Hughes Gareth: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16764. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green):Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. It is an absolute privilege to follow Green member Julie Anne Genter our transport spokesperson. I am proud to rise to support this bill the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill. This is a small technical change to the way we earn income from the road-user charges for the National Land Transport Fund. We would like to thank the committee that heard the submissions the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We would like to thank the submitters and the chair.We are facing a time of rising greenhouse gas emissions from transport a billion-dollar blowout when it comes to transport funding and National having to put up the fuel taxes. We see an $8 billion annual fuel import bill. Kids feel unsafe cycling to school yet National is not giving them solutions. Despite all these massive transport challenges facing the country National a few months before the election wants to focus on a few technical amendments to the road-user charges. It wants to exempt fast tractors from road-user charges and it wants to exempt all unregistered vehicles—vehicles exempt from registration because of the nameplate system. This is National’s priority in transport. National has made a mess of it so it would rather hide it and focus on these technical amendments.This is not the only road-user charges legislation that we have had in front of us this Parliament. We also saw another bill that changed the way the calculations were met. At a time when we have fantastic IT solutions—computer technology is fast cheap and efficient—they are not being used to calculate road-user charges on a fair cost basis. You would think that the National Party would be supporting a fair user-pays system. No instead we are turning back closer to the past with a paper-based overly complex very expensive to administer old-fashioned way of dealing with it. It is no surprise that New Zealand is the only country in the world that uses such a cumbersome old complex system to calculate its diesel-based levies in the way we fund our roads and public transport.So this election is all about transport choice because over on one side you see a very clear vision—a vision rooted in the 1950s and 1960s a vision that does not give people choice.Mike Sabin: There have been roads around for longer than that.GARETH HUGHES: We hear all the jokes from the National members but it is not about choice. What they say is: “You’re going to use our mega-motorways and you’re going to pay for them. And even if we don’t get enough funds we’re going to put it on the credit card.” Despite 75 percent of the money going there these roads are for only 5 percent of the people. What the Green Party is about is choice. We want you to be able to safely cycle to school if you want. We want you to be able to take a good efficient affordable bus. We want to give you public transport choices like a central business district rail link to unlock Auckland’s potential. It is about choice because what we are seeing is the lion’s share of the transport budget being blown on these so-called roads of national significance. What New Zealanders are not getting is choice.Secondly we are going to give Kiwis a choice around economic outcomes. What we heard from the Minister of Transport in question time today in relation to Julie Anne Genter was the Minister say that economic analyses and reports were overly bureaucratic and they are not what he makes his decisions on. At a time of considerable fiscal challenges facing our country it is outrageous that we have a Minister overseeing a $20 billion National Land Transport Fund who is making decisions based on the politics on what he thinks the strategic fit is not on the New Zealand Transport Agency advice. What we know is that a huge chunk of that very expensive taxpayer spend is going on motorways with very low benefit-cost ratios. What we know is that the freight industry is crying out for alternatives—things like effective coastal shipping. We see our regional railways close as we heard from the member Andrew Little and we see our climate change emissions going through the roof despite all the talk about them.So in summary this is a good bill. We support it. It is very modest in its intent and technical. But what we need are greater solutions to the road-user charges problem. What we support is a smarter fairer system where if you damage the roads—and when it comes to heavy vehicles it is the weight of the vehicle that has a disproportionate impact on road wear and tear—we think it is fair that you should pay your fair contribution to upgrading our roads. Road-user charges are around 30 percent of our National Land Transport Fund income so they are an important part of that and it is worthwhile looking in the future to IT solutions. In summary what we are going to focus on in Parliament if we get the privilege of being in Government is not minor technical amendments such as these. What we are going to focus on is providing Kiwis with choices better public transport safer walking and cycling and real economic outcomes for taxpayers.