Wong Pansy: Public Transport Management Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Wong Pansy: Public Transport Management Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:650;Page:18781] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 What a good sentence that Labour member the Hon Mark Gosche ended on! He said his speech was one of his last in Parliament. The Labour Government is going to have its biggest electoral defeat because it holds the New Zealand people in contempt. It rushes through the House the Public Transport Management Bill and it introduces last-minute changes that Cabinet itself rejected. 
Let me remind listeners—who have now increased to five because Maurice Williamson’s spouse and mine have joined the three other people who are probably listening to this debate—that we have just heard a very confused speech from the Hon Mark Gosche. On the one hand he gave praise and said he was enjoying the fact that people in Auckland were using public transport services. He was enjoying the fact that public transport services are available right now. So I ask him why the Government introduced this legislation. Then he told us the reason. It was because one Green Party member came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee; suddenly a bill had to be passed to enable the Auckland Regional Transport Authority and the Auckland Regional Council to plan the whole public transport service around one Green Party member’s needs. That is a mightily expensive exercise. 
I hope the next Labour speaker will explain to us why if things are so bad it has taken the Government so long to do something. Why does it take 9 long years before this Labour Government in its dying days rushes this legislation through the House? I have some bad news for the Hon Mark Gosche. My parliamentary secretary used to use the train to come to work in Wellington but the number of fare increases has driven her back to using her car. Using the train has simply become too expensive. So although the member is trying to defend the Labour Government’s record on public transport it simply does not stack up. 
In relation to the talk about an integrated ticketing system Wellingtonians are talking about their new Snapper system. Christchurch has already implemented it. It makes one wonder why legislation needs to be rushed through the House under urgency just to enable an integrated ticketing system to be adopted in Auckland. I understand that Auckland is making very good progress on it anyway. 
It was really interesting to hear the Hon Mark Gosche say that he rejected the view that it was a case of “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” I thought that was so true coming from a Labour member because in the last few days weeks and months we have heard about poor Owen Glenn who donated half a million dollars to Labour and who certainly did not get his money’s worth. He was betrayed and attacked. I do not know what dogs have been let off in order to get him. 
The passage of this legislation under urgency is a total outrage. It was introduced into Parliament under a disguise. People understood that this legislation would give the regional councils and authorities that control the funding of public services for which a subsidy is required more power to ask for information etc. The Government left those people in no doubt by stating in the explanatory note of the legislation that it would not go all the way and adopt option C which would empower the regional councils and authorities to prohibit commercial services. Throughout the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee hearings every submitter who appeared before the committee had the understanding that he or she was making submissions on a bill that would adopt option B which would give more power to the planning authority and the funding authority but would not go the whole way and allow those authorities to prohibit commercial operators. 
But then the chairman of the select committee Mark Gosche tried to twist the arms of the committee members. Even though the Labour Cabinet had rejected going all the way and adopting option C because according to Cabinet it would undermine business confidence and would stifle the introduction of innovative measures the chairman wanted the select committee to adopt option C. The select committee members questioned the officials. We said that surely it was outside the scope of the legislation to introduce such a major amendment. The chairman quickly put that concern to rest: he said that the Minister of Transport had agreed to it. She could not get that option through the Labour Cabinet so she tried to bully the select committee into adopting it. Even the New Zealand First members could see the nonsense of our changing the legislation in the last minute with such a dramatic switch of direction and they rejected it. 
The select committee members also questioned the officials as to whether it was viable and practical for them to rewrite the legislation to introduce option C. We could tell by their reaction that it was not possible for them to make sure that it would be good legislation and that there would not be implementation problems caused by such a major change being rushed through. 
I think that by the end of the select committee process all the submitters understood that option B was no longer the original option B; additional controls had been introduced. But they decided to accept it as it was. One can imagine one’s shock when as the bill was going through the Committee of the whole House a major Supplementary Order Paper was introduced by the Green Party. Owen Glenn has told us that he understands that New Zealand First has control and influence over Labour because Labour needs its support to pass legislation. But now Labour has looked past New Zealand First to the Greens. Supplementary Order Paper 249 was introduced and the Minister would not take a call during the Committee stage to reassure us as to how a small party could accomplish the task of introducing such a major Supplementary Order Paper with the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed when the officials had expressed to the select committee the difficulty in introducing last-minute major changes. 
This legislation will come back to the House. Lawyers will be lining up—they will be laughing all the way to the bank—because of the loopholes and technical problems in it. The select committee and the officials were never given a chance to comment on the huge change in direction. The Labour Government and the Greens hold the New Zealand public in contempt and they will learn the result of their holding the New Zealand people in contempt. The people do not appreciate the Government promising something then changing the whole direction during a parliamentary process without public consultation. Labour went against its own Cabinet decision and it deserves to have a huge defeat at the ballot box.