Hughes Darren: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Hughes Darren: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the second reading of the Road User Charges Amendment Bill. In opening I note with interest the extraordinary praise the Minister of Transport is getting from National members this afternoon. When people are on their way up in politics everyone wants to be their friend. I think that a lot of those National backbenchers are keen to be very close to the Minister of Transport; the potential for his continued promotion as a result of other activities within the Government seems to be causing an outbreak of good old sycophancy across the National benches. Those members are thinking that if the current Minister of Transport were to move to another slightly more senior portfolio they want to be on his side. When listening to members opposite today talking about how talented the Minister is one would have thought he created the motorcar. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: They all want to be in his house! 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: It is probably best that we do not explore that too far this afternoon. 
The other interesting thing is being lectured by members opposite about changes to road-user charges and particularly what happened in 2008. Many members on this side of the House recall the absolute outrage from National members at any change to road-user charges. That they had not changed for 18 years was one of those facts that got in the way of the story a wee bit for members opposite. They joined every protest around the country they could find to say how shameful it was that road-user charges were going up in order to reflect the costs on the roads of the trucking fleet. They were so outraged by that. 
I have sat here all year we have had a Budget and the Speech from the Throne and now we have a bill that particularly and specifically addresses road-user charges and the National Government is not reversing the charges that were so immoral insensitive and outrageous last year. At that period of time the price of diesel had not headed north. As you will know Mr Assistant Speaker it has headed south quite significantly since the road-user charges were changed last year. It makes me wonder about the crocodile tears that were shed so blatantly by National Party members in election year. They thought there should be no additional costs to the roading industry or the trucking fleet by way of road-user charges. They thought all the costs should fall on to the petrol-using motorcars across the country. That is where the costs should have been. Those members have now come into office and apparently those decisions taken by the previous Minister of Transport Mrs King were quite wise. 
I am curious about whether the member opposite supports the current level of road-user charges. The Dunedin member was so verbose and articulate in his speech and I am asking him now whether he believes that the current level of road-user charges is appropriate. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: I’ll answer it in 30 days. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Well we do not quite have 30 days; we have about 15 minutes before we have to vote on this second reading. It is curious to me that National members now think that these road-user charges are at an acceptable level. National has not addressed the issue of fairness on road users who buy petrol and pay excise tax through that system. 
We support the 42-day change that is coming in through this bill. It will be interesting to see what it is like in operation because there is a chance of a lot of bureaucracy being involved in this. These are not so much bureaucrats at the front line as at the pump line but National does not seem too worried about that. It is clear that on some things the cost does not really matter to National. There are some topics where anything goes and this will have to be added to the list of some of the other topics. 
The period for consultation on this bill is an issue for the Opposition. This bill went to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for consideration for only one hour as Darien Fenton has told the House. There was not an opportunity for there to be— 
Hon Annette King 
: Because Tony told them to! 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: They might have been acting under advice but we have to be very careful in terms of the Standing Orders on that particular matter. 
There were only nine written submissions only eight of them were considered by the select committee and there were no hearings. It was also a truncated select committee process for an issue that last year National members said was so important that there had to be a chance to debate it. Members opposite may see irony in us raising this point but we have listened to what they said last year. They won the election by saying those things. But when we scratch the surface we see that although the words from some of these new members are pretty flash there is not a lot of depth to some of these points. There is not a lot of context to the history. 
I finish by referring to the exemption that light electric vehicles will get in the legislation because I think it is one of the more exciting parts of this short bill. It creates a real opportunity for New Zealand. It is good that there will be an exemption until 2013 but I am concerned about making sure that the Minister will show some leadership on driving that period so we do not get to 2013 and find that New Zealand has not taken the opportunity to really develop a strong light electric vehicle fleet for New Zealand. There are a lot of exciting things happening around the world particularly in Denmark where a huge spend of over US$135 million was announced this year that will be invested in an electric car-charging network throughout that country. I think this raises enormous chances for New Zealand to follow along that path. A lot of the costs with light electric vehicles are very low therefore making them attractive to a country of our size. We need to have a bit of adventurousness and forward-thinking from the Government. 
One of the concerns that we have had with all the transport statements made today is that the Minister does not seem to be transfixed with the contribution the transport sector inevitably makes to greenhouse gas emissions and how we can try to use this powerful part of our economy—and indeed our society—to rather than contributing to this problem come up with new technologies as to ways of dealing with it. It seems to me that on this topic of light electric vehicles creating incentives and creating opportunities for a proper industry to develop would be quite visionary for the Government. 
My message to the Minister would be not to just turn up in 2013 and roll over this exemption but to use the period to really get cracking on the ability of light electric motor vehicles to contribute to the New Zealand transport infrastructure and networks throughout our country. The Labour Party will be supporting the second reading of this bill. 
Bill read a second time.