Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): I am pleased to take a call on this Part 2 but in particular I wanted to speak to one of the amendments on the Table that hasn't previously had attention this evening and that is a very good amendment in the name of my colleague Hamish Walker the MP for Queenstown who has made a very sensible suggestion that I think the Minister should pay serious consideration to which is adding to the provisions currently in Part 2 which obviously are amendments to various pieces of legislation. As we know they go through the transport legislation the Local Government Act and the Search and Surveillance Act—which I want to come back to. But also in this amendment we are suggesting an amendment after the existing clause 11 to add a new clause 12 which would suggest an amendment which isn't currently in the legislation amending the Road User Charges Act.It does seem to me in reading this legislation that there has been an omission to consider the interplay between this piece of legislation and the Road User Charges Act. If you look at that road-user charges (RUC) legislation then it's very clear that in section 53(2) of that Act you have quite a number of provisions that an assessor for road-user charges should take into account in considering whether to make an assessment for the collection of road-user charges. I won't run through them all but as the Clerk can imagine there are quite a number of provisions in that legislation and it's quite clear that a road-user charges assessor should turn their minds to a full range of considerations in deciding whether it's appropriate to make an assessment for road-user charges.What this legislation fails to do though is to consider the interplay between that framework and this framework and I think Hamish Walker is absolutely right when he suggested it's quite appropriate to add into this framework a subsequent amendment to section 53 of the Road User Charges Act which would be a new section 53(2)(g) suggesting that where there is a regional fuel tax scheme in place in the region where the RUC vehicle is primarily used that should be another factor which is considered by the RUC assessor. It is appropriate that when we're going to be adding in yet another cost on motorists in the system we have to think about the interplay between that one and existing frameworks. In this case in the particular amendment that I wanted to address because it hasn't been discussed in this committee stage—and I'm aware actually that there are a number of amendments important amendments still to be discussed in this committee stage. This is an important one. Look it may not be the core of the National Party's opposition to this bill which is absolutely around the imposition of an unwarranted unheralded unannounced new tax on the regions of New Zealand that simply won't address the issues that the Government claims it will—that is obviously at the core of our opposition and a number of us spoke very strongly against that in Part 1—but in this Part 2 we have to turn our minds to the operation of this framework if in fact it does become law. It seems quite clear to me that reading through the existing provisions in Part 2 and the various consequential amendments there has been an omission to think about the interplay with the road-user charges framework and my colleague Hamish Walker has come up with a very good suggestion. It shouldn't actually fall on members of this House to fix a Minister's legislation but frankly I expect very little else from this particular Minister. He's not known as a Minister of competence in delivering everything he does and it seems to me that in this bill we see yet another example where the operationalising of the words is failing and it falls now to members of the National Party to find the omissions—the lacunas—in this legislation and here is a lacuna relating to the Road User Charges Act where there is no direction so far in the legislation as to how it fits in with this regional fuel tax scheme. This is a very simple amendment that I would like to see the Government take up very clearly outlining that the road-user charges assessor can make that change.But there is another matter that I did want to discuss on Part 2 which is the amendment that is in the legislation to the Search and Surveillance Act. Now how many of our constituents hearing that they'd face a 25 percent extra charge on their petrol per litre—11.5c of which comes from this regional fuel tax—know that it comes with an amendment to the Search and Surveillance Act allowing assessors to search their vehicles if there's any suggestion of non-compliance with the Act? But in this legislation we see an amendment to the Search and Surveillance Act. This is how serious this Government is about taking more tax off you—they're adding an amendment to the Search and Surveillance Act which allows an enforcement officer to obtain and execute a search warrant for evidence. So you may think it's just a matter of pulling up to the pump and the pain of paying a little bit more at the pump but no it goes beyond that. You actually now have—thanks to Minister Phil Twyford and the Labour Government—a fuel tax that allows enforcement officers to stop you to execute a search warrant and to search your vehicle for evidence of offences under the Land Transport Act. Now I don't remember seeing any of that in the press release the Minister put out and I would like to hear from this Minister exactly why it is and in what circumstances there could possibly be a need for an enforcement officer to search a vehicle for evidence of non-compliance with payment of the regional fuel tax. I think that is a very extensive power that deserves more time and debate in this House.As member who's been in this House now for nearly 10 years I have heard numerous debates where Labour and the Greens particularly railed against the Search and Surveillance Act and the overreach of powers of the State. Well I look forward to Green members taking a call in defence of why a regional fuel tax bill needs powers under the Search and Surveillance Act for searching vehicles for executing search warrants and for exposing drivers to that unreasonable extension of powers of the State. The Minister has made no explanation as to why that's warranted. It is an important matter. It does deserve the time of the committee. The Minister is not surprisingly silent on it. Well National Party members on this side find the gaps in his legislation find the unworkable holes and seek to fill them even in a piece of legislation we don't support because we do want legislation of this House to be workable.It does show the importance of good quality careful scrutiny of these consequential amendments to pieces of legislation because buried in what could be seen as the detritus of a bill—buried in what could be seen as the unimportant little consequential amendments—are some very significant powers and I've heard nothing from the Government in this debate as to why there is no linkage into the road-user charges framework. I've heard nothing from the Government as to how the two would fit together—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Order! I just want to caution the member regarding repetition. Those arguments were made in your first call. Thank you.Hon AMY ADAMS: Thank you. That's right. Just to finish that point I've heard nothing from the Government around why that search and surveillance power needs to be in here.So I think there are a number of matters that have been raised so far in this Part 2 debate. I'm aware that there are a number of similar matters to be raised. I would invite the Minister to explain to us why those two deficiencies exist and I'm very much looking forward to hearing his answer.