Mapp Wayne: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11354] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I want to bring to the notice of the Committee that this bill reflects the current chaos in the Government. I say that because here we have an amendment tabled today by the Minister because the Government has only just realised the bill was being implemented on—guess when—31 December 2003. 
Simon Power 
: When was that amendment tabled? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: Today. That is amazing is it not? This is a Government that has the full resources of the State behind it yet it does not realise until the very day a bill has to be debated that—gosh—“There is a big problem here Minister.” One can imagine the frantic phoning of officials to the Minister to ensure he got it right. It is reflective of the extraordinary U-turns about-faces and pragmatic approaches this Government is now taking. 
It is the little things that show the deep distress in the Government. It cannot even handle simple things like getting legislation in order. At least tabling a Supplementary Order Paper in a timely fashion would have shown that the Government recognised it was about to implement retrospective legislation. As I say it is something I guess we will see more of. We will see a lot more of this panicked action by Ministers under pressure and scrambling to keep ahead. There is a saying about ducks on the water: the pond is placid the ducks are going along smoothly but the feet are paddling furiously underneath. The problem now is that the water is no longer placid the feathers are ruffled and the panic is there for all to see. This kind of amendment is simply indicative of that and we will be seeing more of it. 
I want to point out a couple of other important measures in this legislation. One of them is the repeal of the Carriage by Air Act. I am sure the New Zealand First spokesperson on transport Mr Brown will be particularly familiar with that Act because it is a hallowed piece of legislation known by a generation of those who operate in the field of air carriage as containing the cardinal rules one has to know. I am sure that as a person long experienced in the carriage of goods Mr Brown will be lamenting the passing of that legislation—now to be buried within civil aviation legislation itself. Something that generations of carriers—and indeed law students through their lectures and practices—have had will now be submersed into this broader legislation. I guess there will be aviation lawyers out there tonight who will be lamenting its passing and having to revise their documentation and so forth because they will no longer be able to rely on that trusty piece of legislation the Carriage by Air Act. 
I want to conclude however on the important trans-Tasman mutual recognition agreements. We will be speaking at length to those. They are important. They signal a united market. I guess what that also represents—and this is perhaps the most significant issue—is this serious intent by the Government to destroy competition in the New Zealand marketplace which will inevitably have consumers paying more. Everyone is going to say that the trans-Tasman mutual recognition legislation around air services is a good thing—it is a single market. On the face of it I guess no one would dispute that but contained within that legislation is an intense explosion of costs that consumers will now have to bear because the legislation is one of the foundations of the merger between Qantas and Air New Zealand. Everyone in the country knows—even the Government—that the consumer will be worse off.