Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party in support of the Civil Aviation Bill.I acknowledge the Minister and I acknowledge the Finance and Expenditure Committee actually. It's been one of those select committee process which I think has been quite collegial and where we've been able to work closely together to ensure that this bill is in the best possible position going forward. I also want to acknowledge and thank the submitters from the various parts of the aviation sector who have I think through their help actually helped make this bill a better bill by actually bringing to us on the committee the issues which actually really matter to them to make sure that this bill will actually work. So I want to acknowledge everyone who submitted and everyone who spoke to the select committee and provided information which has been incredibly informative as we've gone through.So I just want to run through a few of the key issues from the National Party's perspective which have been addressed in the piece of legislation and then conclude with an issue which I think is ongoing and needs to have some more consideration.The first is the issue which has been raised already regarding the Public Works Act provisions. The bill in its original form in our view put far too much power in the hands of Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) to be able to decide where land was surplus to requirements rather than that decision being made by the actual landowner. That has been changed which is good. It now puts the process of facilitating the land transfer in LINZ's hand but the decision as to whether the land is surplus to requirements remains with the landowner which is where that decision should be sitting rather than with LINZ basically being able to come in and make those decisions for airports. It would effectively put a lot of airports—we've heard this through the select committee—in a very uncertain position where a Government body would be able to make decisions potentially as to whether something was surplus to requirements when those airports as they said in their submissions have to make long-term decisions and have to have land for long-term decisions around future runways or future aprons or future development which goes much further than the next three or five years but sometimes 20 30 40 50 years. So what is surplus land is a decision that needs to be kept with the airports.The other area in which there was a lot of concern—from the airports in particular—was around regulatory undertakings or the enforceable regulatory undertakings which has been amended. It now requires a more consultative approach rather than a dictatorial approach. The bill in its original form effectively allowed those Government departments which operated airports around security or biosecurity effectively to come and tell the airport exactly how much land or space they needed and the airports would have to comply with that. Of course airports build for those services but at the same time there needs to be a more consultative approach because of the fact that they operate within constraints. So this has been changed to create a more consultative approach which I think is better for airports and puts less power in the hands of those Government departments but there still is a backstop there if there is no ability to be able to actually form some sort of compromise.The issues around operating commercially that has been addressed by the Minister. But of course it still allows airports to be able to operate and charge how they see fit for non-aerodrome activities keeping that exempt from the regulatory element. Of course that's a fair way of doing things because airports have significant commercial interests which are outside of just simply the aerodrome activities that they operate and of course they are competing with other landowners in the vicinity and of course they should be able to make those decisions based on commercial reality rather than upon regulatory environments.And then we've had a range of issues which were raised by pilots in regards to the review of directors' decisions. There's been a change which allows for those to be independently reviewed. Of course that's important because there was a significant concern raised by pilots around some of the decisions made by the Civil Aviation Authority whereby they were having their licences revoked for various reasons whereas they could continue to have their licence approved in other jurisdictions which of course led to a grey area here in New Zealand. So this independent review at least will provide for some accountability or overview of the Civil Aviation Authority. However I do note that that doesn't go as far as those submitters would have liked in that they would have preferred that those decisions would have been effectively implemented rather than simply just being a review with the decision then going back to the Civil Aviation Authority. So I do note that that doesn't go as far as some of the submitters do want.The other point I wanted to just touch on is in regards to some of the other issues which was a key issue raised around aviation security. I note that the ACT Party in their minority view made a point around aviation security and whether that should simply remain with the Civil Aviation Authority. I do think it's an issue which does need to be looked into. I'm not sure if I agree with the ACT Party's minority view which effectively said to create another body to review the decisions of aviation security. But I do agree with the principle in that I think there is an issue here. This has been highlighted in recent months with the International Civil Aviation Organisation report which has not been publicly released yet but which I understand has raised significant issues around aviation security in New Zealand. The issue that I do think needs to be looked at is whether it is appropriate for the Civil Aviation Authority and the Aviation Security Service to effectively be within the same agency and reporting to themselves and whether there needs to be some separation as we see in other countries. What we've seen is that there's clearly a number of issues which will be highlighted and they will become public at some point around how our aviation security has not been keeping pace with our international requirements. That has put significant pressure on airport security at all of our international airports and from what I'm hearing has been a significant issue and poses significant risk actually to New Zealand as a country in terms of being able to attract international airlines to continue to fly here and to have confidence in our aviation security. So this is an issue which is real it's now. The ICAO report and what it says will have to be released at some point. The question the Minister—Hon Kieran McAnulty: It hasn't finished; you can't release what hasn't finished.SIMEON BROWN: Well the Minister says that it can't be released yet because it's not finished. Well the information will be publicly released as to what was wrong and what needed to be fixed because that will become very apparent. The issue there is around whether our aviation security service were keeping pace with the international requirements which New Zealand has signed up to or whether they were asleep at the wheel. That's something which I know a lot of pilots and airlines have a significant concern about.So National will continue to support this piece of legislation as it goes through the House. We look forward to it being progressed because it is a significant reform which has been in train now for nine years. We look forward to it being progressed being passed into legislation and being implemented to help support our aviation sector which has had an incredibly tough last three years which needs better regulation so that it can be more productive to help grow New Zealand to grow our economy to grow highly productive high-paying jobs. They're the people who do the work. They're the ones who help our economy grow. They're the ones who will move New Zealand forward. The job of Government is not to get in the way; it's to make sure that we have the conditions for them to succeed to grow and to be successful in New Zealand because that's ultimately what creates a strong economy which helps to be able to pay for the public services which New Zealanders ultimately rely on.So we look forward to supporting the bill. We thank again the committee and all the members of the committee for the work that they've done and the constructive approach they've been able to take on this and again most importantly we thank the submitters for putting forward their views on this issue. Thank you very much.