Coddington Deborah: Third Readings 
Coddington Deborah: Third Readings 
[Volume:622;Page:17235] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party opposes the third readings of the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill (No 2) the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill and the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill which were split out from the Transport Legislation Bill. 
Firstly I would like to go back to the way in which these amendments were introduced under the one bill. The Transport Legislation Bill was introduced into the House on 12 August and the Government dispensed with Standing Orders 191 to 194 so that the Transport and Industrial Committee could meet on Fridays and every evening when the House was sitting. The Minister rammed through the legislation so that the select committee had to report back in October. The select committee was given just under 6 weeks—from the time when the Transport Legislation Bill was introduced to when it had to be reported back to the House. 
Increasingly this Government is using the moving of a referral motion to set aside the Standing Orders. We see that as an abuse of power that affects small parties that do not have representation on all select committees. Some members of smaller parties are on more than one select committee. It is also an abuse of power for the submitters whose time to make submissions is considerably shortened. I must say that the chairman of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee is fair. He does do his best to let submitters have their say and allows for a decent amount of time to be given for questions. However he too is under pressure. We are debating four major pieces of legislation and we have seen them rushed through in just over 6 weeks if one takes the time up to their third readings. That is the first reason why the ACT party is opposed to this legislation. 
Secondly the original bill was supposed to be focused on a reorganisation of the Crown entities that were involved with transport. Instead this Government has used that excuse as a way to bring in legislation to codify the  
New Zealand Transport Strategy  
that was brought out in December 2002. That was part of the deal between the Greens and the Labour Government. It is one of the reasons the select committee never got to see the Ross Armstrong inquiry into public-private partnerships. We will never know for sure what went on between the Labour Government and the Greens at the dinners at Hoffman’s restaurant in Wellington. A deal was done whereby the Greens would not support that inquiry because they were desperate to have the  
New Zealand Transport Strategy 
 which they had co-written come into legislation and in particular the sustainability filter that we will see increasingly brought into legislation—and Jeanette Fitzsimons is nodding her head; she is not disagreeing with me. I think those situations that we get under MMP where we see those sorts of deals are abhorrent. 
The Labour Government calls this legislation vision. It says that the New Zealand Transport Strategy is a vision of an affordable integrated safe responsive and sustainable transport system. For people stuck in traffic not just in Auckland but in Wellington—people coming into the city from the Kapiti coast the Hutt and Eastbourne—its vision for transport does not include sustainability. It involves people getting to work on time and getting to the doctor in the shortest time possible so that people can get back to work and not have their time deducted. It means people picking up their children from school and taking them to sport and going to the supermarket. None of those issues will be made any easier by any of the transport legislation that we see going through the House. The  
New Zealand Transport Strategy 
 talks about land transport but land transport in this country does not mean just road and rail any more. It includes maritime transport and air transport. It would be a great surprise now to all of those who have travelled by boat ship plane or helicopter to know that those are now classified under land transport. 
People who know that New Zealand has huge transport problems think that this legislation will solve their problems. They should know that it will not fix a single thing. The Government says that it wants to promote economic growth. How can economic growth be promoted when sustainability must be ensured under this legislation? Sustainability must be ensured and not just considered. It has a higher grading under this legislation than safety. As several speakers have already said safety at a reasonable cost has gone. Mark Gosche was possibly right. Yes safety was used as an excuse sometimes to do nothing but that does not mean to say that it had to be used to do nothing. It could still be used to progress transport. 
But sustainability cannot be defined. Even the Greens cannot define sustainability. We are not talking about sustainable yield here. Under this legislation we know that sustainability will now include endless consultation with all manner of organisations including “affected communities public and Maori.” So Maori are not part of affected communities or part of the public; they are something separate. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Separatists. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: It is separatism. Maori must be consulted when any form of land transport strategy is drawn up. We know what that means. The public sure knows what that means by now. All of those people who are still wasting time trying to travel between Hamilton and Auckland know what consultation with Maori means. It means that a taniwha will pop up when a culvert has to be put in or when a bend has to be made in a road. All those taniwhas pop up and miraculously they disappear when the chequebook from the road builders comes out. I do not know where those taniwha go. I suspect that they pop up somewhere else only to disappear again when the right price is paid. 
But as I have said sustainability is now more important than safety. When people climb into a helicopter or an aeroplane what is the first thing they think of and what do they check? Do they check how kind to the environment that company has been or do they think about how many accidents that company has had or how many fatalities? People who fly are more concerned about safety and having their safety ensured as far as is possible than having the environment sustained as far as possible. When I fly to Picton on Sounds Air the plane lands on the airstrip at Koromiko which has a row of trees that have to be trimmed for safety. I could not care whether those trees are pine kauri or sacred to Maori. People’s safety is far more important than whether those trees should be sustained. If that is what the Greens mean by sustainability then they have a lot of explaining to do. 
If this Government is serious about promoting economic growth it would realise that it does not take a rocket scientist to work out that to allow the transport industry—that is road air and sea—to develop and grow and to promote economic growth it has to be done with minimum regulation and compliance restraints. There was a good intention in the legislation in terms of reorganising the Crown entities but it has been ruined by a Government that is regulation-mad and compliance-obsessed. We will not be supporting the legislation.