Williamson Maurice: Public Transport Management Bill — In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Public Transport Management Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:650;Page:18630] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 If ever legislation needed to be given a little more time for consideration it is this bill. It is this bill for a number of reasons. It is this bill because of decisions taken by Cabinet back in February 2007—Cabinet minute CAB(07)5/3A refers. An option B was decided on yet that is not what we have here as a bill today. We then had a number of people from the bus industry take an issue to the Legislation Advisory Committee and finally take it to the Regulations Review Committee. I will canvas that issue a little more in further speeches later on but the Regulations Review Committee raised some quite legitimate concerns and sent them off to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. 
Due to what could I think be best called an administrative snafu within the Clerk’s Office or within the Select Committee Office that advice did not arrive at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee before this bill was considered and then deliberated on. I would have thought that this matter alone was a serious breach of process if something as important as the Regulations Review Committee feels that it needs to write to a subject select committee on an issue and raise some matters. I will go through those matters in quite some detail as we debate this bill. I will certainly refer to paragraph (a)(i) in clause 52 “Regulations” and to some other matters. 
I do not think I have known a time in the history of this Parliament when this sort of thing has happened to a Regulations Review Committee type of letter raising serious concerns that has been sent to a select committee. It was written back in March of this year—it was actually written on my birthday 6 March. For whatever reason it did not get through to the relevant select committee; I do not think we know why that piece of advice did not get through to us. The select committee under the chairmanship of Mark Gosche quite rightly went ahead and finally did its deliberation and consideration. National members tried to move and I certainly moved in that committee that this bill be at least sent back to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I also gave a watertight commitment that National would facilitate consideration to all be done in 1 day. I gave the watertight commitment to the committee that if we brought the bill back then we would do the consideration all in 1 day and we would be able to consider it properly. We would be able to incorporate the changes that the committee felt were proper and then we would be able to report the bill back. 
I am sorry to say that not only did the Labour members vote against that motion but so too did Peter Brown from New Zealand First. Those members took the attitude that they would not let that advice get through to the relevant committee. That has nothing to do with the substantive issue and I will reflect that at this point. That is a procedural matter and that procedural matter is something that I think—[ 
Interruption 
] Doug Woolerton can bellow all he likes. He should be ashamed to be part of a team that allowed a Regulations Review Committee report to a select committee not to be considered. He would be furious if he was on a subject select committee and he thought that the Regulations Review Committee had advised it of something and it did not have that advice and then it boxed on regardless. 
In order to facilitate what I think is something that might be quite useful National would be prepared to put some support behind this legislation if the Minister in charge of the bill Annette King and the Government would support the set of amendments I am putting forward by way of a fairly extensive document because if she looks at it carefully and her advisers look very carefully then she will see that it does exactly what Cabinet in February 2007 actually agreed to. If the Minister can show me parts where it does not do that then I am happy to drop those amendments. I have put in a reasonably full explanatory note with the document. I think that the explanatory note starts on page 14 of a 23-page document so unlike the explanatory note of a Supplementary Order Paper on the emissions trading scheme legislation which says it amends the legislation this document actually has quite an extensive explanatory note with it. It tries to take the bill back to what the industry and the participants in the industry thought that Cabinet had agreed to. 
If that is what we are to do today and if this Committee was to agree to taking it back—and it cannot be all that bad; it cannot be the dreadful Tories suggesting it because it is in line with what Cabinet agreed to back in February 2007—then we would be happy to try to race through the amendments as quickly as possible.