Williamson Maurice: Public Transport Management Bill — First Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Public Transport Management Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:12365] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I say from the outset that National will support the Public Transport Management Bill at least to go to a select committee. But having said that I am disappointed I did not hear from the Minister a little bit more about why this legislation is needed as opposed to what it actually does. I think there is a chalk and cheese difference between public transport operations that are subsidised and that get taxpayers’ money to help in their revenue stream—whereby the Government has an absolute role to ensure it is getting value for money quality of service and so on—and the very different operation where someone decides to get himself or herself a minibus to deck it out nicely inside and to provide a public transport service but who also decides that he or she does not want any subsidy can do it on a commercial basis and can make a reasonable return on it. Such people will not see why they should be so regulated. 
I think the Minister would have been better to explain to us why the regulations—and I think the quite increased bureaucracy that will go around them—are needed for those commercial public transport services. I think there may be a need for them; it is to do with the integration. If we cherry-pick the commercial services and leave the non-commercials to others then we may end up with the subsidy being more. There may be a value-for-money holistic approach to the way we go about it but I think the Minister should have spent some more time explaining why regulation is needed. 
Having said that though I think there is a need to ensure that public transport services improve dramatically from the time we are looking at because as Auckland and other cities get more and more congested everyone knows it is a fact of life that we will never be able to build our way out of that congestion in total. Yes better roads will make a difference; yes arteries that connect up will make a difference. One of Auckland’s problems is that it has a lot of arteries that do not actually connect and therefore we can come across the motorway at Mangere Bridge suddenly hit the end of State Highway 20 and find that it goes nowhere. From there on we have to find our way on a rat run into town. So yes we will indeed dramatically improve the level of moving around the city if we get the connection of those arteries. 
But I know that the volume of traffic growth is such and the volume of people owning vehicles is such—making us the highest motor-vehicle owning country in the world—that we will always need to rely on putting more and more emphasis on people migrating to public transport so that we can keep the city still functioning. So from that point of view I understand why we may be doing this. The Minister said that back in 1989 the focus was very different in terms of the way public administration was operated but I am still quite concerned about having a sort of nanny State situation whereby we have a busybody bureaucrat coming in and telling a commercial operator—a commercial operator who is prepared to put his or her own money at risk and take the risks of running that business—how to do it. 
We are seeing some of that busybody stuff coming out of Land Transport New Zealand now with regard to other public transport operators I think in the form of hire cars and taxis. I say to the Minister that I find it outrageous that Land Transport New Zealand is saying to hire car companies that it will not let them have meters in their cars. I keep asking why. Why can an operator not decide to operate as a taxi one day meeting all the rules of taxis and having a meter in the car then the next day decide say to do a run up to Huka Lodge from the airport with some American tourists operating as a hire car and not using the meter? On another day the operator may decide to be a supplier of services to a school or something else. Why can operators not do that? Well I know that at Land Transport New Zealand it is because of bureaucrats who have the tidy-mind syndrome and who have told a number of the hire car companies here in Wellington that it will be illegal for them to have meters in their cars. What will happen is that people who are caught with meters in their car will be prosecuted. Those are the rules. 
I have been trying; I have been fighting with Land Transport New Zealand and corresponding with Wayne Donnelly asking him what on earth this nonsense is about. The issue should be about safety about compliance with some safety regimes so that people do not get ripped off and about meeting certain criteria but this is what happens when we let bureaucrats and bureaucracy start to run wild. Just on an initial read of this bill I have a grave fear that we may be setting up a bureaucratic regime for regional councils to impose. And the regulations will not just be on those who receive some public subsidy—the National Party is very very supportive of holding people to account if they are getting public taxpayers’ money by way of a subsidy; of course they should be held to account. 
But again I say that if I saw there was a need around Pakuranga for example to run a service from there out to Middlemore Hospital if I wanted 
to put my money at risk and get a mini van comply with all safety standards and make sure my van was up to all of its services then I do not understand why I would then want to be regulated by the regional council which I do not even want to be associated with. I do not even want to talk with it. I should meet the rules relating to the safety of the vehicle through Land Transport New Zealand and the rules of my driver licensing through both the police and Land Transport New Zealand but I should not even have to know that there is a regional council. I should be able just to post my schedule in the  
Howick and Pakuranga Times  
that I am going to run a commercial bus service out to Middlemore and say that if people want to use my service they can. I would include my charges by way of fares and if I were not getting any subsidy from anybody else then I do not understand why that would not be acceptable. I never hear— 
Hon Annette King 
: So you’re just cherry-picking? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: The Minister says “cherry-picking”. No one runs that service at present. No one runs a service from my electorate out to Middlemore. Here is my question; here is the difference between the left and right in politics. Now we are getting to the guts of it. The left think in terms of control and centre regulation and “this is how we decide what you do is best”. I ask the question again because I would really like to know the answer. If I wanted to start a new service— 
Hon Annette King 
: You’ll be able to. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: The Minister says I am able to. I have not finished my question so she cannot answer it yet. If I wanted to start a new service and bought a bus from overseas—a really nice Daimler-Benz; a real beauty a cracker—and if I had all the licensing the commercial driver’s P licence no demerit points on my licence and so on and said that from Monday I would run three times a week from Pakuranga out to Middlemore Hospital and back publishing my fares phone number and route in the  
Howick and Pakuranga Times 
 then why do I even need to speak to the regional council? That is my question. I am not asking for a subsidy. I am not even asking for people to use my service; nor am I saying that it is a regulation whereby if people want to go to Middlemore they have to use my bus. I want the Minister to tell me why I should even have to speak to the regional council. This bill will make people have to deal with the regional council and I want to know why. That is all. In the select committee I will ask those questions because they are legitimate. 
I said earlier on that there may be a reason for it. Maybe if this is not done there will be so much leakage out of the commercial side of it that the non-commercial side will become very heavily subsidised and difficult to manage. [ 
Interruption 
] No I do not think that that is the answer. I hear someone saying that he or she thinks the Minister said in her speech that it can force people into complying with integrated ticketing but for people who are private operators running a commercial service I would have thought that integrated ticketing was a marketing issue. People may want to use someone’s service but they cannot then use their general integrated ticketing regime—or they have not been able to use it so far because we have not had an integrated ticketing regime in Auckland. That is the answer for that one I say to the Minister. But if all the major operators—for example Stagecoach the train service and the ferry service—all had some compliant integrated ticketing and I wanted to start my own commercial service out to Middlemore Hospital then I would actually soon learn that every customer who wanted to use my service would not use me anymore because I was not part of that integrated ticketing regime. The market would actually say to me to go quickly and see the regional council and ask it what I had to do to be part of and comply with an integrated ticketing regime. But no the left says that instead of leaving it to the market to customers and to choice it will regulate operators to bring in more bureaucrats more regulation and more red tape so that a poor old operator who is trying to run a commercial business will say: “What the hell am I doing this for! I’ll just go fishing.” 
Phil Heatley 
: No the ticket prices will go up. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Of course; that is what I had not understood. The cost of the bureaucracy will be added on to the fare in order to recover the costs. 
So I finish as I began which is to say that National will support this bill to go to a select committee. But we will be very very interested to know why both commercial and non-commercial or subsidised and non-subsidised operators are to be treated the same and why those who just want to get on and run their businesses not only in meeting all the safety requirements—we fully support operators should have to as people should be safe when they are on their vehicles—will have to go off and deal with regional councils in order to be commercially successful businesses.