Williamson Maurice: Transport Legislation Bill — Second Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Transport Legislation Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:621;Page:16733] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 If ever this House wanted to hear from a Minister a speech that contained raw passion if ever this House wanted to hear a speech from a Minister who was committed to his portfolio if ever members of this House wanted to be riveted to their seats by a staggeringly focused speech that speech was not it. That was the dullest defence of any legislation before this House that I have heard from a Minister who is clearly bored with his portfolio. 
The National Party is very sad about this legislation because we could have been happy to support the vast bulk of it. It was a review of the transport organisations and a review was required. We still support some of what has been done on this bill even though we will be voting against the legislation. I will come to the specific reason that we will vote against it at the end of my speech but I will start with some of the good bits. I think the first really really good bit is that it takes the policy advice functions away from the Land Transport Safety Authority and moves them back into the Ministry of Transport where the Minister has some—and I will not be so bold as to say a lot—of say over the way the ministry functions. From my experience as Minister the Minister had almost no control over the Land Transport Safety Authority. It was a law unto itself and did what it wished. That is a good move and I think we should give the Government a tick in that column. Moving policy staff back to the ministry where they will have to work hand in glove with the Minister about what is going on is a good move. 
The second move obviously is to take Transfund—which I am very proud to take the credit for setting up—split it away from Transit and move it into the combined organisation called Land Transport New Zealand which is a combination of the Land Transport Safety Authority and Transfund. There is some merit to that as well. We do not need two boards two bureaucracies two chief executives and so on if there will be just an operational unit which is what Land Transport New Zealand will be. Again the National Party is happy that those two bodies have been merged. We were nervous that Transfund’s focus on what its job was would be muddied by this but it has not been. It is a good move. We will see Land Transport New Zealand become far more focused on land transport outcomes. It is a move that we support. 
Some of the legislation I have to say is a little bit silly. We have got to the point of renaming the Maritime Safety Authority. The debate that went on in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about different acronyms had to be seen to be believed. I will not even give some of them because they ended up being so rude when all the letters were put together. Well Mark Peck screws up his face but I will tell him later what some of the words turn out as if one takes the words “maritime” “safety” “authority” and a few others. However I will not put them in because I will be tempted to give what the words were. But no we have come to the momentous decision—and this is something that New Zealanders have been lying in their beds at night worried about—that the Maritime Safety Authority’s new name will be Maritime New Zealand. It will rip a whole part of our society’s fabric to pieces because of that renaming. 
What I was interested in and was really looking forward to was the Labour Party’s promise from the 1990s that it would repeal the Maritime Transport Act. I was looking to see Mark Peck and the submarine Plimsoll line brigade who waged war in this House for months about the disgraceful Maritime Transport Bill. They said that when they became the Government of New Zealand they would repeal it overnight. It would be gone not by lunchtime but before breakfast. It was that dreadful Maritime Transport Bill. Where are we? Have we passed Labour’s 5-year anniversary? No it is coming up to the 5-year anniversary of the Labour Government and there has been not a mutter not a murmur and not a sausage has changed from that legislation. Labour members said that it was—and many people can check  
Hansard 
 if they want to look at it—the most obnoxious disgraceful and evil legislation in maritime transport history. I looked with great passion at this Transport Legislation Bill and thought: “Well obviously my good work in the mid-1990s in terms of the Maritime Transport Bill will go for a burton once the Labour Party gets its hands on it.” and 5 years later those members have not touched it. 
The reason the National Party is opposing this bill can be seen in our minority report in the commentary on the bill. I will read from it so that those thousands of listeners out there in drive time can hear the reason. “This legislation removes the wording ‘a cost is a reasonable cost where the value of the cost to the nation is exceeded by the value of the resulting benefit to the nation’ from all civil aviation maritime and land transport legislation.” That is what has always been known in the vernacular as “safety at reasonable cost”. Why would one be opposed to that? Why on earth would one not want that to be the talisman touchstone of the legislation? Some lunatic Minister in the future maybe from the Greens or whoever could decide that: “I know what I’m going to do. I don’t care what it costs the nation. I don’t care how much the cost is and there are almost no benefits. I’ve decided that we’re going to move logs by pushbike in this country.” and that is what that Minister could go ahead and do. Members of the Labour Government laugh but we must have no doubt about it. If the Greens get some control in a joint Labour Cabinet that is exactly how logs will be transported—over the Kaimais on pushbike. 
But the Government could have kept what was as I say the touchstone of all transport legislation. People appeared before the select committee like Tony Friedlander from the Road Transport Forum who was quite complimentary. He said that he thought the legislation was OK but he asked why on earth we were removing the criteria for safety at reasonable cost. It is just a barrier; it stops ludicrous behaviour. So when a Minister wants to do something new in the transport sector he or she has to sit down and do the numbers. The Minister will say that: “The cost of doing this is X million dollars and the benefits to the nation are Y million dollars and as long as Y is bigger than X—that is the benefits are greater than the cost—let’s go to it.” But if one does the currents under this legislation if it goes through one can see that where the cost will be X million dollars and the benefits might be zero the Minister can still allow it to proceed. 
National’s minority report further states: “New Zealand National has serious concerns that the safety at reasonable cost concept has been significantly diluted. The new and undefined concept of ‘sustainability’ …”—and I will repeat that; it is “undefined”. We hear so many speeches from the Labour members about sustainability of transport and it is a wonderful word and it is a beautiful and warm warm word. Many of us spend our weekends with sustainability on our mind but it does not provide any definition and it does not provide the longstanding economic discipline that was enforced through the safety at reasonable cost provision. 
Finally if this House wants one better reason to vote against this legislation I refer members to clause 30 which inserts new subsection (4A) of section 15. Members should listen to this as it is a blinder. Subsection (4A) states: “When preparing a land transport programme under section 12A the Authority must—(a) consult—” and I will go through it. For members of the Labour Party who do not even know how to spell land transport programme it is to do with what roading and other transport initiatives will be conducted that year. The Land Transport Authority must consult “(i) Transit; and (ii) every affected regional council; and (iii) every affected territorial authority; and (iv) every affected approved organisation; and (v) the Ministry of Health; and (vi) the Accident Compensation Corporation; and (vii) the Commissioner; and (viii) the Secretary; and (ix) the Ministry of Justice; and”—it all sounds fine—“(x) land transport users and providers; and (xi) affected communities; and”— 
Mark Peck 
: Yes. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I am with Mr Peck so far. There are ticks all the way down. Then the next one is: “(xii) Maori; and (xiii) the public; …”. Well what does that mean? Does that mean that Maori are not members of the public? Does that mean that they are not represented by their territorial authorities and so on? This is the same Government that preached and screamed: “We do not have racist legislation on our books. We do not tolerate racist legislation. We do not want to target any group because of their race.” But in this legislation the Government is picking Maori out for special consultation on a road programme far far above any other member of the public.