White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour): Thank you. I'm going to try and address some of the rant and ramble that I just heard because it's a little crazy-making.Hon Michael Wood: You've only got 10 minutes.HELEN WHITE: What we—that's true I have only got 10 minutes. We have an interesting confusion here because what the Public Transport Operating Model did was it actually prescribed—central government prescribed—that people had to contract out the services which meant you had to give the money if you were a local council to run public transport to the private sector i.e. Mr Bennett's mates. You weren't actually in a position where you could run the service yourself if it made sense.Hon David Bennett: Point of order—point of order.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Not you".HELEN WHITE: Sorry.Hon David Bennett: Point of order. I take offence at that comment.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think David you're a robust character. I don't think there was anything in there to take offence. Carry on.HELEN WHITE: Sorry Mr Speaker. So the issue with this bill is it is actually allowing true competition because the public entity gets to choose the local body gets to choose who it is contracting with. It doesn't have to just look at efficiency; it can look at a whole lot of other factors when it does that.Now the problem with running something like a big team of buses or ferries is that it's really expensive and so you often end up in a position where you've got very little choice if you leave it entirely to the private sector. So we can see that with Fullers ferries: it's the only show in town and you're really stuck with it because you haven't invested in ferries and competition to it. That is really important that we break that down because in Auckland at the moment we have not had great public services. Actually as a result of focusing on wages of our bus drivers we have managed to solve that one.So this is the framework which allows good solid public transport and choice when you are Auckland Transport or you are the Auckland Council—choice about how you do it and actually bringing competition in not strangling the situation and actually telling people how to do it from central government. So this is the irony this is the great difference from the speech that we've just heard—this is the opposite. This is a Government bill which puts choice back in the hands of local body and allows the build-up of public services.Now I have once before spoken about my experience as a lawyer for the bus union. I remember how terrible things were in those times when bus drivers were just getting so little pay and they had split shifts and they were on minimum wages. The answer to our bus driver shortages is just simply not lower conditions and bringing in migrants to do low-paid work because guess who pays for that? Those workers pay but also we all pay because we have to house those bus drivers in Auckland. Let's start employing people on decent terms and conditions and let's see what can happen as a result. And lo and behold what happened this morning? We had an announcement that bus driver shortages are over in Auckland because people are being paid decently.Let's move on. Let's have a framework that works for this country and brings our public transport system up to date. I commend this bill to the House"