Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLand Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:16951. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment BillIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Land Transport Act 1998DARIEN FENTON (Labour):Labour is very happy to help the Government on the passage of this Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill. There is no doubt that in speaking to Part 1 the Government needs our assistance with this bill because of the mess that it has created going right back to when this road-user charges legislation was reviewed. It was passed in 2012 but debated in 2011. I remember—and I have recalled in several contributions I have made to the House—speaking to the first reading of this bill under urgency last August in 2013. It seems to be a very unfortunate trait of this Government that whenever we are talking about anything to do with roads either it is a mess or it is about putting petrol tax up and hitting the people who are struggling out there in the pocket.But as I said Labour did warn the Government way back in 2012 when this legislation was passed that the regulation-making process in this legislation that would allow the Minister to sign it off without public debate would cause problems and that indeed is what happened. What we told the Government then was that it broke the basic democratic principle that there should be no taxation without representation. There were no final numbers available for scrutiny in advance of the 2012 bill being passed into law. The actual changes were apparently going to be set by officials at some later date—and I will get into what did actually happen—and there were a number of submissions suggesting that this regulation-making power was outside the role of legislation like the 2013 Road User Charges Act and that in fact it broke that basic principle of good lawmaking.Indeed what happened was that a mess was created. The Road User Charges Act turned out to have some minor anomalies that this bill seeks to correct. Apparently they affect only a small number of vehicles and their owners. But what happened was that the Minister tried to pass a regulation that would allow this particular issue to be resolved through regulation. The Regulations Review Committee did a very good job of scrutinising those regulations. It recommended to the House back in 2012 that the regulations be disallowed because the Government had not followed the process. It had allowed excessive regulation-making decision-making that was outside the comfort zone of this Parliament and in fact of the tradition of this Parliament.The Minister then did something unprecedented by reinstating the regulations in 2013.Andrew Little: Nothing would surprise us from this Government.DARIEN FENTON: Well that is true. Minister Gerry Brownlee did not surprise us with that but he reinstated those regulations and that was an unprecedented process in this Parliament. He reinstated these regulations. Off they went to the Regulations Review Committee again and what did the Regulations Review Committee say? It said that the regulations were outside the parameters of good lawmaking in this Parliament and that they should be disallowed. So twice the Government has tried to sneak through the regulations that are proposed in this bill—the “minor” reform the “minor anomalies” with the road-user charges—using its regulation-making power. Thank goodness for the good chairpersonship of Charles Chauvel who was the chairman of the Regulations Review Committee at the time when it made the first disallowance and then also the Hon Maryan Street another hard-working member who was on the ball and actually recommended to this House that these regulations be disallowed. That is why we ended up in this House under urgency in August 2013 with the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill.It is interesting when you think about what we could be doing if we were not having to waste our time doing this. The bill talks about “minor anomalies” with the Road User Charges Act. There are many more anomalies than this minor anomaly with the Act and I wanted to take the opportunity in the context of Part 1 to talk about some of those because they are anomalies that have been around for some time. Take the anomaly of light diesel vehicles—those under 3500 tonnes—whose owners have to pay road-user charges. People up and down the country who have light diesel vehicles who have purchased them because they want to contribute to sustainable transport in New Zealand are having to purchase road-user charges in addition to purchasing their vehicles. This issue has been raised time and again as road-user charges have been debated in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and time and again the Government has turned its back on those people who use light diesel vehicles. These are not freight vehicles. The Government has turned its back on those people and said: “We’re not interested in that. We would rather try to sneak through regulations to deal with the issue of fast tractors and other farm vehicles.” That is one anomaly and I would say that it is not a minor anomaly; I would say that it is a major anomaly.Another anomaly that has come through at the select committee when we have talked about road-user charges is the issue of road-user charges on motorhomes and campervans. I have had a number of older people ring me in the last little while since the road-user charges changed. They tell me they are paying for 11 tonnes when their vehicle is actually only 7 tonnes. Somehow with the changes that were made under the Road User Charges Act they are paying $50 more a year. We are talking about retired people on minimal incomes on restricted incomes who have bought a campervan or converted a van into a holiday bus and who are now finding that they cannot go on holiday because first they are not earning enough money because it is really really tough out there and second $50 is a lot of money for them. That is a minor anomaly. Maybe it is a major one because I certainly know that the Motor Caravan Association has been to our select committee and expressed its concerns about this on a number of occasions.In Part 2 I will talk a little bit more about some of the anomalies because there are some particularly bad ones that I have come across in the adjournment that I want to bring to the attention of the Committee. But I would say that Labour is supporting this because we think it is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do to correct anomalies when they are made. It is just a pity we have to waste House time on doing this—House time on something that was urgent back in August 2013.David Bennett: You don’t have to; you can sit down. Sit down.DARIEN FENTON: David Bennett might not think it is important to debate these issues properly but actually the Labour Party does think it is enormously important.The proposals under this bill are to exempt fast tractors—which I found quite amusing really—tractors that operate over 40 kilometres per hour on the road from road-user charges and subject them to an annual charge in lieu of road-user charges to cover the costs they impose on the road network. The bill proposes to exempt all unregistered vehicles—that is vehicles exempt from registration or not required to be registered or operating under trade plates—from road-user charges and apply to them an annual charge as well. That is all very reasonable. It should not have been missed out in the first place. The Minister should not have tried to sneak this through by way of regulation and he should not have tried to trick those on the Regulations Review Committee by reinstating the disallowed regulation and tried to sneak it in that way because he made a mess he made a stuff-up and here we are in this Parliament debating Part 1—Andrew Little: Expensive time.DARIEN FENTON: At great expense actually—great expense. Those who drive fast tractors will be looking forward to having this legislation go through. It actually should never have happened in the first place. Thank you.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):I rise to speak on the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill Part 1. The Green Party is supporting this bill and the principal changes that it is making which establish an annual charge in lieu of a road-user charge for some vehicles that are exempt from road-user charges and create a new regulation-making power to exempt from road-user charges vehicles that are not required to be registered. That is an obvious amendment that was overlooked when the original legislation was passed. The principal legislation was the Road User Charges Act 2012 which was a major overhaul of the road-user charges scheme which was passed in 2012. The Green Party can support these minor changes. We do think it is unfortunate but it does happen with the overhaul of a system as complex as our road-user charges system that there would be oversights and there would be things to rectify that would come back to this House and we can understand that. What is important is that it is following the principle of user pays and so it makes sense that if there are vehicles that are not using the road they should not have to pay road-user charges. That makes sense.But there are some missed opportunities obviously both with the principal legislation and this amendment bill to further rectify anomalies in the legislation—for example those using light diesel vehicles which Darien Fenton referred to. Those passenger vehicles are actually being charged perhaps a little bit too much given that they have greater fuel efficiency and that we want to incentivise greater fuel efficiency in our passenger fleet. Road-user charges are a way of applying fees in an economically rational way that will incentivise the purchase of vehicles that are going to be more efficient. So that is something that we could have looked at that was not looked at. Instead we just provide an exemption for fast tractors which are not usually using the road and exemptions for unregistered vehicles which is fair enough.One of the things that came about as a result of the principal legislation the Road User Charges Act 2012 is that the total contribution to the National Land Transport Fund from heavy commercial vehicles using diesel has now actually declined significantly whereas the contribution from petrol vehicles—passenger vehicles by and large—has increased. It used to be closer to a 50:50 split; now it is getting down to only about a third that is coming from these heavy vehicles. I suppose there is some cause for concern that at a time when we are allowing bigger and heavier trucks on the road which has consequences in terms of road maintenance and the requirement for ratepayers to invest in stronger bridges and what not there is a bit of a subsidy going on.We do want road freight to be as efficient as possible and the current system probably is not getting that outcome.One of the rationale for the changes to the road-user charges system was that we could increase compliance and reduce avoidance. So by and large the contribution from heavy commercial vehicles and trucks has declined but the argument was that there would be increased compliance. In fact from the financial review we saw that was not the case. So there is about the same amount of avoidance of paying road-user charges from what I can tell from the documents from the ministry and the New Zealand Transport Agency as there was before but by and large the road freight industry is paying less in its contribution to our national transport budget. Of course this cannot continue infinitely. Unless we invest in alternatives to the roads we are going to have a problem in the future of funding the transport budget because this Government has got some pretty ambitious plans to spend billions of dollars on just a couple of really expensive motorways that do not actually carry many of our freight tonne kilometres or many of our passenger trips.The Government’s decision to spend most of the transport budget on these few motorways and in particular to debt fund some of them as it is proposing in the case of Transmission Gully which is to be funded from private debt means that New Zealanders 20 to 25 years from now or even 30 years from now will still be paying back the money that was spent by this National Government on one motorway that carries you know a tiny percentage—less than 1 percent—of all vehicle trips in New Zealand. That is not a rational use of transport budget.But what is concerning is that we have seen that vehicle kilometres travelled on our road network have declined or sort of stalled since 2006. Vehicle kilometres travelled particularly by passenger vehicles have declined per capita. They have stagnated overall. This is a phenomenon that has been observed in other countries comparable to New Zealand. Australia the United States Canada and all other OECD countries really are seeing the same peak vehicle use and because of that we are having less revenue coming into the National Land Transport Fund than we anticipated. Over time we are going to have a serious funding shortfall between what the Government wants to spend on very expensive motorways what the Government needs to spend to maintain our existing road network at a high standard and ensure that it is safe and the amount of money that we actually have coming in from petrol tax and road-user charges.What is inevitably going to happen if the Government does not reprioritise its spend and cut some of the more superfluous spending and hopefully not take on this additional billions of dollars’ worth of debt to fund one particular project that has a very poor business case is that future Governments are going to have to put up road-user charges and the petrol tax. It is ironic that at a time when there is declining demand for our road network we are spending so much money on new redundant projects that are going to put us into debt and we are then going to have to raise money afterwards and charge people even more for the use of the roads while they are using them less. This is not a rational policy outcome in my opinion.Although the Green Party is happy to support this bill we think New Zealanders need to be aware that in the future we are going to be seeing increases to the petrol tax and increases to road-user charges to fund this National Government’s outrageous plans to spend billions on a few very low-value motorways. It is going to be bad for the country and it is going to be bad for road users most of all. I have said this to the Road Transport Forum and I have said it to the Automobile Association. This Government is not spending petrol tax dollars and the road-user charges money in a way that is best for road users. I think it has been very easy for the Government to make the claim that because it is spending money on roads it is good for road users. But if we take a rational analysis of it and take an objective look at where the money is going what the benefits are going to be and whether or not it is actually going to benefit freight or road users then the answer is that it is not.In the future we could have higher petrol prices and higher diesel prices and at the same time while people are looking for alternatives to the roads so that we can move our freight at a lower cost and avoid the high cost of diesel and while passengers are looking for an alternative to sitting in traffic in Auckland for example because they need to get to work and there has not been the investment in the passenger rail network that was needed they are going to have to be spending even more because we will be paying back the debt on Transmission Gully. Thank you.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):New Zealand First has expressed concern about a number of amendments to road-user charges made during this term of Parliament. The Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill seeks to correct some of the stuff-ups made so far. We will support the bill on that basis as far as it goes. But there are many more stuff-ups that are not being addressed at all in this bill. One is some of the provisions of the 2012 amendment Act which made many changes to the road-user charges system. New Zealand First then had and still has concerns for the 22000 motorhome owners registered with the Motor Caravan Association although the total number affected is of course many more than that. We have similar concerns about the horse trucks that have been caught by those changes and which should have been exempt from the 2012 regime.Vehicle operators in those categories justifiably oppose having their road-user charges increased—mostly doubled and in some cases trebled—because of new bandwidths and maximum permissible on-road weight charges when their weight is constant and in most cases considerably less than their maximum chassis weight. There are a great number of motorhomes that are built on a chassis that have a greater gross vehicle mass rating than the actual on-road weight of the motorhome. The changes made in 2012 which we think should have been corrected as part of this particular stuff-up’s correction bill result in the owners of these vehicles being required to purchase road-user licences for a greater laden mass than the actual laden mass.The purpose of road-user charges legislation is to continue the road-user charges system by imposing charges on heavy vehicles and certain other vehicles for their use of the roads that are in proportion to the costs that the vehicles generate. We believe that there should be a provision to enable motorhome-type vehicles which are never likely to operate at near the maximum permitted laden weight to be assigned a road-user charge weight that would be sufficient to cover their actual laden mass. An example is a motorhome with a gross vehicle mass of 12000 kilograms but an actual on-road mass of 8500 kilograms. Under the 2010 road-user charge their charge was $120.24. Under the 2012 changes the owner is now required to purchase a road-user charge licence for 12 tonnes at a cost of $246.26. That of course is an increase of $126.02 or over 104 percent which we think is outrageous.The requirement to have all heavy vehicles operating with a road-user charge licence to cover the maximum permissible laden mass as the lesser of the rated gross vehicle mass or the vehicle’s dimension and mass—rule 2002—has resulted in some excessive increases in costs to the owners such as that I have already mentioned. The greater percentage of private motorhome owners in New Zealand are retirees. These people have limited income and in many cases will not easily be able to absorb such large increases in their costs. This bill should have included a provision to allow motorhomes to have a road-user charge licence weight allocated that covers the actual on-road mass of the vehicle. The current regime which captures motorhomes and horse trucks and hugely increases their road-user charge liability is grossly unfair and should have been addressed as one of the Government’s many stuff-ups where road-user charges legislation has been concerned.Although this bill is supportable as far as it goes New Zealand First places on record our strong objection to the way motorhome and horse truck operators have been treated—not even considered as part of these amendments which we think they should have been.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):It is a pleasure to take a call in the Committee stage of this very important piece of legislation the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill has a unique characteristic to it and that is that as a transport bill from this Government it makes some sense but that is about the only redeeming feature of it. It is here because of a failure of process and a failure of the integrity of process by the Minister of Transport—not only the current one but the previous one—that has caused this House to have to devote time to use its legislative powers to correct the previous piece of legislation and the regulatory failure of the Minister. It is important—and that is the reason why Labour will support the bill—that the costs of heavy vehicles to the taxpayer as the primary funder of our roading system are properly shared and met and collected. So this bill plays a very important role in ensuring that that small number—but nevertheless a very important category—of heavy vehicles that do not spend a lot of time on our roads and that would otherwise be exempt from road-user charges do in fact face a levy to properly reflect the burden that they place upon our roads and the cost to the taxpayer of maintaining them to the extent that these vehicles cause undue wear and tear or indeed any wear and tear. That is a good thing and for that reason we support the bill.But underlying this is a more serious proposition that this Government still does not get and that is that not only our roads ought to be properly funded but the funding that is collected or is derived from these user charges is properly and fairly distributed across our roading network because that is not the case at the moment. As my and there is a vast array of roads—thousands of kilometres of roading—that gets no attention at all.David Bennett: State Highway 3.ANDREW LITTLE: I know that David Bennett understands that because he is an electorate member and his electorate is very close to and indeed comes at the end of one of the most important roads in this country and that is my very favourite State Highway 3—the northern route out of Taranaki. It is the northern route out of Taranaki which takes you up the beautiful roads the beech-laden roads out to the north before you get to Awakino Gorge just after you have come down the winding Mount Messenger. The road on Mount Messenger could be rerouted could be set in a more stable area and could save the taxpayer with a bit of upfront investment now. If we managed these new road-user charges under this bill it could enable us to fund a better road on Mount Messenger.Actually that is a dangerous part of State Highway 3 but the most dangerous part was exposed not 2 weeks ago in a tragic accident on State Highway 3 on another very unstable part of the road where a large rock and cliff face fell from the road and crushed the front passenger in a vehicle travelling up it. On a sunny and otherwise pleasant day the passenger and the driver in this motor vehicle met a dreadful fate. That was on State Highway 3 and that illustrates the problem. Questions will be asked and an inquiry is under way as to what happened in that particular case and whether enough money has been spent on monitoring the unstable roads the very important roads but the unstable ones like State Highway 3. The question will be asked as to whether roads like State Highway 3 receive the due attention that they ought to get not because of where they are and the fact that they may not carry the same amount of traffic as the southern motorway in Auckland but because they are unstable and they are in difficult areas. They may well service an area of an important population which is the people of Taranaki and New Plymouth but they are in difficult areas. They are roads that are difficult and costly to maintain but nevertheless they must be maintained. So this bill is important because it starts to signal that at least when Parliament gets hold of an issue like this we as a whole in Parliament can see that we need to make sure that the levies that are collected are properly collected and properly reflect the wear and tear and the burden placed upon the road by different users. The next big challenge—and really a challenge that only the Government can meet—is to make sure that it is properly spent.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):It is a pleasure indeed to speak to the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill in Part 1 of the Committee stage of this bill. The purpose of this bill is of course—as others will know but just for those listening—to amend the Road User Charges Act to enable regulations to be made exempting road-user charge vehicles that are not required to be registered from road-user charges. Most of the vehicles that are exempt will make very little use of roads and make a sufficient contribution to the cost that they impose on the road network through the vehicle licence fee. In fact the first part of this bill Part 1 amends the Land Transport Act 1998 to enable an additional fee for certain road-user charge vehicles. So that provision is essentially making that additional fee payable in respect of all road-user charge vehicles that are operated on roads and that are exempt from paying road-user charges. That additional fee is to be treated as land transport revenue for the purposes of the Land Transport Management Act. It is meant to be set having regard to the extent of the use of the vehicles on the road and the likely cost that the vehicles will generate when they use that road.This is important and I do not want to relitigate the history but it is an interesting bill this one. We support it. I mean getting the legislation clear and getting it right is important. However it has got an interesting history which I did comment on in my second reading speech so I will not go into it here. The fact of the matter is that we are fixing up a bit of legislation to get it right and that is fine. The actual amendments to the Land Transport Act in Part 1 as I said make sense.But one of the issues that we have got is a question of strategic transport direction. That is what I want to talk about. This is about revenue we collect from vehicles using roads and making sure that it is done in a fair manner that makes sense. But we do need to think about what we are doing overall with our transport system. Our transport system is fundamental both to ensuring that people can get from A to B as they need to but also to ensuring that goods and services can get from A to B as we need them to and it is a significant part of our economic system. We need legislation that makes sure that the costs are shared clearly and equitably but we also need to make sure that this transport system that we have actually enables our economy to grow and that it serves the people of this country.The question we really have is about the revenue being generated from the fees that can be set under this part from road-user charges generally and from petrol tax. All of this is about income that is generated that can then be used on land transport. How that is used is I think a point of great political significance and one on which we have a very significant difference with the Government which has essentially concentrated its thoughts almost exclusively on roads of national significance. From our perspective we need to think about the rail network being the backbone of our transport system. We need to think about local roads as part of the infrastructure that is essential in terms of regional development.I think that whole strategic transport direction question is a really important one which the Government across the Chamber fails to take account of. In fact even in question time today—and I raise this point even though it was not a transport issue—illustrative of this problem was the fact that the Government will not deal with any of the hard questions. We were talking about issues of superannuation about money to invest in New Zealand businesses and about the extent to which we use the income we generate and the money that we need to invest in our businesses and how we do that. Honestly the answers to those questions around superannuation today were a disgrace. Likewise we need the money that is being generated through our road-user charges—through the fees that are flagged in Part 1 of the bill—to be used in a much more strategic manner than the current Government is using them.Members on this side of the Chamber will as I have said be voting for this bill. We do think that transport and getting it right in the transport portfolio is critical and we understand the need to correct the mistakes that have been made. But we think that the Government is going in the wrong direction.Part 1 agreed to.Part 2 Amendments to Road User Charges Act 2012DARIEN FENTON (Labour):I am happy to take a call on Part 2 of the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill. I think it has been an interesting discussion from the Labour and Green members of the Committee who have made a contribution to this debate by reflecting on what our transport system should be and how we use most effectively the fees that are taken from freight vehicles and others in road-user charges but also how we use the National Land Transport Fund and the money that goes from petrol excise tax into a special fund—which Labour actually did; it is called hypothecation—to build a transport system that is fair to everybody and that takes into account users of all modes of transport and that makes sure that people can get about and get to work can get to school can get to amenities and so on. That is why we see in places like Auckland where I live such a huge focus now on public transport.It was very interesting to be at the event the other day where the electrification was turned on—the member Julie Anne Genter was there too—and to see John Key turn up for it. John Key turned up and Gerry Brownlee and a whole lot of National Party MP hangers-on for this great event about electrification. I was bemused by that because actually it was a Labour Government working with the Greens in 2007 that initiated and funded electrification of the rail.Hon Annette King: Who was the Minister?DARIEN FENTON: Who was the Minister then? Well it was the Hon Annette King. It was a fantastic decision and I was very very proud to be there. There was not one bit of recognition the other day from that Government of that and also not one bit of recognition from the Government that it was Labour that did the double tracking in Auckland so that we are going to have a rail network in Auckland in the future once the Government gets over itself and funds the City Rail Link as well.The whole transport portfolio the transport policy is really important to everybody in the country. But this bill as I said is correcting a small anomaly and I want to go back and talk about another one that I encountered during the adjournment. Out in the country out in the regions travelling around the rural roads you can see it everywhere you go. This Government has sucked up funding through its roads of national significance its gold-plated highways to nowhere and regional roads and rural roads are missing out. Councils up and down the country are up in arms because the Government is reviewing funding assistance rates funding which is the funding that helps them keep their local roads in order. They are very worried because what it means is if the funding review comes out like it has been looking like it will it is going to cost ratepayers a whole lot more.But for me the most interesting visit I had was to the East Coast to Gisborne the other day where I met with some truck drivers. I know that the Road Transport Forum likes to think I am anti-truck. I am not anti-truck; I am pro - truck drivers because I think they have got a really hard job. Those two truck drivers drive forestry logging trucks. They are driving them day in and day out because forestry is booming on the East Coast. They are driving these huge rigs that they pay half a million dollars for and they are driving them on shocking roads because this Government is ignoring the funding that is needed in rural areas like the East Coast for secondary roads and it is putting those drivers to work on unsafe roads. The roads are rutted. They are unsealed. They fill up with mud. Trucks slip and slide everywhere. The culverts overflow.The forestry industry infrastructure has been neglected. It has been neglected by this Government yet the Minister sitting in the chair at the moment the Minister of Labour knows the consequences of ignoring safety in the forestry industry. He knows the consequences of that yet on one road there have been two deaths in the last 6 months—two accidents killing forestry logging drivers. I talked to these guys I met. These are hard-working guys. They are owner-drivers so they own their own businesses but they are really upset. Their comment to me was “We pay something like $53 million in road-user charges in this area. We see nothing of it—we see nothing of it.”Every day they tell me there are 10 near misses on that road. It is not just the forestry logging truck drivers at risk; a bus was run off the road the other day—it is other drivers on those roads. It is really really dangerous and as I have said forestry is booming on the East Coast and it is going to continue to grow as more trees come on line. So I cannot understand why the Government is not on to this and is not doing something to repair its critical neglect of forestry roads—in particular secondary roads—and why it has embarked on a funding review for regional councils when regional councils are so worried about how they are going to get their goods and services out and how they are going to keep their drivers safe and their road users safe. It is the same in Northland—it is the same in Northland. The mayor up there has been raising this issue and we have had no answers.Labour has an answer—Labour has an answer. We announced our forestry policy 2 weeks ago and we also announced that we would put back in $200 million of funding for critical regional roads in the forestry industry. So we have an answer for those truck drivers. They know that Labour believes that their lives are worth standing up for and doing something about and believes in helping them earn a living helping a town like Gisborne flourish helping it come along and helping this whole forestry industry which is so critical to our country. And of course we want to see value-add as well so it is not just logs coming out of the forests and to the ports.So I think there is an anomaly. There is an anomaly in road-user charges where this Government does not take into account the issue of the sole truck driver in Gisborne driving his half-million-dollar rig. Actually some have been split in half. That is how bad the roads are—their tyres split. The Government does not take that into account. It listens to the big boys. So when you have submissions on road-user charges you hear from the Road Transport Forum and others but it is not often that a lone truck driver driving on dangerous roads actually gets to have any say or gets heard by this Government. So I challenge those members to go to Gisborne meet the same drivers I did get in their rigs go on those roads and see how they feel about it and how dangerous it is and how scary it is. It is not just as I said those truck drivers who are paying their road-user charges and are keeping their trucks up to scratch as much as they can. It is not just them; it is the other road users who are also at risk.We have to take responsibility for it. This is a problem with the road-user charges system. The Government is neglecting rural roads and regional roads and our road-user charges system will not be sufficient until the Government understands that we have got to have a fair share of the National Land Transport Fund that goes not only to cities but also to regions which are so critical for our future.Simon O’Connor: Like Whangarei—that new bridge.DARIEN FENTON: Whangarei—go and talk to them in Northland absolutely.Simon O’Connor: The new bridge.DARIEN FENTON: A new bridge—but the forestry roads are shocking. People are driving off them. I have someone who rings me every morning—who lives on State Highway 1 and says “There’s been another truck gone off the road Darien.” You start monitoring it.Mike Sabin: Every morning?DARIEN FENTON: That member should start monitoring it. Government members do not like it when we—Carol Beaumont: Hitting a nerve.DARIEN FENTON: Yes hitting a nerve. You do not like it when Labour stands up for the drivers for truckies. They do not like that—they absolutely do not like that.So as my colleagues have said we are supporting Part 2 of this bill. The legislation needs to be fixed. Of course we are supporting the bill. It is a waste of time that we are having to do this. I would much rather that we were spending our time in this Chamber doing something for those hard-working forestry truck drivers those logging truck drivers who are putting their lives on the line every day to help their families and to help the economy. I would rather we were doing something about that and that instead of those members shouting across the Chamber from the other side we were putting our heads together in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and coming up with a solution because this is dangerous work.Mike Sabin: I’ll tell you what the solution is: keep Labour from the Treasury benches. That’s it right there.DARIEN FENTON: Pardon?Carol Beaumont: Take a call.DARIEN FENTON: Take a call. That is a good idea—that is a good idea. So as I said I am pleased to support this bill.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Julie Anne—[Interruption] Have you finished? [Interruption] I call the honourable member Julie Anne Genter.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):I have to strongly agree with the contribution just made by my colleague Darien Fenton. Part 2 of this—[Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member. It has been a convention in this place for a number of years now that when people who do not have the floor interject on each other that is not in keeping with the custom of practice of this House. I urge members to remember that.JULIE ANNE GENTER: Thank you Mr Chair. I have to strongly agree with the contribution just made by my colleague Darien Fenton on Part 2 of the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill which amends the Road User Charges Act.I think that for the benefit of members in the Committee today there is probably a little bit of background that needs to be explained about how the road-user charges system works. Central government spends about $3 billion a year on transport through the National Land Transport Fund. Most of that revenue comes from petrol tax and road-user charges. As I said earlier about a third of it comes from road-user charges—that is the contribution from heavy vehicles trucks and commercial vehicles using diesel. They contribute about $1.1 billion which goes to the National Land Transport Fund. Petrol tax is about $2 billion a year. What is often overlooked when people say that roads are paid for by users is that actually that is not entirely true. Local roads are 50 percent funded by ratepayers. Ratepayers pay $1 billion which is spent on transport. So the overall transport infrastructure funded by Government is about $4 billion—$1 billion from ratepayers. It is worth noting that about 50 percent of all vehicle kilometres travelled happen on local roads so it is quite a big proportion that is subsidised by ratepayers.But what is really overlooked when we talk about the economic benefit of our transport system is the huge cost to households and businesses to use the infrastructure that is being paid for with their tax dollars. Taxpayers are paying $4 billion a year. That is being spent mostly on roads mostly on a few State highways. The largest share is going to go on a few State highways which carry a tiny proportion of all vehicle trips over the next 10 years. A large portion is going to be to pay the interest on the debt that we use to fund those projects. That is going to go on for about 25 years. But what is really overlooked is that households and businesses are spending at least three times that much just to use the infrastructure that is being built with their tax dollars. Households spent about $11 billion on fuel and vehicles last year. If we included the cost of businesses—the money that they put into their vehicles—I am sure it would be even more than that.So when we talk about what is the most economically efficient way to reduce transport costs in New Zealand minor improvements to the roading network probably are not the best way to make those savings because households and businesses have to spend well over $11 billion a year just to use the infrastructure. All of that money goes overseas because we import all of our vehicles and all of the fuel that we use to run them. Even if we did find some oil offshore it would not be used in our cars and trucks because we have light sweet crude oil which we export and we do not have the capacity to refine it. It would not be the highest-value use of that fuel.I suppose what the Green Party is saying is that a more rational approach to transport investment that would actually get better bang for our buck is to invest in the modes that have been underinvested in and that benefit not only the people who use them—the people and goods that go by rail or by passenger transport whether that is by bus or by ferry or the people who walk or cycle. If you do all of those things then you get better use of your road network but you also save money on the other side because you save the money that households and businesses are having to spend to use the road network.Unfortunately it was the National Government that decided not to reopen the Napier-Gisborne line—Shane Ardern: Yeah but who closed it?JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well it was the National Government that closed that line.Shane Ardern: No no no.JULIE ANNE GENTER: Yes that is what happened. We have enormous potential to invest in our rail network which would result in quite substantial regional economic development and reduce some of the very very high inter-regional transport costs that we have here in New Zealand. The reason why we should use the transport budget to pay for that is that it also benefits road users. At the moment when we evaluate the benefits of investing in a State highway we look at the safety benefits and we look at the wider social and economic benefits. But when we look at KiwiRail we say “Well you’ve got to fund all of your infrastructure investment simply from the return that you’re making from your freight business.” That does not make sense. The usage—Shane Ardern: A billion-dollar subsidy upfront was pretty good.JULIE ANNE GENTER: It is not $1 billion a year; it was only $250 million a year. The Government is not investing enough in the rail network and that is a missed opportunity because it impacts our road network. Making it possible for some logs and some dairy products to move more quickly and more frequently by rail takes huge heavy trucks off our roads reduces the amount of money we have to spend on maintaining those roads increases the safety for people who are driving in their cars on those roads and benefits our exporters because it reduces their costs of getting their products to market.So it would make a lot more sense to take some of that enormous capital expenditure that is going into a few very low-value motorway projects in peri-urban areas which do not even carry that much of our exports and invest some of that in the rail network all across the country getting regional economic development increasing the safety of those roads improving the maintenance of those roads and also improving congestion. If we invest for example in the City Rail Link in Auckland we can get a lot of commuters off the roads. That frees up the roads for those people who need to travel by car whether they are a plumber or a builder and who have to get around by road at peak time. The best thing for them is if we can get hundreds of thousands of cars off the road and we can do that by improving our passenger rail. Since we have already invested in electrification it makes sense to build the City Rail Link because that actually doubles the capacity of the entire rail network. It means we can get 5-minute frequencies which makes rail that much more attractive for people who are using it to get into and around the city and who do not need to use a car. Once the western ring route is opened there will be alternatives for freight. The last thing we want to see is that road clogged up with commuters who are trying to get to houses that are being built way out of the city. That would not be good for road users. It is not good for freight.So what the Green Party says is that we want an economically rational investment in our transport fund. We have to keep in mind that the way we use road-user charges does not need to be on new roads. Spending money on expensive motorways with low benefit-cost ratios is not the best use of road users’ money. In fact investing in rail is in some cases a better use of road users’ money because it has a better impact on the overall economy and the transport system whether that rail is for passenger services or for freight in our regional areas. So there are lots of opportunities. This bill makes just some tiny technical changes. The overall direction that the Government is going on transport is wrong. It is actually to tax and spend—that is the approach that the National Government is taking. It is borrowing taxing and spending the money in ways that are not going to benefit taxpayers are not going to benefit the economy and are going to cost New Zealanders for decades to come. That is a very serious concern.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):In rising to speak on Part 2 of this bill the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill—Part 2 contains the changes that amend the Road User Charges Act—I just want to identify a few of the elements that are in Part 2. There is provision in Part 2 around the situation where people are required to have a distance licence as part of their road-user licence where the vehicle concerned is used outside the terms of its road-user charges licence and the question around what defence there is in that situation. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee in dealing with this has suggested an amendment here to clause 6A in Part 2 inserting new sections 9(4A) and 9(4B). This is around “reasonable excuse”—the amendment “gives guidance to operators and to enforcement authorities as to a particular circumstance that might constitute a ‘reasonable excuse’ without otherwise altering the effect of the provision”. So that has been done in Part 2 where it sets out what happens in the situation where the vehicle does not have the correct licence for the type of road-user charge vehicle that it is. So that is one of the elements of Part 2.Also in Part 2 are the provisions in clause 12 around an offence provision relating to breach of conditions associated with section 40 of the Road User Charges Act. That is in the situation of a “light RUC vehicle operated almost exclusively off-road”. That provision is outlined. It adds an offence provision new section 40(7) to support the enforcement of conditions associated with exemptions granted under section 40. The proposed penalties have been set out to be commensurate with penalties associated with other offences of similar seriousness. There are a number of minor technical amendments that are covered off in Part 2 as well. One of the provisions is to clarify one part section 57(1)(a) by putting the word “user” after the word “road”.This is a clarification to try to tidy up. Again as I commented in Part 1 Labour does support this bill. It is fixing up some matters that do need to be fixed up. It did have a rather tortuous history to get us here.But the real question—and it is one that Darien Fenton and Julie Anne Genter have both raised here—is how all of this relates to any coherent strategic direction for transport in this country. The fact of the matter is that this is an area where the Government is taking a very piecemeal approach. I thought it was a very interesting suggestion that Darien Fenton made actually in her contribution on Part 2 because in fact we do have the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. What a fine opportunity in fact for that select committee particularly to deal with questions of logging trucks and the types of roads that they unfortunately have to use causing serious accidents and being part of the horrendous health and safety problems we have in that industry. So there is a question of the types of roads and transport used and the failure in fact to make greater use of rail—for us to use rail more effectively especially along the main trunk—and to look at that in conjunction with the conditions of work of people working in the forestry industry. I think that is an exceptionally good idea. I think it is one that the select committee should take up.Of course the chair of the select committee David Bennett happens to be in the Chamber. I am sure that Mr Bennett will want to jump up and agree with us on this matter—agree with us on this very good suggestion made by Darien Fenton which is a serious suggestion. It is not a joke. This is a real problem we have. It is a problem in this industry that could be serving this country a great deal more. We could be doing a whole lot better with the forestry industry and with products from the forestry industry. We could be creating better jobs safer jobs jobs that pay people for a decent standard of living and creating added value in our economy. This is an opportunity to look at an industry that is very important for this country and to make sure that not only is it providing decent and safe work for the people who work in it but also is ensuring that we can use forestry and the wood products from it to ensure that we have better jobs throughout our economy; that we add value to logs and end up with products that we can get far higher prices for.Labour has outlined a strategy for the wood industry—a strategy that sees us moving from the situation where we currently cut down trees create logs put them on trucks and sometimes on trains and take them and export them offshore as logs. What does that add? As Ms Fenton has outlined we have an industry that is very very dangerous including for the truck drivers who drive those trucks on those forestry roads. We need to invest more in those roads to get logs off safely and to use our road-user charges and other funding of land transport to do that rather than funding some of the roads of national significance. But we also need to look at getting those logs and doing things with them. This is the sort of strategic approach that we need in this country to create better jobs to create greater wealth for this country so that we can ensure that that wealth is then distributed fairly.All of these things are completely beyond the scope of understanding of members opposite. Strategic decision-making is clearly not something that the Government is willing to do. Piecemeal approaches generally hands-off approaches are what it does best. It is not focused on issues like creating decent work for New Zealanders. It is not focused on a strategic approach to transport that makes sure that the transport system serves the people of this country and the businesses and the jobs that they create. This is something that is completely foreign to members opposite. I would note that in discussing this bill we have yet to have a contribution from a member of the Government. It would be very good for them to get up and talk about this bill. I would really urge David Bennett the chair of our select committee to get up and talk about the very good suggestion that has been put on the table today by Darien Fenton about us looking in a collaborative manner in our select committee at issues related to both transport and employment in the forestry sector. Thank you.Part 2 agreed to.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.The Committee divided the bill into the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Billpursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 428.Bill to be reported without amendment presently.