Locke Keith: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Locke Keith: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 June 2003. Volume:609;Page:6443. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 It is a pleasure for the Green Party to follow the speech of Larry Baldock who has challenged us on a few points. The Greens will be supporting this bill because we think it is right that road users through this additional fuel tax do help cover the cost of road accidents. As we understand the bill it is not just a tax on petrol that is proposed; there is provision in the bill for that tax to be extended to other fuels such as diesel which I think is very important because trucks which use a lot of diesel are disproportionate contributors to road accidents—very much so if one looks at the statistics. So it is right that the tax is extended to diesel. I hope that in our implementing this law that will occur. 
I think incentives will result from fuel taxes being increased. It means that there will be a move towards a more level playing field between road transport and for example rail transport. At the moment rail operators have to pay the entire costs of the operation—the infrastructural cost of the rails as well as the operational costs of running trains and carriages over those rails. As for road users it is true as the last speaker said that money is put into the consolidated account. But if one adds up the money—the 18c referred to and the other taxes—it still does not add up to the real costs to the community of the roading infrastructure and what are sometimes called the externalities. One does not look at just the costs of building and upkeeping roads; one has to look at all the other costs to the community. 
Infrastructure Auckland funds different infrastructural projects in Auckland with money from Ports of Auckland etc. It published a study on these externalities a few years back and it estimated that if one added up all the externalities including the health costs of the fumes from road transport one would find that the cost was about $2.5 billion a year. It is estimated by the Auckland Regional Council that about 400 deaths a year in Auckland are caused by the pollution put into the air by road transport. That figure is equal to the number of people who die annually in road accidents. The health costs go beyond that. There are the costs of the effect on health of the stress felt by people using road transport as against other forms of transport and the costs of the effects of traffic noise particularly in urban areas and on big highways. There are also the costs to the environment in terms of the use of fossil fuels which are obviously in short supply and in terms of the contribution of greenhouse gases to global warming. If one adds up these and other externalities as Infrastructure Auckland did in its research project one finds that they add up to a lot of money. Even with this tax the road users will not be fully covering the costs of their use of the roads. 
So at least this legislation provides an incentive for the community to move towards fewer accidents a better transport structure and possibly if we do reduce the accident rate very substantially less tax in this regard. It is also an incentive I think to move freight from road to rail transport. One of the aims of the Government supported by the Greens is to have more freight and passenger transport moved by rail as opposed to road. If we are giving an incentive for road users or freight operators to say: “It’s getting a bit more expensive to use the roads because of this tax. Perhaps we’ll send more of our freight by rail.” that will be for the good of the community. This legislation is also an incentive for commuters who drive their cars to work in the big cities in particular to say: “It’s going to cost me more to take my car. I have to look at the cost of going by public transport.” I think this tax will encourage commuters to use different modes of commuting whether rail ferry or bus or other alternatives such as cycing or walking or a combination of those different modes. 
It is also an incentive for local government and central government to do something to decrease the rate of accidents so that there is less of them and they are not so bad. Both local government and central government can do that by various means including by improving roading—making sure there are good cycle lanes so that cyclists are not in danger and making sure there are proper pedestrian facilities so that fewer pedestrians are killed. Improvement of road design is one thing that this measure could encourage. 
We can look at the question of enforcement of the laws. I think that would reduce road accidents substantially. The police could deal more effectively with some of the things that I notice like cars following too closely. People who do that could be penalised a little more in order to make our roads a bit safer. The police could penalise people for overtaking in very dangerous circumstances which I think is a major contributor to road accidents particularly on highways. 
In addition to that this measure will encourage Government and local bodies to provide more education on road safety. More could be done in that direction. I have had a driver’s licence for many many years and I cannot see that there has been a lot of pressure on me to take up educational opportunities such as defensive-driving courses. There is a lot of room for greater community education of existing drivers and also new drivers to decrease the frequency of accidents. 
Within this discussion we are having on road safety and how to fund the accident compensation component of it we also need to look at the question of our not having longer or heavier trucks on the roads. I know there was a proposal to increase the allowable length of trucks on the roads and the weight of those trucks. There was much discussion on that a couple of years ago. The Greens got a huge amount of public support via letters emails and telephone calls because we opposed any increase in the size and length of trucks. Hopefully this sort of discussion we are having now will encourage the Government not to go ahead with that. It is a big issue. Travellers on the roads already have to face the fact that there are a lot of big trucks going round corners and making things very difficult for them. I talked to a resident of Gisborne recently who is very scared to travel from Gisborne to Wairoa because logging truck after logging truck goes along that very narrow road. Again that is an argument for pushing more freight such as the logs coming on stream from places like Gisborne on to the rail sytem rather than increasing the number of logging trucks and other trucks or increasing their length or weight. That would only create more accidents and put a greater burden on the accident compensation system. 
I am glad that when the Minister made the introduction he referred to the land transport strategy which the Greens were involved in. That strategy is to develop alternatives to road use across the range from a strategy for more people to be walking and cycling to the development of public transport in all its forms to promoting innovative things like the walking bus system which was referred to in yesterday’s  
New Zealand Herald 
. That system is developing both in Auckland and around the country. Parents get together to take their kids to school in a walking bus rather than a whole of lot individual cars going to school and resulting in a crush of traffic around the school that makes things more dangerous for the children. A whole lot of innovative solutions are coming out of that land transport strategy and are being implemented.