O'Connor Damien: Road User Charges Bill — In Committee 
O'Connor Damien: Road User Charges Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:676;Page:21783] 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) 
: 
 Sitting down here and reading through a bit more of this Road User Charges Bill I am again scratching my head. Part 4 as the Associate Minister of Transport pointed out and tried to explain relates to enforcement and other matters and I am going through it and looking at the provisions relating to search warrants. Search warrants was a very emotive issue when it was raised a few years ago by farmers in proposals that were originally on carbon tax and then on emissions trading as I understand it around the ability of people to come in and search farms I think. The Minister in the chair David Carter could maybe take a call and explain what the emotion was about. I think it was related to the principle of the police being able to come in and search someone’s private property for things that were related to legal matters but were maybe not of such import that they could get a warrant to bust into a person’s home. 
This is one such situation dare I suggest because clause 72(2) says that a warrant will be given “even though the offence is not punishable by imprisonment.” Many people in New Zealand think that search warrants are justified if the potential offence is a serious one—that is where the police have to bust into a property to get evidence for something like serious drug offending fraud or major crimes such as murder and serious sexual offences all of those things. But what are we talking about here? Road-user charges. The Minister might explain why the police should have a warrant—and quite a complex piece of drafting here relating to search warrants—for offences relating to road-user charges. 
I have to say off the top of my head that reading through some of this complexity begs the question of why we do not just have a tax on diesel and be done with it— 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: —and then not have people trying to avoid it. Well it does beg the question. I am not sure whether it has been considered by the Government. I think it was considered by us and we rejected it. But if we have to end up with legislation like this—highly complex and quite a burden on anyone driving a diesel vehicle—to make sure that we get our road-user charges then it begs the question of whether there is a simpler process. 
The members over there are feeling quite uneasy because they know that they preached on the hustings at the last election—they will not be able to do it this time—that they would slash Government bureaucracy and they would slash the costs of compliance for businesses and they have done nothing. In fact in the second to last day of Parliament of National’s first and last term in Government it has passed legislation here relating to the payment of road-user charges which quite frankly will bamboozle most people using diesel vehicles in this country. It does beg the question that I go back to of whether there is a better simpler way of doing this. 
I go back to the part that we are referring to here. There is another question relating to when a warrant is carried out and a person knowingly discloses information acquired during the inspection or the search. So if the police get a search warrant and bust into a farmhouse to get some information because they think that the farmer might be getting up in the morning to drive his truck down the road it might be just over the limit and he may not have paid road-user charges so he has knowingly gone out there and offended and the farmer’s wife is there and discloses some information—knowingly discloses it because she tells the police—she is liable to a fine not exceeding $25000. 
There may be an explanation that the Minister in the chair can get up and tell the Committee but dare I suggest that this part is so complex and has so many provisions in it that this compliance legislation—