Carter John: Public Transport Management Bill — First Reading 
Carter John: Public Transport Management Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:12369] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 The first thing I want to do is to defend my colleague Maurice Williamson after the attack that has been made on him. It was a scurrilous attack. The House should know that Maurice Williamson is a deep supporter of public transport and bus systems. In fact his nickname is “Bus Williamson”. He is so supportive of public transport that he likes to go around saying he is “Bus Williamson”. The House will be interested to know that in the morning his wife Raewyn has to tie up their dog so that Maurice gets a free run at chasing the buses. Otherwise the dog trips him up. He is very keen to make sure the bus goes past his place and I just want to put that on the record. The House should know that Maurice is a very keen supporter of public transport. 
I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about one or two things. I listened with interest to the previous speaker but there was one thing he did not mention once in his speech. If we read the notes that have come with the bill we see that it talks about operators being required to integrate services fares and ticketing. There is nothing wrong with that. The bill will also enable operators to maintain their existing commercial public transport systems without change. There is nothing wrong with that until we read the next bit which says that that is where it is deemed appropriate by the regional council. Let us hang on a minute—there is something wrong with that. 
Not once did I hear that member talk about commercial viability. Not once did I hear him say that it is actually important for a private operator to be able to function that someone actually pays for the service he or she provides. Not once did the member say that. He talked all around that about the need to be able to maintain the service. He talked about the cost of subsidies he talked about the cost of transport but not once did he say that it is actually important to the private operator to be able to get by commercially. That is quite an important part of providing a private service. We have to be able to afford it; we have to be able to come out on the right side. 
One of the things that worries me about the lefties is that that does not matter to them at the end of the day—so long as the services are running and all the poor people can hop on them then that is OK. Well as we go through the submissions I will be really interested to hear just exactly what the private operators think about some bureaucrat from the regional council hopping on their bus and saying the council thinks the bus should go left rather than right because there are a couple of people it could pick up there who may not be able to pay but that will be OK because the operator will be able to pay for that. The fact that the bus service will actually go out of existence because it is then not viable does not matter to the bureaucrat. That does not matter and that sort of stupid thinking ends up ruining the services that we have. 
Just recently in Northland a group of us have been working to get our withdrawn bus service replaced to take it from Whangarei via Dargaville through the Hokianga so that the people of the Hokianga can have a bus service. We had to work with the private operators the ratepayers and the regional council to end up making sure that the subsidy was at the right level so that the ratepayers were not screwed to death but at the same time the commercial operator was able to have a viable service. That is already working. We did not need a bill to make it happen in Northland; we were practical and got on and did it. We did it because it was a necessity and we were able to sit down and talk about it. 
Suddenly the Government comes along and tells people to hang on a minute because it has a magic answer. It says it will fix things up by writing some rules and regulations and it will allow a whole lot of bureaucrats to sit down and start poking their noses in and interfering without worrying about the commercial viability of anything. That will just put in a whole lot of bureaucratic costs and cause a whole lot of cost to ratepayers. One of the things that worries me about this sort of legislation from the lefties over there on the Government side of the House is that it is all about just loading more costs on to the poor old ratepayers. Those members are not worried about whether a service is viable. They just want to make sure that we have a service and when it finally all falls apart they will say it is a bit of a pity that it did not work but never mind that. They will say people will have to find their own way home until such time as something else comes up. 
The good thing that is starting to happen in local government despite this Labour Government is that some common sense is actually starting to be shown. We are seeing things happen in New Zealand whereby people are saying we have a system called Transit and a system called local government roading and they are asking why the two systems cannot mix. Those systems are starting to talk to each other and we are starting to get some more efficiency out of that—would members believe that? I ask whether that is not a good thing. I say to the House that as soon as the Labour Government catches on that that is happening we will have to make some rules and regulations so it can happen. Yes that will be the problem. That is exactly the sort of thing we are talking about here. It is far better to let the locals actually get on and manage a service themselves. If we can make it work in Northland without a whole lot of rules and regulations it will work everywhere— 
R Doug Woolerton 
: You don’t even live there! 
JOHN CARTER 
: Believe you me I do not even have to chase the bus; I know where it is. I work to make sure that poor decrepit old retired cockies from Waikato can come up to Northland and enjoy the buses. I say to that member he is welcome to come up there at any time. It would be better if he were up there rather than doing what he does here because it does not work down here. He would be more effective if he were up there as the bus conductor. We could do with one of those. 
The point is that we support this bill being referred to a select committee so we can listen to the comments— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Does this legislation apply to Zimmer frames? 
JOHN CARTER 
: No no Doug Woolerton is too shaky to get on one of those. We support this bill going to a select committee and we will be interested to hear what submitters say. But I do say to the House it should be mindful of the fact that here we go again with the possibility of more rules more regulations more bureaucrats more cost to ratepayers and less efficiency and with the real possibility of ending up having fewer services particularly those run by the private sector because the bureaucracy may not especially if it is run by Wellington have a blind clue where the bus runs are in the north. The bureaucrats do not even know where the Hokianga is let alone other places north of Auckland. So I just say we should be cautious with regard to this bill as it goes through the House. We will support it but only on the basis that we can let people have their input on it.