Fenton Darien: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fenton Darien: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:655;Page:4893] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 It is pleasing to take a call on the first reading of the Road User Charges Amendment Bill. I am really disappointed that on a day in the House when we have agreement on a bill like this one of the members opposite could not help himself. He does not have the generosity to put the past behind him and to work together with the Opposition on this bill. 
I also want to make it clear that the former Minister of Transport Annette King gave no guarantees to the industry either on increases or on notice. It is absolutely incorrect to allege that. I want to make sure that that is on the record. 
As I said Labour supports this bill’s referral to the select committee where we hoped it would be thoroughly considered but obviously that will not happen. We will have a very few number of days to consider the bill. I did hear the introductory comments made by my colleague Darren Hughes when he spoke briefly on the bill the other night. He observed that this is becoming a bit of habit of this National Government. We are very concerned about that. People need to have the right to comment on bills that are put before Parliament. They do that through the select committee process and it is called as my colleague said democracy. 
Labour thinks that supporting an uptake in the use of electric vehicles is a great idea and it adds to the good work that Labour did in promoting electric vehicles. Electric vehicles are the future and Labour already had plans in train for a nationwide set of recharging stations for plugging in electric cars when drivers are a long way from home. 
Labour instigated the review of road-user charges and it is interesting to note that the road-user charges system in New Zealand is unique in the world. We instigated a review because there had not been one in 18 years. During that period the ratio of trucks to cars had changed enormously as had the weights being carried by those trucks. That meant there was a great inequity between trucking firms and private motorists over who was paying for road maintenance. Motorists felt they were subsidising truckers and that heavy trucks causing substantial damage were not paying their share. 
Last year Annette King announced a working party that would look at the formula for road-user charges for heavy vehicles. She also announced that the Government intended to amend the Road User Charges Act 1977 for vehicles weighing more than 3.5 tonnes in order to restrict the period of time in which pre-purchased licences could continue to be used after a road-user charge increase. The purpose of the amendment was to allow the Government to give a reasonable period of notice of increases and I note that that is what this bill proposes to do. 
The bottom line for Labour in that review was that all road users must pay their fair share—it was all about being fair—towards maintaining our roads building new roads and improving passenger transport. We wanted to ensure that the formula for setting road-user charges delivered fairness for everyone. 
Well that was then and this is now. The working party reported back to Steven Joyce the new Minister of Transport. And guess what? A key recommendation was that the current road-user charges system be retained with some work around the margins which the Minister says he is looking at—and this I suppose is the first part of that. The report recommended that 6 weeks’ notice be given for any increases to the rates of road-user charges and the result is this bill which provides for 42 days’ notice but also provides a mechanism to minimise the impact of pre-purchasing. 
The bill proposes to amend the Road User Charges Act in order to achieve two outcomes. The first is to enable the exemption of light electric motor vehicles from the requirement to pay road-user charges and the second is to provide 42 days’ notice of increases to road-user charges to all diesel motor vehicle owners. In order to minimise potential revenue loss caused by the pre-purchasing of road-user charges by the trucking industry following the 42 days’ notice the bill provides that heavy vehicle road-user charges licences will expire 1 month after an increase comes into effect. 
Part 1 provides for a road-user charge exemption for light electric motor vehicles. As I said we support that and I was looking forward to hearing from various parties at the select committee on the whole topic of electric motor vehicles and where we are heading with that. Labour supports the notion of new electric vehicle technology and the contribution that that makes for the efficiency of the motor vehicle fleet but currently availability is low purchase prices are at least double that of conventional vehicles and manufacturers do not rate New Zealand as a priority market. The Minister confirmed to the select committee this morning that the main reason for ownership rates being low is the cost of the vehicles. 
Although Labour supports incentives for moving the vehicle fleet beyond its current reliance on fossil fuels and encourages the reduction of greenhouse gases and harmful emissions this measure would appear to have a very minor influence on the decision of an individual or business to purchase an electric motor vehicle. But that does not mean we should not do it. Labour thinks we should be among the leading countries to widely deploy electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids for a new era of energy independence and low emissions in transport. We expect to see electric cars arrive and start to be used in New Zealand between 2010 and 2015. The numbers will grow slowly at the start but they will increase as supply increases and the costs go down. However this is a tiny gesture by a National Government and it does lack imagination. 
The recession calls for innovative thinking and searching out opportunities to create new jobs and be a leader in green technology. Denmark for example is investing in the development of the electric car industry and green transport. The UK Government is investing £250 million to promote low-carbon transport over the next 5 years. Motorists will be offered subsidies of up to £5000 to encourage them to buy electric or plug-in hybrid cars under plans announced by that Government. The US and China are in a race to produce electric cars and hybrid cars. As I said although Labour supports this measure by international standards it is pretty timid and the facts are that 5 years from now it is unlikely that we will have more than 500 electric motor vehicles on our roads. 
I have to note the apparent inconsistency in the National Government’s position. National has said that electric motor vehicles decrease reliance on fossil fuels but just before Christmas it rammed through under urgency a bill that repealed the obligation for oil companies to sell a proportion of the petrol and diesel blended with biofuels. A few hundred cars is progress I suppose but that pales in comparison to what could have been achieved had National not reversed the measures that Labour already had in place. 
I return now to the select committee process. I want to go over the questions that my colleague Annette King talked about. There are some real issues there and I hope that we will get time to get these questions answered in the very very rushed process we will have in the select committee. Those questions are how this will work in practice how much it will cost to implement this requirement and how many staff will be employed. What avenues would exist for trucking firms to rort the system? That is really important because we do not want to have a new measure and go through a process of rorting. Also what would be the total leakage of funds not gathered by the Government? 
Labour supports this bill. As I said I was looking forward to a very interesting debate at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I guess I will not have much of an educational experience about electric cars but as I said it is a start and we support the bill.