Parker David; Brown SimeonHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. The purpose of this part of the Land Transport Act is expresses in section 170 of the Land Transport Act and it says The purpose … is to achieve a rapid reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from light vehicles imported into New Zealand". It's effectively trying to improve the efficiency of the vehicle fleet. The main agency that has been responsible for improving efficiency in things that are energy inefficient for a long long time in New Zealand has been the Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority.So my question and I want to explain why this is relevant but my question to the Minister is whether he gave any consideration of actually rather than doing this as an amendment to the Land Transport Act whether he gave consideration to putting this within the purview of the Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority under their legislation.Now the reasons for that which I would be interested to hear whether the Minister considered include the fact that that authority has been very very effective at improving the efficiency of appliances that we buy every day. And we're not aware of the background rules that drive the improved efficiency of those categories of energy-using devices because it happens behind the scenes and they do an extremely good job of balancing this interest between the drive for efficiency and cost. One of the issues that I know the Government will be concerned about—as was the prior Government—is the trade-off between efficiency and cost.Now the Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority have managed to carry the improved efficiency of you know ranges dishwashers air conditioning devices heat pumps dryers fridges; most of the things that are used by people in their normal lives that use energy now have efficiency standards that are regularly updated. We do a lot of it with Australia and it's done through the Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority and they have great systems and those systems have got public confidence. They behind the scenes will be identifying what technological choices are out there from the providers of these appliances which are not generally made in New Zealand they're made overseas which is also the case for motor vehicles. And behind the scenes they are ensuring that they're not driving the price of these appliances too high whilst they're also maximising within reason the energy efficiency that can be obtained by driving those standards higher.Because in those appliances as well as there are in cars there are more efficient options and there are less efficient options. And it's in New Zealand's interests that we get the more efficient ones into our country so that we use less electricity less energy and have less environmental effect from energy production because as we know any form of energy production has some form of environmental effect.So I would encourage the Minister to give consideration whether this—which really is the expertise that sits in the Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority it's the same skill set that is needed to set these standards properly. I suspect if we did it there would be less public controversy around the standards that he's going to have to set under this because the public have confidence in the Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority. So my question is: has he given any consideration to the Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority? My second reason for doing that and he could address this is presumably given that the regulatory impact statement tabled with this bill shows that there was not much consideration of what the effect of this was on costs. The Hon Dr Megan Woods highlighted that in a second reading speech yesterday. Presumably he has some idea as to how this trade-off between cost and efficiency is going to be made.Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Transport): Madam Chair I appreciate the member's question but this clause is very clearly around amending the legislation which the standard already exists within. Those decisions were made by the previous Government when the Act was first passed. We are making two targeted amendments to that legislation and so the bill therefore has to amend the legislation to enable those changes. That Act is the Land Transport Act 1998 which is being amended and that's why this bill mentions that Act in this clause."