Heatley Phil: Transport Legislation Bill — First Reading 
Heatley Phil: Transport Legislation Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:14904] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 All I can do for the National Party over here is endorse ACT’s proposal that all parties in this House—apart from the undemocratic Labour Party which is riding roughshod over process—support the motion that we dispense with the Labour Party Government’s proposal that we ride roughshod over Standing Orders 191 192 and 193.  
That may not have been so bad had the Labour Party Government not been continually doing it over this parliamentary term. Members will recall that the new seabed and foreshore select committee—which I think is called the Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation Committee—has dispensed with Standing Order 191 which is about meetings not happening on Fridays except by leave of the committee. It states: “Except by leave of the committee a select committee may not meet on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House.” but no the Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation Committee has ridden roughshod over that Standing Order. Standing Order 192 “Place of meeting” states: “A select committee may meet at any place within New Zealand. It must be authorised by the House before it can meet outside New Zealand.” It has also been dispensed with by the Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation Committee. Standing Order 193 “Meetings outside Wellington area” states: “A committee may meet outside the Wellington area—(a) during a sitting of the House only with the agreement of the Business Committee”—Labour is riding roughshod over that—“and (b) otherwise only if the committee has itself agreed to the place for its meeting.” 
That is happening far too often and we will join ACT in opposing the proposal that this bill be considered on Fridays and in places outside Wellington without that first having gone to the Business Committee and all the other issues in the Standing Orders that are being overruled. They are not put there as a joke as the House well knows. The Standing Orders are the Speaker’s second bible. I know that the Standing Orders are important to Mr Speaker. He has watched them being ridden roughshod over. They were not put there in vain. 
In saying that I would like to point out that the National Party supports this bill being referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We understand that it is to report back on 29 October. We have members on that committee who are enthusiastic to see this bill tweaked where it needs to be but on the whole we support it. 
I would like to take up some of the Hon Maurice Williamson’s comments about the decision for this legislation actually to split off the policy functions of the Land Transport Safety Authority and bring them back into the Ministry of Transport. In his view and certainly in the view of much of Parliament the policy and operational functions being in the Land Transport Safety Authority has gone on for far too long. There have been too many surprises. Legislation and regulation in the transport sector have tended to run away from Ministers in this Labour Government more than most. I acknowledge that part of that is incompetence but it is also to do with the fact that the Land Transport Safety Authority has had a policy function as well as an operational function. Having the majority of the policy brought back into the ministry is certainly a good thing. 
 It was interesting to hear about the issue of safety helmets. When Maurice Williamson was Minister of Transport he was woken up one morning and asked to comment on the Land Transport Safety Authority’s bright idea of having safety helmets for those in automobiles trucks and little minis all around the country. How absurd that idea was! How could it ever have got into a policy document? It was absolutely absurd. I think of the mother of six from Pakuranga whom Maurice Williamson often talks about. What if she had to have seven little helmets stored in her car to be used every time she wanted to drive down to the local dairy to pick up some milk? What if she had to have seven little car seats and seven little helmets? I mean how far does it go? One might need to have gloves next and knee-pads and on it goes. That is the problem with having the Land Transport Safety Authority too focused on those sorts of policy decisions and not being accountable I guess politically to the electorate which is generally common sense. Sometimes regulations tend to run away with people. 
Talking about the transparency of car windows and not being able to see through them I remember that argument. I have a woman in the Whangarei electorate who is still battling Land Transport Safety Authority proposals about how much of her side windows she should be allowed to cover with transparencies. Having spent 500 bucks putting stickers on the side windows of her car she was told she had to tear them off. That was understandable except that she had received three warrants of fitness while those stickers were on the car; all of a sudden apparently the warrant of fitness people had got it wrong and she at her expense had to take them off. 
Simon Power 
: That can’t be right. 
PHIL HEATLEY 
: No. The authority then suggested that she put transparent stickers on the windows—ones with colours that people can see through. She spent a couple of grand on that and again the car went through warrant of fitness checks and was fine. She then got pulled up on that and had to tear those off as well. That is the difficulty when something like the Land Transport Safety Authority is involved in operational functions as well as policy functions; we get these absurd impractical regulations bureaucracy runs away with it and every New Zealander is the poorer for it. 
Of course we know of the authority’s focus on the road toll issue. We heard the Minister of Police say in the House today that road tolls are dropping. We know that is not true. They levelled out and they have just started increasing again. He has police out there collecting revenue for his Minister of Finance Michael Cullen to spend on all sorts of pet projects. He has his police collecting revenue under a quota system and it is not having an impact on speeding drivers dangerous events or the number of deaths of New Zealanders on the roads. We need to ensure that the Land Transport Safety Authority does not give permission in effect for the police to be collecting revenue instead of focusing on police work which is what the police should be doing. 
In fact I am actually doing a survey at the moment of people in Northland. I have received just over 3000 survey forms back from the public on whether they feel the police are spending too much of their time and resources on road work—that is collecting revenue on the roads—or whether they are getting enough resources for police work which is catching criminals who are stealing catching violent offenders and catching all those others who are causing mayhem in our society. I will be very interested to go through that survey and find out whether people in Northland are concerned that there is too much focus on revenue collecting and not enough on policing. I will certainly be sending those results to the Minister of Police. He might get a short sharp shock from those results. He might decide that a quota system for ticketing is not helpful to New Zealanders and not helpful with regard to their relationship with the police. 
Maurice Williamson also touched on the issue of search and rescue operations—those undertaken or overseen by the Civil Aviation Authority in the past—and the change in the bill to give the Minister discretion as to who does oversee search and rescue operations. Clearly it could be the role of the Maritime Safety Authority and that would be better in many many situations. This change was brought about by the sinking of a recreation vehicle near Oamaru some time ago where several lives were lost. A review of what happened there questioned whether the search and rescue had been carried out in the best way it could have been. The authority’s involvement in the overseeing of it actually came up wanting and that led to the changes in this bill. 
So we support this bill being referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee but we will also support ACT’s proposed amendment to the motion.