Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Mr Speaker for the opportunity to take a call—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Simeon Brown.SIMEON BROWN: Oh thank you. Thank you a second time Mr Speaker for the opportunity to take a call on the Land Transport Management (Regulation of Public Transport) Amendment Bill which the National Party continues to oppose. We oppose this piece of legislation because it will not fix the issues facing our public transport networks. It will only increase costs; it will not increase efficiency and reliability and what we will see is actually a degradation of the services given to the public. And of course this Government thinks that they know what is best. They think they know how they can fix the problem and in fact they're the ones who created the problem when it came to the unreliability of our public transport services.This Government's very quick to blame COVID when it's helpful but they're not very keen to talk about COVID when it's unhelpful. In this situation what this Government did is when COVID came along of course many people started working from home and a lot of bus drivers who were in New Zealand left the country because they were here on visas. They left the country and then this Government decided to not let them back in to the country. The former Minister of Transport Michael Wood had the illustrious job of also being the Minister of Immigration—and the thing about that is the Minister of Immigration never spoke to the Minister of Transport and the Ministry of Transport never spoke to the Minister of Immigration.Barbara Kuriger: Not even in his sleep.SIMEON BROWN: Well not even in their sleep! So what happened was the Minister of Transport would complain about the fact that our public transport networks weren't operating but forgot to think about actually—what about allowing bus drivers ferry workers and train drivers back into the country so that we can actually make sure the services are able to operate? So instead he came up with a catastrophisation and said The reason why it's broken is because of the public transport operating model". And the reason why they've always hated that is because it has a word called "competition": competition and outsourcing the public transport operations to the private sector. This Government thinks everything should be operated by the Government and not be outsourced to the private sector and they don't even believe in competition. I heard the Minister say "Well actually some of the provisions in this bill might enhance competition." Well how's it going to enhance competition when the bill removes the requirement to have regard to the desirability of encouraging a competitive and efficient market for public transport services? How can the bill even support competition when it takes away the requirement for competition to even be considered when it comes to our public transport operating in New Zealand? And the reason why the National Party opposes this is because we actually believe in the power of competition in terms of actually delivering better outcomes for New Zealanders and actually achieving the outcomes that taxpayers are paying for. And this Government—they think that money grows on trees. Well actually that money needs to be paid for by someone else and money is coming from the National Land Transport Fund which of course is being paid for by road users. It's been paid for by people who fill up their car with petrol or people who pay road-user charges—who are then putting that money into the National Land Transport Fund and a portion of that is then paid to subsidise our public transport networks. Now this Government sees that fund as a slush fund and the more that they can siphon away to be used on whatever they think is an important priority—which isn't our roads—is a good thing—whereas on this side we think actually that money needs to be spent efficiently to get outcomes so that we can invest first and foremost in our roads and then in our public transport network. This Government sees it as a slush fund for their priorities and so this legislation will mean more of that money is wasted on an unreliable service. It will not be reliable it will not be efficient it will cost more to run and less people will use our public transport services and that is not going to deliver the outcomes that we need for New Zealanders. So the National Party opposes this piece of legislation.And what's more—not only all of what I have just said but the Government also then says "Well we're going to let regional councils not even go through a tender process"—not even go through a tender process. In fact they will be able to just say "Well we think we can operate it more efficiently ourselves. We don't have to test that against the market; we don't have to test our proposition against the market to see whether it is more efficient or more cost-effective. We just think we'll be able to run it ourselves in-house." So there's not even a requirement to test that against the market and we think that is also going to lead to an inefficient and unreliable service because we see what happens when Government gets involved. They think they know best—you end up with what we see right across the Public Service at the moment where wait times to get anything from the Government have ballooned. It takes longer to get a hip operation it takes longer to be on the phone to the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) to report a pothole—it's like half an hour to report a pothole when it used to be under a minute to call NZTA.Simon Court: You can fill one in three minutes.SIMEON BROWN: "You can fill one in three minutes" says Simon Court and I know that because he's a civil engineer; he's told me that five times tonight. Well I can tell you Mr Speaker this Government has a terrible record when it comes to our public services and delivering outcomes and this bill will not deliver better outcomes for New Zealanders. The National Party opposes it."