Williamson Maurice: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17495] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 In the 5 minutes that I have I will concentrate on only one issue with regard to transport and I will let my able colleague the Opposition spokesperson on transport David Bennett cover everything else. I will cover the issue and the debacle of the road-user charge increase for this financial year that occurred on 1 July and try to get just a few facts on the table about how badly mismanaged that issue was and how bad some of the answers we received in the House were in terms of being not just bad answers but factually incorrect answers. 
The first issue was that road transport users out there have been asking for some time to be given at least a month’s notice of changes. That is all they wanted. They wanted 1 month’s notice of a road-user charge increase so they could put their billing systems in place to start charging at the new rate come the next month. They did not want say 12 months 30 months or anything else—and they had to hand in the old notice of road-user charges if they had bought them for more than the 1 month. What they did not realise and what I have actually been able to tell them is that until 25 March 2002 the provision was actually in the law. The Road User Charges Act of 1977 has a section 21 that states that there is to be 1 month’s notice. In fact it was the Labour Government that took the 1 month’s notice provision out of the road-user charges legislation. 
Let us go back to 2007 because every one of the dates I am now going to give is from last year. First of all on 9 July the Hon Annette King Minister of Transport wrote to the Road Transport Forum and said: “I appreciate your offer of the Road Transport Forum New Zealand (RTFNZ) to continue working with us on RUC and other land transport related issues.” Basically she was saying to the Road Transport Forum that the Government understood that the forum had an issue about this and about how road-user charges were set and appreciated its offer to work with the Government. Members should remember the dates because I will have to come back to them from time to time. That was a letter from Annette King on 9 July last year. 
An email then arrived at the Road Transport Forum New Zealand on 5 September—just less than a month later—to the chief executive from Barry Kidd at the Ministry of Transport. It stated: “… I have outlined below a brief summary of the issue with giving notice of future heavy RUC increases and a proposed solution that the Minister has indicated should be included in a RUC amendment bill to be introduced into the House later this year.” So that is what the man from the Ministry of Transport said to the Road Transport Forum. He said that the “solution that the Minister has indicated”—those are the exact words in his email—“should be included in a RUC amendment bill to be introduced into the House later this year.” to cope with this issue. 
One would assume from that that the Minister was telling the forum that it had got what it wanted so on 21 September after a board meeting Tony Friedlander the chief executive wrote back to Annette King and said: “The Ministry of Transport has now advised us that you have agreed to a solution being included in a RUC Amendment Bill to be introduced into the House later this year.” So there we go. On 9 July Annette King had said: “Thank you for working with us.” On 5 September the Ministry of Transport had told the Road Transport Forum that the Minister had agreed to the amendment and on 21 September the Road Transport Forum had written back and said “Thank you for agreeing to do it this year.” I ask members to remember that that was what was said in both the email and the response in 2007. 
On 1 July this year Tony Friedlander and the Road Transport Forum which is not averse to being over-zealous in some of the statements it makes—it has to work with the Government and keep and curry favour—put out a press release stating that trucking operators had been deliberately deceived by the Minister of Transport Annette King. This is the press release: “Deliberate deception by Minister of Transport Annette King over increased Road User Charges” and I understand why truckers felt that way. They had had an email saying that the issue would be tidied up last year. It was the Labour Government that had taken out the clause that had allowed it so I imagine that when the big strike occurred across the country and trucks brought cities to a standstill the Prime Minister would have had to be scraped off the wall based on her Minister’s behaviour. 
But then Harry Duynhoven got up in the House and tried to answer that when I talked about the letter from the Road Transport Forum dated 21 September 2007. Harry Duynhoven as acting Minister responded: “I shall quote from a reply of the Minister of Transport to that letter.” Then he went on to read out Annette King’s letter which says: “You will be aware as I am that had the government provided further notice of the increases there would have been a significant amount of pre-purchasing …”. I thought “Well OK—so they did reply to the letter after all and the Road Transport Forum has got no right to complain.” Then Harry tabled the letter which was dated 10 April—long before this stuff ever began.