Williams Arena; Brown SimeonARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you Madam Chair—Hon Rachel Brooking: Aw!ARENA WILLIAMS: —for the opportunity to take a quick call. I understand that the Hon Rachel Brooking is upset but she will I'm sure have an opportunity to take her call.I need to bring us back to a few things that the Minister of Transport said in his contribution a couple of calls ago when he spoke about the Government's policy and some of the amendments being inconsistent with Government policy. This is the first time that the Minister offered us a view of what Government policy is for his proposed amendments which has been at issue all morning as we have made the case that he is amending the wrong Act here and that his Government policy is inconsistent with the purpose of the Land Transport Act—particularly section 170 which sets out a purpose for reducing carbon dioxide emissions over the transport fleet.So when the Minister stood and he said that my amendment to new section 167BA to replace for the purpose of prescribing or providing for the fixing of" with "for the purpose of reducing" is inconsistent with Government policy that is absolutely worthy of this committee's attention. This is the first time that we have heard from the Minister that it is not his policy intent that it is not Government policy to use the clean vehicle standard to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. That is something that we really should have been able to consider at select committee. If the clean vehicle standard which was introduced by the prior Government with very broad support around this House is now not to be used to reduce carbon emissions over the vehicle fleet is not to be used to contribute to New Zealand's international climate change obligations then that is something we really need to understand. I hope the Minister will be able to clarify what he meant when he said that it is not the Government's policy intent to use it for the purpose of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.I will be fair to him: I think that what he might have been trying to advance there was that it might be restrictive in some way to specify that the purpose of it is to reduce the carbon dioxide across the fleet. But really the question here becomes: should there be a split purpose to also prescribe to provide fix and to reduce or should we be clear that it is to reduce? In which case that I guess would be a further commitment to the ratchet provisions in the secondary legislation that exists.It's not an answer to the question for the Minister to stand and say that these are empowering provisions to create further regulatory mechanisms when we know—and from the comments of the Minister in this debate we understand—that he's already given some thought to what those regulatory standards will be when he provides himself the power to set them. He's already considered what they will be. So he needs to be able to give us an assurance because this is the only time that the House will be able to have a debate on what he sets the standards to be.He needs to provide us an assurance that it is the Government's intent to continue to reduce carbon dioxide emissions across the vehicle fleet. We might disagree on how fast that needs to be. We might disagree on ratchet provisions which give the industry certainty. It's certainly our position on this side of the Chamber that giving the industry certainty in each year is the most important thing Government could do—almost regardless of how fast you go that providing the car industry with certainty would be the most important consideration. So if it's not his intent to provide that reduction over time in his regulations he needs to clarify that for us right now.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Transport): Thank you Madam Chair and for the questions. There's been a number of questions. I guess the Hon David Parker is asking questions in relation to the issue which was around who should be administering the standard. Ultimately I've already answered those questions in prior debates in relation to the fact that the previous Government ensured that it would go through the land under the Land Transport Act. That is the Act that the last Government put these provisions within which means that it is managed by the transport agencies. So we're not intending to change that. We think that they are the appropriate agencies as they've already set up the system. There is already a Clean Car Standard system in place. This is simply just enabling cost recovery for that system.In terms of the other questions many of those questions in relation to what the standard should be are quite separate from the debate in this clause which is in relation to a cost recovery for administering it. That is quite simply what this particular clause is doing: cost recovery for the administration of the standard. There is a known amount of money that it costs to administer the standard and this empowers regulations to be made to recover those costs. This doesn't deal with the emissions standards or any of those particular elements; this is simply about making sure there's a cost recovery in place."