Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill.

That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

💬 Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I move, That the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I’m very pleased that we’ve been able to make good progress on this important piece of legislation this morning—record pace, potentially. I just want to acknowledge members from around the House for the way that they have engaged in this piece of legislation throughout its legislative passage, in particular the intelligent questioning on Part 6 of the bill in relation to the recreational aviation sector. I look forward to picking up on those issues with the member as we proceed. But I make that comment because I think there is a good recognition across the House of the value of these regulatory systems bills and in working through them in a collaborative way. Ultimately, everyone in New Zealand and everyone in this House benefits from having regulatory systems that are efficient, that are up to date, that ensure safety, and that allow activities in our country to proceed with as few restrictions on them as possible. I think, given the way in which there’s been broad cross-party support for this bill, we can see that that has come through in the changes that are made by this bill.

Just canvassing a number of those briefly—we’ve been through them a number of times. One of the ones I do just want to dwell on is the introduction of transport instruments as a legislative facility in this bill. In the time that I’ve been in this role as Minister of Transport, the scale of the transport sector has been thrust upon me. This is an enormous sector, covering every way, pretty much, that we move around our country. It is a constantly changing environment. We’re in an era in which technology is constantly impinging and changing the ways in which the transport sector works. It’s a highly safety-critical environment as well, and we need to make sure that we have a regulatory regime which keeps up with those things. There’s just also an extraordinary level of detail.

At the moment, the way in which our regulatory system works to keep on top of all of that is that rules and regulations ultimately all have to come through to the Minister and the Governor-General to ensure that that regulatory landscape is kept up to date, that we keep safe, and that we keep pace with technology. Given the scale of the sector, that is just not a particularly efficient way of proceeding. So what transport instruments do—and this might be seen as a slightly unusual thing for a Government to promote—is to delegate down some ability from the Minister to appropriately and specifically appointed people in the transport system, directors and chief executives, to be able to make transport instruments.

What we have been able to clarify through the course of this legislation—and here I thank the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for the work that they did in this area. Yes, that’s a good thing to do in terms of making the system more flexible, but we also want to make sure that things don’t run away on us. These instruments will, effectively, be pieces of secondary legislation, so the House and the Minister do need to be assured that they will, in fact, be put in place in accordance with the intention of Ministers when they set rules and regulations. So we’ve clarified that those instruments will have to pertain specifically to the purposes of the rules and regulations under which they are set, and I think that that has been an important clarification, and it speaks to the intention that the House has made through the select committee and committee of the whole House process. So I thank members for their support in making those changes.

A couple of the other important little changes that are made through this bill—one that hasn’t received too much comment is that there are a number of potential changes to the board sizes of the key boards that are governed by the various pieces of transport legislation. The Waka Kotahi board, for example, shifts from being between six and eight members to seven to nine members. That deals with a couple of particular issues. One is that an even number is never a particularly helpful number if you’re dealing with contentious issues where people might actually be voting on matters. I’m sure members in this House, who engage in the world of politics, will be aware that an odd number on a committee is actually quite good in terms of being able to make decisions. So that’s something that we’ll be able to provide through this.

But actually, more importantly, that potential change to the Waka Kotahi board size just recognises the sheer complexity of that board, their regulatory functions—their functions in planning, their functions in funding—and the need to get a good composition of people who can ensure that the board has all of the skills that it needs to cover off that very wide set of functions, noting that they manage an annual budget of kinds of around about $4.5 billion. So that just gives a bit more flexibility to make sure that we have the right skills at the board table. Comparable changes apply to both Maritime New Zealand and the Civil Aviation Authority as well.

There are also clarifications in this bill in the way that exemptions may be granted from transport rules, regulations, or under the new regime instruments. This is an important part of the flexibility of the system. We set these rules, regulations, and now instruments. In 99.5 percent of cases, they will apply well to the situations that people find themselves in, but from time to time it is appropriate that exemptions are granted. So we clarify the processes by which they are granted in this piece of legislation but also specifically make some clarifications around how class exemptions for groups may be granted. One of the useful changes that was made at the select committee stage was just to clarify that given that those class exemptions are, effectively, pieces of secondary legislation themselves, they are not appealable through to the courts. People do have recourse through the Regulations Review Committee and also through the fact that they are disallowable instruments. So we’ve provided some clarification and also some protections in those areas as well.

Finally, I’ll just say—we’ve just passed Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 17 through the committee stage. I’ll just say that I’m really pleased with the two changes that have been made via those SOPs. They did come into the process a little bit later, and that in part is because COVID did reveal some particular issues to us, especially in that area of ensuring the welfare of seafarers who visit our shores. This is something I feel really strongly about—that across our regulatory systems, we need to make sure that the most vulnerable people are looked after. We’ve all heard the stories this year about some of the challenges that international seafarers face. Sometimes that’s Kiwi seafarers who are out there, and sometimes that’s international seafarers who are visiting our shores.

These seafarer welfare centres have a long and noble history. They’ve primarily been set up back in the day by religious organisations. There are, effectively, three component organisations who oversee the seafarer welfare centres in New Zealand. One is rooted in the Anglican Church, one is rooted in the Catholic Church, and one covers off other denominational and non-denominational groupings, so we’ve got something there for everyone. But you just think about it, and we have some seafarers who have, effectively, been living in a big metal box bobbing around on the ocean for a year or more due to the impacts of COVID and the inability of some of those ships to land on shore and for people to return home. So these welfare centres are just critical in terms of the human and social needs of those people. They also act as a really important avenue for seafarers to, in a soft and easier, more comfortable way, raise concerns and complaints about their treatment while they have been at sea. We know that some of those issues are very real.

It’s not over-egging things to say that were it not for this piece of legislation, the change that we’ve made through SOP 17 at the committee, those seafarer welfare centres would face a very bleak future. Their funding streams are under real threat, and those services would potentially be compromised, and that would compromise New Zealand’s ability to comply with the Maritime Labour Convention, which we are signed up to. So I’m really pleased we’ve been able to make that change in particular. I’m pleased to see the support that it’s received across the House.

Again, I’ll thank everyone who’s participated in this process: members across the House, the select committee, those people who submitted on the bill, and, of course, the officials who have been guiding it through the process and providing really good support to me and, I think, the select committee as it considered this piece of legislation. As I said at the outset, these regulatory systems bills are an important way of making sure that we have modern, fit for purpose regulatory systems, and I think we’ve been able to achieve some very good outcomes through the passage of this piece of legislation. I’m pleased to see that it looks like it will pass through the House today and take effect from 1 April. I thank members for their support and commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thanks to the Minister, who’s really outlined much of the detail in this bill. I would say that the National caucus is happy to oblige on collaborative debate where the Government comes up with sensible solutions. So we find the changes in this bill particularly sensible. It is important for 1 April that this bill is being done under urgency; however, I would ask the Minister to put some further urgency on transport projects, because, over the last 3½ years, we have not seen, under previous transport Ministers, any urgency at all in this department.

This bill really is enabling transport instruments. It will enable the Minister of Transport to allocate the maintenance of detailed requirements within legislation to a specified individual such as the relevant transport regulator. So the whole thing about this bill is to enable a quick response to change, ensuring decision making is sitting at the right level, modernising existing exemptions—lots of what seem like minor fixes but hopefully will help to speed up the system, because we do know that we really do need some speeding up in transport.

What I would actually ask, in relation to this bill, there are other bills that could be done that would help to speed up the transport process, and I refer particularly to bills like the Resource Management Act (RMA). Without that, we’re not going to be ultimately able to speed up transport in a way that is acceptable to this country. I think about a project in my own local electorate—the Mount Messenger project. It was announced by Sir John Key when he was the Prime Minister, in 2016. It was appropriated in the 2016 Budget. It has been supported by people from both sides of the House, including previous local MP Minister Little. It’s been supported by Minister Twyford in his time. It’s been supported by the Prime Minister, and just trying to get it through RMA processes—it’s not that the Government is slowing this one down; it’s actually the processes of the—

💬 Hon Michael Wood: It’s the member’s constituents!

Yeah. It’s the Resource Management Act and the process that is undertaken around that. So, while we’re spending time today fixing up the small parts of transport, I urge the Government to work with the National caucus when it comes to the Resource Management Act and see if we can get some sort of collaborative debate going on across the House, because nothing is really being delivered in transport at the moment.

I would also make another request in all of this: there’s a lot of talk about public transport, but 94 percent of personal travel in New Zealand occurs in private vehicles, and there are some things we can do in cities around public transport, but certainly, in electorates like mine, private transport is going to be a thing for a very long time to come. So we need the roads up kept, maintained, and in certain areas we need new builds of roads. So let’s not let ideology get in the way, because it’s slowing down progress on key strategic infrastructure in transport.

So, at that point, I’m going to leave it at that, because I would like to get through this bill and let the Minister get on with his real job of building roads.

That previous presentation really epitomises everything that is wrong with the Opposition. Here, the honourable member Barbara Kuriger is criticising a lack of progress on a particular stretch of road that is being held up by her own constituents who are using the very Act to do so that she is so critical of.

But fortunately, we are in an environment where a piece of legislation like this becomes necessary because so much is happening in transport, and, when so much is happening in transport, it means that you’ve actually got to, each time there is a new road, each time something’s done, there needs to be new rules around it—whether it be speed limits, whether it be signs, something as basic as be careful of whatever the local birdlife is. So what is absolutely necessary to keep up with this work that this Government is doing is to ensure we have an efficient regulatory system around it. So what this bill does, it just ensures that there’s a delegation of the ability to ensure that the amount of work being done by this Government, the vast amount of work being done by this Government, that there is a regulatory system that can actually keep up with it.

So what this does is it enables who can actually now make—we’ve heard the Minister describe what transport instruments are, just to ensure we can keep up that efficiency with the vast amount of work we are doing as the Government. But who can do this work, I think those sitting at home will be very interested to know. So in regards to the land transport, it’s Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency, or “the agency” as it’s often referred to, or the Director of Land Transport can do this. In regards to maritime transport, Maritime New Zealand or the Director of Maritime New Zealand may make transport instruments. It also allows, interestingly enough, Waka Kotahi or Maritime New Zealand to delegate this power to the Secretary for Transport. And so the committee recommends a secretary, so the secretary now can be allocated responsibility.

So, again, what we have here is another piece of regulation which is necessary to keep up with the amount of work, the amount of innovation, and the amount of work being done by this Government to ensure that it is the dynamic Government it will need to be to recover from some fairly moribund time in times gone past. I certainly commend this to the House.

It is a pleasure to rise and talk about this bill, because it has actually provided great levity, actually, over the passing of this bill. We’ve had some members talk about the possibility of moa signs in Ōtira Pass; we’ve had others talk about the shape of traffic signals.

💬 Greg O’Connor: Arthur’s Pass.

Arthur’s Pass, it was; you’re right, it was Arthur’s Pass. We’ve had others talk about their great love of the Chatham Islands and the food stocks that are there, from the ambassador for the Chatham Islands, Mr Eagle—it’s been fantastic. And we’ve had others talk about their great love of buses. So we’ve really discussed and canvassed quite a big set of issues.

I just want to say that, for me as a new member, it has been really quite refreshing to see how a bill is actually supposed to go through: from bill in first reading, ultimately to how a law is passed. This has taken its time; it has taken over a year to go from first reading to third reading and be passed as a law. We’ve had nine submissions. We’ve had plenty of time to consider all the big issues. And for me, it is sort of interesting, because, on the other hand, we’ve just come out of a taxation or a capital gains tax bill, and also a Māori wards discussion, which were compressed under urgency, and I thought that was the normal process. But it is good to see that there is a good legislative process.

I agree with my colleague Barbara Kuriger; I think that we would love to see some more action. When we talk about a second harbour crossing, isn’t it interesting? The harbour bridge is at structural constraints, we don’t have a plan for a second crossing, and then we are going to whack a SkyPath on the back of it that is going to load up to a structural load. So we need an answer for this side—SkyPath and the second harbour crossing. We need light rail fixed; it has frozen 15 roading projects. We’ve got the Auckland fuel tax, we’ve waited three years for it all to come; nothing is happening there. Let’s Get Wellington Moving—we could talk about that but we have already canvassed that. And we’ve got lots of congested and clogged cities. So there are more important things to do.

But we are supportive of this bill and we commend the Minister on this very worthy and earnest piece of work, because it is important and it is practical and it is very commonsensical. I know that we have talked about it through the second reading and in committee as well. It is doing the practical stuff: enabling transport instruments, clarifying relocation powers, and minor regulatory governance improvements. So it is my great pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an honour, actually, to hear from my colleague, Christopher Luxon, across the room, and I look forward to his maiden speech this afternoon where he talks about the great things of the Auckland Transport Alignment Project and the $31 billion investment in Auckland’s transport infrastructure.

Understanding the deficit that we’ve had in Auckland’s transport infrastructure for so long—I think a $6 billion deficit we’ve faced over consecutive decades—and as an Auckland MP, each of us knows the impact on our community and the congestion that people living in Tāmaki Makaurau experience on a day-to-day basis. But our reality is that we cannot continue to just build roads in Auckland. That is not the future transport system. I’ve talked often about the need for many, many options—that includes on my bicycle, walking, public transport, light rail—because our vision has always had to be bigger and broader to ensure that we can get Aucklanders moving.

So that’s the exciting thing under this Minister, under this Government, that we’re getting on and doing the mahi. That includes looking into the additional harbour crossing, and if nobody had read up on the reports, we’ve actually done some research and started the work to look at Auckland’s additional harbour crossing and come up with actual options, not pie in the sky ideas that we should do this, that we should do that. We’re actually getting on with unlocking Auckland’s congestion issues under this Government.

So I go back to this particular bill—ahakoa he iti he pounamu, albeit small, this bill is a treasure. Because we know with large investment in Auckland’s infrastructure—$31 billion—addressing those gaps and unlocking Auckland, we’ve got to focus on the little things. And what this bill does is that it enables Government, or the Minister in particular, to delegate responsibilities to CEOs to take care of some of those responsibilities and the instruments that will enable our transport system to unlock itself and get moving.

So without further ado—and I acknowledge the cooperation and collaboration in the House today—I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party is supporting this bill. I would like to, just very briefly, speak in support of the words of my colleague Shanan Halbert, who spoke previously.

You know, transport is an area where we have an opportunity in New Zealand to do much better than what we have been doing, in a way that meets the different needs and values of pretty much everyone in society. There’s often a misconception that we have high levels of car ownership and car use because people have chosen that. But when you really look at the history since the mid-1950s, it hasn’t been a choice that has been made by most households; it’s a choice that was made by transport engineers and city planners. It copied the style of development that happened in the United States and most of the English-speaking world at that time, and what we’ve learnt over the last 70 years is that it doesn’t solve the congestion problem, it doesn’t reduce the cost of transport; it increases it.

So we had this unintended consequence of planning rules and of traffic engineering practice that has led to a situation where most New Zealanders have to use a car to get around. And that is actually costing us a fortune in terms of land that’s tied up for moving and storing cars—you know, most of the off-street car-parking we have in New Zealand is empty three-quarters of the time; that’s land that could be used in more productive ways if we manage parking in a different way. That would mean more land in our urban areas for affordable housing, for schools and businesses, and shops and hospitals, green space—all the things that make a city attractive to live in, we could have more land for that if we manage parking in a more intelligent way. I do believe that some of the provisions in this bill will allow for that, and will mean that it’s a little bit less complicated for the Government to allow for changes in rules and regulation that make it easier for councils to be able to charge the appropriate price, for example, when they have to tow a car. At the moment, they’re not able to even recover the cost of towing that car.

So some of those little detailed rules, it’s really important that we have a streamlined process, and that’s one of the things that this bill is doing, allowing for a more streamlined process for updates to rules and regulation that will facilitate a smarter approach to parking management. And this isn’t at all, in any way, about making it more difficult for people to do things; it’s about having fair and appropriate pricing, it’s about a fair allocation of resources, and it’s about giving people true choice.

When you have buses and trains that run every five to 10 minutes at peak time and throughout the day, and on the weekend, that gives people real choice. When the public transport services are more frequent, more people use them, they’re more affordable to provide, and the more people who can use buses and trains, the fewer people clogging up the roads with their cars. It’s the same with active transport: a huge percentage of trips at peak time are short trips. I mean, we’re talking two-thirds of peak trips that are less than five kilometres. Now, that is a distance that can easily be cycled by most healthy adults and even some children, but only if it’s safe. And when the traffic engineers planned everything around cars and trucks, the reality is that that made it less attractive, less safe, and much less viable to use a bicycle for these short trips. And we saw a complete collapse in the number of kids walking and cycling to school. It’s just not an efficient outcome.

And you do hear people say, “Oh, but what about the tradies? They can’t cycle.” Well, in some countries they do, but actually, they don’t need to cycle. The point is that you only need about a 10 percent reduction in cars on the road at peak to have free-flowing traffic on the roads. So we only need a small percentage of those car trips for people to say, “Actually, it is viable for my kids to cycle to school, and it’s viable for me to cycle to work, and actually I can join up the train with the e-bike so rather than driving and having to park at the park and ride, I can actually cycle, and leave my bike in secure storage at the bus station, or put in on the train and get to the other end of the journey.”

This kind of joined-up transport planning is mainstream in many other countries, and New Zealand has fallen behind, and unfortunately there’s been a real politicisation of transport projects, and you really hear this with the sort of campaign right now for a second Auckland Harbour crossing for cars. It just makes no sense; the cost of that would be astronomical, and the benefit to the people getting around Auckland would be negligible, and that’s what the studies that have already been published have shown. So why is it that the parties who supposedly care about the economy and choice are asking for this massive taxpayer subsidy to single-occupant vehicle trips into the city centre at peak time, which is just going to cause more congestion and more pollution? That is the question. They say they want congestion charging, but the reality is if we had congestion charging, there would be way higher demand for public transport, walking and cycling, and car sharing. There would be no need for this additional car capacity at peak time. And so, yeah, I’m all in favour of investigating congestion pricing, but you have to have the alternatives in place, because what’s going to happen is many more people are going to shift from driving alone to wanting to do other things, and if the buses aren’t there, if the trains aren’t there, if they aren’t affordable and frequent, they don’t have that choice.

So, ultimately, I think the direction the Labour Government’s going in is the right direction, but there still is a challenge, and that is in the implementation, because, unfortunately, the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi has a real deep, embedded culture of this traffic engineering philosophy, which doesn’t care about cost-effectiveness, doesn’t care about choice, doesn’t see people having the choice to cycle as a real, serious transport alternative. And they have completely ignored the evidence that we’ve seen over the last 70 years that when you increase road capacity, you increase traffic; when you decrease capacity for cars, you actually reduce traffic and you get a better outcome. That is an undeniable fact. There is not a counter example anywhere in the world; that’s why right wing parties in Europe are very supportive of cycling as a mainstream transport option, why they’re supportive of public transport.

So, you know, I look forward to the day in New Zealand when we all are willing to embrace a rational, evidence-based approach to transport that gives people real choice, that solves some of our complex problems around transport costs, long commute times, high carbon emissions, high public health costs of people not being able to walk and cycle, with kids not being free to explore their neighbourhoods and get to school under their own steam. That is something that I think everyone in New Zealand should be able to get together and support, and I look forward to that day, but we commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ACT Party believes in good quality regulation, good quality public policy. But before regulations are made, it’s important to ask the question, what problem are we trying to solve? And do we even need regulation? Or can we trust those organisations which have the responsibility to build and operate and deliver safely to actually come up with their own safe systems at work. That is a question that will always challenge Government and that ACT will always challenge the Government on. Why do we need more regulations when, in fact, those businesses with skin in the game and who have responsibilities under the Health and Safety at Work Act as persons conducting a business or undertaking already have clear responsibilities in terms of maritime safety, road transport, and civil aviation safety. So while the ACT Party supports the intent of this bill and this amendment, we have grave concerns about the ability of the agencies tasked with enforcing the regulations and auditing to actually do what they are supposed to do.

There are some very serious concerns that have been raised over the past few weeks. We’ve heard from Radio New Zealand that people who were too afraid to submit on New Zealand Transport Agency’s (NZTA’s) role in auditing and checking heavy vehicle certification took the extreme measure of contacting Radio New Zealand using a burner phone to communicate their very serious and legitimate concerns about NZTA’s performance in safety auditing and checking and the lack of professional development in certifying those heavy trucks and buses and other vehicles, which our economy depends on, but also everybody relies on being safely operated on the road.

More recently, in the past few days, Radio New Zealand, the State broadcaster, that fountain of all knowledge and truth, has reported that now the Heavy Vehicle Engineers—that organisation responsible for delivering these heavy trucks and buses and trailers on our roads—has finally found the courage to stand up and repeat those claims in public. The concerns they’ve raised are that despite the regulations and the instruments that NZTA will be given through this bill, they don’t believe that the agency has the competency or the goodwill to actually work in partnership with industry to make sure that all of those heavy trucks and buses and other plant and equipment on the road have actually been designed and constructed and are being operated safely. So it’s all very well to set up regulations with good intent, but the test is actually the outcome. Are the roads safer? Do road users have more confidence when they’re passing a truck on the road? That remains to be seen. So the ACT Party focuses on outcomes, not good intentions, and while we support this bill and its intentions, the proof will be in the outcomes.

Then there’s the matter of a hypothecated tax—the fuel excise duty—which, it appears for many, many years, has been applied to the aviation sector to all of those operators who’ve chosen to switch from the much more dangerous and toxic aviation gas, what is commonly known as Avgas, which contains lead for the purpose of lubricating aviation engines. There’s been a revolution over the past few years, in that small aircraft engines, and larger ones too, now, can actually run on motor fuel, or Mogas. That is the fuel—a high octane, like a 95 or a 98—that you might put in your car. That can also run a six-cylinder engine like in your Cessna Caravan or the other aircraft that you might use to get around the country, to and from regional airports.

It’s not just the commercial operators, but the flight schools. There’s one in Christchurch which uses 200,000 litres of fuel a year. At 70c a litre fuel excise duty, that’s about $140,000 that they’ve been paying to the Government every year in fuel excise duty and having received no benefits from it. The bill that is being debated—and that will most likely be passed—today takes that hypothecated road user tax and now applies it belatedly to a definition of aircraft safety. Those operators have rightly pointed out that they are already paying levies on aircraft safety and aviation safety through their civil aviation levies. The Minister wasn’t able to clearly explain the difference today, and he has offered to have further discussions on that, but it seems like, for many, many years, these people, whether they’re recreational pilots or whether they’re running a pilot training school, have rightly been asking, how do we apply for our exemption? How do we apply to get our fuel excise duty back, when your local lawn mowing contractor can, but we can’t? That seems manifestly unfair.

I have a funny feeling that the representations of that sector and those stakeholders are what have led the Minister to come to the House belatedly with a Supplementary Order Paper to amend the original bill to make sure that NZTA and the Government wasn’t exposed to that risk of having taken a tax hypothecated on road users and the benefits of roads and applied it potentially in a way that is unacceptable to other matters.

We know that if you look at Auckland’s regional fuel tax, for example, hypothecated on delivering better transport outcomes for Auckland, they’ve collected around about $380 million through that regional fuel tax. It’s hypothecated to deliver better connections and better transport outcomes for Auckland. About half of it sits in an account, unused and unallocated, at a time when we know Auckland is choking with congestion, where there are a large number of unfunded, vitally important connection projects like East West Link, which have been approved, which are regarded by all of the stakeholders, apart from one who is challenging this in court and who has missed their point entirely. All of the stakeholders involved in the design and implementation, including mana whenua groups, including organisations like Auckland Council, which has extensive landholdings along the Onehunga waterfront, which are heavily contaminated with old landfills—the Onehunga catchment contains some of New Zealand’s worst contaminated aquifers. And one of the things that the East West Link project was going to do was create a virtual dam around the Onehunga foreshore, contain all that contaminated groundwater and storm water, and actually treat it, and that was going to be a net environmental improvement.

So when we’re thinking about regulations that improve outcomes, rather than just good intention, it’s really important to think about the long-term strategy. What are our objectives here? When we’re thinking about projects that desperately need funding, like East West Link in Auckland, to unlock the economic potential of south-east and south-west Auckland, to create a transport corridor that means trucks can get from their depots and from the rail hubs in South Auckland to the port—when there’s $180 million sitting in a bank account unallocated and unused, that really grates with our stakeholders. So what the ACT Party would advocate for is that any regulation that comes to the House to make regulating or improving the transport systems, the administration of transport, easier should be considered against the need to get Auckland moving and the rest of the country moving and unlock our potential.

So, in closing, the ACT Party supports this bill, but we support this bill because we share the Government’s intention that regulating through transport instruments becomes much easier for the industry to comply with. But what we also insist on is that the Minister holds his agencies and departments to account for their poor performance in the past and to understand why that performance was poor in safety auditing and checking heavy vehicles on the road, and we insist that any transport instruments that are created under this amendment actually have the buy-in and support of stakeholders in the sector, are easy to administer at minimal or reduced cost, and are practical to implement, because it’s only the outcome that this will be judged on. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Can I first just say it’s really good to get support across the House on this bill, and actually it makes sense, because who doesn’t want to ensure the safety of New Zealanders, especially on our roads and our walkways? I also just want to quickly acknowledge the other members, Shanan Halbert and colleague, for his kōrero around the different modes and the fact that this Government is focused on all of those modes and all of New Zealand’s safety while they’re using those transportation modes. Safety is a top priority for our Government, especially on transport, so this bill ensures the effectiveness and the efficiency of our regulatory system. We know that it addresses the currents gaps and errors and duplications that currently exist. The streamlines around the rule-making process will make sure that our transport sector—so our police and our emergency services—are able to address emergencies and issues much faster. Therefore, it’s a no-brainer that this bill has the safety of New Zealanders at its heart, and I commend this bill to the House.

This is a five-minute split call—the Hon Mark Mitchell.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I intend to take just a short call on this, the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill. I didn’t sit on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, but I thought that my colleague Chris Luxon gave it a very good rundown in terms of the process. I think that because the committee received just nine submissions, that is probably indicative that it is a very technical bill. I’d like to acknowledge my good friend and colleague Paul Eagle for his advocacy for the Chathams. I think that the bill does contain some—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: That’s “High Commissioner Eagle” to you!

Ha, ha! I know that Mr Eagle is a huge advocate and fan of the kai moana in the Chathams, and this is a very good part of the bill. So, well done.

I want to acknowledge the valiant speeches by Greg O’Connor, Shanan Halbert, and Terisa Nga-ba.

💬 Terisa Ngobi: Ngobi.

Ngobi, sorry. Fundamentally, reading this bill—and, by the way, it says here, “to enable a quick response to change.”; if this bill allows the Government to have a quick response to change, bring some more bills in, and we’ll support them all! We’ll get them all through, no problem at all. Valiant speeches trying to get the bus going a bit quicker: Shanan, Greg, and Terisa, all at the back of the bus there, pushing as hard as they can, those legs going as quick as they can, but, unfortunately, they suddenly realise there are no wheels on the bus—so it is a bit hard to get a bus moving when there are no wheels. The reason why I say that is in response to some of the comments that Mr Greg O’Connor made.

The reality of it is this: if you look around the country—and I’ll take my electorate, for example—the only real transport projects going are the ones that the National Government started. I’ve got the Pūhoi to Wellsford, a very popular road—the road of national significance. I’ve got the Matakana Link Road, extremely important; started by the National Party.

But the one road that we do need in my electorate is Penlink. There’s been a promise by the Government to deliver Penlink, and it is meant to start this year. The funds have been allocated but the funds haven’t been released. So if you want to get the bus moving a bit quicker, release the funds and actually start building some roads.

But we are in support of the bill. It is an important bill. It is an omnibus bill. I am very happy to stand and support it. Thank you.

Tena koe, Madam Speaker. I am very happy to rise to take a brief split call on the third reading of the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill. Particularly so to follow that member, Mark Mitchell, where I can give him the assurance that this big red bus has wheels and they are going round and round, as opposed to the static nature of the blue bus on the other side of this House, perhaps.

But I do want to say that what we have heard today is that this is an important piece of legislation. It’s practical, it does have common sense, and the fact that it is going to be supported from across the Parliament demonstrates that fact as well. We’ve heard also today about the multimodal approach, with this being an example of where this piece of legislation will play its part, and so I certainly support the views that have already been expressed by colleagues on that particular issue as well.

When I turn back and look at this legislation at a local level, I think of the Manawatū Tararua Gorge project—Te Ahu a Turanga—a great project that is delivering for my local community. Even though that is around connecting east to west, part of that project does have components of active transport as part of it. And so this piece of legislation will ensure that projects such as that can actually relate to the regulatory instrument and the various regulations and rules that will make things a little bit easier for community groups—for communities to be able to support active transport alongside other more traditional modes and means of transport in community as well.

It’s around being refreshed, it’s around keeping up to date and being relevant—and that’s what this Government is all about. On that basis, we will support this bill, and happy to commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s always a privilege to talk about anything that’s got the words “Chatham Islands” in it, of course, but, more seriously, this is a bill that really has its history in regulatory compliance and safety. I remember talking in the second reading to this and that was the impetus for doing a lot of this work—you only need to do a short google to look back at the history around compliance. There were lots of issues and I’m proud that this Government has pulled it together and gone, “Let’s get this sorted.” And so we had appointments made. We’ve done some of the detail. It’s not too fancy, but it is important and it does save lives, and I think that’s something that has been lost in some of the speeches, because we’ve got distracted by roads and a whole range of other things. But what this is, this is about compliance and safety, so I’m really proud to be able to speak one last time on this.

In my honorary consul role for the Chatham Islands, I have found out they’ve already been operating as a regional council because things down there—I don’t know how much attention they pay to mainland legislation, but I was informed that we were already a regional council. I guess this just gives them the formal blessing, if nothing else. So good on this paper, good on the Minister, and thanks to all those who have spoken, and, of course, the select committee. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for another go at this one, the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill. I have actually spoken on it before, a number of times. I feel like I’ve spoken—

💬 Hon David Bennett: Arr!

—about it on more occasions than it’s come up in this House, so I don’t know how that’s possible, it just kind of feels like that, somehow. I sense there’s an encouragement for me to emphasise the seafarer welfare, but I won’t, in fact.

I just want to make a couple of points pretty briefly. One is, actually, a reasonably serious one. Transport, we often think of in quite technical terms, but it’s the effect on people’s lives, not only from a life safety point of view but also the way that we interact in society, people spending more time transporting themselves when they need to, are away from their families, workplaces, whatever. That was a point that was made really clearly in a local meeting that I attended last weekend in Kūmeu and surrounding areas, and this Friday coming up I’ve got a meeting in Warkworth about issues to that area. And I’m always reminded in the community away from this place how important these matters are for all those in our community.

I think sometimes there’s a discussion that’s really based on a false choice in this place. We hear, on the one hand, roads are evil and should be banned—I exaggerate, but only slightly. And on the other hand, only roads are the way ahead. Of course, that’s a false choice. Of course, the truth lies somewhere in between, which is that if we have the right kind of transport for the right place then we’ll all be better off for that.

This bill does have a pretty mode-neutral feel to it, although I can’t resist any opportunity to weigh in on the subject of active transport. Walking and cycling are good things in themselves, but, representing a rural area as I do, I’d like to fly the flag again, as I do from time to time, for horse transport for those who would ride in areas such as Kaipara ki Mahurangi. It is important for them to be safe. And I wrote to the last Government, the Minister who was the Associate Minister of Transport, I think with that delegation, didn’t get very far with her, but I’ll try again maybe. I’ve reminded myself and my colleague and friend across the House talking about active transport in those terms has reminded me as well.

So the bill’s pretty technocratic, it’s pretty detailed but none the worse for that. I’ve enjoyed the debate and discussion but I don’t wish to prolong it any further. So with that, like others on this side of the House, I commend it to the House.

I rise in support of this bill, and I do so as a scooter user. I think this is where I differ from Julie Anne Genter, in that I found the bike a little bit difficult to get around on, and a scooter in my area means that you can actually go almost anywhere much faster because of the congestion in Auckland, as our Minister works valiantly to actually put that city to rights in terms of transport, as does the council. I take Julie Anne Genter’s point that what we are doing when we use these other modes is also connecting up with the train system, because a scooter could get me to a train, which would actually get me to Chris Penk’s electorate if I needed to, and maybe on to a horse.

I think that what I’ve seen and observed in this area is a stunning shift in the way that we think about things. What really provoked my thoughts was Maureen Pugh’s comment that the Minister of Transport’s job is to build roads. We have gone so far beyond that now, and you can see that in the changes in this legislation, because the administrators are being asked to do so much more. The boards will be enforced in terms of their numbers, but their tasks will also be different. They are looking at a different way of working in the world.

I remember, when there was a real investment in trains in Auckland, there was a complete underestimation of the uptake of those trains, and the same was true of bus lanes. We just did not know how many people would be involved in those things. So, basically, what we do in this situation is we put in place legislation which encourages the actual market for this, and we can see here this beautiful transport instruments provision which will do that. It will put all the administrative work into the right places. It will reinforce that system. Thank you. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

The House stands adjourned until 2 o’clock today.

The House adjourned at 11.40 a.m. (Wednesday)