Little Andrew: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:16951. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):It is a pleasure to take a call in the Committee stage of this very important piece of legislation the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill has a unique characteristic to it and that is that as a transport bill from this Government it makes some sense but that is about the only redeeming feature of it. It is here because of a failure of process and a failure of the integrity of process by the Minister of Transport—not only the current one but the previous one—that has caused this House to have to devote time to use its legislative powers to correct the previous piece of legislation and the regulatory failure of the Minister. It is important—and that is the reason why Labour will support the bill—that the costs of heavy vehicles to the taxpayer as the primary funder of our roading system are properly shared and met and collected. So this bill plays a very important role in ensuring that that small number—but nevertheless a very important category—of heavy vehicles that do not spend a lot of time on our roads and that would otherwise be exempt from road-user charges do in fact face a levy to properly reflect the burden that they place upon our roads and the cost to the taxpayer of maintaining them to the extent that these vehicles cause undue wear and tear or indeed any wear and tear. That is a good thing and for that reason we support the bill.But underlying this is a more serious proposition that this Government still does not get and that is that not only our roads ought to be properly funded but the funding that is collected or is derived from these user charges is properly and fairly distributed across our roading network because that is not the case at the moment. As my and there is a vast array of roads—thousands of kilometres of roading—that gets no attention at all.David Bennett: State Highway 3.ANDREW LITTLE: I know that David Bennett understands that because he is an electorate member and his electorate is very close to and indeed comes at the end of one of the most important roads in this country and that is my very favourite State Highway 3—the northern route out of Taranaki. It is the northern route out of Taranaki which takes you up the beautiful roads the beech-laden roads out to the north before you get to Awakino Gorge just after you have come down the winding Mount Messenger. The road on Mount Messenger could be rerouted could be set in a more stable area and could save the taxpayer with a bit of upfront investment now. If we managed these new road-user charges under this bill it could enable us to fund a better road on Mount Messenger.Actually that is a dangerous part of State Highway 3 but the most dangerous part was exposed not 2 weeks ago in a tragic accident on State Highway 3 on another very unstable part of the road where a large rock and cliff face fell from the road and crushed the front passenger in a vehicle travelling up it. On a sunny and otherwise pleasant day the passenger and the driver in this motor vehicle met a dreadful fate. That was on State Highway 3 and that illustrates the problem. Questions will be asked and an inquiry is under way as to what happened in that particular case and whether enough money has been spent on monitoring the unstable roads the very important roads but the unstable ones like State Highway 3. The question will be asked as to whether roads like State Highway 3 receive the due attention that they ought to get not because of where they are and the fact that they may not carry the same amount of traffic as the southern motorway in Auckland but because they are unstable and they are in difficult areas. They may well service an area of an important population which is the people of Taranaki and New Plymouth but they are in difficult areas. They are roads that are difficult and costly to maintain but nevertheless they must be maintained. So this bill is important because it starts to signal that at least when Parliament gets hold of an issue like this we as a whole in Parliament can see that we need to make sure that the levies that are collected are properly collected and properly reflect the wear and tear and the burden placed upon the road by different users. The next big challenge—and really a challenge that only the Government can meet—is to make sure that it is properly spent.