Ross Jami-Lee: Road User Charges Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ross Jami-Lee: Road User Charges Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 14 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:364. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) 
: 
 This is the first time I have spoken in this Chamber since the election so can I take the opportunity to congratulate firstly the presiding officers and especially yourself on your elevation to Deputy Speaker and I would also like to congratulate all members of the House on their re-election or their initial election if it is their first time. 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: Great result in Botany. 
JAMI-LEE ROSS 
: Thank you and all that hard campaigning you did for me Mr Guy was much appreciated; thank you. Can I say that I have enjoyed the contributions from new members so far but I am looking forward to the real stars of the class of 2011 taking their first stand in the House on Thursday.  
It is good to see that the Road User Charges Bill is finally here for its third reading. Can I say thank you to the Ministers of Transport—firstly the Hon Steven Joyce and the Hon Gerry Brownlee now—for getting this bill this far in the House. It is a good bill and it is one that I hope a large number of members in the Parliament will be supporting. And credit where credit is due—I think it is worthwhile acknowledging that the Labour Party actually initiated the road-user charges review back in I think 2008 which ended up culminating in this bill where we are seeing these quite significant changes to the road-user charges system.  
As has been pointed out by members in this debate before it was adjourned last week and also by the new member Julie Anne Genter earlier this is about making the road-user charges system more simplified it is about making it easier to understand and it is about making it easier for the Government to enforce. It is important that when you have taxes in place and when you have penalties for not paying those taxes it is easy to enforce the paying of those taxes as well. I am pleased to see that just about every party in the House I understand is supporting this bill. We heard from the Labour members last week about their views on the bill. They are supporting the bill but they indicated some areas of concern. I do not tend to agree with the areas of concern that the members of the Labour Party were raising last week and in a minute I will take a few moments to outline why I do not think the views they are bringing to the House really have much credibility.  
This bill is about making it easier for business. It is about making it easier for New Zealanders to run their road transport using the road-user charges system. The previous system of nominated weights was incredibly complicated and it led to operators having to estimate how heavy the vehicles were. There are inherent problems in that and it also meant that the authorities had to work out whether there were problems and try to work out what the weight was after the fact. With this new system we have a road-user charges regime where we will know what every vehicle’s gross weight is and what its road-user charges will be. There is no estimating involved and it is far simpler.  
I was listening very intently to the Labour Party members last week. Darien Fenton and Phil Twyford outlined some concerns. 
Darien Fenton 
: “Dar-rien” Fenton. 
JAMI-LEE ROSS 
: Darien Fenton; I am sorry Darien. Darien Fenton and Phil Twyford outlined some concerns they had and they were complaining that they did not feel that their concerns were answered adequately. I have done a bit of research this afternoon and actually just about all the answers to their concerns are found within the documents they were concerned about. We heard from two Opposition members that they did not feel as though there was very much consultation on this bill. Well I went through to page 178 of 189 pages—and it is buried quite deep in the departmental report but it is in there. This bill went through four phases of consultation by the Ministry of Transport before we got to the bill here. It had a consultation in September to November 2009. It had consultation in early 2010. It had another consultation a bit later in 2010 and then in October and December 2010 it had further consultation. That is four consultation phases.  
There was also the road-user charges review that the Hon Annette King initiated when she was the Minister of Transport. That went through consultation with the industry and on top of that we had the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee consultation. Now that is six phases of consultation on the work that led up to this bill. I do not think anyone can stand up in this House and say there has not been consultation with the industry when this issue has been through six phases of consultation. There will be further consultation on top of that when it comes to the setting of the charges through regulations which will probably be taking place later this year.  
We also heard complaints that the Government is doing this nasty thing called regulations. What the Government will be doing is setting in place the charges through a secondary phase of legislation. It is not possible to set the charges in this bill because this bill we are hoping will stand for many years and obviously the charges have to change from time to time. I know Labour members know about changing road-user charges rates as 2008 was quite a hectic time for them when it came to road-user charges. But you simply cannot set those charges in the primary bill. It would be ridiculous to try to do that so setting those charges through regulations is not an unusual step. It is quite a logical step. But if you are asking yourself why the Government is doing this through regulations and you are concerned that the Government is using regulations and if you are hearing that from the Labour members you would think that Labour members are somehow opposed to the use of regulations.  
Well I was a little bit busy this afternoon and I did a little bit more research. In the last term of the Labour Government 1263 regulations were passed by the last Labour Government. So I take offence a little bit when I hear Labour members standing up and saying they do not like the use of regulations. In the last term of the Labour Government it passed 1263 regulations. So please stop whacking us over the head about the use of regulations. It is reasonable to set the charges through the use of regulation.  
The third topic I want to discuss is about who are going to be winners and who are going to be losers. We heard from Darien Fenton and Phil Twyford about the Motor Caravan Association. The Motor Caravan Association raised some points. It is concerned about what the charges will be. I think it is worthwhile pointing out that the charges have not been set yet. They will be set later on. We are going through consultation first but the members raised the plight of the Motor Caravan Association. The association in its submission was under the impression that charges were going to go up astronomically. It is important to remember that this change will be revenue-neutral for the Government. There will be some people who get small increases and there will be people who get some small decreases but there is no expectation that overall revenue will increase. This is about changing the system not increasing the revenue.  
The Motor Caravan Association unfortunately used some old figures in its submission. It was using existing road-user charges figures which just will not apply to the new regime. It believes that its charges will be going up and it gave an example of a motor caravan that is 19000 kilograms or 19 tonnes—a type 5 motor vehicle. It believes that that charge will go up by 270 percent. I can quite understand that 270 percent sounds like a lot but that is simply not the case. Again I am looking at the departmental report and the answer was right there for the Labour members. The Labour members did not quite see this but the departmental report itself outlines an answer to the Motor Caravan Association. Rather than the road-user charge going up to $451 as the association believed it would it would actually go up to only about $246. It is just an estimate at the moment but $246 versus $451 is quite a difference and nowhere near the increase that Labour members were telling this House last week that road-user charges would be going up by.  
This is a good bill. This is a bill that will make it easier for the industry. It is a bill that will make it easier for the Government and it is a bill that will remove a whole lot of complexity from the road-user charges system. I am glad the Labour members are supporting it. I am glad other members in the House are supporting it but I just had to answer some of those concerns we heard from the Opposition. They are simply not concerns that are relevant to this debate because the research was not done and the answers were right there in the departmental report. I look forward to this bill being passed by the House tonight.