Gosche Mark: Public Transport Management Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Gosche Mark: Public Transport Management Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:650;Page:18779] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 This is a very pleasurable day for Labour politicians and for other politicians who are here to pass public transport legislation that will improve the public transport system in leaps and bounds. We have seen over the last 20 years—since I think 1989 when the legislation that the Public Transport Management Bill replaces was first bought in—a very rapid decline in public transport use largely driven by the fact that the National Party froze the public transport subsidies for 5 years at around $50 million. In Auckland that was $18 million. Ordinary people trying to get to work in Auckland were forced into cars because there was no decent public transport system the trains were dilapidated and ready for the museum or the scrapyard and buses were not purchased by bus companies in the private sector because there was no incentive to do so. It was a recipe for disaster that would require any future Government to spend billions of dollars building more and more roads because there was no alternative. 
Driving around Auckland as I do regularly I have seen a dramatic reduction in the congestion that Auckland has suffered for a very long time. There are two good reasons for that. One is that people are deciding not to drive cars as much because of the price of fuel and the other is that there is an alternative and it is called public transport. That public transport system may be groaning at the moment but it would have been completely lost if we had had a National Government for the last 9 years. The reason it has been able to improve is that we have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into it. But the accountability for that spend is not there the ability to plan better is not there and the ability for the regional council and the local authorities to work with the private sector in a fair manner is not there. That is why we have this legislation. 
Members on the Labour side of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee listened to the submissions heard what people had to say and promoted the idea of improving the legislation by adding option C. Why did we do that? Well we did not just listen to the bus companies who have an enormous vested interest in seeing the taxpayer and the ratepayer pour more and more millions of dollars into public transport without necessarily getting the results. The results are now starting to actually plateau because more and more money alone will not fix the problem. We need planning. 
The select committee had an excellent submission from a representative of the consumers. He happened to be I think the Auckland Green Party representative. He came along to the select committee and those who listened to him were just blown away. He lives in the central city somewhere around Herne Bay or Ponsonby and he goes to work in Manukau City by public transport. It takes him 2 to 2½ hours to do that by bus and train. Is it connected so that the buses that he gets from Ponsonby into the city and then to the train station and then from the train station in Papatoetoe out to Manukau are all linked up so that they meet at the same time? Can he use the same ticket? Can he guarantee himself that the fare will be cheap because he uses the same integrated ticket? Not on your life! It is a shambles. He came along and showed us the shambles that is Auckland’s public transport system which cannot be put straight without this bill being passed. It was an embarrassment. It was crazy—he would get off the bus one stop before the train station in Papatoetoe because the fares actually went up if he stayed on the bus until the last stop. They did not even coordinate the fare system. He could not get off at the train station without having to pay the next full fare as if he had travelled the next section. What a ludicrous situation! 
The private sector says that that situation should be left as it is and that nobody who pays the bills should be allowed to tell them what to do. Well hang on. Where does that happen in the world? Sixty to 80 percent of the revenue for those bus companies comes from the ratepayer and the taxpayer. The National Party says we should leave it that way we should not give them any controls and we should not allow them to see the books and see how the money is spent and see whether they are getting results. Oh no! The National Party says we should leave it to the market. That is what the National Party says. It put up some pathetic Supplementary Order Papers written by the bus companies—that is how they do policy work over there. Whoever pays the piper calls the tune—I heard Maurice Williamson say that. That is what happens with the National Party’s policy—whoever pays the piper gets to call the tune. For the National Party it is about putting up the industry’s submissions in this House as Supplementary Order Papers. That is how it works over there. It does not work that way over here. The other interesting fact is that every regional council—[ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: Excuse me. Can we just have one person speaking instead of an argument across the Chamber? 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Every regional council of substance in this country that runs subsidised public transport systems supports this bill and the addition of option C. The select committee got letters from the regional council here in Wellington from Christchurch and from Auckland and they said that they support the fact that an option should be added and a region should get the choice of having option C. 
I have to say that Mike Lee does not control the Auckland Regional Transport Authority. The people who sit on that board are appointed by all of the territorial local authorities. Last time I looked John Banks was not a left-wing politician. I actually like John—I think he has a good heart—but I would not describe him as a left-wing politician. He is one of the people who appoints the Auckland Regional Transport Authority board so is Bob Harvey so is Len Brown and so is the Mayor of North Shore. They appoint the board for their commercial nous. I am sure many of those people on the board do not vote for me or for the Labour Party because they are there not for their politics but for their commercial nous. The Auckland Regional Transport Authority has said that it needs this to fix up the problems if it is to go forward and continue to improve public transport. 
The Auckland Regional Council is very busy at the moment—not purchasing buses but purchasing trains to replace the clapped out rubbish that was left to us by the private sector which did not invest a single cent in a new train in this country in all the time they owned them. Everybody in Auckland knows that. If Maurice Williamson has this fantasy that the Auckland Regional Council has a secret plot to go out and buy buses I tell him that I think it has its hands full at the moment trying to get the trains to replace the private sector rubbish that was left behind. So we will see improvements in public transport in Auckland and we will see improvements coming because the private sector and the public sector will work together. That is the sort of thing we hear over there. We heard from private bus companies that asked to be given option C because it was good for business. They said it was good for business to have contracts that they could go to their bankers with and say: “Look we’ve got a guaranteed revenue stream we’ve got a long-term contract and we want to improve the bus fleet. We can now borrow money.” That is what will happen. 
In terms of the pathetic excuses the National Party used about the process I will say that the letter from the Regulations Review Committee—which I am happy to table if need be although it is a public document now—was followed absolutely. We changed the Public Transport Management Bill according to the requests of the Regulations Review Committee. It was not a big fuss. It was an annoying problem that the letter got lost but the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee met again and we sought to do a special report to the House. That report would have said that we agreed with the Regulations Review Committee and we had changed the bill accordingly but the National Party denied leave for that to happen so it has been done by the Minister of Transport after we wrote to her as a committee and asked her to do it. There was no fuss no bother. It was not big stuff; it was just sensible regulations review changes that were passed in this legislation by way of amendment. 
I am enormously proud of this legislation. As an Aucklander and as somebody who grew up catching the train and the buses and as someone who is now representing working people who need to do that every day of the week I am very proud that in the last few days I will be able to speak in this House as an MP this bill will be passed as amended. I know it will make an enormous difference to everyday New Zealanders’ lives. They want a public transport system that is reliable and they will have that through a cooperative relationship between the private sector and the public sector. I trust regional councils because regional councils are elected by the people. No bus companies were elected by the people to administer the $900 million of public funds that we put into public transport in this country compared with the $50 million that the National Party used to put in. No we actually care about public transport. This bill will deliver a very good result for the public.