Brown Peter: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Brown Peter: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I open my contribution this evening by expressing my concerns to the Minister on the way he opened his speech a few moments ago. I did not catch the whole gist of his speech but I assume that he is forcing us or compelling us by vote to sit on Fridays. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: Ask me nicely! 
PETER BROWN 
: Is the Minister not going to put it to a vote? 
Hon Paul Swain 
: Yes we are. 
PETER BROWN 
: I think that if the Government has got itself into that sort of a pickle it would have been appreciated if it had consulted the whips of the parties. We have been to the Business Committee this afternoon and there was no mention of anything like this. We think that a little bit of trust goes a long way. We do not lack understanding on this side of the House and I echo the comments of John Key earlier that this is not the way to do the business. I assume that United Future has rolled over and agreed totally. 
New Zealand First will be supporting this bill going to the select committee. Although we do not like sitting on a Friday we will cooperate with the Government to the degree that the bill gets there and gets thoroughly examined. However I have to say that we have concerns over the repeal of the Carriage by Air Act. We feel a little bit uncomfortable with what the Government is proposing in this bill but no doubt that will all come out in the wash at the select committee. But I would like to put on the record that there is something about this part of the bill that does not sit comfortably with us. I was hoping that the United Future members would explain why they are so happy with that part of this bill because it just does not sit comfortably with New Zealand First at this point in time. 
We have no problem with the mutual recognition regime that this bill proposes. We think that is an excellent idea and we are fully supportive of that being implemented. The bill reads very soundly and as I say it makes common sense to us that we can have a law in this country that polices Australian aircraft and that the Australians have the same law in Australia that polices New Zealand aircraft. Our first response is to ask why this did not occur some time ago. It will save costs and it will be in the interests of the safety of the flying public. We think this is the right road to go down. 
We also welcome the part of the bill that deals with unruly passengers. I have personally had the misfortune to fly on two aircraft in my lifetime where an unruly passenger—probably affected by drugs booze or both—tried not to take over the plane like a terrorist would but tried to become the centre of attention. I can tell members that there were moments when the captain of one particular aircraft got rather agitated by what was going on in the cabin and it was pretty darn scary. We were flying into London approaching Heathrow Airport—and I might add this was not an Air New Zealand aircraft; it was a foreign aircraft—and a passenger really went berserk. He was suffering as I said earlier from the effect of drugs booze or both. I can tell members that many of the passengers sitting in their seats did not know what the dickens was going on and did not know what the dickens to do about it. In the cabin of an aircraft as all members know it is quite confined and it was not possible to crawl across the seats to get at the guy. In the end it took four or five—it might even have been six—people to haul the guy down. He escaped again and got into the toilet. We did not know what the dickens he was going to do once he locked himself in the toilet. The captain at that stage—he was foreign and English was his second language—broke into his first language and sounded somewhat hysterical and we were doing loop-the-loops over Heathrow Airport. I can tell members that it was not one of my most pleasant memories of flying. 
 On a second occasion I was flying from here to the UK shortly after I became an MP I believe. I was going home with my wife on a private trip to London—a trip totally paid for by myself and my wife I might add so it was at no cost to the taxpayer. On that occasion someone—a New Zealander I have to say—who was filled to the brim with duty-free liquor and that sort of thing went berserk at the tail end of the aircraft. He spilt red wine over everybody and he too took some restraining. The passengers around us were pretty nervous about how to deal with the guy who was charging up and down the aisles like a madman—even worse than the National Party caucus I understand. 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: Can’t be any worse than them. 
PETER BROWN 
: Cannot be any worse? 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Well it’s not a dictatorship. 
PETER BROWN 
: It is not a dictatorship—oh well. It might be as bad as our caucus has been at times. Again the issue of unruly passengers is one that is well taken care of in the bill. I raised the issue when a civil aviation amendment bill came up during the last term. I said then that that we should be talking about controlling unruly passengers and we were promised by the officials that a measure would come to fruition in due course. So we welcome the bill. We think it targets all the areas of concern: disruption intoxication interference with the aircraft offensive behaviour and language wrongly using electronic devices etc. There is also a clause dealing with smoking. We think that the Government in that segment of the bill has got it right and we are prepared to support the bill going to the select committee. But we have reservations about the part of the bill that repeals the Carriage by Air Act. We agree that that Act needs looking at but we have reservations about whether it needs to be totally repealed. On that basis New Zealand First will support the referral of the bill to the select committee.