Lees-Galloway Iain: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:13036. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It is a pleasure to speak this evening on the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill. Here we are at the first reading—just to make sure all members are clear about this—which comes before the select committee phase. As a member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I am looking forward to getting the opportunity to consider this legislation.Darien Fenton: No you’re not—how could you be?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I am—I am. I am looking forward to this Darien Fenton because I am sick and tired of the employment legislation that we are considering at the moment. I am enjoying the submissions that we are getting from various submitters telling us what an appalling piece of legislation that is and how it is going to depress wages and how it is going to make workers more vulnerable but I have to say it is a pretty depressing situation all round. That is why—you are quite right Mr Assistant Speaker—I want to come back to this bill and that is why I am looking forward to the opportunity to consider this piece of legislation which is somewhat more innocuous than that awful piece of employment legislation.It is appropriate that Simon Bridges read the first reading of this bill. We are not entirely sure whether it means it is now in Simon Bridges’ name. If it is now in Simon Bridges’ name that would be even more appropriate. The reason for that is that this is essentially a piece of legislation to tidy up mistakes made in the last road-user charges legislation that this Government passed. Of course the reason why it is appropriate that Simon Bridges is in charge of this legislation is that when he passed the Crown Minerals Amendment Act just 6 weeks later we were back in the House considering a raft of amendments because that Minister could not pass the legislation without stuffing it up and getting it all wrong. So again here we are tidying up legislation that the Government got wrong the first time round.Darien Fenton: Yes what a waste of time.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: It is a waste of time. I think the public would be far more appreciative if the Government could just do its homework and get its legislation right the first time round.The other thing of course that we are tidying up here is not one but two inquiries or two reports that the Regulations Review Committee had to carry out into the regulations that were made by the Governor-General as a result of that initial piece of legislation. Of course some of those regulations ended up being disallowed and then some of them were reinstated by the Minister. The Regulations Review Committee carried out another inquiry and produced another report and finally the Government has got round to doing what the Regulations Review Committee suggested which was to put these changes into legislation. My colleague the Hon Maryan Street who is the chair of the Regulations Review Committee will go into that in more detail later on this evening.What does the bill do? Well essentially it does four things. It provides for a new regulation-making power to exempt from road-user charges vehicles that are not required to be registered; it allows for a new annual charge in the place of road-user charges for some vehicles that are exempt from road-user charges; it creates new offence provisions in relation to exemptions granted under section 40 of the Road User Charges Act; and it contains seven “minor technical amendments”.So what does each of those things do? Well it is interesting actually because what they do is allow for some vehicles that are used for the most part by farmers to be exempt from road-user charges and the reason which is a fair reason is that for the most part these vehicles are used off-road. They are used on the farm but sometimes they need to go along the road up the road to the next lot of paddocks and back on to the farm again. The amount of time that they actually spend on the road is really quite insignificant and there is very little need to be collecting road-user charges. But because the law was not drafted properly in the first place in many instances those vehicles are actually in breach of the current law. It seems unusual for the National Party to put its farmers—its supporting farmers—at risk but it is true that that is what it did. That is what it did and now it has had to come back and tidy this up.So in general unregistered vehicles are not allowed to be used on the road but this of course does not apply to vehicles that are exempt from registration or are not required to be registered under the Land Transport (Motor Vehicle Registration and Licensing) Regulations 2011—Hon Tau Henare: What jobs are up for discussion? Ibetcha Mallard’s going after today’s performance—what a grump.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —Tau Henare—or to unregistered vehicles operated under trade plates.Under the Road User Charges Act unregistered road-user charges vehicles are subject to road-user charges unless they belong to a class of vehicle that is defined as being exempt under the Road User Charges Act. It is not possible to issue road-user charge distance licences for unregistered road-user charge vehicles because distance licences are issued against a vehicle’s registration number. Operators of unregistered road-user charge vehicles cannot be compliant—Hon Tau Henare: What are you going to do for theMāoris?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —cannot be compliant Tau Henare—with the Road User Charges Act when travelling on roads. So the Government has basically made criminals out of every farmer in the country and now it has had to come back and tidy it up. There is a new annual charge involved here. For those vehicles that do spend a bit more time on the road there is a very sensible provision to allow for an annual fee which they can pay in lieu of the road-user charges that they would ordinarily pay.It seems interesting to me that this legislation is being passed to ensure that a small group of people do not have to pay their road-user charges and they do not have to pay into the National Land Transport Fund when the last piece of legislation the Government passed that related to the National Land Transport Fund actually put up road-user charges through fuel excise tax for every single New Zealander. This is a Government that says it wants to cut taxes—and sure it cuts taxes for a few. It cut income tax for the top 10 percent and it is cutting road-user charges for a handful of farmers but it puts taxes up for everybody else—everybody else who drives their car drives their kids to school drives to work. All those people have to pay more—have to pay more—under this Government when the farmers get to pay less. That is what this Government means when it says it is cutting taxes. It is cutting taxes for its mates and it is putting taxes up for everybody else. That is what National means when it says it is going to cut taxes.This is a fairly technical amendment. It is designed to do one thing really and one thing only: tidy up the mistakes that National made the first time round. So we on the Labour side of the House are quite happy to help the Government tidy up its mistakes. We are quite happy to help the Government tidy up its mistakes. We will see this bill go to the select committee. I look forward to the raft of submissions that will come in on this bill—probably slightly fewer than we have had on the Employment Relations Act amendments that we are considering right now. But in the interests of helping this Government tidy up its mistakes Labour will support this bill going to the select committee.