Fenton Darien: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16758. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour):Labour is supporting the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill. It is worth recalling that the first reading of this bill was held under urgency way back in August 2013. Indeed I remember speaking on this bill at a quarter to midnight in a little bit of a rant about fast tractors which seemed very amusing after we had had a very long long day in the House. So it is interesting that here we are several months later—it was so urgent but here we are on the second reading in March 2014.It is an unnecessary bill in the sense that it did not need to happen in the first place—that is we have this bill in front of us basically because the Government made a stuff-up when it brought in the original legislation the Road User Charges Act which was passed in 2011 and came into force on 1 August 2012 and left out a bit. So what the Government tried to do then—what Gerry Brownlee and whoever the Minister of Transport was at the time tried to do—was to get the Regulations Review Committee to cover up the gap by bringing in a regulation that would continue the exemption for farmers who operate light road-user charge vehicles for agricultural operations. These were vehicles such as tractors with limited on-road use. The Ministry of Transport decided to introduce this pending outstanding policy decisions. So in other words it put forward the regulation to the Regulations Review Committee even before the policy decisions had been made. In other words the Government had not done it in the legislation and it had not even thought about the policy. But the problem was that the regulation was brought to the Regulations Review Committee afterwards—afterwards. So the regulation was made in anticipation of the policy position the Government was going to take.Meka Whaitiri: Weird.DARIEN FENTON: Very weird—very weird. This bill has got quite a saga to it actually. The Government left that bit out. So it meant that those farmers with their mainly off-road vehicles carried on paying money—quite a lot of money actually—in road-user charges contributions yet the regulation was completely out of order. So the Regulations Review Committee moved that it be disallowed.What happened then? Well a decision had not been made. The officials had stepped into the gap and tried to cover up for the Minister of Transport and they put in this regulation. Charles Chauvel who was the then Regulations Review Committee chair got up in the House with the agreement of the Regulations Review Committee—remember this was right back in 2012—three of whom were National members who had actually agreed that this regulation to plug the gap in the legislation that the Minister had stuffed up in the first place way back in 2011 should be disallowed. But then the Minister decided that he would not allocate House time to debate the disallowance motion so the regulation was disallowed. In other words it just disappeared and ceased to exist. The regulation was overturned which is what should have happened anyway.But then what happened next is that the Minister was not satisfied with that. He reinstated the regulation. He had another go with the Regulations Review Committee to try to plug this gap—to try to plug this gap. The Regulations Review Committee which did an excellent job on this said that it was not any better the second time—it was not any better. It is a story of incompetence—Andrew Little: A comedy of errors.DARIEN FENTON: A comedy of errors and a story of incompetence. The Minister tried to introduce it the second time with no improvement. He should have amended the legislation but he did not. He tried to get it through the Regulations Review Committee again so another disallowance motion was moved because there was no improvement and it was no better than the first time. Finally as I said at the beginning on 27 August last year we had legislation introduced to fix this mess under urgency—under urgency. It should have been in place for 1 August last year but we had it introduced on 27 August. It has taken several months. Despite the fact that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee is an excellent committee and did its best there was no way that it could work in the haste that was needed and in fact retrospectively pass this legislation so that we could cover up the Minister’s mistakes.It is a comedy of errors. It is a sad story about wasting Parliament’s time. It is a sad indictment on the Government because road-user charges are a very important part of our infrastructure. It is very important that we have road-user charges so that we can pay for the roads make sure our exports can get around the roads and make sure the infrastructure is safe and efficient. Also I think that there are some things missing in our road-user charges and our whole transport system that I just wanted to mention briefly if I can. Local roads are an example. Local roads have been completely underfunded by this Government. If you go to Gisborne and if you go to the electorate of Meka Whaitiri and talk to the forestry workers who drive logging trucks up and down those roads you will see that that is so dangerous. It is so dangerous now because funding for local roads has been underfunded. It is the same in Northland actually—Andrew Little: And State Highway 3 in Taranaki.DARIEN FENTON: And State Highway 3 in Taranaki as well. The Government has got the balance wrong. Even though we support road-user charges we believe that the Government has got the balance wrong when it comes to transport funding.Just talking about the bill for a minute the Minister has spelt out what it does. I will go over that. It amends the Road User Charges Act to enable regulations to be made exempting from road-user charges vehicles that are not required to be registered. We had five good submissions. It was very interesting. There was a long debate about farm vehicles and trailers on farm vehicles. There was also a bit of concern as I recall from the Road Transport Forum I think which was worried about tractors that were carting trailers along but not being charged road-user charges. It is fair to say that this is a reasonable thing to do because most of the vehicles covered by this bill make very little use of the roads and they make a sufficient contribution to the cost they impose on the road network through the vehicle licence fee.The imposition of an additional annual charge for a trade plate or vehicle licence is a cost-effective alternative to road-user charges. That is what this bill does. It amends the Land Transport Act to enable an annual charge in lieu of road-user charges to be collected through the registration and vehicle licensing system where it is deemed appropriate. Owners of light road-user charge vehicles that are operated almost exclusively off-road can apply to the road-user charges collector for an exemption under section 40 of the Road User Charges Act. However there are no offence provisions relating to the breach of conditions associated with section 40 and the bill proposes to amend that Act to add offence provisions to support the enforcement of those conditions.There were seven minor technical amendments. Going back to what I said at the beginning I say that Labour is supporting this bill. It is a necessary gap that needed to be plugged. It is just unfortunate that we had to go through such a long process and such an embarrassing process for the Government. Thank goodness we have such an excellent Regulations Review Committee whose job it is to scrutinise regulations and legislation led by that very able member the Hon Maryan Street who did an excellent job after she followed on from Charles Chauvel who also did a wonderful job. Thank goodness we have it there to keep an eye on the Minister of Transport when he tries to do things and tries to fix up problems without going about it the proper way. So thank you—Labour is supporting this bill.