Land Transport Management (Regulation of Public Transport) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport Management (Regulation of Public Transport) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I move, That the Land Transport Management (Regulation of Public Transport) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill amends the Land Transport Management Act 2003, replacing the Public Transport Operating Model—sometimes called PTOM—with a Sustainable Public Transport Framework. The introduction of this new framework will support the Government’s commitment to improving public transport in New Zealand. The change is necessary to address systemic issues in the planning, procurement, and provision of public transport. It’s also necessary to set up the public transport system for the growth that we need to both achieve emissions reduction from the land transport system, and address traffic congestion in our metros.

PTOM was intended to increase commerciality of public transport services and reduce subsidies by ensuring competition for the provision of the service, and has not, however, created a sustainable system, it hasn’t adequately protected working conditions, nor has it provided regional councils with the necessary flexibility to tailor public transport services to the needs of their communities. Cumulatively, we’ve seen a degradation of service reliability and we believe a better system can do better.

One of the key issues with PTOM was the negative impact on the workforce. PTOM rewarded operators with low wage costs and resulted in operators struggling to recruit and retain drivers, ultimately resulting in reduced service levels. Auckland bus drivers were already hundreds of drivers short in 2018—which is long before COVID to deal with one of the points raised by Simeon Brown. Operators couldn’t attract and retain drivers because of poor wages and conditions.

To address these chronic driver shortages, this Government had to intervene. We had to fund increased wages and improved conditions over and above the contract prices that have been locked in under the PTOM model. Once wage rates were increased and we were confident the sector was committed to improving driver wages and conditions, we also provided a temporary pathway to recruit migrant bus drivers. However, the sector needs to be sustainable in the long term rather than the relying on ad hoc measures such as we’ve had to adopt to address these systemic issues.

The regulation of public transport bill represents a critical step in setting the public transport sector up for long-term sustainabilities. These longer-term solutions are found in the systemic changes proposed in the bill. We’ve heard the argument that the objectives of the new framework can be achieved through contract variations under PTOM, but rather than relying on a patchwork of measures to try to resolve systemic issues, this Government’s establishing a framework that drives fair and equitable treatment—the work drills through the entire system, through planning, procurement and the operation of services. Embedding these outcomes in legislation will help effect lasting change in the sector.

I acknowledge that PTOM has played an important role in increasing the integration and coordination of public transport networks, the new framework’s not intended to overthrow the PTOM in its entirety. Key successful elements have been retained, such as regional councils remaining responsible for planning and providing services. Efficiency and value for money remain key considerations when it comes to planning, procurement, and investment decisions.

The Sustainable Public Transport Framework refocuses public transport planning, procurement, and operation to strengthen outcomes, support mode shift and accessibility whilst improving environmental and health outcomes. By enabling in-house service provision and public ownership of assets, public transport authorities will have greater flexibility in how they provide services. They will still be able to contract out services. Where a public transport authority chooses to contract out services, ownership of strategic assets like bus depots can reduce barriers to entry, in fact, facilitating increased competition for contracts.

By introducing new transparency requirements, we increase operator accountability, whether the operator is publicly or privately owned. This will also enable benchmarking of service delivery models, and actually will provide information for those who think that these models should always be provided by an outside party—we’ll have real information as to whether, on occasions, council provision is more efficient. By removing the automatic exemption for interregional services and thereby including them in the new framework, we facilitate the development of more interregional services, and more collaborative planning of these services between regional councils.

Overall, this bill will help us achieve better environmental, social, and economic outcomes. I note that the Supplementary Order Paper made some minor and technical changes to ensure consistency across provisions and clarify provisions to ensure they achieved the policy intent. I commend the Land Transport Management (Regulation of Public Transport) Amendment Bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Simeon Brown.

SIMEON BROWN: Oh, thank you. Thank you a second time, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on the Land Transport Management (Regulation of Public Transport) Amendment Bill, which the National Party continues to oppose. We oppose this piece of legislation because it will not fix the issues facing our public transport networks. It will only increase costs; it will not increase efficiency and reliability, and what we will see is actually a degradation of the services given to the public. And, of course, this Government thinks that they know what is best. They think they know how they can fix the problem, and in fact, they’re the ones who created the problem when it came to the unreliability of our public transport services.

This Government’s very quick to blame COVID when it’s helpful, but they’re not very keen to talk about COVID when it’s unhelpful. In this situation, what this Government did is when COVID came along, of course, many people started working from home, and a lot of bus drivers who were in New Zealand left the country because they were here on visas. They left the country and then this Government decided to not let them back in to the country. The former Minister of Transport, Michael Wood, had the illustrious job of also being the Minister of Immigration—and the thing about that is the Minister of Immigration never spoke to the Minister of Transport, and the Ministry of Transport never spoke to the Minister of Immigration.

Barbara Kuriger: Not even in his sleep.

SIMEON BROWN: Well, not even in their sleep! So what happened was, the Minister of Transport would complain about the fact that our public transport networks weren’t operating, but forgot to think about actually—what about allowing bus drivers, ferry workers, and train drivers back into the country so that we can actually make sure the services are able to operate? So instead, he came up with a catastrophisation and said, “The reason why it’s broken is because of the public transport operating model”. And the reason why they’ve always hated that is because it has a word called “competition”: competition and outsourcing the public transport operations to the private sector. This Government thinks everything should be operated by the Government and not be outsourced to the private sector, and they don’t even believe in competition.

I heard the Minister say, “Well, actually, some of the provisions in this bill might enhance competition.” Well, how’s it going to enhance competition when the bill removes the requirement to have regard to the desirability of encouraging a competitive and efficient market for public transport services? How can the bill even support competition when it takes away the requirement for competition to even be considered when it comes to our public transport operating in New Zealand? And the reason why the National Party opposes this is because we actually believe in the power of competition, in terms of actually delivering better outcomes for New Zealanders and actually achieving the outcomes that taxpayers are paying for.

And this Government—they think that money grows on trees. Well, actually, that money needs to be paid for by someone else, and money is coming from the National Land Transport Fund, which, of course, is being paid for by road users. It’s been paid for by people who fill up their car with petrol or people who pay road-user charges—who are then putting that money into the National Land Transport Fund, and a portion of that is then paid to subsidise our public transport networks. Now, this Government sees that fund as a slush fund, and the more that they can siphon away to be used on whatever they think is an important priority—which isn’t our roads—is a good thing—whereas on this side, we think actually, that money needs to be spent efficiently to get outcomes so that we can invest first and foremost in our roads and then in our public transport network. This Government sees it as a slush fund for their priorities, and so this legislation will mean more of that money is wasted on an unreliable service. It will not be reliable, it will not be efficient, it will cost more to run and less people will use our public transport services, and that is not going to deliver the outcomes that we need for New Zealanders. So the National Party opposes this piece of legislation.

And what’s more—not only all of what I have just said, but the Government also then says, “Well, we’re going to let regional councils not even go through a tender process”—not even go through a tender process. In fact, they will be able to just say, “Well, we think we can operate it more efficiently ourselves. We don’t have to test that against the market; we don’t have to test our proposition against the market to see whether it is more efficient or more cost-effective. We just think we’ll be able to run it ourselves in-house.” So there’s not even a requirement to test that against the market, and we think that is also going to lead to an inefficient and unreliable service, because we see what happens when Government gets involved. They think they know best—you end up with what we see right across the Public Service at the moment, where wait times to get anything from the Government have ballooned. It takes longer to get a hip operation, it takes longer to be on the phone to the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) to report a pothole—it’s like half an hour to report a pothole, when it used to be under a minute to call NZTA.

Simon Court: You can fill one in three minutes.

SIMEON BROWN: “You can fill one in three minutes”, says Simon Court, and I know that because he’s a civil engineer; he’s told me that five times tonight. Well, I can tell you, Mr Speaker, this Government has a terrible record when it comes to our public services and delivering outcomes, and this bill will not deliver better outcomes for New Zealanders. The National Party opposes it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I love public transport and it’s a privilege to take another call in this House this week about the Government’s fantastic work to make public transport better in New Zealand. One of the comments that the other side have been making tonight is around their reliance on immigration to solve some of the challenges we have had around our driver shortage in New Zealand. Now, of course there are times when it is appropriate for us to bring workers in from overseas, but one of the problems with our public transport operating model introduced by the National Government is it has led to a race to the bottom on wages and conditions for drivers. One of the important components of this bill is that it will actually enable operators and councils to lift the conditions and wages for drivers, lift the training opportunities, and continue to grow the number of bus drivers that we have in New Zealand. It’s an excellent bill, and I commend it to the House.

Before I start, I wanted to pay homage to a great man, a legend, a warrior by the name of James Brown—no, not the movie star, dancer, and singer that many of you are accustomed to, but the leader, the erstwhile rangatira of a tribe called Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, who passed away in the wee hours of this morning. He was a man who led the tribe from whoa to go, a larger than life personality and someone who was all about competition in the ferry market on the Waitematā and te Pataka kai o Tīkapa Moana, also known as the Hauraki Gulf.

I want to thank the Minister for the opportunity to speak to the Land Transport Management (Regulation of Public Transport) Amendment Bill and echo my Te Pakūrangarāhīhī colleague, Master Simeon Brown, who articulated the sub-optimal use of land transport funds and other funds slushing around for alternative and quite illusory concepts of urbanising the entire Aotearoa New Zealand nation into public transport use in the cities. That’s what it’s really about. It’s not about the efficiency or the competition of public transport; it’s actually about a more sinister dynamic, I’d call it, that’s come out of this Labour Government to try and make everyone urbanites, to try and make everyone townies, to try and make everyone live in the cities and live in public transport.

But, you know, in 2012, we had the Public Transport Operating Model (PTOM), the great National Party under Sir John Key and Sir Bill English, which focused on a commercial basis, value for money, and competitive and efficient provision of public transport. But now we’ve got a new ideology, we’ve got a new way of doing things. Although well-intentioned, the assertion that the PTOM created problems for wages can be addressed without undermining the entire system.

This bill hatches new principles based on mode shift and union appetites. This is a risk space we don’t need to be in because out there will be a wolf—a wolf that is looking for more taxpayers to pay for these crazy ideas. The Bus and Coach Association, they have discredited this idea. They have said that this bill disregards business realities and market dynamics. Uber, the great company that we use from time to time, opposes this bill; it doesn’t provide any scope for innovation. And Fullers360, that well-known Scottish-owned ferry business on the Waitematā says that it appreciates that the Crown and local government need the ability to bring exempt public transport services within local government control, but their experience has been that this almost unbridled power—remember that term “unbridled power” from the former Labour Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer—leaves an operator with a permanent sword of Damocles hanging over their business. It’s like ram-raiding through the public transport system.

Now, Labour argues that public ownership of assets and in-house delivery are good. I just can’t keep up, because last week and for the last couple of years they’ve been saying on resource management reform and spatial planning and three waters that councils are not so good at doing things, but this week, they are very good and can be trusted on public transport—bizarre flip-flop or flip-flap. Gymnastics all over again.

Now, scrapping PTOM takes public transport backwards. It removes efficiency. It removes a competitive market-based approach to service delivery. It removes transparency. It removes common sense. Even the Ministry of Transport in the regulatory impact statement announced that enabling in-house provision without contracts performs worse than the status quo. But that is exactly the pathway that our colleagues in the Labour Government want us to take now. The sustainable public transport framework will stifle innovation. It won’t win the Nobel economics prize, Mr Brown. It might win the Nobel Peace Prize; we don’t know.

We see this: in section 25 and section 116 of the Land Transport Management Act. In our view, this bill won’t fix the problems around wages and conditions. Immigration is a better way to address those issues. Competition creates efficiency, not regulatory omnipotence and omniscience that this bill brings yet again. It doesn’t like efficiency. Tax more, public transport more, and everyone will be happy. Kei te hē—it’s wrong. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker for the opportunity to take just a short call tonight on the Land Transport Management (Regulation of Public Transport) Amendment Bill. I am lucky enough to sit on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, one of the hardest-working committees, that was able to work through this bill. We heard from over 50 submitters, good submitters, and, of course, I want to thank those submitters for taking the time to submit on the bill.

This bill establishes, as we’ve heard, a sustainable public transport framework that will replace the PTOM—the Public Transport Operating Model—that we have at the moment, which we clearly know does not work, which we clearly know does not support workers. We’ve heard about the terrible working conditions of the bus drivers and so on.

So the sustainable public transport will make sure that we focus on strengthening employee welfare, it improves our environment and health outcomes, and, of course, it improves our public transport. It’s a no-brainer, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s remarkable that here we are, Wednesday, 23 August 2023. The House is sitting under urgency to debate a bill around the regulation of public transport, as if this was the most urgent thing that New Zealand faces right now. Not an affordability crisis for people wondering whether to pay a bill or put tyres on the car, not rampant crime, including crime, actually, at public transport facilities like bus stops and bus stations in places like Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty. And certainly not issues of divisive co-governance. No, we are here to debate the regulation of public transport.

What does this bill hope to achieve? This bill hopes to modify the Public Transport Operating Model—a model where councils procure, through a public and open tender process, bus companies to supply buses and drivers to pick up passengers and take them to their destination. It’s worked quite well, apart from a few hiccups. And it’s those hiccups which have given the Government cause and excuse to pass a bill which makes some quite significant changes not just to the way public transport is procured and operated but also has implications for the efficient allocation of taxpayer funds and ratepayer funds to public transport and transport services in general.

So I’m just going to give a quick rundown of what this bill does. It removes the requirement for local councils to tender out for services, which means ratepayers won’t know if the services that are being delivered are being delivered in a cost-effective way. They won’t know because there’ll be no prices to compare. Councils won’t know whether they’re getting value for money because there’ll be no price to compare. Passengers won’t know whether the service they’re getting is value for money because there won’t have been an opportunity for those procuring and delivering and managing your service in local government to work out whether it’s the most efficient way to deliver it.

Because it may well be that a public transport operator—a bus company—actually knows something about passengers, knows something about where people work and live and go to school, knows something about traffic congestion on the route. Maybe they even know something about where people are most likely to wait and congregate for a bus. For example, if there’s a shopping centre where people can wait under cover or maybe grab a coffee or, at the end of work, go to the mall. Maybe public transport private sector bus companies know things that local government transport planners don’t know. That is why we generally tender for services when the public sector is procuring them: to discover the things that central planners don’t know.

Even eloquent, intelligent transport planners like the Hon Julie Anne Genter, who was once associate transport Minister, and will no doubt be offering her own perspective on this bill in a very short amount of time. Not even the Hon Julie Anne Genter has perfect knowledge of where a bus might go, where the passengers might be waiting, and what the intentions are of those individuals who might get on a bus and go somewhere. That is why the public sector issues requests for tender to discover things that the public sector doesn’t know.

Well, if only that’s the problem with this bill. What else does it do? It proposes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It can’t reduce New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions because greenhouse gas emissions are capped by the emissions trading scheme. Only the climate Minister can reduce New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions by allocating the number of credits that are auctioned under the emissions trading scheme every year. If the climate Minister wishes New Zealand’s greenhouse gases to be lower, they can simply lower the cap on our national emissions for any given year. This bill doesn’t reduce emissions at all; it just reduces emissions from a few buses and allows another industrial or private person to emit more carbon as long as it’s within the annual cap.

This bill, apparently, according to the Minister who spoke on the third reading, will reduce congestion. It will allow public transport services to be delivered in a way that reduces congestion. Well, I know the Minister lives in Auckland, but he doesn’t live in the part of Auckland I do: Te Atatū Peninsula in West Auckland. Te Atatū Peninsula has been a blue-collar workers suburb for a long time. A lot of people in Te Atatū rely on the bus to get to school, to get to Henderson town centre or the night markets to do a bit of shopping or to get to the city if they are working in professional or office space jobs.

This is what Auckland Transport and Waka Kotahi have done to reduce congestion using public transport. This is just one example, and I’m sure there’s more to come. Described as “high quality public transport” by the former transport Minister Michael Wood, they’ve built bus stops on the side of the motorway at Te Atatū Peninsula, now they’re building bus stops on the side of the motorway at Lincoln Road. They fully expect that West Aucklanders, working people, will get off the bus on the side of the motorway in Te Atatū Peninsula where 15,000, 20,000, 25,000 vehicles are going past every day, and then cross to another bus stop and then get on another bus. Now, the bus shelters are about as wide as the desks in front of each member of Parliament in this House. That’s how much roof covering you’ve got against a stiff sou’westerly breeze in winter. That’s high quality public transport, according to a former Labour Minister of transport. Has it reduced congestion? No, because the way they’ve configured the bus stops has taken out traffic lanes, which means instead of free-flowing traffic, including buses leaving Te Atatū Peninsula at peak times, now it’s five lanes into two instead of five into three. So even if there was a bus, and we haven’t seen one for a while because they cancelled the services—

Helen White: How does it relate to the bill?

SIMON COURT: —while they reconfigured the bus stops. Hold on, we’re talking about reducing congestion. That’s what the Minister of Transport talked about—

Helen White: How does it relate to what’s in the bill?

SIMON COURT: —instead of—well, hold on. This is Auckland Transport, a council, and NZTA—the Government’s transport agency—co-designing better public transport, Helen Clark.

Helen White: But it’s got nothing to do with the bill, has it?

SIMON COURT: No, no, no, this is what the bill’s proposing more of. A bus would be stuck in the same traffic as all the other cars now. The traffic jam didn’t exist before these public transport improvements. This bill won’t reduce congestion. We have evidence right now of what a Labour Government - led public transport solution for Te Atatū Peninsula in West Auckland looks like. It’s traffic chaos. Buses are stuck in the same traffic as the car. If people ever were to wait at those bus stops which are roundly ridiculed in West Auckland by the working class people of West Auckland—roundly ridiculed—they would get wet in a mild shower, Helen White.

And then we come to the issue of workers’ wages. A Labour-led Government, six years in power, saying this bill is necessary to uplift the terms and conditions and pay of bus drivers. Well, ACT calls nonsense on that because this Government allowed Immigration New Zealand to come to a sector agreement with bus companies and operators and councils to allow them to pay less than the median wage. So I’d like to correct my statement from committee of the whole House when I said “bus drivers are paid the median wage”, this Government, Helen White, who we understand used to be an employment lawyer, should be aware this Government came to a sector agreement which allows migrant workers and local workers to be paid $28 even though the median wage is $29.66. I don’t know, maybe this bill won’t solve that. Maybe this Government could have solved it some other way. Who knows? Maybe the bus drivers will give their party vote to ACT in the next Government because they’ve got more confidence that under an ACT Party Government they’ll get $2,300 as a tax break in the hand every year, up to $78,000, and they’ll be able to decide how they spend their own money.

Well, the truth is the reason that the Government allowed Immigration New Zealand and the bus companies to come to a sector accord is because NZTA and the Government couldn’t afford to pay the bus drivers more. This bill is an incoherent waste of time, pushed around urgency by a Labour Government in its twilight, 2023.

What would ACT do? Well, we’d get on with building the roads, particularly in places like West Auckland, and a north-west busway would be a great idea, extending four-laning through to Kumeū and Huapai where a quarter of a million people are coming to live in the next 30 years, according to the Auckland unitary plan. Currently, their buses are stuck on the two-lane rural roads, the same two-lane rural roads I was commuting to work on in the 1990s. ACT would make sure that the roads are built, that we can restore efficiency and reliability to journey times. So if you are waiting for a bus on a fantastic north-west busway or in Kumeū and Huapai at some point in the future, you’ll know you’ll be able to get your destination on time. That’s ACT’s offer. We reckon Kiwis will give their party vote to ACT.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party is supporting this bill. It’s been a long journey to get to this point because we’ve known that there needed to be changes to improve the operation and planning of public transport services for quite a long time and it’s ironic, in some ways, that I’ve some of the National and ACT speakers on this bill suggest that things aren’t working that well for public transport at the moment but we shouldn’t change it.

I think everybody knows that things aren’t working very well for public transport at the moment and hence that’s the need to change the framework. Part of that goes back to that ideological decision. I believe it was in the early 1990s that most of these decisions were made by a National-led Government to not allow local authorities to own or operate public transport services, for the most part. I mean, Christchurch was sort of doing it, but for the most part those changes were brought in, and then there was a proposal for changing the operation of public transport at the end of the fifth Labour Government in 2008, and a really good option 3 passed without the public transport management, though. But National repealed that when they got in in 2009 and they worked up this other framework which I don’t think ever had a whole lot of legislation around it. It was more operational or through regulations.

But, fundamentally, what we’ve seen is that if you want to have a well-functioning public transport system with services that genuinely give people choice, it doesn’t work to have a whole lot of different operators. Like, having a whole lot of different private operators is a barrier to the transport planners planning an efficient network everywhere. It was a barrier to bringing in integrated ticketing and integrated fares, and it’s a barrier when the owner of a bus operator suddenly sells it to an overseas hedge fund and then that overseas hedge fund actually doesn’t have any interest in running the service properly. [Interruptions]

No, but I mean, hello. Do National Party members—I mean, obviously National members don’t take the bus, so they don’t understand what happened when Infratil sold NZ Bus and a whole lot of bus drivers left, and then they didn’t even have—like, they had a whole office in Wellington before; they didn’t even have a manager in Wellington for the bus drivers to call because the overseas hedge fund didn’t care and didn’t have any incentive to run a good public transport service. And that’s why it should be directly accountable to elected people at a local level because they have an incentive—a direct incentive—to improve the services to people.

Now I want, for the benefit of the National members who have recently been going around talking about the five countries in the world with the very best roads—Singapore, the Netherlands, Switzerland—all countries that have centrally-planned, excellent public transport. It’s not done through private operators and, you know, less than half the trips in the cities in Switzerland, Netherlands and Singapore—Singapore being the only city—are by car. That’s why the roads are good; this is what we’ve been trying to tell you: if you invest in public transport and operate it properly, so many people take it that then when Hon Judith Collins tries to drive on the road, she will get stuck in traffic.

But they haven’t yet grasped this concept that you benefit the people driving on the roads when you run really frequent, reliable public transport services that are actually connected, and you can’t do that if you have all your services cut up into separate operators. And then when there is a need and suddenly you realise there’s a whole big transport need in one area, the bus operator—you can’t go to them and say we need this many buses and this many drivers. That’s just not how it works.

OK, sorry, I just—you know, they don’t want to know. So, anyway, I mean voters at home should consider this: if you want good public transport services, it’s very important, this Labour Government and the Hon Michael Wood actually did the work on this bill to bring it through. It’s going to pass before Parliament rises. That’s very, very good. If some of the private operators don’t like it, that doesn’t mean it’s not good for public transport services and the people using public transport. Because, when you’re talking about public money on things, if the private operators are raking in big profits and rolling in the money through operating their service, that’s a sign you’re probably paying too much for it. Otherwise, anyway, sorry it’s 11.38 at night.

I just want so much for everyone across the House to understand that we all win from good public transport that’s run for a public good. Even the people who love their cars and want to drive their cars and they’re so close—they’re so close in picking those five countries with the best roads, they almost got it. Because those five countries have the sort of transport policies that the Green Party’s talking about, so if you want good roads you need really excellent public transport. You need excellent safe walking and cycling, You want slow speed limits in your residential areas, so your kids can walk and cycle to school and actually have some car-free areas, because that’s actually good for the businesses down there. And we’re going to have, thankfully, the opportunity for public ownership and public operation of public transport services so that can be run for public good and the people working in that sector can have well-paid jobs, because that’s how you get a workforce of trained people who are there and able to run the services and you don’t have a whole heap of cancellations like we had in the last year.

What would be even better and a really good reason—if the members in the National Party actually care about competition, having private ownership of bus depots and the vehicles is a barrier to competition. If you want to have better competition, it was one of the private operators came to me and he was telling me about Perth. He was from Perth and what they have done in Perth is they weren’t getting enough competition so they said automatically whoever wins the contract gets the right to use the depot, because private ownership of a depot is a barrier to entry for new operators. So if you want to have an efficient, well-run public transport service that’s working well for people, public ownership of the depots as a strategic asset is really, really important. Otherwise you’re not going to get competition, you’re going to get one tender per contract.

I can see I’m not convincing them. So I’m just going to stop and say thank goodness they’re not in Government and God forbid it should happen after 14 October, because those people are incompetent.

Mr Speaker, thank you. It’s a delight to take a call on this bill. I was on the select committee with the Hon Julie Anne Genter and my lovely friend Terisa Ngobi, who is in the House tonight.

It was a relief to see legislation come through like this, because what this does is it gives choice and power back to the local bodies. Instead of imposing on them a requirement that they must contract out services, it allows them to decide whether they will or not, whether it’s in the benefit of the people who are paying the taxes and the citizens to do that or not. It’s basically a move away from ideology, not towards it.

That choice has turned out to be a good one for places like London, where they own the fleet and then they contract out the service—but the city owns the fleet. Now, there’s a good reason for that. For the layperson, that’s a huge infrastructure that has to be brought, in the case of public transport. So if you buy a fleet of buses or you buy a ferry, it costs a lot of money, and if there’s only one party who’s done that, actually, we’re all a bit vulnerable to that company that owns it. If the council owns it, you’re much less vulnerable. So it’s a much more flexible system, and it’s one thing; they don’t have to choose that, but they can under this.

There’s another flexibility option here, and that is the flexibility of being able to have on-demand services included. It’s another good, modernised move. Nobody should be afraid of this. This is a good bill, and it will make our transport system work much more efficiently. I commend the bill to the House.

I wasn’t going to take call on this bill, but being lectured by Julie Anne Genter about the evils of American hedge funds investing in transport in New Zealand actually requires someone to stand up for Americans, even if she doesn’t want to.

I’ve looked at this bill and it’s really clear this is all about ideology. So we’ve got councils being told that they’re not capable of running water services and now they’re going to run bus services. We’ve got councils now being told that when they want to take over a bus service or run their own bus service, they won’t have to have any competition, they won’t have to cost it out, they won’t have to see what is the best deal for people.

So I would say to these people on the other side of the House who are ramming this bill through under urgency—I mean it’s almost midnight; we’re going to have another midnight session tomorrow night because they want to shove everything through before this election, because they don’t think that they’re going to be around to do anything after it. When I look at them and say, “Have they ever actually contracted anyone to paint a house for them or build a house?” Or do they just go to whoever it is that they know and say, “Just paint it and I’ll pay whatever it is”? Don’t they get a quote? Don’t they even get an estimate? Or do they just say, “Well, it’s other people’s money. It’s ratepayers’ money. It’s all free. Nobody has to pay for it. It’s all free. We’ll just do that, shall we?”

Well, actually, it’s nice to think that, you know, some councils might want to set up their own company to run a bus transport company—they’re stopping them doing it now. But what they’re saying in this bill—shoving through in urgency, a bill that’s all about removing competition, removing innovation. And he’s talked to the submissions from, say, Uber, who I’m sure most of us have used for their transport services: on time, we want it, no fuss, and using technology to bring about a much more friendly service for people. Why are they against it? Because they say it’s going to stifle innovation. And are they right? Yes, they are right, because they are actually leaders in innovation, transport.

We know that in New Zealand there are cars that are the un-driven—or the driverless cars are being trialled at the moment by some of the car manufacturers. We know that there are driverless buses and trains being trialled elsewhere around the world. These are things that are actually coming to us, and local councils are now going to be in charge of putting these in place.

You actually need the people who know about transport to be in charge of transport. You want the people who know about bus services running them, getting schedules on time, who turn up no matter what—I don’t know, these people called “bus companies” who actually know about running buses, who know about what’s needed to maintain buses, what’s needed to have the right staff in place.

Again, this is just another effect of a Government that has been so anti-immigrant, so anti - bus drivers coming to this country, so xenophobic on everything possible, and only now have suddenly rushed around and got some bus drivers. This is a Government that actually doesn’t want competition—the labour force either—and that’s part of what they’re doing here.

So, tell me, where’s their public transport when we have, in Auckland, as we know, Fullers, who are running the ferry services, having had to say they can’t get enough staff so they’re having to close down some services. Is anyone here seriously going to tell me that Auckland Council or Auckland Transport’s going to suddenly find or magic up all these ferry staff? Are they actually—where are they going to come from? The fact is it’s simply not possible.

It is really important that we have competition. It’s like we don’t have one set price for food, or one set price for anything because if we do, as has happened in other centrally planned economies, we end up with not enough of what’s needed, or lots of things that nobody wants and nothing of what people get.

There’s a reason Government should keep out of this stuff, and that’s because they’re incompetent. It’s a Government that’s the least competent Government I’ve ever seen. We’ve had six years of central planning and no delivery. This is just another example of a useless Government bill that, yet again, we’re going to have to overturn after the election.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. That was a bizarre contribution, but it is quite late at night.

The primary driver, obviously, for this piece of legislation is that the Public Transport Operating Model simply hasn’t worked. It’s been an unmitigated disaster, it is market failure, and it requires the State to step in and fix it. On that reason, I commend it to the House.

Mr Speaker, thank you. It’s my pleasure to rise and take a short call this evening. In Whanganui, we used to have trams that went the length and breadth of our beautiful city, but we don’t have those any more. We do have Mabel still, she goes along the awa front, but we need our public transport system to be rebuilt. We need strong public transport networks, and we’ve finally got advocates in Whanganui who are helping to do that in Anthonie Tonnon. So to honour the work that he has done to advocate for public transport in Whanganui, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, my first pitch, actually, is to Auckland Transport, but seeing we’re talking the land transport regulation, it would be great if they could put another bus on, on Gowing Drive, to get our school kids there. The current buses are packed full. So that’s just a bit of a request to Auckland Transport on behalf of my constituents.

Hon Scott Simpson: Are you sure they’re listening?

SIMON O’CONNOR: I hope they are listening, actually. Actually, they won’t be at this time of night—sad.

Anyway, the idea that somehow removing competition and sending public transport back to councils to organise makes absolutely no sense. I think it’s one of the reasons amongst many that this Government is not only rushing this through urgency, but it’s probably delighted that it’s 10 to midnight so that people don’t understand, again, the core concept that they are removing what is a competitive contractual space back in-house. It just sort of reflects this centralising mind set. The strange thing about it is I think it’s not going to make public transport any more efficient, but this speech is.

Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill, the Land Transport Management (Regulation of Public Transport) Amendment Bill. It’s a good bill because the Public Transport Operating Model doesn’t work and it needs to be put in the bin. This bill puts it in that place. This is a bill that also is about increasing those things that we think there should be more of in our public transport system like better wages for the bus drivers and choices to be made about how sustainable these can be. So with that, I commend this bill to the House.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill.