Bennett David: Public Transport Management Bill — First Reading 
Bennett David: Public Transport Management Bill — First Reading 
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DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 The National Party will be supporting this bill. Maurice Williamson raised a very good point when he asked why the Government would want to put this bill forward and I think Harry Duynhoven explained the reasons very well. He said the need for some kind of coordination was an issue especially in relation to cherry-picking of services. I think everyone will accept that point when looking at the development of a public transport network in New Zealand. 
This bill is not without its flaws and I have a story to tell about something that is happening in a community in New Zealand. It was mentioned by an earlier speaker who has no real idea of what is going on and who failed to mention the real point in my city of Hamilton. In Hamilton we have a very effective bus network which has been used as a model for many other bus networks around the country. We have an Orbiter bus which is great. It travels right around the city both ways. However there is one problem: our bus network in Hamilton is determined by the regional council—Environment Waikato. That council has the role of managing public transport in the Waikato region. The trouble is that 85 percent of its services cover just Hamilton City which is within the Hamilton City Council’s boundary. So there is an eternal debate going on between the regional council and the city council over who should control and dictate what that bus service is about. 
If the earlier speaker had known anything about Hamilton she would have realised that the real debate around public transport in Hamilton relates to which council will control and dictate how public transport will be provided. This bill gives control over public transport to regional councils. [ 
Interruption 
] The Minister is making a comment but I will come back to her. With this legislation the regional council will have all the control which it does not need in the case of Hamilton City Council. The city council should have that control. Within its boundary it has 85 percent of the total public transport needs that have been dictated in the Waikato region yet the control is with the regional council. This is a flaw in the bill in the sense that it looks just at the model of the regional council and says that it is the great god who will decide everything. Well that great god had its day of come-uppance last week when the regional council in Hamilton was thrown out. Basically it was destroyed at the last vote cast on Saturday. 
And that will happen to the Labour Party next year because it awaits the same fate as members of Environment Waikato. Those members will be on the way out next year. They will be out on the bus next year. There will be no more limousines for those guys. They await the same fate of those who do not listen to the public. That happened to Environment Waikato and sure as day that will happen to the Labour Party. [ 
Interruption 
] Oh yes and we can talk about Hamilton City Council elections as well if we want to. 
The Minister opposite is waving. She is the Minister who said that public-private partnerships are alive and well in New Zealand. I have the  
Hansard 
 from last week where she was asked a simple question about what she thought of the comments made by her colleague Steve Maharey: “The Government is ruling out the use of public-private partnerships in the state sector … even to help construct new roads”. That is what she had to deal with from one of her own Ministers last week. And what did she do? She made some kind of excuse about what public-private partnership actually means. She tried to defend her own Minister—a Minister who should have stood up and said: “I was wrong. I made a mistake. I don’t know what I’m talking about.” Instead she tried to make excuses. She said: “I made it clear that we already have public-private partnerships. We have the private sector building the roads; we have the public sector paying for them.” Well that is not a public-private partnership! She passed legislation enabling public-private partnerships so how can she say they already exist? The Minister was trying to cover for her colleagues. 
Those members opposite do not have any idea of what is going on in the transport sector. They do not know what a public-private partnership is. They do not know what the regional councils do in Hamilton—for example with regard to public transport. They have no idea yet they set about creating pieces of legislation all the time—like this bill. Why do they do it? The reason is that they have nothing else to do. They are not attacking the real problems facing New Zealand. 
Let us look at some of the phrases in the commentary on the bill. It states the bill will “give regional councils greater powers to regulate”. Is that not great Labour terminology! I bet you it could put the words “greater powers to regulate” on a billboard at the next election. It states the aim is to “obtain the best value for money”. That is a joke in terms of transport under that Minister. She had a ministerial advisory group do a report and she said she has no aim for best value for money in the transport sector. How can she say that in legislation now? It is disgraceful. But this is the best phrase—“enables fair competition”. How can we have “fair” competition? What does one have to do to make competition fair? Is it not of itself fair? We do not have to regulate competition. That does not make sense. But that is Labour Party mantra. This is a philosophical debate between the Labour Party— 
Hon Annette King 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This is a very amusing speech and a very good Wednesday debate speech but the member has not touched on the first reading of this bill in any aspect at all. You might like to ask him just to mention a little bit about this bill. After all National says it supports it but the member is making a raving speech about opposing the bill. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I was just about to wave the bill at the member; so perhaps he could refer to it. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: Perhaps it is because the Minister has not read her own bill. Where does she think I got the words “greater powers to regulate” “best value for money” and “fair competition” from? I got it from her bill. I was talking about her bill. She has not even read it. She might join the New Zealand First Party next if she has not even read her own bill. 
The Labour Party talks terminology. It talks about things like “greater powers to regulate”. This is all about setting up a bureaucracy that Labour can put on New Zealand local government. This is another case of where the Government puts more and more rate demands on local government. Local government then has to meet those requirements and the local consumers have to pay through the rates to regional councils. This is what will happen here. The Government is setting up things like regional public transport plans to cover all these public transport issues. Is that not more compliance costs for local government? That is what it is. It is nothing to do with dealing with the issues. It is to do with setting up bureaucracy and compliance costs. That is what the Labour Party is about. 
Another great aspect of this bill is that the Government is going to create—get this—a new public service. And what is it called? It is called the “public transport service”. Do we need the public transport service? No we do not. We need transport that works. We do not need another public service set up by this Government but Labour continues in that history of bureaucracy setting up more and more Government quangos to tell people how to live their lives. This Government is just telling people how to live their lives. It will not actually give people the resources or the money so that they can live their lives. Its failure to do so will result in it having the same fate that Environment Waikato had last weekend.