legislation Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 24 April 2020.

Motion agreed to.