Peters Jim: Land Transport Management Bill — In Committee 
Peters Jim: Land Transport Management Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:613;Page:9743] 
JIM PETERS (NZ First) 
: 
 I would like to carry on from where the last speaker left off. My lasting impression when I look through the bill including the schedules is that yet again we have a Government talking about obtuse concepts such as “ensuring environmental sustainability”. For the life of me I am not sure what that is and I am quite experienced in local government affairs. I never knew what it was under some of the legislation that we have had to look at previously. I never found—and I cannot find now—a clear legal definition to give to regional land transport committees so that they have some idea of what that actually means. This bill and the schedules lack that. If there is no adequate definition here it is because there is no such definition. Why should local councils and all the various people who are now to make up the new regional land transport committees have to work out what that obtuse concept is? Because it is a nebulous concept. 
It reappears over and over again—it is in schedule 3—but I am in doubt as to what it really means. 
We have yet again the same problem with the Local Government Act 2002 —which this bill will be a factor of—and with the Resource Management Act. There are sections in those Acts that are directly contradictory and they contradict this bill as well. The proof of that will be court cases at great cost to ratepayers and to citizens in order to find out that I am right and that the legislation has failed to pick up the fine legal intentions in the wording in this bill and in those two Acts. I said that last year and in March this year. I am absolutely certain—and I am backed by senior counsel in this city—that those Acts are contradictory on some important matters and only time will prove that. The lack of application of this bill to those principles in a legal sense will be a factor here too. Whatever the term “environmental sustainability” means it will do that. 
The other issue that concerns me as a member of a regional committee is what the new representation means. Does it mean that for the first time the Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee which is part of the regional council will have to consider the “cultural interest” issue? Who are the people concerned with “cultural interest”? Is it the local arts council? Is it some creative body that does performing arts? What is it? I cannot find a definition here at all. This will be a very strange addition to the regional land transport committee. 
The other thing I want to speak about is the fact that there is nothing in the bill—and therefore in the Act when it becomes law—that tells a land transport committee: “Thou shalt give weight to the majority opinion”—as we do at most times and do in this House. The bill states that all those bodies no matter how obtuse small or representative of the local community they are have to be listened to and heard. This is not a majority opinion. This is a collective of minorities down to the smallest minority somehow in this unique bill having equal place and equal weight. I find that incorrect. In the practical sense as a member of a committee I am not sure how we will resolve it. 
 I go back to the other schedule that deals with long-term community consultation. It might just be that if we take the Local Government Act 2002 at its word—and that part in this bill as its final word—we can by tiredness and long-term consultation reduce issues. 
But that would also be undemocratic because the local consultation process will do that excepting for the small groups well financed and well represented who again will have a pervasive say in a democratic process because the majority will be overcome by lethargy and by time. So overall having been involved with land transport for the last 13 years I do not see this bill or the schedules as a huge improvement because as I said last night at the end of some of the good intentions in this bill and in the schedules one fundamental issue still remains and that is funding. This bill will not help the Albany to Puhoi realignment B2 (ALPURT B2). It is finished all done and not able to be processed because of funding issues at this point of time. The Minister should not shake his head. If he had the will ALPURT B2 would be under way now. Instead under this bill ALPURT B2 will go right back to the start and instead of the 7-year term which the Minister sought—of which he gained only 10 months—it will take 14 years to complete.