Flavell Te Ururoa: Road User Charges Bill — First Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Road User Charges Bill — First Reading 
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TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Kia ora ano tatou katoa. I have just a brief contribution to the discussions tonight. Many of the points have already been raised by other members. 
In terms of clarification as we know the purpose of the Road User Charges Bill is to modernise and simplify the road-user charges system which is a system that collects money from the users of diesel vehicles. At the moment road-user charges are based on the distance travelled and the weight carried. In order to find out what the impact of the changes might be I got in contact with a couple of Maori contractors for their opinion to see how they might be affected by the charges. The group of New Zealanders who it appears will be hit the hardest by this legislation will be truck drivers loggers transport service workers and those involved in the forestry sector. Within that group Maori comprise about 22 percent—a massive 22 percent if you like—of the total truckie workforce which is some 6240 people. 
One of the people we got in contact with was named John. He said he drove a 23-tonner which had a 27-tonne maximum. He said he would be paying for 27 tonnes when he was using only 23 tonnes and that that was not good. In fact he was very clear saying that he did not support the changes at all. With the cost of fuel going up he could not afford to be paying more for road-user charges as well. On the other hand I talked to Don who said that the devil was always in the detail. Because most logging trucks had on-board scales and were loading to the legal limit with every load a charging in bands rather than a specific tonnage should not have had any effect. 
So what is the judgment call—John or Don? Well at this stage we know that we need to hang out a little bit more for some conclusion to that debate. At this stage we know that this bill is about cleaning up the administration of the antiquated road-user charges system. In some senses the bill is purely an administrative tidy-up. That in itself serves to be pretty consistent with our Maori Party policy—namely that we will review compliance requirements so that there is no increase in compliance costs. 
The Government members’ point of view is that they believe that changes in the bill will result in less road-user charge evasion—that is less non-payment of charges because evaders will no longer be able to deliberately underestimate the weight they are likely to carry. If members do not know about this I can tell them that evasion in relation to road-user charges is conservatively estimated to cost about $30 million a year for heavy vehicles alone. The Minister has talked about the need to remove a form of evasion; the removal will give the system greater integrity and reduce revenue leakage while at the same time it will provide for a fairer and simpler structure in relation to offences and penalties. 
From the point of view of those who believe in the genuine progress index which includes the Maori Party at least another issue of the evasion of offences and penalties should be brought into this debate. That is the fact that in the 81 pages of the bill there is not one single mention of the environment despite this legislation being in effect a tax bill for diesel. 
The Maori Party will be supporting this bill at the first reading in the House because we want to hear the views of more than two submitters notwithstanding the importance of the views put forward by John and Don that I referred to earlier. We are certainly keen to hear more in relation to the issue of environmental impacts and to this end we look forward to the debate in front of the select committee. The Maori Party is willing to support this bill at its first reading.