Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 July 2008. Volume:648;Page:17062. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
:  
I would like to explore as I said earlier on a whole range of issues in this legislation but sadly with it all being nearly in one part I will have to focus on just one aspect. I will focus on the issue of road-user charges and say to the Minister in the chair the Hon Annette King that one of the problems we heard from a number of people was that it is difficult enough having to deal with refunds and offsets in a particular way when the road-user charge system is in place but having a regional fuel tax implemented as well will mean that commercial operators will now have to work with both forms of charging. 
I guess it is really important to explain to people out there that when we are running motorcars with petrol we pay just the petrol tax by way of tax on that petrol. But commercial users of trucks have to buy road-user licences by estimating how many kilometres they want to buy and their hubodometers on their trucks tell them whether they have done those kilometres. They purchase the kilometres for a certain number of tonnes and then they travel that distance. That is the road-user charge. But of course if a truck goes off-road and into a forest as forestry trucks do it still has its hubodometer running so the driver then has to record how much off-road travel the truck is doing and get refunds and rebates. 
I know that a number of commercial trucking companies out there say that it is a real nightmare to do that but they have to to try to make the system work and one of the reasons why we are very strongly opposed to a regional fuel tax is that it adds a separate charge for those people. It is not increasing their road-user charges at a regional level—it is not saying “for your road-user charge you will pay the extra”—it is saying that on diesel there will now be a tax that people will pay per litre when they buy their fuel. As those operators quite clearly pointed out they will now have two sets of compliance on which they have to do their returns and refunds to show that diesel was being used either on proper roads or in forests and off-road in order to make the reclamation of those sums of money. So I say to the Minister that it is very very worrying for us that there are two separate regimes. Had the Minister wanted to move to just a total fuel tax that would be all right; we could have lived with that. Had the Minister wanted to go to just a straight road-user charge regime that would be all right— 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: Is that what you are suggesting? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No I am just saying “Had the Minister wanted to …”. But I tell Mr Duynhoven that the problem is the two regimes; I would be pleased if he would listen and get it through his head. It is the two regimes that cause the problem for the people out there and it is unfair to impose two total regimes on them. 
I also talked earlier on about the conflict of interest between the funder of State highways also being the funder of other roads and therefore looking after itself. But I point out to the Committee tonight that what is so delicious an irony is how much of a conflict there is with what the Government has done today with road-user charges. Today the Government has bought back the rail operator. It now owns the railways; it is the owner yet today it has put up road-user charges for the trucking fleet. If people ever wanted an example of a conflict of interest I say that this is one: I own this business; I bought it today and it is mine—and by the way I have now got the powers and I will use them to put up the costs of those who compete with me. The Government does not own a trucking operator—well not yet but I am fearful that if I give this speech too often that is exactly the next thing it will be looking to buy—but today 1 July 2008 will go down in history as the day when the Government took control and ownership of the rail operation. Tonight we will be passing as part of this bill the provisions of a Supplementary Order Paper to cope with some of the superannuation requirements for the people concerned which is a bizarre part of this bill and which was not even there until this Supplementary Order Paper appeared. But on the same day the very same day that the Government has bought back the rail operation the Minister has come out and fired in a road-user charge increase—oh and by the way she permits with this legislation a regional fuel tax which will start charging a fuel tax on those companies out there that are operating trucks. 
I have been contacted today and I am sure other members have as well by a number of trucking operators who are furious about it. In fact Tony Friedlander has put out what I think is quite a hard-hitting press release saying that he feels he has been betrayed. He was given a commitment last year by officials and the Minister that if there was going to be another road-user charge increase trucking companies would be given a month’s notice of it and be given that warning. 
Nathan Guy 
: Consultation! 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Consultation—they would be given it. But it came like a bolt out of the blue today to them and as he said in his press release—and the Minister can shake her head all she likes—he feels that he has been betrayed by people who gave him commitments and so on. And there are more issues to this bill that I would like to explore.