Lees-Galloway IainIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I wish to pick up more or less where my colleague Sue Moroney left off—on the matter of the use of special vehicle lanes by electric vehicles. I understand the policy intention here is to facilitate and support the use of electric vehicles by allowing them to use bus lanes and other special vehicle lanes. For instance we have had experiments with lanes for vehicles that have two or more passengers in them.What I am interested in though is not so much the policy intention behind it but the enforcement because it seems to me that it is going to be very very challenging to enforce the rule that only electric vehicles are allowed to use what would otherwise be lanes specifically for public transport. I understand that this was raised at the Commerce Committee and that the committee's response was to insert new clause 17A. New clause 17A Section 145 amended (Evidence of approved vehicle surveillance equipment)" states: "(1) In section 145(1) after 'moving vehicle offence' insert 'or a special vehicle lane offence'. (2) In section 145(2) replace 'in proceedings for a moving vehicle offence' with ' in proceedings for a moving vehicle offence or a special vehicle lane offence'."I understand that the consequence of that amendment is that it will be allowable for photographs to be taken of vehicles in special vehicle lanes and that those photographs will then be used to look at the licence plate and determine whether or not that vehicle is an electric vehicle. Fine—that is one way of enforcing the rule that only electric vehicles may use special vehicle lanes. My question to the Minister as a representative of the Government is about the resources that the Government is going to put towards the administration of this. What resources will the Government put into the—quite considerable I would imagine—amount of administration that is going to be required to go through all of those photographs all of those vehicles and look at those registration plates to determine whether or not the vehicle is an electric vehicle and to then follow up with those that are not electric vehicles and issue fines and what have you?Is there something that is going to be done through technology? Is there going to be new technology or at least resources made available to the Ministry of Transport or the police or whoever is going to be responsible for enforcing this so they can do this through technology or is it going to be a matter of somebody sitting at a desk and going through all the photographs—sitting at a computer and going through all the photographs? I hope it is not the latter. It is one thing for us to pass legislation in this House set up the rules and say that this will now be possible but it is quite another thing entirely for that legislation to be properly enforced.My concern is that the concerns raised by submitters at the select committee are absolutely correct—that vehicles that are not electric vehicles will be able to get into special vehicle lanes. It will not be immediately obvious and so you then have that issue of bus lanes being clogged up not just with electric cars but actually potentially with non-electric conventional cars as well and that the resources will not be there to properly enforce this rule. Then it will become known that you can get away with driving in a bus lane and—hey presto—all the bus lanes are clogged up and the public transport system is then put under extraordinary and unnecessary strain.I think that the House in considering this legislation needs to know that the Government has considered that as an issue—the resourcing that will need to go in to making sure that section 145(1) and (2) as amended by—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): If the member thinks he can sort of get a bit closer to the detail of the bill that would be good. I will give him another try.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Thank you very much Mr Chairman. How magnanimous of you! So exactly how does the Government intend to ensure that those changes made in new clause 17A will actually be enforced to make sure that this legislation actually operates correctly?Another area that the select committee considered was the collection of the gas levy and the select committee recommended amending clause 13 to replace rather than amend section 23 of the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Act 1989 to place liability for the gas levy solely on where the gas is sold by a retailer. That presumably is to simplify the process of collecting that levy—collecting the levy at the point of sale—and I wonder what consultation has been done with the retailers who are going to be required to collect that gas levy. I wonder whether that is something that is going to be simple for them or whether there are going to be additional costs for them in collecting that levy. Obviously we want the collection of levies to be as simple and straightforward as possible but again because this is a change that has been made by the select committee what consideration has been made by the Government to ensuring that that levy will work appropriately?Those are the only two issues that I wanted to traverse in this contribution. I am sure there will be others and I am sure colleagues are preparing to rise to take a call as well but if the Minister were able to address those questions particularly really the question about the special transport lanes that would be most appreciated."