Street Maryan: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:13046. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak to the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill—Hon Annette King: Really?Hon MARYAN STREET: It does and I am probably the only member in the House who is absolutely delighted that this piece of legislation has finally come before the House under urgency. Let me explain because it is not immediately obvious why anybody would be so pleased that we would be debating tractors at quarter to midnight on a Wednesday. But I am personally delighted that this piece of legislation has finally seen the light of day. I happen to chair the Regulations Review Committee and people will know by the attached information that is available on this piece of legislation that this has now been the subject of two reports from the Regulations Review Committee. Why should it cause such fuss? Well let me try to encapsulate that as briefly as I can.Last year the Ministry of Transport brought in a regulation—regulation 8—to continue the existing exemption for farmers who operate light road-user charge vehicles for agricultural operations so light vehicles such as tractors with limited on-road use. This is the bit that is really interesting. The ministry decided to introduce this regulation “pending outstanding policy decisions on how best to manage” these exemptions. In other words the Government had not done it in the legislation. In the road-user charge legislation it had not done it. The ministry officials read the minds of Cabinet and said “We’re going to put in a regulation that says we’ll just roll this exemption over because it’s all going to come to an end on 30 June 2013 anyway.”I am sorry; officials do not have that power. They do not have that power. A regulation was made that was never brought to the Regulations Review Committee except afterwards. This regulation was made in anticipation of the policy position the Government was going to take. I am sorry; that is not how it works. The Government intends a policy position it states that position then it enacts it in legislation if it is a competent Government. But this Government is not so it left this bit out. It meant that these guys with these mainly off-road vehicles carried on paying a swathe of money—a swathe of money—in road-user charge contributions and the regulation was completely out of order. So my predecessor Charles Chauvel moved that it be disallowed.At 1 August 2012 when the Road User Charges Act came into force decisions on whether and how to implement an exemption for light road-user charge vehicles had not been made. The decision had not been made so the officials stepped into the gap andtried to fill it in. I am sorry but that is not the way it goes. So they just thought that they would roll over this existing exemption and it has used transitional regulations rather than saying “Minister you need to go back.” I understand that Minister Simon Bridges has introduced this tonight but it is in the name of Gerry Brownlee. Perhaps between them they could get half an idea right but at the moment all this is doing is correcting something that should have been done by 1 August 2012—1 August 2012. Here we are a year and several weeks late—a year and several weeks late.So what did they do? The officials put in a regulation. Charles Chauvel got up in the House with the agreement of the Regulations Review Committee three of whose members are National members. It is unconstitutionally in my view stacked because it has always been a bipartisan committee before now but it now has three National members and two Labour members.Anyway the three National members whose names are signed to this report agreed that it should be disallowed. So Charles Chauvel went ahead and moved the disallowance motion. Then the Minister did not allocate House time to debate the disallowance motion. Therefore the regulation was disallowed. In other words it was overturned. It ceased to exist. It went up in a puff of smoke. The reason however that the Minister Gerry Brownlee gave in front of the Regulations Review Committee doing the second report on this regulation was that he did not want to allocate House time to debating MrChauvel’s motion because he believed that given the infrequency of using the disallowance procedure it would not be a good precedent for the Government to use its majority to vote down a disallowance procedure. I am sorry; that is what it is for. If the Government does not want its regulations disallowed it should make some time get up in the House and say: “This shouldn’t be disallowed because we were the plonkers who put the inadequate legislation in to start with and we are too embarrassed to correct the legislation so we’re just going to let this go on.”What happened after the disallowance of the regulation? The Minister reinstated it. It was not any better the second time—it was not any better. So we have a complete litany of ineptitude—a complete litany of ineptitude. The Minister introduced it a second time with no improvement. He should have amended the legislation for goodness’ sake but did not. So I moved another disallowance motion because it was not any better than the first time—it was not any better than the first time.Can I just say that I withdrew my disallowance motion. On 11 June this year I withdrew my disallowance motion on the understanding that this legislation was going to be brought forward to correct the matter in time for 1 August—1 August of this year. Here we are in parliamentary time on 27 August putting up for first reading for goodness’ sake—for first reading—a piece of legislation that should have been in place in order to correct the mistakes previously. It should have been in place in time for 1 August for the start of the legislation after the regulation would have been rescinded or overtaken. But no they still could not get it right—they still could not get it right.This is just an extraordinary list of ineptitude of one mistake after another which the Minister could have fixed last year. I do not know whether it is Simon Bridges’ bailiwick now. I feel sorry for him. He does not understand this stuff to start with so how can he possibly amend it? How can he possibly fix it? Being such a limited person in this respect it is very difficult to imagine how he might ever fix it. Here we have the legislation wrong in the first place a regulation put in place that was not allowable the regulation was disallowed the Government did not put aside time to debate it it then reinstated a regulation that had been disallowed and by the time that it expired on 30 June this year the Government was still not ready with legislation to correct it. This would be farcical if it were not serious for the poor old farmers. This would just be hilarious if it were not for the poor old farmers. So try to get it right this time please.