Fitzsimons Jeanette: Public Transport Management Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Public Transport Management Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18247. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Public transport needs a big hand up if it is to play the role that it needs to play to reduce car dependence to reduce greenhouse emissions to protect us from oil price rises so we can still get around and to reduce congestion in our cities. The Public Transport Management Bill sets out to make progress in that direction and the Green Party supports it. However still more needs to be done. New Zealand cities are world famous for their poor levels of public transport and their high levels of car dependence. The famous transport academic from Western Australia Peter Newman says that car-dependent cities around the world have the highest proportion of their wealth spent on transport. Auckland spends 16 percent of its wealth on moving people around. That is four times higher than a city like Copenhagen for example. So it is highly economically inefficient to have public transport services that are less than what they could be.  
We also have a quote from Paul Mees from the University of Melbourne who says: “The decline of public transportation used since the 1950s has been the worst of any major Western city in the world. Even in US cities today the bulk of transport funding is going into public transport. Auckland defies this global trend.”  
I want to talk about public transport in our cities from the perspective of a transport user. I will suggest that what Bill English has just said about the perspective of a public transport user could not be further from the truth. The travelling public in Auckland and Wellington at least are voting with their feet. They are moving out of their cars now. We have a reduction for the first time in history of vehicle kilometres travelled on Auckland motorways at peak time and we have a very significant increase in the use of public transport. This is in response to rising oil prices and also I think to congestion. The fact that the trains have benefited even more than the buses because they are not subject to that congestion just shows what a significant factor this is in influencing transport choices.  
When as consumers we try to make those choices what do we find? Well Bill English admitted that we find poor-quality buses we find poor reliability we find unclear timetables and we find a complete failure to connect. Who is running those buses now? It is the private companies that Bill English thinks should retain all the decision making. If we have poor-quality buses now that are old and dilapidated and not very clean we need to be able to set standards for the quality of public transport services. But we cannot do so unless those services are contracted. That is why we need a fully contracted model. If I want to change from my train trip to a bus to get where I am going the timetable is not integrated the buses do not leave when the trains arrive the tickets are not integrated and despite what New Zealand First has been claiming I cannot buy a ticket in either Auckland or Wellington that will allow me to transfer from buses to trains on the same fare. They do not connect. Yes we have a Snapper ticket in Wellington which is very snappy but it is only for the buses; it does not allow connection with the trains at all.  
We have public transport systems that are not reliable. I have a secretary who regularly texts me in the morning to say that the train has stopped between stations that she does not know when it will start again and that the trains are not on time. In order to solve that problem we need more investment and we need more services. If the public are moving from their cars to buses and trains we need more buses and trains at peak hour to accommodate that demand.  
Bill English says that private operators and private owners of buses will give the people what they want but their elected representatives will not. Do we really believe that? Will we vote in those people who say that they will not give people the sorts of bus services they want and that they will do something else just because they believe in it? I do not think so. The private operators have not been giving people what they want which is why there is now a call to have greater public control over those services and greater powers for regional authorities. So in fact Mr English destroys his own case.  
He thanked New Zealand First for protecting the rights of the monopolist bus companies against the overwhelming submissions of virtually every council and of the smaller bus operators—who do not get a fair go in the competitive system at the moment because of the monopolist behaviour of some big ones—against the submissions of the Planning Institute and against the submissions of commuters. The travelling public will thank the Green Party for introducing an amendment in the Committee stage to insert option C which is a fully contracting model as an option. We will not impose that on any regional council. We believe that regional councils that are elected by the people can decide in consultation with the people what the best model is for their city. But they ought to have that option of a fully contracted system. We will introduce that amendment at the Committee stage and we believe it will pass. I thank numerous colleagues for that.  
Regional councils need to be able to ensure that there is coverage of the whole city that there is a network of buses that go where people want and when people want that there are common standards of comfort quality emissions and reliability and that all of these services connect. They cannot do that without the powers of this bill and particularly without the powers of option C which we will add back into the bill.  
This in itself will not be enough. We are strongly supportive of this legislation. We have talked to the Government about it all the way through. It is a great first step but more is needed. We have a system that tells people that if they want a new State highway or motorway in their region central government through the National Land Transport Fund will dish out all the money—100 percent funded out of the fund. But if people want public transport as an alternative to that new motorway they will have to pay for most of it themselves. That has always been a problem because as soon as a regional council—however much its people are asking for public transport and however much it wants to provide it—puts up the rates to pay for it it gets turfed out of office.  
It has been distortionary of our transport system for years and years that State highways and motorways are centrally funded yet if we want to build a railway to do the same thing and to carry the same people the same distance across the city Auckland or Wellington will have to fund about half of it itself. We need to change the funding arrangements in the National Land Transport Fund. We need to put public transport and roading on a level playing field. We need to make sure that those alternatives to new roading—those alternative choices for commuters—are funded at the same rate as roads are. Otherwise we are asking them to compete with one hand tied behind their backs.  
That is something the Green Party has campaigned on for years. I have a bill that has won the ballot and has been sitting waiting for its first reading for a year. It would change that balance of funding but it is pretty obvious it is not going to get its first reading before the election. However I look forward to it progressing next year and to our getting a level playing field for different transport modes so that at least consumers can have the choice of travelling the way they want to travel.