Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. The Green Party supports most of this bill the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2022-23 Platform Economy and Remedial Matters) Bill (No 2).I just want to talk about one area where I think there's still a huge opportunity to get a much better outcome from this bill. I'd like to really focus on that particular aspect of the bill in this speech. One of the reasons it's a major focus is because we actually received a huge number of submissions on this at the Finance and Expenditure Committee—over 400 submissions. Some of these were from regional councils regional councillors people who are working in businesses and even some tax specialists but literally hundreds of people wrote in submissions asking that fringe benefit tax also be exempted from other vehicles like bicycles e-bikes scooters e-scooters and sharing services that might be used for commuting purposes. Currently the bill does not do that. The bill does exempt public transport passes from fringe benefit tax which is a welcome change that starts to reduce the distortion to travel choice that currently exists in our fringe benefit tax system but it doesn't go all the way. This is a simple change that the Government could make that would make it easier for employers to provide support and incentives for sustainable commuting modes that right now currently fringe benefit tax is a barrier to.Before I even came to this House I worked as a transport planner and I worked for an engineering consultancy that was then Sinclair Knight Merz and it was later acquired by Jacobs. One of my first jobs when I was still a student planner there was to chair the internal environmental committee. What we were trying to do was do everything we could within the business to make our business more sustainable. One of the key things that was driving pollution and congestion was the way that people got to work. But what we found quite quickly—and this was back in 2007 and 2008—was that as an employer if they were to try and take steps to incentivise people to bike to work or to take public transport it was a problem because they would have to pay fringe benefit tax on these incentives. Of course that created huge distortion because there is no fringe benefit tax charged on employer-provided carparks which are often worth as much as an annual public transport pass and a good deal more than a push bike probably about the same amount as a reasonably priced e-bike. So there is this distortion in the system.The New Zealand Transport Agency published a research report back in 2012 that actually analysed and went into quite a bit of detail about how the fringe benefit tax system was unintentionally subsidising car trips for commuting to work. That creates congestion because of course what is the main driver of peak congestion? It's the trip to school and the trip to work combined basically. So here we are trying to deal with high levels of congestion at some certain times of day. That's a public cost that we have to deal with infrastructure and services to try and combat that. There's more pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from cars at the moment. And there's just all sorts of health benefits and wider public benefits from people being able to get to work by public transport or by bike. But the system is currently unfair as it's set up.The problems with our high reliance on private cars for travel to work have been noted in the two most recent OECD reviews of New Zealand that I looked up. The one in 2017 an environmental review identified transport as an area where New Zealand is lagging behind and needs to do more to achieve coherent pricing of externalities". They particularly noted investment and support to increase low-carbon travel by public and active transport—cycling scooting etc.—was recommended. Similarly in the most recent 2022 OECD economic survey they identified that environmental taxation can be used to reduce externalities related to road transport.Now the problem with the advice that we get from the IRD is that—you know they're always like "Oh but we just need this pure simple tax system that is as simple and transparent as possible." It's basically their religion. I mean I'd like to know what happens when someone gets hired by the IRD. They must be like sat in a room with this sort of drilled into them because they repeat it at just like such a deep level—they really believe it. The simplicity of our tax system; we're the envy of the whole world. I tell you what we're really not because if you look at the OECD economic survey it says that we're really lagging behind because we're not using our tax system to get better environmental outcomes. You just can't reconcile why IRD is saying—with that recommendation from the OECD the world's most preeminent body on economic research and analysis of which New Zealand is a member. So you can tell I find it a little bit frustrating when I hear that line because it has to be taken as an article of faith that you believe a simple tax system is more important than one that gets better outcomes that the public wants.I personally hold that we should use our tax system in ways to get to the outcomes that we want as a public. This would be a very simple change that would cost New Zealand nothing that would enable those employers who want to—and those employees who want to—benefit from incentivising bikes e-bikes e-scooters and possibly e-scooter sharing services for a commute to work. There'd be huge benefits in our town centres. One thing that I think the committee really missed out on is that not everyone can take public transport. You know public transport doesn't exist as a viable means of commute in many parts of New Zealand. So we haven't really rectified the current distortion simply by exempting public transport passes from fringe benefit tax. Extending it to e-bikes scooters and sharing schemes that are primarily used for commuting purposes would enable that choice to available for people who don't have public transport services or those who unfortunately live in places like Wellington and Auckland where in theory there are public transport services but the buses are regularly cancelled. So it's not very reliable at the moment.Just a few more things I'll say about this which is that the United Kingdom has an incredibly successful scheme like this called the cycle to work scheme. The studies have shown that they have had huge uptake—you know the benefits massively outweigh the cost there are over a million users that have used it a 91 percent increase in bike journeys over 10 years. Canada and many other countries have similar sorts of tax breaks for sustainable transport and that includes cycling. At the moment with the popularity in e-bikes this would be a simple move the Government could take that would enable support for e-bikes to make it a little more accessible for people because there is a high upfront cost to them that can put people off. But in fact it would help with cost of living for those people because it would mean they wouldn't have to pay for petrol they wouldn't have to pay for parking not to mention that we have these enormous public health benefits which benefit our whole health system because people who bike to work or walk to work are much less likely to get cancer and be hospitalised for a whole range of reasons—it adds to their quality of life.Now I know people in this House think this is a weird fringe issue but I really would ask members in the House to consider supporting my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) which I will be putting forward in the committee stages to extend this exemption to e-bikes and bikes as over 400 submitters called for at the select committee. I would think that it would be something that all parties could agree on since the ACT Party and the National Party are complaining the Government has too many taxes and too much red tape. Here's a perfect example of a tax and red tape that we could get rid of which would help support better outcomes for the climate. I know the National Party does not have any proposals to do anything about climate change. Maybe they would consider a tax break for sustainable transport as something they could consider. I definitely think the Labour Party should consider it because the Labour Party is at the moment the Labour Government and is actually doing nothing to support sustainable transport while they're spending over $1 billion subsidising cost of fuels unfortunately in the name of cost of living. It's a short-term measure to cut petrol tax; it's a long-term measure to allow people the incentive of getting an e-bike which then saves them having to rely on petrol for many many years.So that's the opportunity we have before us members. Please support my SOP at committee stages."