Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this Land Transport Management (Regulation of Public Transport) Amendment Bill. And it's not just because they've got the word transport" twice in the same phrase; it's because it is bad policy. If you boil this bill down to a very simple summary this bill tries to ensure that councils have the opportunity of operating bus services and ferry services and any other public transport operation they can think of. And when I say "operating" I don't mean going out to the market place and saying "We would like the following bus routes to run at the following times. Who can provide that service for what price?"; I mean the council actually buys the buses and the electronic equipment to guide it and collect the payment and it employs the bus workers. I think people might want to think a little bit about their local council and think they're nice folks but do we really want them to also be in the transport business—not just commissioning at a high level but actually fixing the buses working out how to maintain the buses? Is that the sort of thing that councils should be doing or should they as is the status quo right now under the Public Transport Operating Model have a job of saying "On behalf of our ratepayers this is where we'd like the buses or the ferries to go and we would like to go out to the market place and ask people who are actually in business doing transport to provide the services."? Those are the two basic choices. The ACT Party would just make the point that private enterprise that businesses where people are risking their own money—a lot of people in business get started by borrowing money against their house. With those kinds of people where they're putting their own skin on the line where they're the ones that are kept up all night they tend to offer more efficient services than public services. And you just have to ask yourself: what's the record of councils as landlords owning homes? Hopeless mostly trying to get out of it and very sensibly so. What's the record of councils managing three waters infrastructure—drinking water and stormwater and waste water and sewage? Well funnily enough this Government says that councils shouldn't be able to operate their own three waters infrastructure. This Government has gone to an enormous effort with at least three pieces of legislation in Parliament so far—a massive multi-million dollar advertising or some would say propaganda campaign. They've taken enormous amounts of political heat. But this Government has done all that because they don't think councils should operate three waters. They've said councils don't have the scale or the expertise or the balance sheet in order to be able to borrow the money to invest in the three waters assets so three waters assets have to be taken out of the purview of councils.What about planning resource management? What about the Natural and Built Environment Bill? Well David Parker the environment Minister has a huge piece of legislation that actually establishes 15 new entities to do resource consents and planning and create plans. Why is he doing that? Because he doesn't think the councils are up to it. So it's very strange that Labour doesn't think councils can run three waters doesn't think that they should be as involved in planning their communities. It's very strange—you know we know they've been pretty hopeless at managing most things actually. However Labour is determined that they're going to run bus companies and we heard possibly the reason why just a second ago. She talked a bit about transport—Helen White did the member for Auckland Central. She talked a little bit—oh no sorry; that was Chlöe Swarbrick. She talked a little bit about different issues but the thing that she really fixated on—you know a former unionist or perhaps a current unionist—was "This will change conditions of employment." And that's the issue.This is not being done to provide better public transport for Aucklanders or people in North Canterbury like the former speaker Matt Doocey. This is being done actually as a payoff to Labour's union mates—they want the councils to be the employer. They want to start using public transport as a form of job creation. And this is another great irony of Labour and another great failing of Labour. The Labour Party believe that somehow they're above ideology that somehow what they're doing is just practical and right. But in reality what they are finding as they bring this legislation to the House is that they are not going to deliver practically better services for New Zealanders. What they're going to do is try and deliver for the unions and the labour movement in this particular public service when the practical answer is to actually go and talk to some people that operate public transport. You know I was out at the opening of Pavlovich late last year out of West Auckland a brand new terminal all private investment to make transport better. I met with the chief executive officer and chair of Fullers just a couple of weeks ago. It's not difficult. They'll say the problem is there aren't enough people. The argument you hear from Labour is "Oh it's because they're horrible to the workers. They make them do split shifts and you know they're not treating their workers well." The truth is that there are just not enough workers in New Zealand. There are not enough drivers. Talk to anyone in a trucking company. Talk to anyone in logistics. Talk to anyone in the airport precinct. There aren't enough people to drive the ferries and drive the buses. That is the problem. So the Labour Party failing to understand the practical issues instead turn to ideology and attempting to serve their constituency and the union movement that built them just as they did when they got rid of charter schools. It wasn't about public policy. Always goes back to paying off the unions with the Labour Party. They are trying to distort the entire public transport system purely to pay off with jobs for the boys and girls.That is not going to make the boat go faster. It is not going to make New Zealand a more prosperous country. It is not going to make New Zealand a more livable country and it's not going to help us reduce the amount of carbon or greenhouse gas emissions that New Zealanders emit when going about their daily life with a given living standard. All it's going to do is further complicate the way that services are delivered the way New Zealanders solve their practical problems from day to day as the Labour Party attempts to pursue ideological administrative changes to the way that public services are run. There is no problem there to be solved. They haven't got up and explained "There's a big problem. This is why we're doing it." The only problem in public transport right now is there aren't enough people available. Mr Speaker here's another thought for you. They haven't explained why a publicly owned bus or ferry service would be better. We had an attempt. We had an attempt from Chlöe Swarbrick who said that "Well because these private companies make profit then it's going to be more expensive because they have to make a profit on top of their cost structure." But what she fails to understand is well business really and profit and the role of it. You see in order to make a profit you have to actually ensure that the costs of what your company consumes are less than the value of what it sells. It's not complicated but it's very hard to actually do. It takes a lot of hard work a lot of risk a lot of nous. And it's the profit motive the opportunity to make a profit that actually gets people focused on: how can we do more with less; how can we be more efficient in this firm? In actual fact if it's true that profit drives efficiency because it makes people constantly compare the costs of what they consume with the value of what they sell then what will removing the profit motive mean? What will it do when councils that the Government doesn't trust to do three waters or planning or anything else are suddenly in charge of operating businesses that run buses and ferries? Well it's not rocket science. You can work it out. What it does is it takes away the incentive to think extra hard every day about the cost of what's consumed and the value of what's provided. You have a monopolistic service run by people with no profit motive. The service levels get worse the cost gets higher the only winners are the unions and the losers are those people—particularly those people in large metropolitan areas like Auckland Wellington and Christchurch—who actually need a decent public transport system for their lives to work. So we oppose this bill. We oppose the ideology behind it we oppose the bankrupt economics behind it and we hope this Government will one day see sense or else they'll all have to go."