Court Simon; Brown Simeon; Parker DavidSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. Well Minister of Transport thank you for that explanation. Because of course an employer who wished to secure drivers to operate vehicles that could be worth a quarter of a million dollars that meet the highest standards for emissions controls Euro 5 or Euro 6 turbo diesel buses or if they have the ultimate luxury—driving a low-emissions or electric vehicle or hybrid bus around our major metros—you'd think that if a public transport operator a private sector bus operator had tendered for a contract assuming that in order to get paid they would have to deliver a certain number of services that met the schedule and they were there to pick up the passengers that they would have provided in their tender offer and in the way they manage their workforce for regular breaks. Because there has not just been a driver shortage there's been a worker shortage in New Zealand. New Zealand's been in a global war for talent which includes competent heavy-vehicle - trained drivers—Hon Damien O'Connor: Oh here's the market genius.SIMON COURT: —heavy-vehicle - trained drivers. The Associate Minister of Transport the Hon Damien O'Connor suggests that the ACT Party are full of geniuses. Well Dr James McDowell here he does have a degree which might help. I'm a civil engineer and I've worked in transportation Mr O'Connor. But the person here that you should be directing your questions to Mr O'Connor is the Minister of Transport David Parker who sits in the chair and who has offered himself up for questioning.So Minister I just need to try to get my head around this. A public transport operator has invested millions or tens of millions of dollars in very expensive pieces of equipment—a quarter of a million-dollar buses. They're air conditioned. They're state-of-the-art. They have to have a certificate of fitness every six months. The drivers have to have been trained to a heavy vehicle standard. They have to pass alcohol and drug tests. And they have to be paid a reasonable rate. If they've immigrated to New Zealand they have to be paid the minimum wage according to the immigration—sorry the median wage. The median wage. According to the immigration expert—one of the ACT geniuses the Hon Damien O'Connor—they've been paid the median wage.Hon Damien O'Connor: Is that too much?SIMON COURT: So not only are they well paid—no it's not too much. It's fine. That's up to the bus company operators.So here's the problem I'm failing to understand. This bill proposes that for some reason bus companies won't give drivers a bathroom break even though this Government's been in charge of WorkSafe it's been in charge of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment so it could go in and investigate workplace safety issues or a failure to meet minimum standards. Clearly after six years that hasn't been a priority because here we are tonight debating a bill that would actually according to the Minister himself help resolve the issue of where drivers get to use the bathroom. So I'm really interested if a bus company operator who's invested tens of millions of dollars in equipment needs to put drivers in the driving seat so they can pick up passengers so they can then invoice the council the regional council who's commissioned them in order to get paid I would have just assumed that you'd want to give better conditions to drivers and that if there was a circumstance where somebody scheduling buses had forgotten to leave enough time for a bathroom break that's something that would be brought to the attention of management and resolved quick smart because the last thing you want is your drivers walking away and leaving a quarter of a million dollar bus parked in at the side of the road so you can't deliver the services.Now the Hon Damien O'Connor I know you're not a genius but that's what the private sector does. They try to put people in the cab so they can operate a bus or a truck so they can deliver the service and then invoice their clients. But apparently—apparently—this bill has to legislate so they can have a bathroom break even though this Government's had all the power to check whether people get a bathroom break for six years.Minister are you absolutely sure that the views of the public transport workforce need to be taken into account when adopting a regional public transport plan because they might not get a bathroom break?SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd like to take up a couple of points in relation to the workforce shortage that the Minister of Transport raised earlier. Of course this bill is being promoted by the Government to apparently solve the workforce shortages that we have. I'm not sure Minister whether you have seen the news because on 16 August 2023 which was—what's that?—seven days ago Auckland Transport put out a statement saying relaxed immigration settings help end bus driver shortage in Auckland. So Minister the bill hasn't been passed and we no longer have a bus driver shortage in Auckland. In fact Auckland Transport is quoted saying It was a big help from the government relaxing the immigration settings for bus drivers and putting in that pathway to residency. We're applying those learnings to resolving the crisis in [ferries]". So Minister is it that the legislation needs to change or was it that the former Minister of Transport who was also the Minister of Immigration was just a little bit caught off guard and not really thinking about actually how he should be talking to himself about the fact that as Minister of Immigration he could solve some of his transport issues? Maybe he was distracted doing other things instead. So I'd like you to answer that question.The second question is in relation to clause 7 which replaces section 27 with: "Local authority may hold interest in public transport services and infrastructure". The Minister said earlier "Well it's a matter of trust—it's a matter of trust. We're going to trust local government to operate these services efficiently and reliably." Well why is it that this Government feels that it can trust local government to operate public transport services in-house efficiently? And now it's going to say "Three waters we're going to take that all away because we don't trust you." So the Government can't have it both ways. But the point in that is that this bill takes it away from being operated in a competitive tender process and officials recommended against that. I would like to understand how the Minister is going to measure under this legislation whether or not local authorities if they were to operate those services internally are operating them in a way which is efficient providing good value for money or is he just going to leave it up to "trust"?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): Thank you Madam Chair. It is correct that immigration has been part of the answer to resolving the driver shortage—I accept that.Simeon Brown: It's solved!Hon DAVID PARKER: Well it was solved through Government intervention that was necessary also to provide more money to pay for higher wages to be paid for bus drivers because they had been competed down under the competitive model to a point that the driver—Simeon Brown: You did that within the Public Transport Operating Model though.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well we had to fix it because the current model—we had to fix it using more Government money because the current model had driven down wages to the point where drivers could not be attracted.Hon Member: Terrible blimmin working conditions.Hon DAVID PARKER: It is terrible that that was the position that was reached and it was a failure of the current model that led to that.In respect of the matter that that he raised as to clause 14 of the bill there are lots of cities around the world that own their own public transportation systems and their public transport systems are quite often better than ours."