Blue Jackie: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Blue Jackie: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:656;Page:5471] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I am pleased to stand and speak to Part 1 of the Road User Charges Amendment Bill. Essentially Part 1 is about electric motor vehicles. There is an amendment to the preliminary provision which states: “light electric motor vehicle means a motor vehicle whose motive power is wholly or partly derived from an external source of electricity and whose gross laden weight is 3.5 tonnes or less.” This bill will exempt light electric motor vehicles from paying road-user charges for 4 years as a first step towards encouraging their uptake. At present light electric vehicles are classed as diesel vehicles for the purposes of road-user charges. 
The Government sees private vehicles continuing to be the most significant mode of transportation in New Zealand and other statistics confirm this. Eighty-four percent of people go to work by car truck or motorbike and 70 percent of all freight in New Zealand is carried by road. The environmental impacts of the widespread use of private vehicles need to be taken into account. Therefore the Government feels it is important that we encourage the use of alternative fuel technologies in order to help meet our environmental obligations over time. The Government feels that this measure will encourage the uptake of electric vehicles hence the bill that members are speaking to today. This technology will make a significant contribution to improving the efficiency of our vehicle fleet. 
There are very few electric vehicles currently in the fleet and the forgone revenue costs will not be significant. This bill is about the Government supporting a new fuel technology and encouraging change to this new technology. Importantly electric cars can also decrease our reliance on imported fossil fuels and improve our energy security. Combining highly efficient electric motors with our competitive advantage in renewable electricity generation will reduce the greenhouse gases produced by the transport sector as well as the harmful emissions affecting air quality. There is no doubt that electric motor vehicle technology can make a significant contribution and improve the efficiency of our motor vehicle fleet as well as addressing the environmental impacts of fossil fuels. Increasing the proportion of light electric motor vehicles in the fleet decreases reliance on these fossil fuels and improves our energy security. We think these are important positives. Combining highly efficient electric motors with New Zealand’s competitive advantage will reduce these greenhouse gases and we feel this is definitely something that we want. We want to improve the air quality for New Zealanders. 
Light electric vehicles are much cheaper to operate per kilometre than conventional motor vehicles which is another added positive. Until there are economies of scale that will reduce the battery costs early electric motor vehicles will be quite expensive. For example the price of a conventional motor vehicle is approximately $20000 but an electric motor vehicle at the current time can cost anywhere between $40000 to $80000 which is quite prohibitive. We see it as very important to encourage the use of electric motors and this bill will go a way to helping to improve that uptake. 
Although New Zealand does not have a light electric motor vehicle manufacturer at the current time the Government feels there is an important role to play in improving the uptake and this bill will go towards fulfilling that. Part of this role is also to remove the barriers that could prevent or delay the uptake of the market for light electric motor vehicles in New Zealand. One barrier has been the use of road-user charges and this bill will obviously amend that provision. At the moment when considering the upfront costs of early electric motor vehicle technology road-user charges are probably only a minor consideration. We need to look at other ways to improve electric motor vehicle uptake but this bill is a first step in the right direction. The National Party promised in the lead-up to the 2008 general election that light electric motor vehicles would be exempt from paying road-user charges and now we have fulfilled that pre-election promise. In summary we see that this bill which will exempt light electric vehicles from paying road-user charges will have many many benefits. Certainly they will help the environmental impacts they will help our reliance on fossil fuels they will also support our energy sector and importantly this is an option that hopefully will see New Zealanders—