Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill. I will begin my contribution with a brief comment about the select committee referral. This is something that my colleagues and I will be seeking to debate and it's something that the chair of the committee—a hard-working committee and a hard-working chair—has brought to the attention of the House given that he has commented that he will need to open submissions almost immediately because it has been proposed in this House by the Minister that the committee would be reporting back on the 14th. It is Labour's position that that is not enough time to delve into some of the issues which need to immediately be addressed within this bill. So I will come to the reasons for that in my speech and then I'll be asking for a call on the motion when the Minister moves it.So just to quickly recap about what this bill seeks to do as the Hon Dr Megan Woods has said it redefines and checks in with the definitions of things like electric vehicles (EVs). This is meaty policy work. In an environment where the technology around this is changing constantly it is for the committee to give itself an assurance that the definition that we create today in the legislation is fit for purpose not only now but in the future.What is drafted currently is backwards-looking. It deals with the problems that we have had now and the Government work on this—which the Minister has had the benefit of speaking to today—was done broadly since 2021 but we need to ensure that the advances in technology are captured within the definitions here.It also sets a differential rate for plug-in hybrids and an exemption for very light EVs. But one of the things that the committee will be asked to deal with is whether those weight ratings are appropriate given the kind of policy problems that the House is being asked to solve here about everyone paying their fair share when large vehicles only make up a very small proportion of New Zealand's transport fleet.So what needs to happen next? Well the questions that the Labour members have addressed in our speeches on this side of the debate have not had an opportunity to be addressed. They are about what the impact of this policy will be on New Zealand's transport fleet as a whole. That's something that the select committee needs time to delve into and understand because the impact of this policy decision will take us away from essentially what was a subsidy of users of electric vehicles in order to incentivise their uptake and their use. That was a decision to expand the number of electric vehicles which were being imported into New Zealand alongside other policy decisions like the Clean Car Discount. Those were incredibly effective. They meant that New Zealand had one of the highest rates of increase of uptake in electric vehicles in our fleet in the world and when we take away those options for people it means that we will see an ongoing effect over several decades in terms of what is available not only in the primary vehicle purchasing market but also for the secondary vehicle purchases which is most New Zealanders. Many New Zealanders will not then have the opportunity if newer vehicles aren't coming into the country through things like corporate fleets to be able to buy them in the secondary market and it will have an ongoing effect on the emissions of our vehicle fleet as a whole when people hang on to their older vehicles that do not use EV technology.So we need to give ourselves some assurance as this House that this isn't having a long-run effect on our emissions profile over time and those numbers aren't available for the House today. They are unlikely to be made available to the select committee in a four-week process. We need the time to be able to delve into the impact of this decision on coming generations. There's also some work to be done on what the Government members have presented to the House as the 2 percent of the vehicle fleet being sort of a goal of the EVs represented within that. That certainly doesn't represent the number of EVs in the vehicle fleet. That would be a good idea. We still I think have a general agreement in this House that it is good for our transport fleet to reduce in its emissions profile and also to become less dependent on foreign offshore oil. Those are good things and so we need some assurances at the select committee level about how we continue to incentivise the uptake of ordinary people buying primary or second-hand cars to purchase EV vehicles. Those are the sorts of things we will need to delve into. We will also need to understand the implications for say those hard-working taxi drivers in Manurewa in my electorate for whom this will completely change their business profile. For those reasons we'll be seeking calls on the motion to refer this to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.