Brown Simeon; Parker DavidSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Madam Chair for the opportunity to take a call on this committee stage of this bill and there are a number of questions for the Minister in relation to the bill. Firstly I'll note that in Supplementary Order Paper 419 there's some changes that have been proposed and I'd be interested for the Minister to take a call and to explain those changes to the committee and what the purpose of those changes are. I think it's important to have that put on the record given given that this bill's already been through a select committee process.The second question really is in relation to the purpose statement or the purpose principle Section 115 amended (Principles)" in clause 9 that this bill changes in terms of the operation of public transport. I'd like the Minister to outline and actually provide some justification for the legislative change. Because what we heard in committee—and we've heard in previous debates on this piece of legislation—is that this bill was needed to fix the unreliability in our public transport system. This bill was needed to make sure we could electrify our buses. This bill was needed to make sure that the buses were turning up on time. And the question was asked during the committee stage of officials: did the public transport operating model stop regional councils operating public transport from being able to negotiate electric buses as part of the contract? Did it stop them from negotiating wages as part of that contract? Did it stop them from negotiating terms and conditions as part of those contracts? The answer was very clear from officials that no the public transport operating model (PTOM) did not. It did not stop those issues from being contracted.The Government in my opinion used COVID used the fact that we lost a significant portion of our bus drivers during the COVID lockdowns to basically try and say we need to change the law. That has been I think a misconception of the real issues here. So I'd like the Minister to provide justification as to why those principles needed to actually be changed and why the issue of efficiency and value for money has been reduced from being a top priority to being a low priority in that list of principles.The next question I've got for the Minister is in relation to the question about how this legislation now allows for councils to effectively run public transport services in-house without having to go through a tender process. My understanding is that through the regulatory impact statement the officials didn't recommend that as the option but that was rejected by the Government and I'd like the Minister to answer and outline to the House why this Government thinks that in relation to the operation of our public transport systems there shouldn't be a competitive tendering process to ensure that taxpayers get good value for money.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): Perhaps dealing with the questions in the reverse order to which they were asked with the last question answered first: the Labour-led Government believes that we can trust local authorities to efficiently run their public transport services and if they want to run them in-house they can do. They don't want to have inefficient or overly expensive public transport services but they do want them to be sustainable both environmentally but also financially sustainable. In respect of the duties or the key principles that are in replacement section 115 the member in his question suggested that the efficiency objective is—well if I understood his question correctly he asserted that the efficiency and value for money objective is a lower objective than the others. They're all ranked equally. The prior system required competition to be put ahead of all of the other principles. Now efficiency and value for money is given equal weighting. In respect of what were the outcomes of the prior system yes the Government believes that the PTOM model did put undue focus on lowest cost tendering that led to unsustainable contractual arrangements by people effectively bidding down labour costs in order to win the contract. And at the end of that we were hundreds of bus drivers short and we had lots of bus services that weren't running in our major cities. As a consequence public transport became less reliable and fewer people were using it. That undermined the viability of public transport and it also increased traffic congestion.Finally in respect of the issues in the Supplementary Order Paper they really are all technical. They're shown in track changes in the Supplementary Order Paper on the Table and members can see that they are technical with the possible exception of the amendment to section 150 in clause 19 with the insertion of new subsection 3A as it is currently. The explanatory note says that the insertion of that new subsection 3A into section 150 of the Land Transport Management Act relates to matters the Minister must consider before making the regulations regarding exempt public transport services. Those subsections do not provide the extension of the category of exempt public transport services to include appropriate interregional services. New section 3A provides for how those subsections apply where regulations relate to interregional services.There was a related amendment made at the select committee but the consequential amendment to section 150 wasn't made and is by the Supplementary Order Paper."