Genter Julie Anne; Brown SimeonHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Since the Minister referred to it I did want to take a call to speak to my proposed tabled amendment and the reason for it. So the reason why I've tabled an amendment suggesting that they phase out the Clean Car Discount at 2030 instead of now or some years in the future is because we know that as the Minister has often stated himself over time the vehicle manufacturers are moving to produce entirely zero-emissions vehicles. So there's just this gap now between now and when that happens where we need to take steps to address price parity and that's the purpose of a policy like this. It's not meant to last for ever; it's meant to last as a transition to shift the vehicles being offered and also to shift the demand profile from you know businesses and New Zealanders so that we shift the average tailpipe emissions to be lower than what they would otherwise be. That's the point of Government intervention at this point. Every vehicle purchased between now and 2030 is going to lock in 20 years at least of emissions. If we can influence the market so that we're selling lower-emissions vehicles here in New Zealand we're bringing in we're importing more low- and zero-emissions vehicles. That means that we'll have reduced emissions over a long period of time and as the Hon Megan Woods was just saying of course that has a positive economic benefit for New Zealanders because they're spending less money on fuel. So at the same time that we're reducing carbon emissions we have an added benefit of spending less money on imported petrol and diesel and that's a direct productivity gain; it actually helps us with our current account deficit. I don't know if the Minister is aware—but he might be interested to know especially with his portfolios—that currently our imports of vehicles and fuel to run them exceed the value of our exports in dairy. So all of our dairy exports are not even covering the cost of the cars that we need to use and the fuel that we need to use to use our transport system. So there's a huge opportunity there to reduce our current account deficit. Obviously lots of people are going to continue carrying on driving their petrol and diesel vehicles and that's fine. But this policy the purpose of it is to make it easier for more New Zealanders to access low-emissions and zero-emissions vehicles and that has economic benefits for us it has environmental benefits. It's really a win-win policy and if the Minister and the Government were to accept my amendment it would mean that the policy would continue for that period of time that we're waiting for the global market to completely transition to zero-emissions vehicles. I would also note that the reason vehicle manufacturers are moving in this direction is because most other countries have policies like clean car standards and clean car discounts or other price incentives at the point of sale that are deliberately targeted at reducing emissions from the vehicle fleet. And we know that relying on fuel being in the emissions trading scheme (ETS) will not work to that end. It does not work. It will not work. That's why fuel is not in the ETS in Europe and I would be totally fine with fuel being taken out of the ETS here if it meant we could have a policy that was more effective like the Clean Car Discount. But of course European countries largely have much higher fuel taxes than we do and maybe that would help the Government close the gap in its infrastructure spend because it's promised a huge infrastructure spend with no revenue really to pay for it. I think they're going to be very unhappy when they realise how much costs have inflated compared to the prices that they put in their manifesto for those so-called roads of national significance" which are really roads of private greenfields-developer significance particularly in the Auckland region.But seriously Minister seriously—he says the market's going in this direction and we're going to be mainly offered zero-emissions vehicles hopefully by 2030. How do we close the gap between now and 2030? The Minister's only referred to meeting our emissions budgets to 2025 not beyond 2025. Obviously there will be penalties and fiscal risk for New Zealand if we aren't on track to meet our emissions reduction commitments by 2030 beyond 2025.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Transport): Some further questions have been raised by members. I note that the Hon Megan Woods asked whether I'd received further advice on the label. No I had not asked for further advice on the label but I'm glad we can now read it. It's good to see that it's big enough to read.The other question was in regards to other jurisdictions and I just would like to note that the New South Wales Labour Government is ending subsidies for electric vehicles (EVs) on the same date that we will be ending subsidies on EVs.I note the Hon Julie Anne Genter continues to ask questions about her tabled amendment. I've already said we don't support it."