Wong Pansy: Public Transport Management Bill — In Committee 
Wong Pansy: Public Transport Management Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:650;Page:18636] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 Talking about process and procedure is important in Part 1 because although the Minister is trying to bluster that this bill is all about passengers the bill clearly states that it clarifies and extends the function and powers of regional councils. That is why National took the report from the Regulations Review Committee very seriously. 
I want to put some facts right. A special meeting of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee was called in a hurry as we heard from the Hon Maurice Williamson. Even after he had given a watertight guarantee that the bill could be referred back to the Regulations Review Committee and come back in a day the chair and the New Zealand First member disagreed. They called another meeting to consider the special report that our committee was never meant to deliberate on. So we met to consider the report but once again Labour and New Zealand First ganged up together to try to ride roughshod over us. The reason why National cannot agree to a deliberation on the special report is very very simple: we have major concerns that the recommendations from the Regulations Review Committee were not agreed to by the officials. 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: What are they? 
PANSY WONG 
: It is really disappointing to hear that the chairman of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee is not familiar with the content of the special report and does not realise that the officials did not agree to all the recommendations. 
For a start out of the six recommendations made by the Regulations Review Committee three—one two three—have been taken up by the officials and that is a worry in itself. Those recommendations include the deletion of the requirements for plans the deletion of the ability to add to the definition and the clarification of circumstances. The officials said that yes they would agree to those recommendations but one recommendation of the Regulations Review Committee is about the deletion of the ability to add to controls by regulations unless there is clearly a need. The Regulations Review Committee said that unless a need was clear and that people knew beforehand regional councils should not be able to introduce a change. 
But the officials do not agree to the recommendation being adopted. The reason is that they want to restrict the regional councils’ power to adopt a control in a relatively short time without the need to amend the primary legislation. Let us listen to this very carefully: this bill consists of a clause that would allow regional councils to introduce and adopt a control in a relatively short time without the need to come back to Parliament. That is a huge huge power to give away and the officials want to minimise that power by recommending the addition of a provision requiring only that the Minister of Transport should consult regional councils public transport operators and the New Zealand Transport Agency. 
We all know by now that whenever consultation is used in this way it usually means that the ministry has decided on a course of action. It says it will go out to consult but that does not mean that it will actually adopt the results of the consultation with operators and all sorts of sectors. We all know by now for example that before this bill came into Parliament it was consulted on widely and the sector agreed to option B but actually option B+ is being adopted in the final bill. 
So there was a very good reason why we have stuck to our agreement. We agreed to the meeting but we cannot agree to the deliberation of these recommendations particularly— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Is the member calling again? 
PANSY WONG 
: I will just clarify that. We agreed to that short meeting we considered those recommendations but we cannot agree to ignore a very significant recommendation from the Regulations Review Committee not to give a power to councils to introduce a control at short notice That is abuse of authority. 
National continues to be very responsible in making sure that process and procedure are being adhered to because after all this legislation has the implication that regional councils could exercise a control that could infringe on private property rights. We have talked about how private bus operators could work long and hard to develop a route into a commercially viable state but a council might be able to introduce controls etc. to make it commercially not viable and then use that excuse to withdraw the route. Then ratepayers and taxpayers would end up paying more. 
National has very good reasons to be very suspicious of this legislation. When the bill was first introduced into Parliament its purpose clause clause 3 stated: “The purpose of this Act is to contribute to the aim of achieving an integrated safe responsive and sustainable land transport system.” It took us a lot of effort and deliberation to reintroduce the word “affordable” and that word has now been reintroduced into the purpose clause of this legislation. There was a hidden agenda in the Labour-led Government—once again—with the aid of the Green Party and possibly to a certain extent New Zealand First to drop the word “affordable” and to make commercially viable routes unaffordable in order to make sure that public transport might become unaffordable from the point of view of ratepayers or taxpayers in terms of subsidies. We could have bus routes that are really working well at the moment but because of this desire to have overall control over every service ratepayers and taxpayers could end up paying a higher subsidy—not for better services and not for services that are responsive to passengers but maybe just for planners who like to have a grandiose idea of how public transport should be administered or planned. So National is very happy that at least after long deliberations we have introduced the word “affordable” back into the purpose clause of this legislation. 
Part 1 and Part 2 are really all about the controls authority and powers that will go into the transport authority. That is why the process and the individual provisions are very very important. It is just as well that National has been there every step of the way; otherwise we would have ended up with a public transport system that was not affordable because of that word not being included in the original purpose clause of the bill. Can one imagine that in New Zealand we could dream of implementing a public transport system that could be unaffordable for passengers ratepayers and taxpayers just because some planners had a grandiose vision of how the public transport service should be run? 
I want to put the record straight. Unfortunately the advice from the Regulations Review Committee went missing. We are not blaming anybody for this but we agreed in good faith for the bill to be referred back to the select committee so that we could examine those powers and controls.