Wong Pansy: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Wong Pansy: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:648;Page:16985] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 I have not heard another member manage to confuse so many of us in such a short speech. For a start she challenged the next speaker which is me Pansy Wong to talk about climate change. I thought let me have another look at the Order Paper. We are actually debating the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill—right? I was really confused; she wants me to take a call on climate change? I thought wow she might like to join our Transport and Industrial Relations Committee because she might learn a few more things in order to clear up some confusion. I wish that the next Labour member to take a call would speak to the statement made by Moana Mackey that the Labour Government embraces private and public partnership in building roads. I would like Labour members to name just one instance where that has happened in the last 8 years—just one not two; we need only one. Well I bet there are none. 
The other thing that has me even more confused is that every week in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee when we consider another bill like the Public Transport Management Bill the Labour members keep complaining about the lack of usage of our public transport and about how we have to do more. But just now Moana Mackey told the House that Labour is very happy that the usage of public transport has gone up and up in the last 8 years. So why is it that half of the Labour members complain about the lack of usage of public transport while the other half keep saying how much it is going up? I am looking forward to the next Labour member taking a call to clarify some of those statements. 
Another statement that I thought quite interesting was that the member said New Zealanders were really happy that the Minister of Finance had spent almost $1 billion on buying back the train system. Actually I want to tell that member that Australians are even happier than New Zealanders about that. They actually described New Zealanders particularly Michael Cullen as having a “Helen moment”—whatever that means! After negotiating a so-called sale price the Government suddenly discovered that it might have had a liability there that it had not taken account of. 
During the select committee process on the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill we travelled to Christchurch and we travelled to Auckland. We met during the adjournment and we listened to submissions during House sitting hours after question time which meant there was a real sense of urgency to push the passage of this bill. Our chairman the Hon Mark Gosche kept impressing on us the importance of rushing the passing of this bill and I now have a lot of sympathy for a lot of the submitters who travelled to all sorts of places—Invercargill to Christchurch etc.—to help rush through this bill. They thought that the Labour Government was being courageous and bold when it announced that its policy and measures such as a regional fuel tax would be implemented as soon as the bill was passed. They thought that the Government would have the conviction to carry that through. 
We have just learned from the Minister of Transport though that she is going to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper. She will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper but I believe that she has also been taken by surprise. I remember that one day while we were in the process of rushing through this bill the intelligent and effective member my colleague the Hon Maurice Williamson came to the select committee and asked whether anyone had heard that the Prime Minister had already gone out and made an announcement saying that she would not let New Zealanders suffer from another petrol price hike. Well I have bad news for the Prime Minister too. Another of her Ministers the Hon Maryan Street announced just prior to Christmas that the accident compensation levy on petrol would go up by 2c on 1 July. I am afraid that the price of petrol is on the rise; accident compensation seems to be a black hole in terms of cost escalation there. So it was to our surprise that while we were rushing the passage of this bill the Prime Minister unilaterally made an announcement saying we could forget it; the regional fuel tax would not be introduced until New Zealanders found it affordable. Looking at the forecasts for the price of a barrel of oil I am not too sure for whom and when it will become realistically affordable. But it was very disappointing for those of us who had put so much time and effort into the bill—in the spirit of cooperation even though we will not be supporting it—to see all that rushing come to a standstill. 
The other issue I will raise is that this Labour Government does seem to like to tinker with structures. For some reason Labour believes that fixing structures or dismantling structures will somehow achieve a policy objective. So here we are debating this Land Transport Management Amendment Bill and looking at the coming together—the integration the merger—of Land Transport New Zealand the office of the Director of Land Transport and Transit New Zealand into a single strategic Crown entity to oversee policy funding etc. It was quite interesting when the Hon Maurice Williamson started to find it necessary to question all of the submitters who came before the select committee because they were the same people who had complained to him years ago asking why the Government had one single entity with the priority of being the essential body overriding local authorities. People felt that local projects were being given low priority. They badgered him and eventually he yielded to their wisdom and agreed to the disintegration of that structure only to find it is being put together again 9 years later. 
I get a bit cynical because the Labour Government also has a ploy a plan and it keeps changing its Minister as well. Therefore if anybody brings up a query they will say: “Oh well that was the previous Minister.” So I am very cynical about this move which means that in future whenever there is something wrong people will say: “Well that was the previous Land Transport Authority.” or “That was the Office of the Director of Land Transport.” rather than say: “Well that’s where the buck stops.” I can demonstrate with Immigration New Zealand which is in big trouble at the moment. We have the Hon Clayton Cosgrove who has just taken over from the Hon David Cunliffe who took over from the Hon Lianne Dalziel and before her was the Hon Paul Swain. That is why we have lost track of who can actually be held accountable and I wonder whether the same ploy is now being used on this structural change. So I am afraid even though we like some parts of this bill we will find it hard to support it.