Catchpole Brent: Railways Bill — First Reading 
Catchpole Brent: Railways Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7420] 
BRENT CATCHPOLE (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support this bill to the select committee. We believe that the uniform safety regime the bill promotes is a good step in the right direction. Without such safety measures we have seen the occurrence of a number of rail accidents. Jim Anderton talked of one in particular where a young boy fell through railings and suffered horrific injuries. 
 The bill as it stands does not talk about a minimum standard of service that rail participants must provide. It talks a lot about safety but it does not talk about the service they should provide. This is a weakness and I hope the select committee will look at it when it considers the bill. The Minister of Transport will be able to make rules to provide for safety in relation to rail participants and this bill is a good way of ensuring that. But the Minister must ensure that the system he or she is trying to implement does not wipe out the likes of heritage operators. There are a number of heritage operators around the country and they should be subject to safety measures but not to the extent that they are driven out of the system altogether. 
David Benson-Pope 
: You’re the “Heritage Supporting Party”. 
BRENT CATCHPOLE 
: Well let us hope the Government supports the heritage operators with this bill as it goes through the House; if not we will see quite a number closing down— 
David Benson-Pope 
: We would be the last people to disadvantage hard-working heritage operators in this country. 
BRENT CATCHPOLE 
: I think I have the call here. Does the member mind if I carry on? 
David Benson-Pope 
: You can carry on. 
BRENT CATCHPOLE 
: Thank you very much. This bill identifies problems with the current audit and inspection process by introducing a broader system of safety assessment that is able to be tailored to reflect the participating safety history and the prospect of each rail licence holder. That is very good but there is no incentive to do this. Some huge costs are listed. They are very prohibitive and the fines are not realistic. They are way out of proportion to what would be expected and they are considered to be unfair. We certainly consider them to be unfair. 
Another big gap in this bill is the incentive to encourage more logs off the roads and on to rail. The bill does not provide for that. If we look at the real reason that Toll Holdings is trying to purchase Tranz Rail we see it is not for the rail; it is for the road transport that Tranz Rail operates. It is interesting to note that Tranz Rail is the largest trucking operator in this country. That tells us something: there is no incentive to get goods off the roads and on to rail which would help to make our roads safe. 
Jim Anderton said earlier that the majority of people killed on the rails are workers but he conveniently forgot that a large number of people are killed at level crossings—admittedly on the roads. This bill does not address the dangers of level crossings and the number of people who are killed in that way. I would like to see the select committee take more notice of that aspect because it is an area where safety can be improved immensely. 
 New Zealand First firmly believes that the Government should own the track and provide incentives for competitive operators to run the passenger and freight services. A competitive structure would create more incentives to get the passengers and the freight on to the track making it a worthwhile prospect. We would hate to see the smaller branch lines continuing to be closed. I would like to make sure that this bill is not so prohibitive that it makes it impossible for those smaller branch lines to operate. 
With that I would like to summarise by saying that New Zealand First will support this bill going to the select committee provided that the select committee looks at the concerns I have raised and at the concerns Peter Brown raised with regard to rail and the safety of rail.