Robson Matt: Urgent Debates — Tranz Rail 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robson Matt: Urgent Debates — Tranz Rail 
[Sitting date: 10 June 2003. Volume:609;Page:6080. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 I am so glad to be following Paul Swain and not Bill English because I feel like I am at a party. I feel like I want to celebrate what has happened. If I went with Mr English after hearing him and Roger Sowry I would be singing: “It’s my party but I’ll cry if I want to.” New Zealanders are actually out celebrating. On Friday I was discussing community safety—and the audience of course was upholding the Government’s record on community safety as I was speaking to them. But when I got the news that we had re-entered the rail business that we had the tracks back for New Zealanders and that we had a sensible joint-venture approach to running rail the audience broke into enormous cheers. National members should listen to that because it is a decade since they did what they did and that is part of the reason that the nail has been driven into their coffin. They sold part of New Zealand but not only did they sell it they gave the cheapest deal and ensured that Michael Fay David Richwhite and others benefited and that New Zealanders lost. 
Did those people whom National members helped to a fortune then turn round and say: “Thank you New Zealand.”? No. They gave New Zealand the fingers. They do not even live here. They do not trust our rail system to travel on. They travel on the European rail system because they have the money to do so and they got that money from the people of New Zealand in a shoddy deal. People are celebrating because the people of New Zealand can recognise a good deal. The National Party cannot. 
That old song “The Railroad Runs Through the Middle of the House” does not apply here; it runs only through the National Party benches because the majority of the House support buying the railroad. My friend Paul Swain is also thankfully the Minister of Corrections and he will find that when he goes out to the prisons even there inmates will be singing in praise of buying the railroad. They love that song “The Midnight Special Shines on Me” because the “Midnight Special” represents freedom and this is freedom for New Zealand. It is freedom to determine our future. 
I am very proud that the Progressives are here on this day because we along with other parties who have said that they support the partial renationalisation of essential parts of the rail track to make sure that it can be part of the infrastructure of New Zealand have been part of that process. 
New Zealanders are not going to go around saying: “Which party is part of it? Which party is the one that should take the credit?”. They are going to say: “Which parties are still pouring cold water on this proposal?”. We will give the information to them—well we do not have to give it to them because it looks like Bill English is going to go out and parade it in the face of New Zealanders. 
Little New Zealand children obviously know more about rail than do Bill English and the National Party even if it is only from watching  
Thomas the Tank Engine 
 and finding that we need happy staff to be able run a good railroad and that we need happy engines to be part of a railroad but that we need a rail track that is going to be there and not be ripped up. What National is asking us to do is to put New Zealand in jeopardy and continue a situation where at any time that it was not profitable the owner could allow for the tracks to be ripped up. Our reinvesting in rail guarantees that we will have a rail system that will be part of an integrated system. The decision to reinvest in rail will allow us as a coalition Government to ensure that there is an integrated transport approach that involves road rail and sea. 
I can tell members who else is cheering: the people of Auckland. As I have gone down the road in Auckland looking for the rail station so I can get on a train when we finally get a decent rail system in Auckland I have seen a photograph that scared the living daylights out of me. It was a photograph that I am told is of Bill English and I only know it is Bill English because it has been doctored and the name is there underneath: “National”. He is telling me “Citizenship for all” or I think “One citizenship for all”. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: One standard of citizenship for all. 
Hon MATT ROBSON 
: He is saying: “One standard of citizenship for all” but what we also want is one standard of rail for New Zealand that actually works. Aucklanders will want to see that because at 7 o’clock in the morning until 7 o’clock at night the Auckland streets are jammed. Those people whom National is trying to win back having been maltreated in Auckland will be very interested to find that the parties that they are celebrating for taking back rail—Progressive and Labour—are being denigrated by National as National says there is nothing to celebrate and that we have taken a backward step. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.