Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. Look if only the roads in Auckland were as free of congestion as Parliament's halls on a Tuesday night. The ACT Party will support this bill including the fact that it's under urgency because there's nothing that the ACT Party wants to do more than return taxpayers' money whether it's through road-user charges or any other form of taxation to taxpayers. There is a cost of living crisis and all New Zealanders are hoping and praying to wake up and find more money in their bank accounts. One of the problems with this piece of legislation which unfortunately the officials have failed to point out is that there hasn't been a regulatory impact assessment. In the departmental disclosure statement there is no information at all about the cost and benefits of this piece of legislation how it will be implemented and all of the issues around implementation. That means that transporters—people in the industry—are actually very concerned about how much of their administration time and how much of their business time is going to be spent trying to make claims to get the 36 percent reduction. Why on earth wasn't a simpler method canvassed? Actually one of New Zealand's transporting representative groups Transporting New Zealand has actually suggested a simpler alternative—that is rather than give a cost reduction on road-user charges give the 36 percent - equivalent extension of kilometres. Transporting New Zealand I understand has proposed that that would be a far simpler way of administering the system. When you actually look at the way road-user charges are administered in New Zealand it's a system that was set up in the 1990s when it was intended that those who caused wear and tear to the roads—trucks on the road; heavy vehicles it was presumed—would pay their fair share based on their weight the number of axles and the distance travelled. At the time when New Zealanders understood how important user charges road pricing and having the people who used the service should pay for it was actually road-user charges seemed like a pretty smart idea and a pretty good way to recover the cost from heavy transport operators using the roads. But like most Governments they couldn't anticipate the future. They only looked in the rear-view mirror to come up with policy that solved problems of the past. So very shortly after road-user charges were introduced into New Zealand New Zealand had the benefit of receiving a large number of light diesel-powered vehicles—what we call utes or sport utility vehicles (SUVs). Some of us are lucky enough to have turbocharged diesel engines in our utes and SUVs which are actually highly efficient with very high compression ratios. They're great for towing. They're great for hill climbs and for sandy and muddy conditions. But of course these vehicles when they're used on road have to pay road-user charges. The actual administration of the scheme was set up for commercial operators: for people hauling logs hauling rocks hauling containers hauling fruit and vegetables and food to supermarkets in large truck and trailers articulated vehicles and B trains. The system was set up for them but it has had to be adapted to cater for the hundreds of thousands if not millions of light diesel vehicle operators and it's not fit for purpose. The fact that the Government has to come to the House to pass an amendment under urgency to allow road-user charges to be discounted at this time—which of course ACT supports because we believe that taxpayers should be able to keep their own money and so we support that. But if you actually go on the New Zealand Transport Agency website and look at the road-user charges information on how do you pay them and what are they for the information appears to be from last century because actually that's when road-user charges were developed and that's the system that was set up to deal with a problem of the past. So if we're thinking about what this legislation is intended to do well it's not even a band-aid. In fact if it was a band-aid it wouldn't even cover a scratch on your pinkie finger this discount for road-user charges for people who use diesel-powered vehicles. That's because the cost of living crisis in New Zealand and the astronomical rates of inflation of nearly 6 percent have far outstripped any concession that this Government might have made. But what is heartening what we should take heart from and what the ACT Party wants voters to know is that actually tax cuts and reducing Government revenue need not lead to a reduction in services because what the Government and the Minister of Transport have told us is that they will simply reach into another fund—that's the general taxation fund—to make up for the road-user charge discount. But that actually brings us to a far more fundamental problem: road-user charges are hypothecated to build operate and maintain roads—Matt Doocey: And rail.SIMON COURT: —and it turns out rail as my colleague has pointed out—yet only 23 percent of the funds in the National Land Transport Fund are actually allocated to roads. The system is broken. I have an answer to a written question here that I asked the Minister last year: What percentage of the 2021 to 2031 NZTA budget is allocated to investment in road construction?" The Minister said "The estimated funding allocated by Waka Kotahi (NZ Transport Agency) from the NLTF"—the National Land Transport Fund—"is 23 percent."—23 percent of the money is allocated to roads. The system is broken. Road users are not getting value for money. Not only are they not getting value for money but they're stuck on congested roads in major centres like Auckland Wellington and Christchurch and even Dunedin. I've even heard that Invercargill has traffic jams. We certainly know that Tauranga has traffic jams. Hamilton has traffic jams. All of this money that is being collected by the Government through road-user taxes fuel excise duty and so forth is not being spent on roads. New Zealanders are not getting fair value for money. Now the roads in Invercargill it's fair to say are wide enough to turn around a wagon pulled by a team of eight bullocks. Actually that makes those roads ideal for all kinds of urban development public transport. But look in all seriousness the New Zealand road users are being ripped off. They're having money hoovered out of their pockets through fuel excise duties and road-user charges and of course they're paying their fair share for carbon emissions through the emissions trading scheme (ETS) that wonderful scheme which captures all of the carbon emitted by New Zealand industries and allows businesses to trade fairly to mitigate emissions or to pay for their emissions. In fact the Climate Change Commission said that no other policy at all is required in order for New Zealand to meet its emission targets in 2050 and this Government is collecting so much money from auctioning credits under the ETS. Remember every single road user pays for their emissions through the emissions trading scheme. There is a price—an ETS price a carbon price—put on every litre of fuel whether it's diesel or petrol that New Zealanders use to put in their cars trucks vans utes and so on. So that's why ACT says that actually we could give the people of New Zealand—the road users and families—a much bigger discount by offering them back their own money. It's actually a carbon dividend taking the money the Government collects through the emissions trading scheme and giving each family back $750 a year in a carbon dividend. They've paid that money. They should be able to reap the benefit of New Zealand reducing its emissions. That's what the emissions trading scheme is—it's a wonderful scheme. This bill which ACT supports will put a very small amount of money back in the pockets of New Zealanders who rely on purchasing road-user charges to operate their diesel-powered vehicles. ACT fears that like with most Government schemes it will be overly complex. It will be difficult to administer and it will impose additional costs on businesses that the departmental disclosure statement has not addressed—has not actually carried out a cost and risk assessment. ACT will support the bill in the hope that New Zealanders get some tax relief from this tax and spend Government."