Curran ClareCLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Having sat on the Commerce Committee as well alongside my colleague Megan Woods and my colleague across the House and chair of the committee Melissa Lee we had a number of interesting discussions around this bill. I want to thank Megan Woods for her considered and quite proactive and constructive comments around the bill. I think she is being very polite in a lot of ways in describing its potential as being a starting point.Can I just say though that this is a bit underwhelming after 9 years to be looking at this as being the harbinger of a great strategy to help reduce emissions and to be the introduction of the new technology the new way of driving—electric vehicles. I know that the previous Minister of Energy and Resources the Hon Simon Bridges talked—and no doubt still continues to talk—a lot about how electric vehicles are the future how this is what we are all going to be doing in the future and how this is what we can be doing. But if this bill is it in terms of how we are going to enable and encourage that to happen then it is as I said a bit underwhelming. You could sort of tell actually—the way the Minister who gave the speech initially in the second reading really did not seem hugely engaged. I am disappointed about that because there is so much more that could be done.The predictions are that by 2021 there will be 64000 electric vehicles on our roads and the part of this bill that deals with how that is going to be acknowledged really is around enabling them to use the special bus lanes. If you live in Auckland if you live in Wellington and no doubt in a few other parts of the country that is just going to create more problems in terms of congestion on our roads if we are not dealing at the same time with a comprehensive public transport strategy and the introduction of light rail in Auckland. There are a whole lot of other infrastructure things that we need to be doing alongside a measure that allows and gives a special status to electric vehicles to be able to travel in the bus lanes.The reason they are called bus lanes" is so that the buses can travel in them and there can be a lack of congestion enabling people to travel backwards and forwards to work—or wherever they are going—using the public transport system on the road and enabling that travel time to be less. If you put 64000 electric vehicles—or the proportion of them that are in our major cities by 2021—into those lanes then there are going to be problems without doing anything else. So let us give it a tick as being a start—a good start a bit of a start—but also let us say it really is not enough.I want to actually refer back to 2008 under a previous Government the Labour Government when the Hon David Parker who was the Minister of Energy and the Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues at the time initiated a strategy the New Zealand Energy Strategy which was actually quite "big picture" and had some really strong goals in this area and of course in other areas. He established in April 2008 a vehicle energy and renewables group of nine industry and research experts who were looking at promoting the use of renewable energy and transport especially in the areas of electric vehicles and biofuels. You know there was some really good thinking happening then. It seems to have gone into a bit of hole.I want to read a bit from a speech that he gave I think in April 2008 when he said: "To ensure the best cooperation between industry and government the Minister of Transport has appointed a group of individuals to meet regularly with Ministers and officials."—that was the vehicle energy and renewables group—"Our goal is to position New Zealand to leverage the benefits of our highly renewable and low carbon electricity supply to provide for our transport needs once electric vehicle technology reaches maturity. Electric vehicles can provide a positive contribution to our trade balance and energy security. We believe it will be beneficial for New Zealand to be one of the first nations to adopt plug-in hybrid and purely electric vehicles. There is a unique opportunity to combine electricity and transport sectors with net benefits for both." That scenario assumed that there would be a high percentage of the public sector fleet that would be plug-in hybrid and growing up to 60 percent by 2050.Where are the Government's targets in that and where is the big-picture thinking? Is this it in terms of expanding the way that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority levy is used and enforcing the use of special vehicle lanes enabling special vehicle lanes to be used for electric vehicles and changes to the collection of the gas levy and regulations made under the Road User Charges Act? These are all small measures. I think Megan Woods described them as small pieces in a bigger strategy or a strategy that does not really exist.Labour supports this bill because we see it as being a step. We heard the submissions. We listened closely to what was being said. We heard particularly the submissions from Auckland Transport the Greater Wellington Regional Council and the Waikato Regional Council which did stress the negative effects on the ability to deliver public transport services by allowing electric vehicles access to those special vehicle lanes. What else is the Government doing in this space? That is what I would like to hear. That is what I would have liked to hear from the Hon Judith Collins and I am hoping that we will hear a bit more about that. It is a pity that Simon Bridges could not have given us a passionate speech about his plans for the future of electric vehicles but this piece of legislation is pretty underwhelming."