Doocey MattMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Well isn't this interesting? Here we were told only a few weeks ago that this Government was going to be back to basics—the back to basics" Government. Yet they couldn't help themselves could they? This failed socialist experiment—it's in their DNA; they just want to get in and they want to centralise everything. And look there's a clue in the bill in the start of it the main provisions. What is this bill about? More central planning and control; they've even written it in the first page. That's exactly what this is about: Labour knows best! Wellington knows best! More central planning.Of the failures this Government has had—KiwiBuild three waters the Government's $1.9 billion for mental health everything they've touched around centralised planning the health reforms the tertiary sector reforms—you think they would have learnt. Every centralisation reform they've tried to introduce has gone to custard. Then they said "Don't worry. We've had a new Prime Minister. There's a bit of a change; we're back to basics." But they can't help themselves because for this Government it is always ideological—it is always ideology that's driving them.What's interesting when you unpack the regulatory impact statement that goes along with this bill even the Minister's own ministry was warning against the options that he had chosen. It was going to drive up cost. It was going to remove transparency. It actually wasn't going to give public transport customers the best service but of course Michael Wood knows best! He overrode his officials. He overrode his ministry because for him it's ideological—ideological transport Minister.I must say I know that many New Zealanders on 14 October can't wait for Simeon Brown to be the transport Minister for New Zealand. Let's take a stocktake under what's happened under this Government. Potholes everywhere. No roads have been maintained. Buses—well I don't even know if they run any more. And then ghost trains—that's their transport plan. Their biggest issue now is they want to centrally plan the bus system—purely ideological.I'll tell you what it means for people I represent in Waimakariri in North Canterbury—good salt of the earth North Cantabrians in provincial and rural New Zealand. The issues for them as I saw on Monday night when we had a tailback from the town of Woodend right back to the Waimakariri bridge—what they're missing is that State highway this Government cancelled five years ago.So it's all very good centralising the bus system but just to give you a clue that bus is going to have to go on a road and if you can't get your roads right how are your buses going to go? At the moment they're redirecting hard-earned road-user charges being paid out of the back pockets of hard-working Cantabrians and redirecting that funding from the land transport fund to pet public transport projects in Auckland.You can tell by the language they're using that they're initiating a war—what was the term that's used through the bill?—on single-occupant vehicles. What nasty people they are in single-occupant vehicles! I've seen a few of them in my patch. In fact Waimakariri has the highest rate of three-car families in the country. Why? Because when you live in rural provincial New Zealand no public transport system is ever going to get you where you need to go. If you live in Swannanoa and your kids in high school need to drive to Kaiapoi and one of the parents works in Christchurch and the other in Rangiora they might be in those nasty single-occupant vehicles. Watch out because the Government's going to wage a war on you.Because of course as we heard from that last speaker Shanan Halbert the soon-tobe former MP for Northcote it's all about the lens of big metropolitan cities. This Government—it's all they care about. Get out to rural and provincial New Zealand and then you start to understand the challenges that New Zealanders have because what this bill is doing is removing choice. They call it "modal shift". On this side of the House we call it "modal choice".We want to give people choice. And I'll tell you what this bill removes: the ability for the council to go out into the market and contract someone. They can do it in-house with no openness and transparency. That's exactly what we see from this Labour Government. So much for being open and transparent. When you look at clause 9 which amends section 115: "providing public transport services assists in furthering the principles set out in paragraphs (a) to (d)." Why that is important: in the bill that this is replacing paragraph (e) which is now overlooked was (f). This means the efficiency and value for money at paragraph (e) are not a requirement for public transport provisions which is incredibly different from the previous legislation. So no longer do services need to be—under this bill that we're debating today—efficient and good value for money. I'm looking forward to the Labour callers and of course the Green caller as well who take their call on this bill. How are we going to get a better public transport system if we're removing efficiency and we're removing value for money? Of course this Government doesn't worry about it. It all grows on trees doesn't it? But only a few weeks ago they were telling us that the cost of living crisis was their number one issue—"back to basics". But here they are again. They had a great opportunity to look at the opportunities within public transport—on-demand going gangbusters down in Canterbury especially South Canterbury. This bill had an opportunity to really unleash that. As I mentioned at the start of my call in this debate this bill will allow for the in-house provision of public transport delivery—Chlöe Swarbrick: Choice.MATT DOOCEY: —with no tendering processes required. Chlöe Swarbrick just shouted out "Choice." How do you get choice when there's going to be no tendering processes required? Even in the regulatory impact statement the Minister and his officials—because he's got a lot of officials that he can talk to. That's right—officials arriving by the day at the moment; 14000 extra bureaucrats in Wellington since this Government came into office. But what the ministry said is that enabling in-house provision of public transport services without contracts will lead to performing worse than the status quo when compared to the criteria. So that would be very interesting for the Labour speakers today in this debate. How are you overriding the advice from the ministry that this bill will perform worse than the status quo? The ministry added "Any move away from a contractual approach … may also reduce transparency over cost and performance."—reduce transparency over cost and performance.So here we are: we're debating a bill today that is all about central planning and control. It actually says it; the front page of the bill—it's quite open about it. Central planning and control. It's going to end up in a worse performance of the system than is the current status quo. And as the advice said it's going to reduce transparency over cost and performance. Once again this Labour Government—this failed socialist experiment—can't help themselves. They promised us "back to the basics" and here they are a few weeks later. The only solution they had—they had a real opportunity—was central planning and control again."