Kedgley Sue: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7404] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party as with all other parties in this House is happy to support this legislation going to the select committee. But I would like to start by saying how deeply unhappy we are with the procedural motion that has been sprung upon us tonight that would suspend the normal procedures of the House and require the select committee considering this bill and the previous bill to meet at all hours virtually of the day and night and during the proceedings of the House. As other colleagues have said previously we can see no reason that this should be sprung upon us. We are aware that there was a Business Committee meeting this afternoon. We are unable to understand why if there were some good reasons this was not raised at the Business Committee. 
I am very grateful to the ACT member for having moved his motion which I hope will be supported that would basically seek to amend the proposal. Otherwise the way it is all rolled up into a composite motion it may have required us to vote against the entire move of this bill to the select committee. In fact we are perfectly happy that the bill goes to the select committee but we are deeply unhappy with this suspending of normal procedures that has been sprung on us at the last minute. May I also say that we are very unhappy that the Government denied us leave to change our vote on the procedural motion on the previous bill. 
I turn now to the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill itself. We support the various clauses in the bill. I will spare members my own stories of civil disobedience on airlines. Fortunately my experiences have not been as dire as some that have been recorded. I am very pleased that the regulations covering unruly passengers also include such things as persons operating portable electronic devices. I think that is important. We know that people operating cellphones can in fact interrupt the safety of the aircraft yet we see people on aircraft who insist on using them. So I think that provision is really excellent and we are absolutely delighted with those proposals in the bill. Indeed they are long overdue. 
We do have some concerns about the repeal of the Carriage by Air Act and its replacement with the Consumer Guarantees Act. We are not convinced that the Consumer Guarantees Act will give consumers the same degree of protection that was granted to them by the Carriage by Air Act which is being repealed. But this is the sort of technical detail that can be thrashed out at the select committee. I notice that other members have also expressed concerns about that so hopefully this is an issue that the select committee will address. 
We are happy too with the provisions for the mutual recognition of aviation safety certification between Australia and New Zealand. We are very pleased that in this bill we have opted for mutual recognition with Australia not harmonisation. As Associate Minister of Transport Harry Duynhoven who originally introduced this bill said in his press release: “We have decided on mutual recognition not harmonisation.” We are very pleased with that. We think that mutual recognition between Australia and New Zealand makes a lot of sense as compared with harmonisation. We are deeply opposed to harmonisation which ultimately involves relinquishing our sovereignty and we cannot understand why the Government is pursuing harmonisation rather than mutual recognition in other areas such as the regulations surrounding dietary supplements. We hope that we will carry on the tradition of mutual recognition as this bill does and not try to move towards harmonisation which always seems to mean New Zealand adopting Australian legislation and Australian rules and us giving up our sovereignty. So we are very happy with that as well. 
Indeed as I said apart from our concerns about repealing the Carriage by Air Act we are perfectly happy to support this bill. The only thing I would say is that basically this bill is a bit of a hotchpotch of different bits and pieces of the Civil Aviation Act that are being amended. It seems to us that there is one important issue that we ought to be addressing in this legislation with regard to runway safety and that is the fact that at present we are not implementing the rules of the International Civil Aviation Organization in respect of for example airport runway safety ends. Our airport runway safety ends do not comply with international regulations and we think that this bill would be a sensible place to try to look at ensuring perhaps in the purpose of the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill that there is a requirement to implement those obligations including the ones relating to runway safety. 
So there are issues like those that we believe ought to be covered in this omnibus civil aviation bill but we are happy with it as far as it goes. But we are deeply unhappy with the idea of the select committee being required to meet at all hours of the day and night and while the House is sitting. As we are a small party this would be a real burden on us and we will be opposing the motion. We hope that it will be defeated. We will then be able to support the bill going to the select committee.