Baldock Larry: Transport Legislation Bill — First Reading 
Baldock Larry: Transport Legislation Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:14906] 
LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to support this legislation being introduced into the House. It is with a great deal of satisfaction really that we see another piece of legislation that is focusing upon transport issues. When I first entered this Parliament I had a burden for the issue of families. Second to that was the issue with regard to our transport network in this country and the number of New Zealanders who were being injured or killed on our roads as a result of poor roading infrastructure as well as other things. 
When I first stood for Parliament in 1999 I spoke a lot in my speeches about some very practical things that could be done to improve things in New Zealand. I had recently read a little publication called  
The Dog and Lemon Guide  
which I still hold to be full of some very practical things. One of the things the book recommended was the introduction of crash testing results for automobiles. It has been pleasing to see that introduced in the last few days so that New Zealand motorists can choose safer cars when they purchase them and I think ultimately that will have an effect upon the safety statistics that we all long for in this country. So there has been much happening with regard to transport in terms of the legislative programme of this House. United Future is pleased again to rise and speak in support of the Transport Legislation Bill. 
A long time has passed since the Government transport sector was restructured in such a way that a single agency has the authority and resources to take the lead in developing and implementing transport policy and that administrative overlap and wastage is minimised. I think we all agree that there will be significant improvements arising from the restructuring that this bill promotes. Ultimately it will give our taxpayers a much better efficiency in the use of their taxpayer funds. 
United Future has worked closely with this Government on transport issues. It has been my pleasure to work with the Hon Paul Swain and now with the new Minister of Transport the Hon Pete Hodgson. In fact United Future is very pleased that the Government has adopted so much of United Future’s transport policy. We will continue to work cooperatively with the Government throughout the rest of this term. We are determined to see addressed the chronic underfunding of New Zealand’s transport infrastructure. We are determined to see reforms that will enable much-needed new roading projects all over the country to be expedited. 
We have already made significant legislative reforms that will enable alternative sources of funding such as public-private partnerships to be identified and utilised. We have also ensured that extra funding for all regions not just Auckland will be made available from petrol excise tax increases soon to come and that a more favourable proportion of this tax will be spent on roads rather than ending up in the Crown account. 
However there is little point in securing extra funding if it is just going to be frittered away by an uncoordinated bureaucracy or tied up while waiting for projects to get the go-ahead. That is why United Future is so pleased to see this legislation. By strengthening the role of the Ministry of Transport this single agency will be able to take the lead in developing and implementing transport strategy. Rather than having one agency pulling in one direction and one pulling in another by spending road funding money in an inefficient and uncoordinated manner as they go we will see road money being spent strategically and efficiently thereby maximising the gains from increased funding. 
It has made no sense to us in United Future why we had to have a statutory independent body such as Transfund to make so many significant decisions about road funding simply because there may have been some suspicion about the Minister fixing the roads in his own back yard when in consideration that was such a small percentage of the amount of funding that was to be carried out throughout the country and only led to an increased layer of bureaucracy. 
This does not occur in the Ministry of Health and it does not occur in any other agencies and I believe that it is time we were able to trust the Minister and the Ministry of Transport to see that road funding is used where it is needed throughout the country. 
United Future is also pleased that the longstanding issue over which agency should have primary responsibility for undertaking search and rescue coordination has been resolved. By enabling the Minister of Transport to direct the new Maritime Transport Authority to carry out management administration of national search and rescue in future rather than the Civil Aviation Authority we will hopefully see better search and rescue coverage and response times and avoid a repeat of the incident near Oamaru which resulted in a tragic loss of life. 
The other department that is to be restructured under this bill is the Land Transport Safety Authority. It began with United’s policy and then was United Future’s policy for some time to have the Land Transport Safety Authority abolished. I have to say that I have personally been impressed with the work of the new director of the Land Transport Safety Authority in the time he has been in charge of the authority. I believe that the authority has made significant progress in what it does and I commend him particularly for adopting a threefold strategy rather than the old twofold strategy that ignored the need to see our roads built more safely and the engineering design taken into consideration in the strategy to reduce accidents. But ultimately it is clear that the policy development of the Land Transport Safety Authority should be transferred to the Ministry of Transport rather then held in a separate agency. As Phil Heatley said speaking prior to me there needed to be a separating of the policy and the operational functions of the Land Transport Safety Authority. 
We know though that despite the best efforts of the authority we will arrive at a plateau in this country where we cannot bring down the road toll any further without investing heavily in improving the quality of our roads so that lunatics who continue to travel at great speed or under the influence of alcohol or drugs are impeded from being able to kill innocent motorists. We must have more divided highways throughout our highway network and other engineering initiatives that will produce a safer condition to limit the error factor that will always be with us for as long as human beings are behind the wheel of automobiles. 
There will be other things addressed by the select committee I am sure as it hears submissions on this bill. There has been a lot of debate today about the speed with which this bill has to go through the House but United Future is supporting that speed. We believe that it is necessary. We believe that this restructuring has been discussed and has been provided for for some time. The sooner it can be implemented the better off motorists and the business network through the country will be as we can implement all the other initiatives that this Government has been introducing with the support of United Future. I conclude my comments by indicating that United Future will be supporting the first reading of this bill. 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to engage in debate on the Transport Legislation Bill on behalf of the National Party. National will be supporting the bill. But we will be taking a very very close look at it when it goes to the select committee for a couple of reasons. Firstly we know that legislation introduced to the House by the Labour Party often lacks rigour and definition. It is often very sloppy indeed. I notice that on many of the select committees I sit on a huge amount of change is made to legislation introduced by this Government. I am forced to draw the conclusion that there is a lack of work by the Government on these bills before they are rushed into the House. Certainly we will be looking at this bill very closely. I commend the first speaker for the National Party the Hon Maurice Williamson. He came down here— 
Phil Heatley 
: A former Minister of Transport 
JOHN KEY 
: He is a former Minister of Transport. The Hon Mark Gosche also a former Minister of Transport noted that the House was flush with former Ministers of Transport—in fact the Minister himself— 
Phil Heatley 
: The graveyard shift. 
JOHN KEY 
: Yes it can be a graveyard shift. It was interesting to watch the current Minister of Transport and a former Minister of Transport Mark Gosche listening intently while the Hon Maurice Williams was speaking on the bill so eloquently. In their heart of hearts they knew that although their absolute performance may have been adequate—a “could do better” on a report card—they were looking to learn about relative performance. I could see in their eyes they were thoroughly enjoying his address and that it added to the debate. 
I turn to the first and quite important point about the intent in the bill to override Standing Order 191 which would allow the select committee to sit on a Friday and anywhere in New Zealand. The National Party will have much pleasure in supporting the amendment put up by Deborah Coddington of the ACT party to remove that provision. When I saw that I wondered why the Government is all of a sudden asking for this provision so that the committee can sit on a Friday and anywhere in New Zealand. It is a trend of this administration to try to do this a lot. It happened with the Foreshore and Seabed Bill and a number of others. 
The obvious conclusion I have come to is simple. This is not taking place because the Ministers care about whether the select committee sits on a Friday or in Auckland Wellington Christchurch Dunedin Taupaki or anywhere else. Ministers as members of the public will know do not sit on a select committee as such. They attend if it affects their particular ministry. So it does not affect Ministers. They will not be pushing for this. The reason is that the Government now has a very narrow majority indeed. It has a one-vote majority. It lost one of its former colleagues the honourable Tariana Turia. She saw the light and left the Labour Party. She will obviously be back in 2005 with a great many more colleagues and Labour will have far fewer as it sits on the Opposition benches. Interestingly it is now in a position where it cannot afford to vote down— 
Dave Hereora 
: He’s dreaming. 
JOHN KEY 
: Dreams are free but that is not a dream I have; it is a real-life experience. I have seen it in front of me. I have read the book. I know that it has taken place. Nanaia Mahuta is in the House today. She is a good member but is another who will be under pressure when she goes to the ballot box. 
Phil Heatley 
: She will jump ship. 
JOHN KEY 
: Yes but I am digressing in wondering why the Government is so eager to override this provision and why it has been so eager the whole way through in current legislation and I was at the point where I was discussing the very slim majority this Government has. It could fall at any time. I have great faith in United Future which understands that this Government is in its dying throes. It is really a very sick puppy indeed if I can put it in those terms. I notice this afternoon that the junior Government whip Mr Darren Hughes has gone out and had a haircut. That should not be of any note but often one does that—[ 
Interruption 
] I know I have parliamentary privilege so I do not want to abuse this and I would not say this outside the House but I suspect the haircut is very much on the basis that he is looking for a job interview. I return to Standing Order 191. 
Darren Hughes 
: Bring it on! 
JOHN KEY 
: We will be bringing it on. 
Hon Member 
: Don Brash will be running against him. 
JOHN KEY 
: Don Brash will be running against him in Otaki! Dr Don Brash would wipe it clean in Otaki. What a wonderful Prime Minister of New Zealand he is going to make. I return to Standing Order 191. Why is it that the Government is so keen about that? It is nothing to do with Ministers. We know they do not sit on select committees. We know that the Government has a one-seat majority. The reason is very obvious and I am sure very obvious to those who are eagerly engaged in this debate today. The reason is that members of Parliament back-bench members the cannon-fodder of the Labour Party cannot afford to be out of the House for fear of the Government losing a vote. Ministers well they would have normally come down to the Chamber and filled up their seats and been happily engaged and happy to take some of the workload off the back-benchers so they could be out there trying to win their seats. But no they cannot now because the Government is under so much pressure. They are out there going up and down the country trying to talk to people about the things they are doing. It is just not happening. That is my conclusion as to why the Government has gone to so much length on Standing Order 191 and I simply wanted to raise that point. 
I want to move on to the guts of the bill which looks to integrate the policy work from the Land Transport Authority and Transfund into the Ministry of Transport. At first blush that looks like an eminently sensible idea and we commend the Minister for doing that. But I am interested to note that in the explanatory note of the bill there is no mention of the financial implications of merging the policy work that was under the Land Transport Authority and was in Transfund into the Ministry of Transport. When the select committee looks at this I will be asking our members on the select committee to find out about any cost savings taking place. Because one thing we know about this Government is that it is a big spender. It loves spending taxpayers’ money. A $13.9 billion spend-up is what Dr Michael Cullen dished out in the last Budget. 
Interestingly enough most people in New Zealand know that that is a crazy amount of money to be spending on such a build-up and for someone who claims to be a fiscal conservative—a rather bold assumption I would have thought on Dr Cullen’s part—that is interesting. I am surprised we have not seen any mention of cost savings and the Opposition will be looking to do that. 
I do want to make mention of the purpose of the bill and if I may read from it for a moment it states: “The purpose of the review was to consider whether the Government transport sector has the capability and is best arranged to implement the NZTS.” If one looks at the strategy we see some very very interesting terms. One of them is “ensuring environmental sustainability”. I was interested to hear the speech made by the United Future member who claimed credit and said that so much of Labour’s current policy in transport is coming from United Future. 
 That of course is a complete and utter hoax. We know that the Labour Party’s transport strategy was not written by the Hon Pete Hodgson who is now the Minister of Transport. It was not actually written by the previous Minister of Transport Mark Gosche either. It was written by an unknown woman—Heather Simpson—who does not sit in the Parliament. She does the negotiations with the Green Party. Interestingly enough when the Land Transport Management Bill was being debated here on a quiet night it was Heather Simpson with the Prime Minister who determined what would be in New Zealand’s transport strategy. That is why it is such a Green strategy and unworkable. That strategy will be soundly rejected by the people of New Zealand when they go to the polls in 12 months’ time. 
National will be supporting the legislation. We will take a good look at it in the select committee. I urge members to make sure that the cost savings are found and I urge the Government to remove Standing Order 191 so that it can be tossed from office as soon as possible.