Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): This bill I think could be best described as an empty box wrapped up with Christmas paper: looks really good and you can make wonderful speeches about how marvellous it is but it fails to recognise the fact that it is totally back to the future. The speech before by the Green member Julie Anne Genter should have gone one year back from the history that she was attempting to quote and recognised that it was a Labour Government in 1989 that brought in the reorganisation of local government and saw the end for numerous transport boards run by local authorities throughout New Zealand. Why did they do that? Because they were a hopelessly inefficient way of providing public transport. And now we have—just these 30 years later where you know some changes might be useful—a complete return to what was the norm in the 1980s. Quite unbelievable. Julie Anne Genter talked about the failed ideology" of ensuring that there is competition and efficiency in the delivery of services. Well what is so failed about that concept? The reason why people don't use public transport in New Zealand in great numbers is because of the lack of reliability of those services. And now we have a Government that is going to take away some of the requirements about that efficiency and replace it with this set of new requirements: new "principles" they call them. The first one is: "[a] well-used public transport service reduce[s] … environmental health and health impacts of land transport including by reducing reliance on single-occupant vehicles and using zero-emission technology". Everyone knows that; so why does that have to be a principle for the establishment of your public transport? It's a simple point and no one is going to argue that point. But when it comes down to looking at councils again owning bus services—then I think there is a problem. And you'd have to ask why would we encourage local government to take their ratepayers' money to buy bus services that they already can control through the arrangements that exist right now? And that might have been a place to make some changes because well for all the vain hope in the world that it might be possible to get local government both regional councils and district councils to discuss these things to sort out some good routes etc. etc.—they don't do it now. There's nothing stopping them getting in a room to have a discussion about where those bus routes should go but they don't do it. And I know in Christchurch it's a constant ache for people who want to use bus services and the idea that we're going to now have perhaps the Environment Canterbury bus service and all that investment by those companies who have provided bus services in the city for 30 years is suddenly just going to be set aside.There is absolutely no gain to any consumer in this particular proposal; not one. There is a whole lot of feel-good stuff in here that ends up just making you wonder why on earth there was so much time invested in all of this. One of the principles here is: "regional councils territorial authorities and public transport operators should work together to provide co-ordinated public transport services and associated infrastructure necessary". Where is the provision in the law that says they must do it and what is different about what they can do right now? So we're going from a "can" to a "could" to a "maybe" and a "would"; and none of this is going to make a blind bit of difference to another person going to a bus stop tomorrow morning next month next year—wherever—if there isn't reliability in that service.So all this does is creates a whole lot more uncertainty. Why would any one of the current bus operators out there at the moment want to reinvest in their capital stock? Why would they want to buy better buses why would they want to buy electric buses? What would be the reason for them investing all that extra cash when they know that at the drop of a hat the local authority can turn around and say "You're out we're taking it all over it's all ours". The member from the Green Party used the term "ideological approach". This is what this is and it is a failed ideological approach."