Mapp Wayne: Transport Legislation Bill — Second Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Transport Legislation Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:621;Page:16745] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I had the pleasure of being on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and I know the sorts of submissions that were made. The Minister over there— 
John Key 
: Which one? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: —well both of them actually—I imagine did not read the submissions. They would know if they had read them that there is deep and sustained opposition to the measures in this bill from the very industries that it purports to affect. We are talking about the aviation industry and the land transport industry. 
Mr Duynhoven says that oh well yes they are just talking about self-interest. One of the leading aviation companies in this country is Air New Zealand. This Government owns 80 percent of Air New Zealand. It is opposed to the elimination of the test of benefits at reasonable cost. This is a business that knows the importance of having reasonable and sustainable legislation and it takes great pride and care in its reputation. 
Air New Zealand knows self-evidently just how damaging aircraft accidents are to public confidence in the industry so it is in a balancing act. It does have to analyse what is reasonable and what is not reasonable. This Government and the Minister for Transport Safety are likely to impose unreasonable and undue burdens. The reason I say that is that this Minister is the one who is promoting these changes. I have to ask this very simple question of the Minister: what was wrong with the old legislation the legislation that this Government is now seeking to repeal which he wants to change in order to introduce some scheme that will have people in the industry quaking in their boots? The Minister has a certain reputation around the place for enthusiasms—I think that would be a polite way of describing it. The Minister is actually quite proud of that fact. In this instance those enthusiasms have the potential to impose hundreds of millions of dollars of unnecessary costs to achieve almost nothing. That is the kind of thing that can happen. 
It is one thing to have enthusiasms about restoring one’s own historic Porsche. That is fair enough. It is a private thing. It is quite another to exercise the power of the State aided and abetted by its yapping lapdogs known as United Future to impose those kinds of enthusiasms on some of the most important industries in our country. 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: Has your aeroplane got a radio in it? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: Several. That is why we are opposed to this change in legislation. 
I also want to draw the House’s attention to one other important issue in this legislation and the National minority report refers to its specifically. I want to read this out and put it correctly on the record: “New Zealand National does not agree with the separate identification of Maori in preparing a land transport programme. New Zealand National considers this is preferential treatment. New Zealand National believes preferential consultation provisions on matters of general interest will ultimately damage the health of our democracy.” I wrote those lines on behalf of my colleagues. They come down to some very fundamental issues about how our country is governed. 
This week the Government has announced that it is going to have a special committee. We do not know who will be on this committee and we do not know who it will consult but this committee apparently is going to deal with treaty issues. Yet we find already that the Government is predicating how it views the world. The ACT party has from time to time in somewhat amusing terms referred to the two-world view. I guess we have all been amused at the lilt in the way the questions have been asked in this House. I say to the ACT party that this is Labour’s two-world view in action. Labour believes that the best way to develop public land transport policy is to have specific consultations on the basis of race on land transport. 
As I travelled to the airport this morning I was listening to Mr Shane Jones on the radio. He is going to be the Labour candidate for Northland. I can assure him that he will not win that seat so he need not put too much effort into it. He knows that and that is why he is going for a high place on the Labour list. He is deeply concerned about the creeping way that the treaty is insidiously getting into all aspects of public policy. We are not talking here just about Maori land language culture and things like that. We might expect the treaty to have some relevance around settlements. We are talking about issues of general policy. He said that that view is so 20th century so last century. 
That tells us something about the thinking of this Government does it not? These are people whose ideas were formed in the universities and the polytechnics in the 1970s and 1980s. I have read Steve Maharey’s book  
Alternatives: Socialist Essays for the 1980s.  
Those were the formative days of this Labour Government. It is that kind of thinking that has permeated its way into contemporary legislation not just on things that directly affect Maori and in which there are special Maori interests but rather on all things that affect New Zealanders in a general way. That causes me profound concern. 
For the last 12 months we have had a Coordinating Minister Race Relations who has talked about policies on the basis of need not race and a Government that purportedly is trying to give to the public the impression that it is on to these issues. In fact what it is doing by way of clause 30(2) is quietly and in a sneaky and devious way inserting subsection 4A(xii) into section 15 of the principal Act specifically stating that Maori are to be consulted. They are a group different from those of “affected communities” and “the public” both of which are also specifically mentioned. 
How can the public have any confidence that the Government’s review of the Treaty of Waitangi will be an honest open-minded and fair one when in the very week it makes that announcement it inserts a provision like this into legislation? It is surely undermining the confidence of New Zealanders that we do not have a Government that will govern for all equally without favour to any particular group on issues of general interest—and the transport system is surely that. 
One can understand treaty references on issues like settlements on languages on the Maori Land Court and on other such matters—one would expect that—but in this area where it is a matter of general applicability that is where the line is drawn. Mr Shane Jones who I imagine will be a member of the next Parliament has said very clearly to Labour members to think about what is required for modern New Zealand and to look forward to the future not the past because that is the only way we will build progress in this nation.