Blue Jackie: Road User Charges Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Blue Jackie: Road User Charges Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 14 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:368. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I am pleased to be speaking to the third reading of the Road User Charges Bill. I sat on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee in the last term of Parliament and what a good committee it was chaired by David Bennett and continuing to be chaired by David Bennett. We heard many submissions on this bill. I would like to congratulate Steven Joyce the previous Minister of Transport. I think he made a significant contribution in the transport area and certainly he has made safer journeys for New Zealanders over his term. I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the officials and submitters on this bill and to wish the new committee which I am no longer on well on its future deliberations and business in the future.  
This bill has been amended to ensure that it is enduring because quite frankly the current system is outdated. It is really last century and it was well and truly overdue for an overhaul. This bill will modernise the road-user charges system. It will reduce compliance costs for operators eliminate the scope for error and fraud in the purchase of road-user charges licences and simplify enforcement and administration requirements. It is very important. We must have a fair system a balanced system and a well-managed system. This is what this law will do. The road-user charges—or RUC—system was established in 1978. It is a long time ago and this review is very timely. All the revenue from the road-user charges system goes to the National Land Transport Fund and the fund is used mainly for road construction and maintenance along with other activities benefiting road users.  
 The bill is a result of the recommendations of the  
Independent Review of the New Zealand Road User Charging System 
 and it brings about the most significant reform of road-user charges since it was introduced—it is a very significant reform. Diesel vehicles are very popular in New Zealand—diesel is cheaper than petrol—and more economical to run. Fuel consumption tests generally give results between 20 percent and 30 percent better for a diesel-engine car compared with the same model with a petrol engine. But also you have got to know that up to 36 percent of diesel is used off-road such as on farms; in manufacturing industrial and commercial ventures; and on boats.  
But back to this bill. This bill is about bringing the road-user charges system into the 21st century from 1978 to 2012. This bill addresses the concern about road-user charges evasion which is conservatively estimated to be $30 million per year which is not an insignificant sum. This bill will remove the evasion opportunities and encourage timely payment making a fairer system for all.  
The main provisions of the bill are first of all a change in the definition of vehicle weight. Currently road-user charges are based on the distance travelled and the weight carried. The system is complicated and it has been open to error. An operator has to guess the actual gross weight to be carried and it can be difficult for an operator to predict in advance the actual weight to be carried. It is also very difficult of course to recover the charges owing after the fact. The bill changes the definition of vehicle weight to a fixed road-user charge so that operators do not have to guess in advance and so that Government authorities do not have to deal with recovering money afterwards. Inevitably this will result in lower administrative costs for the industry and the Government and of course it will mean that fewer road-user charges are lost through evasion so it is a win-win.  
There are a number of other provisions. Others are removal of a time licence system and modernisation of the list of vehicles exempted from road-user charges. There is also an improvement to the regulatory framework for electronic management systems and this really shows how far we have come from 1978 through to 2012. Really back in 1977 when the Road User Charges Act came into power we did not have electronic systems and we did not have the internet. None of this would have been dreamt of all that time ago. So really we have brought the system into the 21st century and it means much more efficiency and much more fairness. It means that road-user charges can be purchased electronically and that a distance licence can be displayed electronically on an on-board unit situated in the vehicle. And of course the distance travelled by the vehicle is measured electronically. It is all done electronically something which no one and certainly not our parents would have thought of back in 1977. Quite frankly the Road User Charges Bill of 1977 never would have dreamt of such a possibility that in 2012 we would be going to such a modern system.  
Another provision in the bill is that it is a fairer simpler and less costly structure in relation to offences—penalties—particularly for light vehicles. I cannot emphasise the fact that really a fixed road-user charges weight means that the distance-based evasion will be the main focus of compliance management and will obviously save money and save time.  
Really this bill I cannot stress enough is about bringing road-user charges into the 21st century. It is about reducing compliance costs for transport operators and ultimately reducing transport costs for our businesses and exporters. These changes will make it easier and fairer to all those who pay road-user charges and that has to be good. Changing the definition of licence weights removing the confusing time licence system and simplifying the list of exempted vehicles will all reduce compliance costs for businesses simplify the administrative processes for industry and Government and save a lot of time and frustration and confusion at times. The New Zealand Transport Agency will also be able to take greater advantage of modern internet technology in administering road-user charges payment channels.  
This bill addresses concerns about the evasion which I mentioned before which has been estimated to be up to $30 million a year which is a very big sum of money and that will be addressed in this bill with the different provisions that we have talked about. Really people who are using road-user charges honestly have been subsidising people who have been evading the system and who have not been paying their road-user charges as they should be. This bill will remove a number of evasion opportunities encourage timely payment and make the system fairer for all. I commend this bill to the House.