Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party is supporting this bill. It's been a long journey to get to this point because we've known that there needed to be changes to improve the operation and planning of public transport services for quite a long time and it's ironic in some ways that I've some of the National and ACT speakers on this bill suggest that things aren't working that well for public transport at the moment but we shouldn't change it. I think everybody knows that things aren't working very well for public transport at the moment and hence that's the need to change the framework. Part of that goes back to that ideological decision. I believe it was in the early 1990s that most of these decisions were made by a National-led Government to not allow local authorities to own or operate public transport services for the most part. I mean Christchurch was sort of doing it but for the most part those changes were brought in and then there was a proposal for changing the operation of public transport at the end of the fifth Labour Government in 2008 and a really good option 3 passed without the public transport management though. But National repealed that when they got in in 2009 and they worked up this other framework which I don't think ever had a whole lot of legislation around it. It was more operational or through regulations. But fundamentally what we've seen is that if you want to have a well-functioning public transport system with services that genuinely give people choice it doesn't work to have a whole lot of different operators. Like having a whole lot of different private operators is a barrier to the transport planners planning an efficient network everywhere. It was a barrier to bringing in integrated ticketing and integrated fares and it's a barrier when the owner of a bus operator suddenly sells it to an overseas hedge fund and then that overseas hedge fund actually doesn't have any interest in running the service properly. [Interruptions] No but I mean hello. Do National Party members—I mean obviously National members don't take the bus so they don't understand what happened when Infratil sold NZ Bus and a whole lot of bus drivers left and then they didn't even have—like they had a whole office in Wellington before; they didn't even have a manager in Wellington for the bus drivers to call because the overseas hedge fund didn't care and didn't have any incentive to run a good public transport service. And that's why it should be directly accountable to elected people at a local level because they have an incentive—a direct incentive—to improve the services to people. Now I want for the benefit of the National members who have recently been going around talking about the five countries in the world with the very best roads—Singapore the Netherlands Switzerland—all countries that have centrally-planned excellent public transport. It's not done through private operators and you know less than half the trips in the cities in Switzerland Netherlands and Singapore—Singapore being the only city—are by car. That's why the roads are good; this is what we've been trying to tell you: if you invest in public transport and operate it properly so many people take it that then when Hon Judith Collins tries to drive on the road she will get stuck in traffic. But they haven't yet grasped this concept that you benefit the people driving on the roads when you run really frequent reliable public transport services that are actually connected and you can't do that if you have all your services cut up into separate operators. And then when there is a need and suddenly you realise there's a whole big transport need in one area the bus operator—you can't go to them and say we need this many buses and this many drivers. That's just not how it works. OK sorry I just—you know they don't want to know. So anyway I mean voters at home should consider this: if you want good public transport services it's very important this Labour Government and the Hon Michael Wood actually did the work on this bill to bring it through. It's going to pass before Parliament rises. That's very very good. If some of the private operators don't like it that doesn't mean it's not good for public transport services and the people using public transport. Because when you're talking about public money on things if the private operators are raking in big profits and rolling in the money through operating their service that's a sign you're probably paying too much for it. Otherwise anyway sorry it's 11.38 at night. I just want so much for everyone across the House to understand that we all win from good public transport that's run for a public good. Even the people who love their cars and want to drive their cars and they're so close—they're so close in picking those five countries with the best roads they almost got it. Because those five countries have the sort of transport policies that the Green Party's talking about so if you want good roads you need really excellent public transport. You need excellent safe walking and cycling You want slow speed limits in your residential areas so your kids can walk and cycle to school and actually have some car-free areas because that's actually good for the businesses down there. And we're going to have thankfully the opportunity for public ownership and public operation of public transport services so that can be run for public good and the people working in that sector can have well-paid jobs because that's how you get a workforce of trained people who are there and able to run the services and you don't have a whole heap of cancellations like we had in the last year.What would be even better and a really good reason—if the members in the National Party actually care about competition having private ownership of bus depots and the vehicles is a barrier to competition. If you want to have better competition it was one of the private operators came to me and he was telling me about Perth. He was from Perth and what they have done in Perth is they weren't getting enough competition so they said automatically whoever wins the contract gets the right to use the depot because private ownership of a depot is a barrier to entry for new operators. So if you want to have an efficient well-run public transport service that's working well for people public ownership of the depots as a strategic asset is really really important. Otherwise you're not going to get competition you're going to get one tender per contract.I can see I'm not convincing them. So I'm just going to stop and say thank goodness they're not in Government and God forbid it should happen after 14 October because those people are incompetent.