Martin TraceyTRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First and my colleague Fletcher Tabuteau to contribute on the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. We would have to agree with our colleague from the Green Party Gareth Hughes: there is no innovation in this bill. While New Zealand First will be supporting this bill it is as close to next to nothing as you can do without doing nothing. What it does do is it combines three levies so that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority can improve supposedly the operation and administration of those levies. It does not provide any other transparency over the operation and administration of those levies and it does not change any of the rates of those levies. It merely allows them to join together into a larger pot. With regard to encouraging the uptake of electric vehicles by extending the road-user charges exemption to include heavy electric vehicles first of all let us be clear for the New Zealand public that there are currently 70 vehicles in the New Zealand public fleet. I think it is worthy to note Z Energy's submission to the Commerce Committee: Z notes that the proposed definition of an Electric Vehicle (EV) namely 'a motor vehicle with motive power wholly or partially derived from an external source of electricity' departs significantly from more traditional global definitions which typically refer to the vehicles propulsion system being electric rather than focussing on the primary source of the energy."—e.g. external source of electricity. This little change this diversion from what is the globally accepted definition will affect heavy electric vehicles—those that are self-creating or partially electric which is the Z Energy fleet it had submitted on—as it means that the opportunity of uptake for the delayed road-user charges is going to be minimal. So not only has the Government chosen to do very little with regard to innovation it has very very much limited the capacity of those currently inside the fleet to actually take any advantage of this lower road-user charge. If we look at the suggestion that the answer to incentivising New Zealanders to pick up electric vehicles is by allowing them to drive in a bus lane firstly let us be clear: the bill does not do that. The bill allows a local transport authority to decide whether people in an electric vehicle can use a bus lane and the Commerce Committee recognised—there was quite a major conversation on this—that it would be difficult to identify the type of vehicle. How would they identify an electric vehicle over a non-electric vehicle travelling in the bus lane? Before any local transport authority is going to allow an electric vehicle to travel in a bus lane—and Auckland has already said it is highly unlikely—it is going to have to install some sort of photography system so that it can check whether the people currently travelling or who would possibly use that access are actually electric vehicles. It is going to have to take photos of them and it is then going to have to go through the motor vehicle registration files to see whether they are actually electric vehicles or not.Can I just read that right now—actually it is not right now; it was in December 2016—Norway which has a population of 5.2 million people which is a million more than us at the moment hit 100000 electric vehicles on its roads. But it did it with several different ways of incentivising. If I can read from the submission by ChargeNet NZ: "The nation of Norway allowed Electric Vehicles into high occupancy vehicle lanes. This was part of a policy package that included significant tax breaks at point of purchase for new Electric Vehicles. Norwegian policy should be considered at a city level … a national level (where Electric Vehicles were seen as critical to meet the nations carbon reduction goals in a petroleum focused economy and a clear fiscal case was presented as part of this policy development that allowed the policy to be considered as part of an offset of Emission Trading Scheme costs) and a regional level (where European Union policy in regards to carbon and Norway's bilateral trade agreements with for example Germany … should be considered). It should also be noted that Norway is now politically struggling to phase out the high occupancy vehicle lane incentive which has become a congestion issue."So it is as close to nothing as this Government could get to incentivise the uptake of domestic electric vehicles. It will have to be phased out within a 5-year period. I note that there were amendments by the select committee. It suggested as the commentary on the bill states an amendment to the Road User Charges Act: "We also recommend inserting new subsection (2A) to provide that the initial RUC exemption would expire no later than 31 December 2025"—which is 8 years away—"and any subsequent exemption would last for no more than 5 years." So that is a total of 13 years away and yet if we look at the Government's own statistics we see that in May 2016 we had 1394 electric vehicles registered and in May 2017 we had 3576 electric vehicles registered. What this Government has put inside this bill supposedly to incentivise electric vehicles will need to be undone—if any local authority actually puts it in place in the first instance—because of downstream congestion. What might have been smarter—and I have got to say I am disappointed by the submissions by Z Energy and by other organisations in that they did not push harder for this Government to actually incentivise charging stations. Distance anxiety is one of the largest blockages to New Zealand citizens actually picking up and taking on board a second-hand electric vehicle. They worry that they will not be able to get to the next charging station before they run out of juice as such. But this Government went nowhere near that.Just imagine if every Z station in the North Island had a super-charging station inside it. Imagine the distance that you could get to. Right now Northland is fairly covered—and thank you Northpower which I forgot in my previous contribution. But if you go past the Brynderwyns and you keep on going and head south if you are trying to get from Auckland down to Tauranga you have got an enormous gap in there. You actually need to go to a caravan park book into a park there and see whether you can somehow run an extension cord. This Government had an opportunity. It would not have cost it money necessarily but it would have cost it some time to think about how it could have created a greater electric vehicle incentive plan for this country. That would have gone a long way to our commitment to the Paris Agreement and to our carbon-neutral footprint. This bill is an opportunity missed. We will support it because it does no harm. It amalgamates some levies and away we go. But let us be clear: there is no innovation inside this bill. There is no vision here and there is no aspiration. New Zealand First I think we are what 86 days away from having a Government that just might have some aspiration with regard to shifting the petrol-driven fleet the diesel-driven fleet that we currently have into something that is fit for purpose for the future. Kia ora."