Pugh Maureen; White HelenASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Members we are debating the second reading of the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill.HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you Madam Speaker. I just want to talk briefly on this bill. I was on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee last term and I returned for a very brief appearance in the committee when it was discussing quite a critical part of this bill which was the issue of what discount should be given to people who had plug-in hybrids. It was really lovely to see my colleagues taking such an active role and I was there when Arena Williams put up the possibility of an amendment which has turned out to be something that's been adopted by the Government in the new form of the bill.So for people out there who are wondering what on earth this is all about this is a bill which brings back a charge to people who have electric vehicles for their use of the roads. The reason that that was exempted for quite some time was because we really really need to encourage vehicles that are not using fossil fuels and so we had in the last Government a plan as to how to do that and we incentivised it. We had a carrot for people buying new vehicles and that was the discount the Clean Car Discount. We had some sticks which were really those measures that said you can't bring in really dirty vehicles into the country. So we had those kinds of measures in place and we had taken away for quite some time the payment that electric vehicles would make to our roads because we collect the money for road maintenance every time somebody fills up their tank for petrol or if you've got diesel then we're collecting it from you in a different way but it's basically the same thing. So that's how we were doing it. We had this incentive.Now everybody knew that it couldn't really last for ever in terms of having a discount that was so entire on the use of electric vehicles on our roads. So we could see that that was going to have to come to an end at some point. The Clean Car Discount was extremely successful probably more successful than the transport Minister at the time thought it would be. The uptake was huge and I'm sad to see that go because I really sincerely think that when I was in that committee and we went through that work I went from the point of being someone who was sceptical about it to somebody who was totally convinced by the end of that process and then I saw it work and I saw a huge uptick in the amount of vehicles. Now that piece of work means that there's a whole lot of vehicles out there that are electric and that will now move into the second-hand market and will mean that a whole lot of families that would never be able to buy a car that was new electric will be getting one.And there's a whole lot of families who bought these plug-in hybrid cars as well and they were in a situation when we were looking at this law where it looked like they would be in trouble because the plug-in hybrids were not—they were going to pay at the pump every time they filled up and they were going to basically have a double charge because they were going to be charged as electric cars like a diesel car is affected. So it was going to be a sort of double whammy for them. So there's been an amendment here where there's a 50 percent reduction in what they pay so that there is an accounting for the fact—and it's rough it's rough. Some people will be winners and some people will be losers but basically there's an accounting for that in the percentage that has been found here of discount on what they'll pay.So I'm really pleased to see this happen. I think this is an area we're going to have to be creative we're going to have to be nimble in the way we work and there'll be a lot of unknowns. It was great to see the select committee—and I was there when this happened—work on this talk about it and I saw that working. So I have absolute respect for the people on the committee who had a very real genuine discussion about this problem and how to fix it and I commend particularly Arena Williams for coming up with the advocacy for this position. I commend the bill to the House.