SpeechCHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members the House is in committee on the Road User Charges (Temporary RUC Reduction Scheme) Amendment Bill (No 2). Members when I left the Chair for the dinner break we were discussing Parts 1 and 2.Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Before the dinner break I responded to a couple of questions from Mr Court and I did promise to come back straight afterwards and respond to a few questions that Mr Brown had raised in his contribution.There were three issues which he raised. The first related to clause 6 of Part 1 which provides a five-year period for Waka Kotahi to look at taking action in the event that they do believe that there has been excessive or unreasonable purchasing of road-user charge (RUC) licences at the reduced rate. Officials advise that the five-year period is important to provide some additional flexibility for the agency if new information comes to light. In particular what they note is that distance travelled as recorded at the time of a warrant of fitness is an important tool for Waka Kotahi to assess purchasing behaviour and that when it comes to new light vehicles that are purchased they won't be required to have a warrant-of-fitness check for three years. So some additional time for Waka Kotahi to keep an eye on things and to be able to have conversations with people in the event that they do believe that excessive purchasing has occurred. As I said before we don't believe that this is a big problem—there have been hundreds of thousands of RUC licences issued over this discounted period and a relatively small number of cases of concern—but for the integrity of the system it's important that the agency does have that ability if information comes to hand that they do need to act on.Mr Brown also asked a question which effectively came down to: in the little gap that we have between the RUC reductions ending on 1 February and the implementation of this legislation will people be left worse off and how might we manage that situation? This comes back to the RUC overlap-licence issue that I spoke about in my first reading speech. And if I can just take members through that in a bit more detail that might be helpful in addressing that particular question. Section 31 of the Road User Charges Act will allow a person who has purchased distance at the full rate to purchase a distance licence at the discounted rate and receive a credit for the unused distance on the full-rate licence. So given it's been a relatively small period in between—I think actually that will affect only a fairly small number of people given that you are pre-purchasing your kilometres effectively—combined with the overlap licence I think will largely resolve that issue and ensure that people aren't worse off. Bearing in mind too that compared to people receiving the fuel excise duty (FED) discount which will have a hard end date at the end of June there will be people who have purchased legitimately RUC licences before the end of June that will carry over a little bit beyond then so there are some swings and roundabouts in this. And all things being equal I don't see that people purchasing RUC licences will be disadvantaged in any material way below the benefit that people who purchase petrol and pay FED receive a benefit through the system. Mr Brown also had a couple of questions about excessive purchasing—just wanting to get a sense of scale I think there about Waka Kotahi's enforcement behaviour. Officials advise me that Waka Kotahi have investigated over the course of the discounts so far—basically the last year—4405 potentially excessive purchases and based off that have then contacted 2207 vehicle owners which is a pretty small number in the context of hundreds of thousands of licences purchased in that period. The approach that the agency has taken there has generally been an educative approach telling people that these issues are being monitored and watched and strongly encouraging people to comply in a reasonable way rather than going straight in with hard-enforcement action. I think that's the appropriate way of taking things through. It's important to note that there's also no incentive really for heavy-vehicle owners to bulk purchase because under the existing framework of the Road User Charges Act their licences expire one month after the temporary reduction period ends in any case.