Lees-Galloway Iain: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9788. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): In this call I would like to specifically address Supplementary Order Paper 235 in my name. It is clear that the divisions across the Chamber on this bill the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill are pretty strong. The Government has just the narrowest of majorities on this bill and the Opposition parties—and in fact even the Government’s support party the Māori Party—are opposed to this bill. I imagine that a lot of the debate this afternoon will be of a fairly political nature but I do ask members to consider this Supplementary Order Paper closely because this is a constructive change to the legislation that has been asked for by regional councils that will need to operate under this legislation. It refers to transitional arrangements moving from the current parameters under the Land Transport Management Act as it currently stands through to the new Public Transport Operating Model that is contained in this amendment bill.Under the new provisions the regional councils will need to have in place a new regional public transport plan before they can contract any new public transport services. However those plans are not due to come into place until 1 July 2015. That is the latest that the legislation allows for them to come into place. Having spoken to the regional councils that is the appropriate time. There is a considerable amount of work required to get those regional public transport plans written up and in place. They will not be in place before then.However for at least seven of our regional councils their current contracts with public transport providers are going to come to an end after the amendment bill is passed but before the regional public transport plans are in place. That means they have some difficulty in determining under what parameters they are contracting those new services. In fact in discussions with the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Government the regional councils have been advised that the best way forward for them is simply to roll over the current contracts.In the first reading debate Julie Anne Genter talked about how the Public Transport Operating Model supports the current operators. It is monopolistic in its tendencies. This transition period is even worse for that because essentially the operators will beable to dictate terms to the regional councils about how those contracts are rolled over. There will be no competition at all if this transitional period is not agreed to and that means that ratepayers are going to be paying far too much for their public transport. It means that the operators will have the regional councils over a barrel. I do not think that is the situation that anybody seriously wants to have happen.In the spirit of constructive bipartisan efforts to try to make what is a bad bill as good as possible I have tabled this amendment to bring exactly that type of transitional period into place whereby the regional councils would be able to contract new services under the current arrangements provided for under the current Act up until the new regional transport plans are brought into place and then those contracts can run through only until 30 June 2017 so by 30 June 2017 everybody will be operating under the new Public Transport Operating Model.I think that reflects the consensus that the operators certainly believe exists out there. The regional councils want to work with the Government. They do not want to be kind of in opposition to the Government. They do not want to be seen to be working against central government; they want to work alongside it. But the only way for regional councils to effectively work alongside central government is for this amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 235 to be passed. So I do ask that members give it serious consideration particularly Government members. I know there has been a lot of conversation between the regional councils and the New Zealand Transport Agency but this is an opportunity.