Wong Pansy: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Wong Pansy: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:648;Page:17205] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 I just want to remind the public that today we are actually debating the Labour-led Government bill the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. I thought the public might be very confused after that 10-minute speech. The Hon Mark Gosche sounded like he is practising to be an Opposition member. He treated my colleague the Hon Maurice Williamson as if he were the Minister responsible for the bill. Here he is attacking Maurice Williamson as if it were his legislation. None of the Labour members seem to be proud of the bill because Mark Gosche could not seem to find much to say about Labour’s own legislation but spent his whole 10 minutes attacking Maurice Williamson. 
I would change tack and say that we should come back to debating the third reading of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. The reason the National Party is voting against the bill is that we support only one initiative in it which is to make sure that all the tax collected through the fuel tax will be put towards transport but I am afraid that we could not find any good reasons to support the rest of the legislation. We find even fewer reasons to support it because right at the beginning as the Hon Mark Gosche correctly pointed out regional councils city councils and everybody rushed to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to support the bill because they thought they would get additional funding. They thought the Labour Government was courageously promising them that they could go out and start consultation and start to put in a 5c or a 10c tax and then they could build their roads—[ 
Interruption 
] Well what happened? Everybody rushed to the various centres to make their submissions. We travelled to Christchurch and to Auckland to listen to very earnest submitters who really believed that if they put in the hard yards they would get a reward on the passage of this bill. But before we even reported back to the House the Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark unilaterally made the announcement that it was all off. Petrol prices are too expensive so it was a no go. So I tell the Hon Mark Gosche that I am afraid the Rodney District Council project no matter what the council has been promised by the Labour Government will not happen. There ain’t going to be a regional petrol tax. What happened to the courage the vision etc. that was announced by the Hon Mark Gosche? 
I want to bring something into the debate because it was suddenly brought into this legislation on Tuesday. When we thought we were going to do the Committee stage of the bill the Minister of Finance suddenly tabled an urgent Supplementary Order Paper apparently on the theory of tempting the Toll Holdings shareholders to buy back the rail now we know that the cost is going up every day. By the way the Prime Minister was not too sure what the cost was. She thought it was an additional $80 million to upgrade and $300 million over 5 years. But the Minister of Finance said that it was actually $80 million over 5 years. It just shows amazingly that the Labour Government members do not seem to go into any detail and the Prime Minister does not know the costs when it comes to the use of a huge amount of taxpayers’ money. When schools apply for a little bit of funding for upgrading their sewerage or for maintenance the Labour Government makes them go through all sorts of reports to justify the $5000 or the $10000 but boy oh boy when Labour members spend $1 billion of taxpayers’ money they do not seem to do the sums. 
That Supplementary Order Paper demonstrates that the Labour Party which always proclaims it is the workers’ party actually forgot about its workers. The Government brought in a Supplementary Order Paper to ensure that the staff transferring from Toll to KiwiRail will have their superannuation contributions recognised by the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. That was quite a revelation for a party that proclaims itself to be on the side of workers. I wonder what happened to the union delegate—did he or she forget to remind the Labour Party? 
It is quite ironic that we are standing in this House today debating the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill while at the same time we have angry truckies out there because the Minister of Transport the Hon Annette King told them that they are the ones who have not paid their way and they are the ones doing all the damage to the roads. She has increased the road-user charge despite the fact that last year there was quite a clear undertaking from what we can gather from question time that the truckies were entitled to 1 month’s notice. Well the trucking companies—the owners the staff etc.—go out every day and earn their money by working long hours. They cannot afford a sudden increase in road charges by a Labour Government seeking more taxpayers’ money. Those people have to earn their money and they cannot rearrange their lives just like that with 24 hours’ notice. Tomorrow the truckies are going to drive to the main cities and demonstrate their anger by protesting so I warn all workers to make sure that their travel arrangements for tomorrow are made smartly otherwise they will get caught in gridlock. I am not sure how the passage of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill will resolve this type of issue where the Government simply increases charges at a drop of a hat while hard-working New Zealanders are already finding the cost of living and the cost of fuel beyond their reach. 
Even Local Government New Zealand is not very happy with this legislation. First of all it strongly preferred a partnership approach rather than a top-down approach. The Minister of Transport says that she and the officials will issue a 3-year Government policy statement to coincide with the timing of transport and local government planning which is fair enough. I think the time-line is fine but how about the process of arriving at that Government policy statement? In its submission Local Government New Zealand felt very strongly that if the Government simply goes out and tells it that national priorities rather than regional priorities will make their way into that Government policy statement what is the point? That means it is a top-down approach rather than a partnership approach and it does not take Local Government New Zealand’s point of view. 
Of course we also have district councils outside the main centres that say that that idea is an inflexible top-down approach because some of those councils need all the money to go towards roading—they do not have public transport. Yet they will have no choice. They will almost have to dream up projects—cycleways on farm roads etc.—in order to utilise part of their regional petrol tax funds. 
If this bill is serious about improving transport management it should take into account local situations and give the flexibility for people to put in their priorities. Of course I am not too sure that one super-bureaucracy is necessarily better than three in light of the fact that 10 years ago the Hon Maurice Williamson was being got at every day about the terrible super-bureaucracy that failed to take into account local concerns. We are not sure that this bill is the right way to go.