Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. Look it's remarkable that here we are Wednesday 23 August 2023. The House is sitting under urgency to debate a bill around the regulation of public transport as if this was the most urgent thing that New Zealand faces right now. Not an affordability crisis for people wondering whether to pay a bill or put tyres on the car not rampant crime including crime actually at public transport facilities like bus stops and bus stations in places like Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty. And certainly not issues of divisive co-governance. No we are here to debate the regulation of public transport.What does this bill hope to achieve? This bill hopes to modify the Public Transport Operating Model—a model where councils procure through a public and open tender process bus companies to supply buses and drivers to pick up passengers and take them to their destination. It's worked quite well apart from a few hiccups. And it's those hiccups which have given the Government cause and excuse to pass a bill which makes some quite significant changes not just to the way public transport is procured and operated but also has implications for the efficient allocation of taxpayer funds and ratepayer funds to public transport and transport services in general.So I'm just going to give a quick rundown of what this bill does. It removes the requirement for local councils to tender out for services which means ratepayers won't know if the services that are being delivered are being delivered in a cost-effective way. They won't know because there'll be no prices to compare. Councils won't know whether they're getting value for money because there'll be no price to compare. Passengers won't know whether the service they're getting is value for money because there won't have been an opportunity for those procuring and delivering and managing your service in local government to work out whether it's the most efficient way to deliver it.Because it may well be that a public transport operator—a bus company—actually knows something about passengers knows something about where people work and live and go to school knows something about traffic congestion on the route. Maybe they even know something about where people are most likely to wait and congregate for a bus. For example if there's a shopping centre where people can wait under cover or maybe grab a coffee or at the end of work go to the mall. Maybe public transport private sector bus companies know things that local government transport planners don't know. That is why we generally tender for services when the public sector is procuring them: to discover the things that central planners don't know.Even eloquent intelligent transport planners like the Hon Julie Anne Genter who was once associate transport Minister and will no doubt be offering her own perspective on this bill in a very short amount of time. Not even the Hon Julie Anne Genter has perfect knowledge of where a bus might go where the passengers might be waiting and what the intentions are of those individuals who might get on a bus and go somewhere. That is why the public sector issues requests for tender to discover things that the public sector doesn't know.Well if only that's the problem with this bill. What else does it do? It proposes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It can't reduce New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions because greenhouse gas emissions are capped by the emissions trading scheme. Only the climate Minister can reduce New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions by allocating the number of credits that are auctioned under the emissions trading scheme every year. If the climate Minister wishes New Zealand's greenhouse gases to be lower they can simply lower the cap on our national emissions for any given year. This bill doesn't reduce emissions at all; it just reduces emissions from a few buses and allows another industrial or private person to emit more carbon as long as it's within the annual cap.This bill apparently according to the Minister who spoke on the third reading will reduce congestion. It will allow public transport services to be delivered in a way that reduces congestion. Well I know the Minister lives in Auckland but he doesn't live in the part of Auckland I do: Te Atatū Peninsula in West Auckland. Te Atatū Peninsula has been a blue-collar workers suburb for a long time. A lot of people in Te Atatū rely on the bus to get to school to get to Henderson town centre or the night markets to do a bit of shopping or to get to the city if they are working in professional or office space jobs.This is what Auckland Transport and Waka Kotahi have done to reduce congestion using public transport. This is just one example and I'm sure there's more to come. Described as high quality public transport" by the former transport Minister Michael Wood they've built bus stops on the side of the motorway at Te Atatū Peninsula now they're building bus stops on the side of the motorway at Lincoln Road. They fully expect that West Aucklanders working people will get off the bus on the side of the motorway in Te Atatū Peninsula where 15000 20000 25000 vehicles are going past every day and then cross to another bus stop and then get on another bus. Now the bus shelters are about as wide as the desks in front of each member of Parliament in this House. That's how much roof covering you've got against a stiff sou'westerly breeze in winter. That's high quality public transport according to a former Labour Minister of transport. Has it reduced congestion? No because the way they've configured the bus stops has taken out traffic lanes which means instead of free-flowing traffic including buses leaving Te Atatū Peninsula at peak times now it's five lanes into two instead of five into three. So even if there was a bus and we haven't seen one for a while because they cancelled the services—Helen White: How does it relate to the bill?SIMON COURT: —while they reconfigured the bus stops. Hold on we're talking about reducing congestion. That's what the Minister of Transport talked about—Helen White: How does it relate to what's in the bill?SIMON COURT: —instead of—well hold on. This is Auckland Transport a council and NZTA—the Government's transport agency—co-designing better public transport Helen Clark.Helen White: But it's got nothing to do with the bill has it?SIMON COURT: No no no this is what the bill's proposing more of. A bus would be stuck in the same traffic as all the other cars now. The traffic jam didn't exist before these public transport improvements. This bill won't reduce congestion. We have evidence right now of what a Labour Government - led public transport solution for Te Atatū Peninsula in West Auckland looks like. It's traffic chaos. Buses are stuck in the same traffic as the car. If people ever were to wait at those bus stops which are roundly ridiculed in West Auckland by the working class people of West Auckland—roundly ridiculed—they would get wet in a mild shower Helen White.And then we come to the issue of workers' wages. A Labour-led Government six years in power saying this bill is necessary to uplift the terms and conditions and pay of bus drivers. Well ACT calls nonsense on that because this Government allowed Immigration New Zealand to come to a sector agreement with bus companies and operators and councils to allow them to pay less than the median wage. So I'd like to correct my statement from committee of the whole House when I said "bus drivers are paid the median wage" this Government Helen White who we understand used to be an employment lawyer should be aware this Government came to a sector agreement which allows migrant workers and local workers to be paid $28 even though the median wage is $29.66. I don't know maybe this bill won't solve that. Maybe this Government could have solved it some other way. Who knows? Maybe the bus drivers will give their party vote to ACT in the next Government because they've got more confidence that under an ACT Party Government they'll get $2300 as a tax break in the hand every year up to $78000 and they'll be able to decide how they spend their own money.Well the truth is the reason that the Government allowed Immigration New Zealand and the bus companies to come to a sector accord is because NZTA and the Government couldn't afford to pay the bus drivers more. This bill is an incoherent waste of time pushed around urgency by a Labour Government in its twilight 2023.What would ACT do? Well we'd get on with building the roads particularly in places like West Auckland and a north-west busway would be a great idea extending four-laning through to Kumeū and Huapai where a quarter of a million people are coming to live in the next 30 years according to the Auckland unitary plan. Currently their buses are stuck on the two-lane rural roads the same two-lane rural roads I was commuting to work on in the 1990s. ACT would make sure that the roads are built that we can restore efficiency and reliability to journey times. So if you are waiting for a bus on a fantastic north-west busway or in Kumeū and Huapai at some point in the future you'll know you'll be able to get your destination on time. That's ACT's offer. We reckon Kiwis will give their party vote to ACT."