O'Rourke Denis: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) Road User Charges Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) Road User Charges Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 17 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17473. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]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 Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill seek to correct some of the stuff-ups made so far. We will support the bills on that basis as far as they go but there are many more stuff-ups that are not being addressed in these bills at all.New Zealand First has concerns for the 22000motorhome owners registered with the Motor Caravan Association although the total number affected is of course many more than that. Vehicle operators in that category justifiably oppose having their road-user charges increased—mostly doubled and sometimes trebled—because of new bandwidths and maximum permissible on-road weight charges when their weight is constant or in most cases considerably less than their maximum chassis weight. There are a great number ofmotorhomes that are built on chassis that have a greater gross vehicle mass rating than the actual on-road weight of themotorhome. This matter should have been attended to as part of these particular stuff-up correction bills so that the owners of these vehicles would not be 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 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. That is the whole thrust of the system. That is not what is happening with thesemotorhomes and they are suffering huge and unjustifiable increases in charges as a result. There should be a provision to enablemotorhome-type vehicles which are never likely to operate at near the maximumpermitted laden weight to be assigned a road-user weight that would be sufficient to cover their actual laden mass. An example is amotorhome with a gross vehicle mass of 12000 kilograms but an actual on-road mass of say 8500 kilograms. Under the 2010 road-user charges their charge was $120.24. Under the 2012 changes the owner is now required to purchase road-user charge licences for 12 tonnes at a cost of $246.26. That of course is an increase of $126.02 or in other words an increase of over 104 percent. We in New Zealand First think that is absolutely outrageous.The requirement to have all heavy vehicles operating with a road-user charge licence to cover the maximum permissible laden weight as the lesser of the rated gross vehicle mass or the vehicle’s dimension and mass—referring to rule 2002—has resulted in some excessive increases in costs to the owners. That should have been put right in this amending legislation and it has not been attended to. The greater percentage of privatemotorhome owners in New Zealand are retirees as you would expect. These people have limited income and in many cases will not easily be able to absorb such large increases in their costs. This amending legislation should have included a provision to allowmotorhomes to have a road-user charge licence weight allocated that covers the actual on-road mass of the vehicle. The current regime which capturesmotorhomes and hugely increases their road-user charges 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 these bills are supportable as far as they go New Zealand First places on record our strong objection to the waymotorhome operators have been treated. They have not even been considered as part of these amendments and we think they certainly should have been. I am glad to see that since I made my first reading speech on this issue the Labour Party has adopted New Zealand First’s policy on the issue. I congratulate it on doing that. We are always willing to share our policies with other sympathetic parties. I now call upon the National Government to do the same.