Gosche Mark: Public Transport Management Bill — First Reading 
Gosche Mark: Public Transport Management Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:12367] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 We are very pleased to have the support of National for this Public Transport Management Bill. It is the norm now for it to do “me too” and support the things it knows people want. Just about all the politicians who stood for the local body elections whether they were from the right or from the left said they supported public transport because they knew that ordinary New Zealanders want public transport. Any of those dumb enough to stand up in a local body election and say they are opposed to it knew they would be history. The National Party is also looking ahead to the elections next year saying that it better not show its true colours and say what it thinks which is that it opposes public transport. The member who just sat down was describing legislation that basically exists today which is the system he wants. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: What a load of rubbish! 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Why is he not voting against this bill then? As he said basically people could set up a bus route. That is why we have the problems we are trying to resolve with this bill. 
Also it is interesting to note these figures. This Government is expecting to spend about $506 million in the 2007-08 year on public transport. Compared with 1999 that is 10 times more. If we went back to 1998 we would find that it was the same as I think it was in 1997 and 1996 because I think that the member who has just sat down froze the funding for 5 years. He froze it and wondered why public transport ground to a halt in Auckland City. 
It does not matter for those who use a car or a limousine. They do not worry about the buses and the trains. That is why that member does not know that there are bus services from his electorate over to Middlemore. He does not know because he has not been on a bus apart from the odd freebie he gets invited to when a bus service is launched and people are taken from Britomart to the hotel for a drink. He has never been on a bus like an ordinary punter. He was so worried about his electorate boundaries because he might have to represent some working-class people and he is now a man greatly relieved that he does not have to do that. 
If the member looked out the window of his electorate office he would see big sort of maroon-coloured things going past. They are bigger than cars; they are called buses. From Howick past Pakuranga they go every day—heaps of them. The problem you see is that we want them to be going all day not just at the most convenient times for the operator which is one of the problems with the current legislation. 
I will get serious now and just read what the problems are. Under the current legislation the public transport operator can register and deregister services which may be a single trip at any one time of the day and not necessarily a complete timetable for a route. If people rely on public transport like a growing number of New Zealanders do—rich and poor—because of its convenience in congested cities they want to be able to get on the bus in the morning go to work and know that there is a bus going back at the end of the day. If they have to finish work in the middle of the day in the off-peak times then they might also want to get that bus back home again. 
We are trying to give decent planning for the operators and the regional councils so they can guarantee the public a system that can be relied on and not one that is just cherry-picked so that an operator can say: “I will do a bus in the morning from Howick into the city when there are lots of people wanting to go to work. I will not bother about anybody in the middle of the day. They can find their own way and if they do not have a car that is tough.” People cannot catch a train as Mr Williamson knows because there are no railway lines out to Howick. So buses are important. 
People also want to know that they might catch that bus in the morning and get home on the ferry because there is a very good ferry service that goes out to Maurice Williamson’s electorate. They may decide that they want to be able to do that with the same ticket. Can they do that right now? No. So there is not the ease of use that many international cities with good public transport systems can offer. 
Unfortunately the operators have not all put their hands up and said that they will sign up to an integrated system that says people can get on the bus on the North Shore get down to the ferry in Devonport get on that ferry and go across to Auckland City go across the road to Britomart and get on a train and go to where they might work in points further south with all trips using the same ticket. I think that many New Zealanders—and many Aucklanders in particular—would like to have an integrated ticketing system. The legislation we are putting in place will allow that to happen. Many efforts have been made by the regional council and some operators to have this done under the current legislation and I am sorry but the legislation fails to deliver the powers to make that happen. 
We have also seen commercial routes suddenly become non-commercial routes in the blink of an eye. In one case in Auckland—I think many many people were aware of it and the Auckland Regional Council was astounded by it—an operator just said it was stopping. Suddenly the council had to come up with $5 million to keep those routes going and that was not budgeted for. No ratepayers want to have their regional council put in that situation because the law is deficient. That is another good reason why the National Party will be supporting this legislation when it goes through the select committee and comes back to this House. 
This bill is good legislation. It gives powers to the regional council to put in place plans to work with the responsible operators to service those routes those destinations those times of the day and all those sorts of things that are important if we want a world-class public transport system. I think that the operators will welcome this legislation despite the fact that they may have concerns about some of it. 
For instance I know operators are a little concerned about the grouping of services but when I look at the logic for it I am not quite sure why they would be nervous about that. What we do want is obviously for the public to know that when they get on a bus in the morning there are pretty good services running at peak time lesser services in the off-peak time and then better services again at the end of day when the peak is going the other way. We want to make sure that the operators and the regional authorities which are responsible for these plans can draft sensible groupings of services so that that continuity is there. That is what keeps people using public transport. 
If there is one thing that turns people off it is unreliability a lack of standards and a lack of knowing that the service deemed suitable for them to get to and from their work or study will be there for the rest of the year. So people make those conscious decisions. 
The other thing I would point out—because I think it is quite important—is that quality and safety are important. We want regional councils to be able to put reasonable demands on operators to provide that. We have had arguments for years and years about disability and access to public transport. All sorts of excuses have been made for years and years as to why nothing could be done. People said that it was too expensive and too difficult and that they could not access the types of vehicles to make it possible. It was just about simple things like being able to have a loudspeaker going so that people can hear about services if they cannot read a sign that tells them that information. 
Lots of people in our communities are visually impaired or have hearing loss or some sort of physical disability and they are absolutely reliant on public transport because they cannot drive. They just do not have the ability to drive so putting into place some decent services for those people will be life-changing for them because reliance on particularly mobility taxis in a city like Auckland is just appalling. Why? Because they are mostly booked in the morning to take the kids to school and are mostly booked in the afternoon to bring them home so people with disabilities are very reliant on trains and buses. They also want to be able to use those disability taxis in the morning and in the afternoon and from my experience there are just not enough of those sorts of vehicles around to actually make that happen. 
So I applaud this bill. I do look forward like Maurice Williamson to hearing the various arguments. We must make sure we tease out any difficulties or technicalities in the bill that might get in the way of a good operation from the perspective of both the operators and regional government because if we go too far in one direction then the operators will say they are out of here and they will not invest. But if we go too far in the other direction then ratepayers will have to fork out far too much money in subsidies. That is the sort of balance we will be looking for.