Williamson Maurice: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:615;Page:11195] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 Many times in transport debates I have come to the House fired up brimming with anger and ready to rip the Government—or the Labour Party when it was in Opposition—to shreds. Today is not one of them. This is a pretty stock standard bill that I think all members would like to see go through. It continues a long process whereby we have been trying to get our real targets into line—the Australians. That is where our opposition lies at this point—not in this Parliament but across the pond. It has been very very hard to get Australia to agree on what I think are quite common-sense regimes. 
For example we have always wanted New Zealand engineers and pilots who service Qantas planes in Auckland to be allowed to do similar work on Air New Zealand planes over there—on planes that are certified for use and domicile in New Zealand. There may be members who think that Australians are so different that their engineers planes and regime should not be the same as ours—again I am not one of them. I am really disappointed that it has taken us—both the previous National Government when I was a part of it and the Labour Party while it has been in Government—so long to address that. I understand that even with regard to some of this stuff we nearly had a bail-out from Australia on it. I say to the Australians if they are listening—and they often listen to my speeches because I often have a good smack at them—that we should be treating New Zealand and Australia as a single aviation market in toto. 
It needs to be pointed out that these changes in the mutual recognition of aviation certification do not go all the way. They apply only to aeroplanes with certain seating capacity and of certain weight. I had better explain that for passenger operations the changes apply to planes with a capacity of more than 30 passenger seats or a maximum certificated take-off weight of more than 15000 kilograms. For cargo operations they apply to planes with a maximum certificated take-off weight of more than 15000 kilograms or a maximum payload of more than 3410 kilograms. Why? 
Harry Duynhoven looks at me in despair—I am sure it has been difficult for him. Why could we not recognise all planes? Why could we not recognise a New Zealand plane that weighed slightly less—with say 28 passengers on board? What is the difference between 28 and 30? 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: It’s two. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I know that someone will tell me it is two; but we are quite good at maths as well. Regarding the Australians I simply do not understand why we could not have moved to full open mutual recognition at some time in the past. I am still getting counselling about some of the ways that the Australians behaved over the single aviation market and the open skies agreement. I still find their attitude to us condescending and disgraceful. 
In the last half of this speech I will address some of the provisions of the bill and why I think that the National Party will support its passage through the House. First of all there are a series of amendments about the definition and carriage of dangerous goods. As the world progresses all sorts of things that we never knew were dangerous have been identified. For example when I was growing up and at school I did not know that fertiliser was a bomb. I did not know that we could blow the entire side off a massive skyscraper building with fertiliser. Now everybody knows that. 
Peter Brown 
: You just told them. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Peter Brown obviously does not realise that there was quite a bit of publicity about the Oklahoma book depository and the fact that fertiliser was used as a bomb. If Peter Brown does not keep up with the news then we should get him an Internet connection so that he can. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Where would you put it? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I say to Mr Cosgrove that I know where I would plug it but we will not go there. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: Would it be broadband? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: It would be broadband all right. So for members who are at all interested in this there are products that were around 20 and 30 years ago that we thought were incredibly benign and which are now clearly identified as being terribly dangerous. I would imagine that we will need to keep upgrading the lists and definitions of dangerous goods and spray cans that we probably thought were pretty ineffectual but that we now know could puncture a hole in the side of an airliner and so on. 
Some of the rest of the bill deals with the treatment of passengers who are behaving badly. I was lucky enough before my parliamentary life to work for an airline and to travel just about full-time on planes overseas. I was away a lot and saw a number of examples. I remember seeing an Australian rugby team flying out of London one night and I would not have liked to be the cabin crew telling them to behave themselves because those guys were absolutely three sheets to the wind and their behaviour was— 
Brent Catchpole 
: Been thrashed by the Poms had they? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No from what I could understand—although it was impossible to tell quite what they were saying—they had actually won their matches. Never mind. There is some stuff in the bill with regard to penalties for offensive behaviour etc. etc. 
I experienced something on the plane that night that made me laugh. A number of the passengers became very worried because one of the rugby players tried to open the door of the 747. He took hold of the big handle—he had had enough of the cabin crew being rude and he wanted to get off. We were somewhere over France at the time and it would have been an interesting departure. I have good news for members in case they are at all interested in this absolutely trivial notion: one cannot open a plane’s door when a plane is in flight because the door on a 747 opens inwards first and then rotates to go back on out. Because of the pressurisation of a plane even Charles Atlas is not strong enough to open the door on a plane when it is in flight. The doors do not open outwards. They open inwards firstly and then outwards. So if in future one sees some idiot racing for the handle of a door trying to open it one should feel safe. That person will not be able to do it no matter how many cornies and Wheaties he has had for breakfast. 
The bill goes on as I said to deal with intoxicated people and with demands that there is compliance with the pilot’s instructions. I think that is quite right. The pilot has every right to be in command while in flight. There is not the normal jurisdiction of police and all the other law enforcement agencies around. Again on aeroplanes I have seen—I think on two occasions—individuals handcuffed by the crew because of behaviour and so on. The cabin crew do take some pretty abusive stuff along the way. 
I know there was a request for a provision by the airlines to remove their liabilities for being unable to carry people because of delays or not being on time etc. I am pleased the select committee and the Government have not bowed to those requests because I still think there are some obligations on airlines to make sure they carry passengers. I know for a fact—because I was involved in the design of some of the computer systems—that airlines have a very sophisticated overbooking regime. That is fine; it makes a lot of sense. The airline overbooks by so many people knowing there will be a cancellation rate and hopefully by the day of the flight the number of bookings is down to just about dead right. But it seems pretty unfair for consumers—consumers who have booked seats paid for them and travelled all the way to the airport to find they cannot go on because the plane is overbooked and full—not to get some form of compensation . 
There is some other stuff in the bill. I see that scenic flight operations and air ambulances will not be captured—whatever “captured” quite means. I guess the Minister can tell us about that. I am pleased that the bill complies with the Human Rights Act. I am not quite sure why we need to have civil aviation complying with that Act but nonetheless people will sleep soundly in their beds at night knowing that it does. 
There were some matters outside the bill and I found one of those to be interesting. During the hearing of evidence we were very interested to learn that New Zealand does not have full membership of the United Nations Committee of Experts on the Transportation of Dangerous Goods which currently has 25 full voting members. Quite frankly I do not care. The way the United Nations functions these days I think that it is probably a positive boon that we are not part of the operation in terms of the bureaucracy and added cost that it makes—although I am sure that Mr Duynhoven will manage to sort it out and get us connected. 
Overall the National Party in Opposition will most certainly in this case be supporting the bill—just to reassure anybody out there in drive time who is listening and who thinks that in Opposition all we do is to argue against things. We do not. We are constructive we want to assist where we think things are of value and we most certainly will be supporting this bill right through its passage through the House.