Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Madam Speaker. That was a fascinating speech by the Minister of Transport in support of this piece of legislation the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill. National will be opposing this piece of legislation because ultimately this piece of legislation will not work in achieving the goal that the Government is—Dr Duncan Webb: It's working already.SIMEON BROWN: And I hear them say It's already working. It's already working." Well what's working is not this legislation; what's working is a range of subsidies which the Government has introduced without ever actually needing this legislation at all. And so the surprising thing here is that if you subsidise something of course it makes it cheaper. But this piece of legislation goes much much further than that and that is actually what we are going to be debating here tonight—the legislation and its impacts on the market—rather than simply the subsidies that the Minister has already put in place.The first point I want to make tonight is that the National Party has a strong record of investing in electric vehicles. And I'd put our record up against this Government's simply just trying to put this legislation through. National was the party which put in place the exemption for EVs placing them outside of the road charges until 2 percent of the vehicles were EVs. We implemented tax changes we worked with business and we actually made sure the Government and the Government departments were actually increasing the number of EVs—and something which has actually stalled under this Government's watch. Since then they have done very very little.And now we come to this bill which effectively tries to give the Minister full control of the car industry here in New Zealand by imposing the feebate and Clean Car Standard. And what effectively this will be doing is increasing costs for New Zealanders without actually reducing the emissions that New Zealand emits through its transport sector or across the economy. And the Minister says "This is not going to cost the taxpayer at all." Well it's already cost the taxpayer millions of dollars through his subsidies. It's already cost the taxpayer and now it's going to cost the taxpayer even more because of the charges and the increased cost that it's going to be putting on to consumers through the feebate and the Clean Car Standard.Submitters to this piece of legislation made it very clear that this bill will not be able to make the difference in terms of reducing transport emissions as the Government is trying to make out. The Motor Industry Association and the Vehicle Importer' Association made it very clear that these targets are too ambitious in the short term meaning what will end up happening is that we will end up either with New Zealanders not getting access to the cars this Government is promising or New Zealanders having the choice of paying more for the existing cars that they decide to already purchase—for whatever reason they decide to purchase those cars—or they will simply hold on to their existing cars for longer to avoid the additional charges and costs that this piece of legislation will put and impose upon them.Manufacturers will have the decision whether to send their cars to New Zealand or send them elsewhere. They'll be able to send them to New Zealand at an increased cost or they'll be able to part sell them elsewhere. And the supply challenges which were brought to us by the suppliers and manufacturers around the world around vehicles are some issues that this Government should not be seeking to ignore as they try to implement this policy. If this policy will end up as I predict with the number of newer vehicles moving into the fleet slowing down and the number of people holding on to their vehicles for longer what we'll end up with is the emissions being emitted from our vehicles actually plateauing rather than reducing as this Government seeks to do.A couple of examples as to where this will have a significant impact is firstly in the area of utes. Now the Minister tries to talk about how he's going to be trying to get everyone out of their cars and into EVs and I ask him "Where is the evidence that he's going to be able to get the tradies out of their utes and into EV utes?" Because the evidence from the market is very clear: these are being manufactured but they are not at the scale these targets require them to be over the next few years. And the Minister might try and talk about how this is working but these are the cold hard facts and realities which actually may get in the way of his inconvenient truths. The reality is that what will happen is that our tradies our farmers and those who need a ute for their job will end up paying on average 15 to 20 percent more on average for their vehicles. And what will they do with that cost? Do you think they are just going to suck it up? Or do you think they are going pass it on to the people who they supply services for?Hon Members: Pass it on.SIMEON BROWN: Pass it on. Exactly. Precisely. They will pass that cost on to consumers whether it's a farmer a tradie or whoever. And people on the other side of the House we heard the—I think it was the Prime Minister who said that some people don't use their utes for so-called "legitimate purposes". Remember that quote? No they're not using their utes for "legitimate purposes". Well I'd like to put another inconvenient fact out there: the industry's made it very clear that 70 percent of people who purchase utes purchase them for commercial purposes and that's something which I don't think people on the other side of the House like to hear. And so the reality is that yes the market will begin to deliver many more different types of utes with EVs or hybrids which will be able to be much more effective but they are not here yet and in the meantime New Zealanders will be paying through the nose for that.But it isn't just utes and farmers and tradies who won't be able to afford these EVs. It might come as a surprise to the chardonnay socialists on the other side of the aisle—look there's one a chardonnay socialist; hands up guilty as charged—that a $60000 Tesla is not actually affordable to most New Zealanders. Now when they're drinking their lattes in Ponsonby and Parnell they might think that a $60000 Tesla can be bought by anybody. But even with an $8000 subsidy as proposed by this Government most New Zealanders still can't afford to buy those vehicles. And so effectively what we're doing here is we're subsidising the people who can already afford to buy the Teslas and we're going to tax the people who can't afford them or who have a much lower budget when it comes to purchasing a new vehicle.And so they will either pay more for their next vehicle or they'll simply as I said earlier hold on to their existing vehicle for longer a car which is likely to be emitting more carbon dioxide and which will cost them more in petrol—and we could talk about petrol taxes as they keep increasing under this Government—and it will be more pollutant in our environment. And so Madam Speaker this piece of legislation will have significant perverse impacts on the people that the chardonnay socialists on the other side say they care about—the people of Mount Roskill the people of Māngere the people in those suburbs who won't be able to have the choice even with these subsidies. They'll be the ones paying more or holding on to their more pollutant vehicles.And another problem—and we're going to touch more on this when this bill gets to the committee of the whole House stage—is that this bill effectively just gives carte blanche powers to the Minister of Transport to effectively increase the charges determine the subsidies manage the market as he sees fit from his ivory tower in the Beehive. And that speaks volumes of a Government which wants to tell New Zealanders what vehicle they should be able to drive tell them when they can drive it and try to manage the industry as they see fit. National wants to see a transition to lower-emissions vehicles but we believe on this side of the aisle that you work with the industry; you make sure the targets can actually be delivered on. You don't say "Oh New Zealand we can choose whatever vehicles we like."We are such a small percentage of the vehicle market—0.017 percent of the vehicle market of the world. We have to work alongside the industry we have to look at what other countries are doing and we have to work alongside them and give New Zealanders real choices so that they are able to have the vehicles they need for their jobs—the farmers the tradies the families with a large number of children so they can have vehicles for their families. We want to make sure of that without penalising them arbitrarily as this Government is seeking to do with this piece of legislation. So National will be opposing this piece of legislation and we will be proposing sensible pragmatic policies which work alongside industry to make a real difference in this area. Thank you Mr Speaker."