Key John: Transport Legislation Bill — Second Reading 
Key John: Transport Legislation Bill — Second Reading 
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JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 About the best thing one can say about this transport bill before the House today is that it is like a looking glass. It is a looking glass into what life would be like under a Greens-Labour Government. My goodness! What a slow pace of life there would be if the Greens were to get into power with Labour! I make this simple prediction: if this bill becomes an Act it will be repealed. 
Mark Peck 
: No way. 
JOHN KEY 
: Yes it will. It will be repealed by the time you get a job down south— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I am not looking for a job. The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate. 
JOHN KEY 
: I am sorry—this legislation will be repealed by the time the member loses his current employment and gets a new job and it will be gone because by its very nature it is fundamentally flawed. 
Mark Peck 
: No it’s not. 
JOHN KEY 
: The chihuahua over there is chipping away. 
Mark Peck 
: Ankle-biter. 
JOHN KEY 
: The ankle-biter is chipping away. I want to tell the House why this legislation will be gone before the ink is even dry on the paper. The reason has been highlighted by many submitters who appeared before the select committee and it is very simple. This bill is predicated on the Government transport sector review which led to the New Zealand Transport Strategy. That is code for the sneaky little deal that Heather Simpson did with the Greens. 
Mark Peck 
: No no. 
JOHN KEY 
: That is what that was all about. That is what Heather Simpson managed to do in the dark of the night when she was absolutely desperate to keep the Greens sweet because she had cut a deal with a couple of other people who had managed to get more numbers. The first thing the select committee was told was that it was highly unusual and inappropriate to put the Minister’s objectives into a piece of legislation. We are codifying in legislation what Pete Hodgson thinks is a good idea. It would not be quite so bad if it was what he personally thought was a good idea but it is actually what Heather Simpson a paid bureaucrat thinks is a good idea. In the dead of the night she was doing a coalition-type deal with the Greens over something she thought was a good idea. That is why this legislation will be gone before the ink is dry when National gets into office. 
Mark Peck 
: Even that member doesn’t believe that National is going to win. 
JOHN KEY 
: This member is absolutely sane and rational in discussing the situation! Let us have a look at the parts of the New Zealand Transport Strategy—devised by Heather Simpson as a sop for the Greens—that will be codified into this legislation. The first objective is that transport will be affordable. Well how will it be affordable when the Government does not want to use the private sector—a cheaper provider—to do anything in roading? 
Mark Peck 
: Where does it say that? 
JOHN KEY 
: That is what it says. The member should read it before he supports it. He is going from this place so he should cross the floor. He should take the opportunity to go to his colleagues and say: “I know bad legislation when I see it. I’m out of here! I’m going to cross the floor on this one.” As I said the first objective mentioned in the transport strategy is that the vision must be affordable. In New Zealand that means that we cannot use the private sector to do anything. 
Mark Peck 
: Where does it say that? 
JOHN KEY 
: Well the Government passed the Land Transport Management Bill. That was a complete and utter waste of time because it virtually barred the private sector from involvement. So transport in New Zealand will not be affordable—that is point one. 
The second objective is that transport must be integrated. Let us have a look at what is happening in the transport situation in Auckland as a result of this. We now have people out there trying to build train tracks and trains when there will be over a billion car trips in Auckland and a couple of million trips a year by trains. We are going to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on subsidies and billions of dollars electrifying tracks and buying new trains and this is going to be integrated and affordable! Well I think points one and two are in conflict. Quite a lot as been said about the issue of safety and I will come back to that subject and have my 2c worth on it. 
The third point the real doozy—and Mr Peck will have noticed this; it is probably one of the reasons why he is tossing in the towel on this Government which will be gone in just a few months—is that it must be responsive. Responsive! Judith Tizard the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues is laughing. She lives there and she has seen that the Auckland motorway network has not been completed since 1965. It certainly will not be happening under the Land Transport Management Act and it certainly it will not be happening under the Transport Legislation Bill. As I said the third point is that it must be responsive. What does “responsive” mean? Responsive to what? It is responsive to Heather Simpson’s demand to keep the Greens sweet—that is what it will be responsive to. It means: responsive to the fact that the Government might not have to be propped up by someone whom its current support partner has absolutely no time for—and frankly probably neither does its major coalition partner. That is the responsive bit. But in terms of getting some action on Auckland’s roads there is absolutely nothing responsive in this legislation at all. 
Now I come to the really blatant bit. It was late at night as Heather Simpson was devising this policy with the Green Party and she just could not help herself. The Greens said: “This is the bottom line—‘sustainable’ has to be in there.” So the fifth objective of the strategy is that it must be sustainable. Mr Peck is wondering why this legislation will be turfed out by any Government that is sensible at all. The strategy is certainly not affordable it is certainly will not be integrated it is certainly not responsive and it is certainly not sustainable. So it will be absolutely gone. This bill means that a Minister’s objective will be codified in a highly unusual Act of Parliament. I think that parliamentarians should be worried about that. 
I am very surprised that United Future is supporting this bill. It is a party that argues for common sense. What is sensible about codifying what the Greens and Labour did late at night to hold together some coalition talks? Why do they want to do that? Why does United Future want to do that? There is nothing sensible about that. But I want to move on to “safety at reasonable cost”. This bill will remove the requirement for “safety at reasonable cost”. I want members to think about this for just a moment. New Zealand rightfully so followed many international jurisdictions when it added seat belts as a necessary requirement in cars. 
Hon Rick Barker 
: Is this member opposed to seat belts? 
JOHN KEY 
: I am not opposed to seat belts at all. But this is my point— 
Hon Rick Barker 
: You like seat belts? 
JOHN KEY 
: I like seat belts. I always wear my seat belt. Seat belts save lives. I would never let anyone go in a car without wearing a seat belt. But—and this is the point—when “safety at reasonable cost” is removed by legislation it may mean that we want to have the 6-point seat belts that we see “Top Gun” flying in. Would that make cars safer in New Zealand? The answer is yes it would. 
Hon Rick Barker 
: Could you have seat belts on motorbikes? 
JOHN KEY 
: Yes there could be seat belts on motorbikes. Mr Barker is quite correct; his mind is going in exactly the same direction as mine which is quite a scary concept. [ 
Interruption 
] Yes it would not be too long before we have ashtrays and seat belts on motorbikes. 
Deborah Coddington 
: Crash helmets in cars. 
JOHN KEY 
: Yes crash helmets in cars. So “safety at reasonable cost” is a very interesting point because let us not forget that this is a Government that if it could get away with it would have traffic officers hiding behind bushes to issue parking tickets and speeding tickets to people on the basis of safety. We all know that that is a complete and utter hoax. This is not sensible legislation. This is legislation that is codifying the whim of a Minister and which is fundamentally flawed. It has this crazy issue of removing “safety at reasonable cost”. It will be gone—probably faster than Mr Peck will be back to his electorate.