Gosche Mark: Third Readings 
Gosche Mark: Third Readings 
[Volume:622;Page:17231] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 That was a disappointing speech. I know that the member is in fact rejoicing as he will no longer have to pay the counsellor he has been visiting ever since he was the Minister of Transport about his worries and fears of having to deal with The Land Transport Safety Authority. He has told everybody in the country his stories of horror about the Land Transport Safety Authority. Here is legislation that actually does away with an organisation that Maurice Williamson has denigrated from one end of the country to the other and his miserable party will not even let him have a personal vote to support the Government. He absolutely wants to do that because he knows that this is good legislation that it is a sensible measure and that it is a big step forward. Mr Williamson has been whipped into line and made to vote against legislation that he knows is eminently sensible and very workable. 
He also knows as the Minister would tell him if he had another speech that all of the advice from right across the board on that so-called wonderful “reasonable cost” apparatus said that it did not work. It was well passed its use-by date and select committee members who visited the Maritime Safety Authority’s rescue coordination centre were scratching their heads as to why a lot more was not being done in the area of water safety in this country. I told them why: reasonable cost in the law stopped them from doing it because reasonable cost in those frameworks is dependent on how much money there is to do it in the beginning. And if we have a miserable Government like the National Government was that is not able to put any money into safety then reasonable cost is used as an excuse to do nothing. “Reasonable cost” becomes “least cost”. 
There are a significant number of people who are concerned about safety in this land who have come up against reasonable cost not as a sensible measure of whether the Government should act in a particular way but as an excuse for doing nothing. When we became the Government we put real money into the safety programmes of areas that had been starved of money—and look at the results. We have a much better result in the area of road safety. We are seeing improvements in all of those other areas that were starved of funding. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: The cost is going up. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: That has nothing to do with reasonable cost. If the member opposite would care to read some of the words that he knows are in the law he would see that they talk about assisting economic development. How could we put a stupid rule or law into place that had to be tested against that one alone? It would very quickly be in front of the courts. Industries that are concerned about unreasonable costs being put upon them would ask how a stupid rule or law that adds so much cost for so little benefit could get through the tests that any law changes or rules would have to get through. 
So it is a nonsense for National Party members to say they are voting against this legislation because “reasonable cost” has been taken out. It is just pathetic Opposition politics. They did not like the fact that the Greens might have had a say so they decided to vote against it—I mean let us grow up here. That is not any basis on which to have a policy. But that is what passes for policy in the National Party nowadays. 
If Mr Williamson was given his head and allowed to do his thing he would be voting for this legislation. He would be celebrating and saying that yes the Land Transport Safety Authority used to drive him mad as a Minister and it is good to get rid of it. But he would also say as I would to the chair of that authority and its board members that in terms of the revenue-gathering side it is a job well done. They have put together one of the best pieces of computer work in this nation to do the job they do in that area. Yes they put up some advice on safety that Ministers would tear their hair out about but that is their job. It is called free and frank advice and sensible Government processes see the bad stuff put aside and the good stuff come through. 
 We have got transport working in this country in the last 5 years cooperatively with parties such as the Greens in a way that the Tories never managed. Here they are beating their chests about how great they are at doing things and how many motorways they would build and we cannot find any anywhere that they actually built in 9 long years. When we go around the country we see there is an enormous deficit of transport infrastructure and it is all down to 9 years of pontification by the National Party. National wrote a policy  
Better Transport Better Roads 
 which was thrown in the rubbish bin and rejected. It fills a cupboard in the Minister of Transport’s office. It has been kept as a memento and a reminder of the foolishness of the National Party which upset every Tory council in the country. 
When I visited the councils as the new Minister of Transport they could not believe it. They said: “This is a Minister of Transport who wants to listen.” and I did. They said: “We don’t need great revolutions; we just need sensible Government and some money.” So that is what we have given them. The Green Party and the Labour Party can be proud of the work that is going on. The busway in Auckland is under way and the biggest motorway project in Auckland in many many decades is actually being built. A lot of Auckland MPs who visited that project last week were amazed at what this Government has been able to achieve in such a short time and this legislation will push it along even further. I just wish Mr Williamson was allowed to vote for it instead of being whipped by his party and being told what to do.