Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Mr Speaker thank you for the opportunity to take a short call on this second reading of the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill. I want to thank members around the House for engaging in what has been a really interesting and lively debate and it points to a good committee of the whole House stage coming where we can get into some of these issues. But there is still a misunderstanding about two important aspects of this bill. On the one hand we have members opposite shouting ute tax". What's this then? Grant McCallum what does this do? What is this? If one would think that the Clean Car Discount was a ute tax then what is a piece of legislation which spreads cost from clean small cars to large big cars? How is that different to the tax that you're worried about?Luckily I'm here to tell you mate. The difference is that in this sort of legislation you're designing a tool that Government can use that isn't intended to pass on those costs because they're costs that are designed to be borne by the industry not the consumer. Those are generally large sector participants in the industry who can adjust what kind of cars they import so that they do not pay the tax.So when the National Party talks about things like time of use charging you might say that was a tax but it's not intended to be paid it's intended to change the behaviour of people who if they did not change their behaviour they would pay the tax. So in this scenario we have large importers but also small importers who are able to offset certain cars between themselves.A really interesting and recent example is that this system as it's being designed now would create some difficult costs for importers of small cars that are not hybrids or electric vehicles. So say a car like a Suzuki Swift which is a small car so it doesn't enjoy the weight settings that exempt say a Toyota Hilux from some of these requirements but is not an electric car. Those cars are on the receiving end of some of the more difficult parts of this. But you have Toyota actually saying in the media recently that they are interested in working with Suzuki because they have so many really good cars for a scheme like this and that they import lots of small electric cars that they would be able to offset not only their large Hilux offerings but also something like a Suzuki Swift imported here. So we see really good examples of where the industry can not only avoid this cost but are also interested in working together to make sure that the entire industry is lowering its emissions profile.I wanted to make sure that we all know that point going on to select committee stage because to describe this as a tax—one might see this as a tax but it's not something that will be paid by consumers. It's not designed in a way that is designed to put costs on to consumers and so we need to be debating what we're really debating here when we get to that point.The second point that I just want to clarify is that the Minister gave a bit of a confusing explanation of New Zealand being car takers in a world of car makers because most of the cars that are imported into New Zealand are already compliant with international standards that far exceed our own standards. When the member Cameron Luxton stood and gave his contribution about the industry being far ahead of New Zealand standards that's right. But it's not because industry are stepping themselves out faster and faster and faster than other legislation it's because in Europe they're up to Euro 7 now and in 2035 they will have banned combustion engines. So every large car manufacturer that imports into the European markets that share these standards needs to comply with much higher standards.To give you another practical example that's why the Mitsubishi diesel-engine cars that we have in New Zealand use a diesel particulate filter which is not required by these standards but is required by those Euro 7 standards. It's a way of processing the particulates in diesel fuel to make sure that they are compliant with the emissions requirements in Europe. That doesn't need to happen in New Zealand legislation but it's something that is a standard in all of those cars that are imported here. The flipside of that is that if we don't have legislation like this we get ourselves on par with those countries who will take any cars and all of the cars that don't comply with legislation anywhere else in the world."