Mallard Trevor: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16770. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and I would like to say that I am starting this call in some anxiety. Looking around at my colleagues in the House I have a feeling that I am missing the men’s caucus of the Labour Party which could well be meeting at the moment. I am slightly worried about why I might be excluded from that group.I would like to start by saying that I have some experience of vehicles of this type and know a little more than I used to 40-odd years ago about which vehicles should be driven across roads and which should not be. I had a very bad experience on the county roads of Taumarunui with a D7 bulldozer where I discovered that even when you have the blade up when you go across the tarseal road it does tend to make quite a difference to the surface as the D7 grips and rips it up. So I do know that even if they are vehicles that are not generally driven on roads they can cause damage quite a lot of expense and in this particular case annoyance to the county clerk of the Taumarunui County Council at the time.I listened with great interest to the speech of Simon O’Connor and he was saying that The Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill was a small but important step towards having a more efficient roading system. This bill is no such thing. It is no such thing at all. This bill—and I have been here looking at it very carefully for at least 20 minutes now—appears to be something that is only fixing up a mess that is the responsibility of a National Government Minister of Transport. I cannot tell from reading it whether it goes back to Maurice Williamson whether it is all Gerry Brownlee’s work or whether “Mr Fix-it” or “Mr Not-quite-fix-it” Steven Joyce was the person who—from Maurice Williamson’s smile I can tell that it was Steven Joyce not Maurice Williamson who was the person responsible for making this mess originally and then Gerry Brownlee tried to fix it up twice. So what this bill does is try to correct some errors in transport legislation.I know this is an unusual thing to say but I am actually feeling slightly sorry for the National Government Ministers in this particular area because I think it is fair to say that there are two areas of legislation especially for minor legislation and regulation where you are not that surprised when it is wrong. They are agriculture and transport. That does say—[Interruption] Sorry?Hon Member: Agriculture?Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Yes agriculture and transport. They are the ones that most often have to come back with amendments to amendments to amendments in order to try to get the legislation right. That probably does go over a period of years—although I do not want to criticise the Public Service—to the quality of the recruitment and the payment of the people and as a result of that some of the legislation that we have had out of those agencies frankly has not been that flash. This Parliament has wasted a lot of time on going over it and over it and over it in trying to get it right.I will be interested to hear from the next National speaker a better explanation around combination vehicles. Is a combination vehicle something like a truck and trailer that are only sometimes put together? Is it a truck that has the basic trailer attachment but it is not on it at the current time? Or is it something that very very rarely gets put together in that combination? The requirement to apply for a certificate at a point soon after using it is something that is important. If there is a requirement to do something rapidly one would assume that it is an unusual combination. I presume it does not apply when it is a combination road-user charges thing. It is not the diesel land cruiser giving the other diesel land cruiser a tow over the Wainuiōmata Hill because one of them has run out of diesel. Clearly they run out of road-user charges fairly often but they still go when they run out of road-user charges but not when they run out of diesel. Is a combination road-user charges vehicle one land cruiser diesel towing another land cruiser diesel or not? Is that what we are referring to as a combination vehicle? And if a vehicle is not actually using its motor when it has a motor at the time it is being towed is it subject to road-user charges or not?I know that members opposite are looking carefully across the legislation and even if they cannot tell us now I am sure that as we work our way through the long and extensive Committee stage especially on Part 2 of this bill—it is a bit sneaky really. It pretends to be other minor amendments but actually there is quite a lot in here. If we look at new section 12A “Agreement to pay road user charges in relation to combination of vehicles” in clause 8 I think there is room for more explanation there.The next thing is “or carried” in display of a road-user charges licence. The deal around road-user charges licences is that you normally need to be able to see them. So what does “or carried” mean? If there is a combination of vehicles and there is a road-user charges licence can someone keep the road-user charges licence in their pocket rather than displaying it as is normally required? It appears to be what we are permitting now. I am quite surprised frankly because I would have thought that for a Government that is working hard to get the road-user charges revenue it is pretty hard to get that revenue if the road-user charges miles or kilometres I suppose they are called now are kept—[Interruption] Well it used to be miles back when I was in Taumarunui county. [Interruption] Metrics—it is a new thing. To be fair that was in the days of 60-mile-an-hour limits. That has changed.There is new section 38A “Exemption of RUC vehicles not required to be registered” in clause 11. This appears to give to a Minister quite a broad power as to what is to be licensed or not. If you look at new section 38A(1) it can be “(a) all RUC vehicles that are exempt from registration under the Land Transport Act 1998; or (b) 1 or more classes of RUC vehicles …”. The Minister can specify that all road-user charges vehicles or a particular class of road-user charges vehicles are exempt. [Bell rung] Is that 8 minutes already Mr Assistant Speaker? No that could not possibly be. I had 10 minutes not 5.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I gave you 10 minutesHon TREVOR MALLARD: I had not even got on to the bit about the spooks. If one goes to page—[Interruption] No absolutely. The member in front of me—the Minister to be—says that it is not in this bill. Actually this bill does relate to the Search and Surveillance Act 2012. Who would have thought that there would be a sneaky amendment in relation to the ability to search and surveil hidden away in something called the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill?I bet that the Prime Minister who is in charge of the Government Communications Security Bureau knows nothing about this. It is another attempt to use the Maxwell Smart approach on the part of Gerry Brownlee and to not let the boss know what is going on. It does involve getting warrants. It involves getting warrants under the Search and Surveillance Act. Well do we really want such serious legislation—such serious legislation—to be used to find out whether someone has got a road-user charges ticket in their pocket? I mean the idea that some of the most serious legislation in the country which is very very controversial and something that is up for amendment could be brought into force in order to search for a bit of paper on road-user charges is just disgraceful. I look forward to a lot of discussion on this particular point in the Committee stage.