Brownlee Gerry: Road User Charges Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Brownlee Gerry: Road User Charges Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 07 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:137. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 I feel I need to respond to Phil Twyford’s concerns. Firstly I will acknowledge that Labour members are supporting the Road User Charges Bill so obviously they will be speaking from a very genuine and concerned perspective. But one of the things I would point to is Appendix 1 of the consultation document that went out for consideration by all parties who pay road-user charges. The example that the member gave us was of a 1960 I think kilogram vehicle where I think the suggestion was that the road-user charge was going to go from $121-odd to something in excess of $450 by the time you add two things. That would be a rate per 1000 kilometres meaning that in that case someone would be paying close to 50c per kilometre. That is patently ridiculous and not something that is going to happen.  
The consultation document gives the example of a vehicle of up to 4 tonnes twice the weight of the vehicle that Mr Twyford was using as an example. Currently that vehicle would pay somewhere between $44 and $49 per 1000 kilometres. The consultation document gives a range—remember it is up to 4 tonnes so there will be various gross weights below that. The new range is somewhere between $45 and $87 per 1000. That is a long long way from the $460-odd that the member was speaking of. The mid-point I guess in that range is something like about $60 which represents a gross increase of about $11 per 1000 for people in that category. I am just working off the bands that I have put here. They are certainly not rates that are struck at this stage but they are substantially less than the very big figures that the member gave before.  
I think the issue of gross laden weight and trucks is really the problem with the mileage. If you are just charging on a mileage rate that truck is doing some wear and tear on the road at all times that it is on the road whether it is at its gross laden weight or not. If we are going to have efficiency in transport something that the Green Party certainly requires of us as a point of policy then having some road-user charges that actually encourage inefficient use is not particularly helpful. I think also that even at the upper end I would like to say—so you might have vehicles up to 44 tonnes—the increases in the road-user charges are not likely to be anywhere near as substantial as the member spoke of. In that case for the current ranges between $250 and $409 depending on the weight that they put on to that vehicle under the gross system it would be around about $276. That is encouraging efficiency as you get bigger units able to take larger loads.  
I think the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has done a good job in considering all of these aspects and I appreciate the efforts that the committee has made to get a good bill. No one likes passing bills that increase charges. This I think is a bill that may increase some charges but by and large it will improve the efficiency of that large chunk of the transport system and also make it much fairer for those who participate in it at all levels. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
Clause 2 agreed to. 
Bill to be reported with amendment presently. 
House resumed. 
The Chairperson reported the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill with amendment and the Road User Charges Bill with amendment. 
Report adopted.