Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Madam Speaker thank you very much and I thank the Minister for his contribution to the debate. I had the privilege of serving on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that considered this bill and we did do a thorough job over recent months in considering this bill. This bill is actually quite an important one in the way it makes changes to the funding and planning framework for rail and it can't be divorced from the Government's wider changes around rail in New Zealand: the development of a New Zealand Rail Plan and huge increases from Crown coffers to rail via both direct Crown contributions but also the much-criticised—but much-loved by the other side—Provincial Growth Fund.Let me make four points. The first is that the National Party in Opposition supports rail in New Zealand; it's a very important part of our transport system—Paul Eagle: Hear hear.CHRIS BISHOP: —as the Minister has noted. I hear my colleague Paul Eagle from Wellington saying Hear hear." from over the side of the Chamber and he will know as my colleague sitting next to me on these benches Nicola Willis knows and other members from Wellington know it plays an important role in Wellington in terms of allowing people in the Hutt and Porirua and Johnsonville—not so much out in Mr Eagle's neck of the woods although if the Greens have their way we'll have a slow tram running out past the hospital to the airport at some point in 2080 or 2070—Nicola Willis: They want better buses.CHRIS BISHOP: Nicola Willis points out that they want better buses. They absolutely do want better buses but rail means that—I mean everyone who jumps on a train from the Hutt or from Johnsonville is probably not in a car and of course that reduces congestion on our roads and that's a good thing and it's the same in Auckland. It was National that started the City Rail Link in Auckland of course and that's a project that has been somewhat controversial in the House over the last decade or so but the simple reality is that will add huge capacity to the Auckland rail network and that will of course help commuters in Auckland and help make Auckland the city that it should be: the 21st century livable city where people have a variety of different transport choices in order to get around the city.So we do support rail and one of the things we heard during the select committee process was a constant refrain that the previous National Government had put KiwiRail into a system of "managed decline"—I think was the exact phrase used—and we would take issue with that. In fact we did during the committee process and I repeat that now because the simple reality is that if you look at the numbers the last National Government rightsized KiwiRail after it was nationalised by the previous Labour Clark Government in 2008. It was called back then the "sale of the century". The Crown paid Toll Holdings I think it was $690 million and the then chief executive of Toll Holdings was on the record as saying "You know you only get one Michael Cullen in your life."—which of course is a paraphrase of Kerry Packer's quote about Alan Bond after he did the dirty with him on the sale of I think it was Fairfax Holdings back in the 80s: "You only get one Alan Bond in your life." And of course that was true about KiwiRail as well. So that was a controversial decision back in 2008 but the previous National Government put a lot of money into KiwiRail to invest in the Main Trunk and to run lines that were economic and profitable—and that's the critical point.I do want to come back to the point about economics because there are challenges with the economics of rail in New Zealand and we need to be upfront and clear about those challenges. New Zealand is a long thin country with a small population base and rail makes sense to transport quite a few goods—bulky goods logs other goods—and in the golden triangle of Waikato and Auckland and Tauranga it makes a big contribution. Down the West Coast as Maureen Pugh would tell me there's a real role for rail. But we need to be pretty clear-eyed I think about the challenges that rail presents in other parts of the country and I want to come back to those comments. So we need to be realistic. But rail is very important particularly in our metro centres.Second point is about planning and funding. The Minister talked about this in his contribution. We do believe that there does need to be better coordination and better planning around rail in the transport system. We do accept that. We do not believe that this bill essentially establishes that. We do not believe that the bill does what the Minister says it does on the tin so to speak. Actually this was pointed out in contributions to the select committee by a variety of submitters. The Minister noted in his contribution that the Government's gone for what's called a partial integration framework and we heard submissions at the select committee that that doesn't offer all the benefits of full integration and it creates real complications for what the Government has decided to go for. So as the New Zealand Automobile Association (AA) pointed out for example the Minister's tasked to sign off the KiwiRail plan.Forward that to the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) who have to include it in the National Land Transport Programme but this approach doesn't allow for the consideration of trade-offs between the modes as NZTA's board while retaining their decision-making authority of which road projects proceed has no influence over the rail projects. So that's actually a really good point made by the Automobile Association and actually directly contradicts what the Minister said which is that we need to have clear transparency around the trade-offs between the modes and we need to be mode-neutral. But of course that's not actually provided by the bill. That's not what the bill does and we think that's a problem. We think and we noted this in our minority view on the bill that there are a variety of non-legislative tools and solutions that could be used to do that. Don't have all the answers for that right now but we think that is certainly the direction we should be going and that's the direction that the next National Government will take it.Third point is about the ability for KiwiRail to access the National Land Transport Fund and this is the core objection that the National Party has to this bill. What this will mean is that road users who pay road-user charges and petrol tax to fund the roads that they use will end up funding rail. And we do not believe that is appropriate. And as the AA and other submitters put it this disrupts the social licence that's existed around road funding. And actually it was Annette King a former Labour Minister of Transport who set up the clear hypothecation that the money that road users pay through petrol tax and road-user charges goes into the National Land Transport Fund and that's spent on roads. Now is it true that some of those funds are spent on other things? Yes of course. But they're spent on those things for the benefit of road users.So there is funding from the National Land Transport Fund that funds the operating subsidies and some capital improvements for metro rail and of course the justification and the rationale for that is a good one which is that if you improve the stations and you operate good railway lines people will jump on the train rather than use their car. So of course that benefits road users for the reasons I mentioned at the start of my speech. But this fundamental change that truck drivers and trucking companies will pay more to cross-subsidise their competitors is wrong and we don't believe it's appropriate and that's our core objection to the bill. I just want to repeat that. Trucking companies will end up paying road-user charges and fuel tax to cross-subsidise their competitors to cross-subsidise rail. And that's not right.The fourth point is that we believe this will lead to the opening of uneconomic lines wealth-destructive lines and I'll just point you—Hon Member: It's already happened: Northland.CHRIS BISHOP: Well that's a classic example of it—99 percent of freight in Northland Mr Eagle travels by road as Matt King I'm sure will point out to the House. And why is that? The reason it travels by road is because it's fundamentally more economic to transport those goods by road. And my point Dr Webb is that if the people who transport goods around Northland want a rail service they will be prepared to pay KiwiRail through the charges that KiwiRail charges to open those lines. That's the whole point of the economics of the system.And so I just point you in closing to the example of the Napier to Wairoa line and this was opened by the Government through the Provincial Growth Fund—$6 million to restore that line and everyone said "Oh there'll be two trains a week going down that line." Guess how many trains have gone down the line since they opened it! One—$6 million and one train's been down the line. Is that a good use of taxpayer money? I don't think so and that's exactly what will end up happening. We'll end up opening uneconomic railway lines because we have a nostalgic view that rail is the answer. It is the answer in some respects but often it isn't. Thanks very much."