Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. I have a number of Amendment Papers that I would like to speak to during the course of this debate. But I will start out asking the Minister a question which is did he consult extensively with the vehicle industry before proposing the rates that are proposed in the bill in particular for electric vehicles (EVs)? At the select committee we heard a very compelling submission from a joint industry group that included the Automobile Association the Motor Trade Association the Motor Industry Association the Vehicle Importers Association and a few other organisations—Drive Electric. And they made the very strong case that they fully supported all vehicles contributing to the road-user charges system and paying for some of the upkeep of the roads. And at the same time they argued very very convincingly for a lower rate for plug-in hybrids and for EVs. The rate they proposed for electric vehicles was 60 instead of 78 per 1000 kilometres and the reason for this reduced rate is because we are very much in a period where if we don't have some sort of support or financial incentive to electrify the fleet it will slow down and that has very serious consequences for meeting our greenhouse gas reduction targets later in the period.I note that Government members seem to think about these things in a very like individualistic way and not consider that actually team New Zealand is in this as a whole. We all are working together to reduce our emissions. And what is important here are the actual outcomes. So having a policy that you consider fairer in theory means nothing if we're all worse off as a result because we're not sufficiently reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and as a result we're going to be penalised under the likes of our EU fair-trade agreement not to mention the fact that it's just a lost opportunity all around because it's more greenhouse pollution but it's also more air pollution and it's overall higher fuel bills as a nation which affects our current account deficit.So my question for the Minister is did he consult extensively with the industry groups? Did he consider that we could put a price on road use from EVs and plug-in hybrids but at a lower rate than what was initially proposed in order to ensure that we're not actively disincentivising EVs at a time when we need to be supporting that. In five years we probably won't need that financial support. But these next five years we're importing a bunch of vehicles that will be on the roads for over you know 20 years. So that will impact our carbon emissions 20 years from now 25 years from now.So my other question actually for the Minister is whether or not—I mean this could sound tangential; I have heard the Government say that their plan for electrifying the vehicle fleet is doubling renewable electricity. However we also heard at the select committee very clearly from people who are very involved in that industry like Mercury that having a national network of vehicle chargers is not going to make a difference for bringing in more electric vehicles. The barrier to bringing in electric vehicles right now is the lack of financial incentives and the lack of fuel economy standards that mean that vehicle importers are actively prioritising those cars.So they made the point that the vast majority of charging is going to be done at home or at workplaces not at public charging stations. So while it's a nice to have—public charging stations and having more renewable electricity; of course we support that—that's not the solution to the current barriers to bringing more EVs in. And here today the Minister has the opportunity to listen to the industry. I have an Amendment Paper that would reduce the rate for EVs to the one recommended by the industry which is 60 per 1000 kilometres and I invite the Minister to consider accepting that amendment as he has accepted our amendments to the bill in select committee where we reduced the rate for plug-in hybrids to 38 from 52.