Gosche Mark: Public Transport Management Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Gosche Mark: Public Transport Management Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18240. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 It is a very sad day when the National Party’s transport spokesman the Hon Maurice Williamson who is a former Minister of Transport and the deputy chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which dealt with this Public Transport Management Bill is unable to speak. Why is that man not allowed to speak? 
David Bennett 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The member cannot draw attention to a member’s absence from the House. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Speaking to the point of order I say that I did not. Maurice could have been sitting right there. That member has just pointed out that he is not even allowed in the House; I did not point that out. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Does the member have a point of order on the floor? If he does I did not hear it. The member does not. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Oh dear! The deputy chair of the select committee who has been National’s transport spokesman for years and years and is a former Minister of Transport is unable to take a call today. Has it something to do with the fact that he told the truth about the National Party’s policy on tolling—that it would charge New Zealanders $50 a week? National would give with one hand a $50 tax cut and take with the other hand a $50 toll on the roads. 
We on that select committee have heard year after year about the Hon Maurice Williamson’s travels. He is the most travelled man in Parliament. He has been to every public-private partnership structure ever built in the world—every bridge every tunnel every road. He knows what those public-private partnerships cost in tolls. I do not get out of the country very often but recently I was in Brisbane and I went over the Gateway Bridge which is just one of the toll roads in Brisbane. Can members guess how much the toll was? It was $2.90 each way. I know that Maurice Williamson is sure to have visited that bridge because he has visited every bridge in Australia he tells us. He knows how public-private partnerships work he knows how much the public would have to pay and he was telling only the truth about the National Party’s policy. 
What is the National Party’s policy on public transport? Bill English said during the speech of the Minister of Transport that it was ridiculous to say that integrated ticketing and integrated fares would solve the problem. Well Maurice Williamson believes that they would. Actually he tells us that it is the National Party’s policy to have integrated ticketing and integrated fares—so much so that we all got on a bus outside Parliament to see the new smart-card system operating in Wellington which could be turned into integrated ticketing and integrated fares if we pass this bill if the regional council is able to have control. But no Bill English once again has had to put his transport spokesman in his place. He says that integrated ticketing and integrated fares are not National Party policy that it is opposed to them and that they are stupid. Maurice Williamson says that National is actually for them; he told us that in the select committee. He told the transport operators who brought a bus here not so long ago that they are a sensible idea that they are a good part of the bill and that National supports them. 
So what is the truth? Is it $50 a week or $2 a week? Is it integrated ticketing or is it not? Well we will wait and see whether the National Party can figure out something as complicated as that before the election. I doubt it can because poor old Maurice has been sidelined. National members have probably buried him in concrete under a highway somewhere to keep him quiet. Even then we would be able to hear from him because he would take his telephone with him and make calls. Everybody would still hear from Maurice Williamson what the transport policy of the National Party really is and Bill English would be working full-time to close him down because he does not want anybody to be frightened by Maurice Williamson’s speaking the truth. 
I was listening to Pansy Wong try valiantly to take the role that Maurice Williamson should be filling here today as National’s transport spokesperson. She said there should be no control over the spending of public money. She said it should be left the way it is. That is paraphrasing what she said but she was saying how terrible it is that the Government wants to have some control over those in the private sector who provide bus ferry and train services in this country. The taxpayer and ratepayer subsidy is $909 million—not quite $1 billion. But we heard from the National Party members who oppose this bill that the local government authorities which administer the subsidy on our behalf are evil stupid and venal people who cannot be trusted to put controls on the wonderful people out there who run ferries buses and trains and who because they are from the private sector know everything and can do everything without any control by the funder. Well it will be an interesting situation if that party ever becomes the Government; National would just hand the loot over just give it to the private sector and it would not expect to have any control. 
National says it would be ridiculous for the regional councils to even have a plan for a bus colour system. There is no control in the bill—we took it out—but we have said there should be a plan. Anybody who knows Maurice Williamson’s electorate will know that buses go there and back. Generally speaking they are owned by one company which has maroon-coloured buses. Everybody who wants to go to east Auckland—which is unfortunately represented by Maurice—knows to get on a maroon-coloured bus. National says it is OK for that bus company to paint its buses to look like a Milo tin or a Qantas aeroplane but it is not OK for the people who pay the bills the ratepayer and the taxpayer to tell the company to put up a standard sign or to use a standard colour scheme. National members say that is an intrusion into the rights of the private sector. 
Hon Annette King 
: Who’s paying for it? 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: The taxpayer and the ratepayer are paying for it because most of those bus companies receive 60 or 70 percent of their income their revenue from the taxpayer and the ratepayer. In some cases it is 80 percent. But National members say we should leave them alone we should not tell them what to do and we should not tell them that it would be simple for consumers to figure out that if they want to go somewhere up the coast they need to get on a bus of a certain colour. No no those members say we cannot have that because it is an intrusion into the private sector’s right to do business. Well what a lot of nonsense! That is why the National Party is voting against this bill. It says that the private sector should be trusted with $900 million of ratepayers and taxpayers’ funds without people elected by the community having any say about it. National says that no the local authorities should not be planning and no they should not have control. It wants to leave everything to the market. 
Well we left it to the market in the 1990s. If my memory serves me right the previous National Government in all its generosity was putting $18 million into Auckland’s public transport. Aucklanders wonder why their trains are dilapidated and why it is not easy to get on them at the moment. They wonder why their bus fleet is dilapidated. Well when the taxpayer and the ratepayer are putting in such a pitiful amount no signals are sent to the private sector to invest so it did not. It did not build any new trains it did not order any new trains it did not do anything about double tracking and it did not do anything about grotty railway stations that were open to the weather covered in graffiti etc. It did nothing about building wharves so that people could access ferries easily—no no. Those companies did not do any of that because National left everything to the market and we had an absolutely appalling public transport system for a city the size of Auckland. 
I have just been to Brisbane and I have seen the wonders of a public transport system that has integrated ticketing that has a plan and that has a Government and a local council committed to it. One can get on a Quick Cat ferry and go from one end of the river to the other on a daily pass costing $4.40. If one gets off the ferry one can within a certain time frame get on a bus and travel by road—some of the roads have dedicated busways like the ones this Government has built—or get on a train all on the same ticket. 
Bill English says integrated ticketing is rubbish and the National Party is opposed to it. What would one expect from a visionless outfit like that which does not have a policy yet? If it does have a policy Maurice Williamson is not allowed to espouse it because he might tell the truth. This is our truth: public transport up and down the country. Local government has called for it; it supports it. Auckland—all the territorial local authorities and the Auckland Regional Council—was united around option C. The National Party opposed it. The Labour Party members on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee thought it was worth putting it in the bill as an option. Members opposite who oppose everything for the sake of it oppose Auckland having a decent public transport system. 
There are something like 200 different fares and products within the public transport system in Auckland alone. The Auckland Regional Transport Authority wants to have it down to 20 and it says this bill is necessary. That is why the Government has put it forward that is why we have improved it in the select committee that is why it is necessary and that is why the National Party will vote against it.