Genter Julie Anne: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9805. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I am very pleased to have another opportunity to take a call on Part 1 of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill as there are so many different changes happening in Part 1 of this bill. I have already spoken about my concerns with the changes to the purpose of the principal Act and the lack of the Government’s willingness to listen to the many submissions that were opposed to that. I have talked about our concerns with the transitional measures and other elements of the Public Transport Operating Model that are going to entrench existing bus monopolies. I have talked about the problems with borrowing or going to public-private partnerships to fund transport priorities when those new projects do not generate new revenue.Further concerns that I have are to do with clause 14 and clauses 66 and 67. These are related to the core requirements of the regional land transport programmes prepared by regional transport committees and the make-up of the regional transport committees. During the select committee process we heard from a number of regional councils people who have sat on regional land transport committees and in almost every single case perhaps every single case they said that they benefited greatly from the additional members such as representation from the police representation from the disability community and representation from cyclists and walking advocacy groups because all of those different perspectives were able to provide the regional transport committee with solutions to problems before projects were implemented. So even though it may have taken a little bit more time having that broad perspective from a number of different areas resulted in more robust decisions being made. When we see the sort of horrific accident that happened at the KiwiRail level crossing in Morningside where there was not adequate disabled access and a woman in a wheelchair was trapped and hit by a train that sort of problem with the design of transport projects is exactly what can be avoided if you have robust input into the projects and into the prioritisation of projects.Although I expected regional land transport representatives to tell me that there was some problem with having these additional representatives on their regional and transport committees in fact every single one of them when I asked them about it said that no they really valued it and they did not want the change that the Government was proposing. So it does not seem like there was actually any problem with having that broad representation or requirement for broad representation in the principal Act. The problem or perception of a problem came from the Government which simply wants to streamline everywhere. The results of streamlining and making this change despite the fact that the individuals directly involved said that it was beneficial will be that we will see more of these problems where regional land transport committees will not have the diverse interests of end-users put into the planning and programming of the regional land transport priorities.A further problem that was raised by my colleague Andrew Little just a moment ago was the fact that there is actually a downgrading of the ability of regional councils to set their own priorities. We see this in clause 14 with the changes to the core requirements of regional land transport plans. They are going to be required to be consistent with the Government’sPolicy Statement on Land Transport Funding. So what the Government is essentially doing with this bill is concentrating more and more decision-making power at the central level as to which transport projects will get funding.There are a couple of different problems with this. Firstly regional and local ratepayers are major contributors to the money that is going into transport projects. They really should have some say as to what their priorities are. But secondly it is actually taxpayers all over the regions who are paying the road-user charge and the fuel taxes that are going into the central government’s transport budget. Ironically when the previous Minister of Transport Steven Joyce asked the Ministry of Transport foradvice on the amount of vehicle trips that were being taken on local roads which are half-funded by ratepayers not by road users and how many were being taken on State highways which are 100 percent funded by the Government but are basically funded by road users everywhere asking whether they are driving on local roads or on State highways what it showed was that the number—