Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you Mr Chair. I am finally taking another call in this debate. I've had 30 seconds as it goes because I was relying—for the benefit of the members of the committee—on Speaker's ruling 79/4 which encourages the Minister in the chair to engage in a back-and-forth debate. Speaker Tolley ruled that if you can keep your contributions focused five minutes is not a target. I made the most focused contribution when I asked the Minister Did the change that happened at select committee make this a better law?" And the Minister couldn't even say my name when he answered the question. It's almost like he's mad at me. Is that because he rocked into Cabinet and Cabinet told him "Oh well she foxed ya. Sorry. Wear it." Is that what happened to the Minister? Is that why he's annoyed and can't say my name? I'll give the Minister a go at saying my name.Now back to the questions for the Minister that we have in front of us. Following on from that question I would like the Minister to explain to the committee was it fair that plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) would pay both fuel excise tax and road-user charges (RUCs) and essentially be double taxed under the rate for PHEVs that he initially introduced to the House? That question is in the context of the fact that he's taken on board the change of the hard-working Opposition members who made sure that not only was a slip drafted by the Parliamentary Counsel Office that we had done the work on that the committee had had a good robust and cross-partisan discussion about the appropriate rate—and good on the Minister for taking that on board. But since he did take that on board is it then unfair what he initially introduced to the House?And my second question is what policy objectives did he consider when he introduced that first rate to the House? Was he concerned with all road users making a contribution in a way that represented the total cost to not only the roads but also to the transport fleet as a whole in New Zealand? Because in the points that my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking raised which have not yet been addressed by the Minister there is a greater cost to New Zealand of fuel vehicles and vehicle emissions than just the cost to the roads. There is also the cost of emissions and the cost of New Zealand not meeting its targets under the climate change legislation..My next question is about whether the Minister was concerned when he set that rate with fairness at all. Can the Minister comment on his considerations about fairness within the system when he set that original rate?I'd like to ask two different kinds of sets of questions as well given that I'm not going to rely again on that Speaker's ruling about two to tango. I want to understand this idea of choice in the context of 25000 users of PHEVs in the in the system already. So we've heard some contributions by heckling from the Government members that this is about user choice and that users will continue to buy PHEVs even under these settings. Whether or not you think that is true there are still thousands of users right now who already have these PHEVs. So this is essentially a change which would affect people who have already made decisions about what they can afford as a household for their household vehicle or what they can afford as a business in using the sorts of vehicles that use both electricity and fuel. These are people like ordinary taxi drivers and Uber drivers in South Auckland who have made the calculations about whether they can run a successful business on the time that they have and on the vehicle that they have. And my question to the Minister is: how does the change in rate affect them given that they already have these vehicles? And what will the change of the rate save PHEV owners per year?The next line of questions that I have for the Minister is: can he confirm that he has already asked Waka Kotahi and the Ministry of Transport to provide advice on the transition to universal RUC in June to him and when will Cabinet consider that advice on universal RUC this year? I ask that because I have made a number of amendments that I do wish to speak to around the purpose of this bill. This is something that Labour does support at this stage but what I need from the Minister is some assurance that work on universalising RUC is occurring now and that this is a transitional measure because it is important to recognise that in the context of universalising RUC for everyone this is a measure which extends it to EVs and PHEVS now but will be something that we get a second bite at. If this process which only gave submitters about 24 hours to submit to the committee is to be done again then that's a good thing and that is a baked-in reason for us to consider it again.And the need for that baked-in reconsideration of the rules around universalising RUC is something that my colleague the Hon Damien O'Connor has already asked the Minister and it has not been addressed. The importance of universalising RUC in our system is that all road users should pay their way to using roads. It should depend on the kind of damage that the cars are doing to the roads or indeed heavy vehicles. And so once this applies to everyone once there is a sort of baseline of the kind of damage that we do to our roads being something that is a user-pays system then we need other incentives to provide for cars which then don't emit the same amount into the atmosphere because if we're just pricing the damage to roads we're not pricing the damage to our environment and that is something which our transport plan already takes account of. This is already a policy consideration which Governments regularly use to decide the type of vehicles that are imported into the country and the type of incentives that we create around not only buyers for personal use but buyers for commercial use. And so we need to know that there is another bite at this and that Cabinet will reconsider these policy settings. And we haven't heard an answer from the Minister about that yet.I also want to speak to my amendments and I hope the Minister will consider some of these amendments. Speaking to those that I've proposed for Part 1 the reason that I've proposed some changes to clause 5(1 )—and I'll take the Minister to those changes; it's on page three about halfway down—is that the words here around "light electric RUC vehicle" and "very light electric RUC vehicle" may very well change That's why I've asked for some confirmation from the Minister of what was presented by officials very helpfully to the select committee that this work was ongoing. So we need to know whether these words around "light" and "very light" are still fit for purpose. Do we mean in fact that it's actually a plug-in hybrid electric RUC vehicle that is a RUC vehicle but that is also light so that we can come back and change that if it is required to be changed later? And we need to understand whether the definition of "very light vehicle" will still be relevant when these things are considered by Cabinet soon.So the other amendments that I've proposed in Part 1 include some amendments to clause 7. These are my questions that have not yet been answered but we would like some answers on before we get to the vote on this amendment which is about the types of considerations that are baked into the primary legislation about why you would set a RUC rate or a discounted RUC rate with a discount at all because it would be available to the Government to charge the full RUC rate but we recognise that there is some unfairness in doing that because there is a double taxation element. So the discount is appropriate.And then clause 7 inserts new subsection (2A) that clarifies why you would give a discount. But what is not included in the rationale for giving a discount is the other policy considerations that Governments already take into account when formulating a land transport plan and those are policy objectives around the kind of vehicle fleet that we want at all in New Zealand the kind of incentives that we create for vehicle owners to choose vehicles that do not emit the same level of emissions as previous vehicle fleets as old vehicles as old petrol-using vehicles and old diesel-using vehicles.So if we can be assured that Cabinet is going to look at this again maybe it doesn't need a change. But if they're not then it really does. It needs to include those policy objectives that this Government will be faced with as soon as it turns its mind and attention to its climate change commitments because the transport fleet is still one of New Zealand's largest contributors to our emissions and it will need to reduce its emissions somehow. So it will need to be clear in the primary legislation that those considerations are something relevant to take into account when setting a discounted RUC rate."