Twyford PhilLAND TRANSPORT (NZTA) LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): I move That the Land Transport (NZTA) Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 24 April 2020.Safety is this Government's top transport priority. I want to make sure that people who are going to and from work and using the country's roads and highways get home to their families safely at the end of the day. Every Kiwi has the right to travel around our country to use the transport system and arrive home safely to their family and safety lies at the heart of this bill.This bill will strengthen and clarify the New Zealand Transport Agency's (NZTA's) regulatory function and leadership role within the land transport regulatory system. There are three key components that are proposed by this bill. They include establishing the role of Director of Land Transport; strengthening the regulatory function of NZTA—this involves clarifying its regulatory role objectives functions and funding while also supporting key regulatory interventions; and third one of these key regulatory interventions implements measures as part of the Tackling Unsafe Speeds programme. This is an important component of the Government's soon to be announced new Road to Zero safety strategy.As New Zealand's land transport regulator the NZTA exercises regulatory functions to promote a safe efficient and effective land transport system. In October 2018 the NZTA board announced that the NZTA had not been performing its regulatory function properly and in particular that it had been too focused on education and self-regulation. This came to light through the board discovering a backlog of 850 regulatory non-compliance cases that had not been adequately managed by the transport agency. We're talking about compliance files that had been sitting around that had been left open and not properly followed through. One of these cases involved a man from Dargaville Mr William Ball who was killed in a vehicle that had not been properly inspected by a non-compliant vehicle inspection agent.In response to all this I commissioned a review into the regulatory capability and the performance of the New Zealand Transport Agency. The review was conducted by the agency's Government monitor—the oversight agency responsible; that is the Ministry of Transport who were assisted by the consultancy firm MartinJenkins. The ministry's final report was made public in October last year and it found that the New Zealand Transport Agency had failed to properly regulate the transport sector under the last Government. The former Government in my view was asleep at the wheel while the agency treated the people that it was mandated to regulate as its customers. This meant that cowboy operators could get away with not doing their job properly.For more than a year since the October 2018 NZTA board announcement the agency has undertaken work to build its capability and the systems to deliver its core regulatory functions including strengthening governance decision making its people capability and operational delivery. However even with these organisational improvements more changes are needed to ensure that this failure is not allowed to happen again—and that's what this bill does.The Ministry of Transport report recommended the establishment of a role called Director of Land Transport. This bill establishes that role. It makes it a statutory role. I note that such a role is already in place in the maritime and aviation sectors with Maritime New Zealand and Aviation New Zealand. The Director of Land Transport will provide a greater focus on regulatory delivery and drive more accountability for regulatory outcomes and decision making in the transport agency.The director will be accountable under law for the delivery of key regulatory functions and powers that are currently held and exercised by the board of NZTA under the New Zealand Land Transport Management Act. This includes statutorily independent functions such as issuing licences compliance and enforcement of all regulated parties in the land transport system. I want to underline how important it is to have—in an agency that is responsible for both building much of the infrastructure for our transport system for co-funding infrastructure and transport services with local government; an agency that is focused on building the transport system that will deliver the mobility the productivity the quality of life that we demand as a country—some statutory independence that ensures that those powerful drivers to build infrastructure and deliver services are not allowed to overpower the statutory mandate to deliver a proper standard of safety regulation.I now come to the second major component of this bill and that is that it will refresh the independent regulatory functions and powers in the Land Transport Management Act to ensure that they are fit for purpose. This includes refreshing the NZTA's regulatory objectives and its remaining functions and powers in the Land Transport Management Act. It will provide a greater focus on the NZTA's regulatory role and make sure that its existing land transport planning investment and delivery functions are adequately articulated.The bill provides for some specific additional powers to support the NZTA to perform its regulatory function. This includes functions such as providing the NZTA with the ability to place conditions that address safety risks amongst transport service licences. Second the bill requires the transport agency to develop a new strategy to strengthen regulatory delivery and to establish a new regulatory operating model to implement the agency's regulatory strategy. The strategy and the operating model are critical in driving the transport agency to articulate how it will be an effective responsive and risk-based regulator.The review of the NZTA found that resourcing was a key barrier affecting the agency's ability to perform its regulatory function. There's no question that the transport agency needs additional capability and capacity to lift its regulatory performance but I do want to note over the last year what progress has been made within the transport agency under the leadership of interim chief executive Mark Ratcliffe and the new chair of the agency board Sir Brian Roche in beefing up the capacity of the regulatory function with the agency.To address this issue the bill proposes further to allow the Crown to fund NZTA's regulatory activities and the Ministry of Transport's associated monitoring activity up to amount agreed by the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Finance from land transport revenue—so that is from the National Land Transport Fund that is replenished every year through the revenue that's generated from the fuel excise duty and road-user charges. These new changes coupled with the recent board appointments at the agency will support the NZTA to become an effective modern and risk-based regulator.Fourth as part of the key regulatory interventions the bill supports the implementation of the Tackling Unsafe Speeds programme. These include enabling the NZTA to issue infringement notices for offences detected by safety cameras requiring the transport agency to establish a speed management committee which will conduct independent reviews of the transport agency's speed management plans and establishing a centralised register where there will be a single definitive source of information about speed limits on all New Zealand roads.I want to underline how important this is. Over the last decade the number of deaths and serious injuries in this country blew out by more than 50 percent far beyond the increase in vehicle kilometres travelled or population growth. At a time when so many other countries that we often compare ourselves to have succeeded at reducing the number of deaths on their roads New Zealand's been going in the opposite direction.I want to acknowledge the work of Associate Minister Julie Anne Genter who's been leading the Government's safety work in this area. It is a comprehensive programme of reform right across the design and the building of infrastructure. These changes will make sure that NZTA can do its job as a safety regulator for the land transport system. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 24 April 2020. I commend the bill to the House.