Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I do admire the Minister of Transport's passion and his determination to drive through this piece of legislation because he truly does believe—and that makes me very very concerned. This bill is another example—in fact it could be among the best evidence—of what's wrong with this Government's climate change policy. It all comes back to the zero carbon Act. This bill is two taxes dressed up as an ugly climate fairy. The Minister claims that this bill will lead to reductions in emissions of 41 percent by 2035. The problem the Minister and the Government have with this climate policy is that his own Ministry of Transport says the opposite—that vehicle kilometres travelled will increase by 20 percent by 2035; not go down by 40 percent. These two facts cannot both be true and that is what we see with this Government's climate policy. It is running into a brick wall of reality.Now I want to remind Minister Wood that simply wishing something to come true when you're on the campaign trail and then coming to this House and telling the people of New Zealand that it was a manifesto commitment therefore it will happen does not make good policy. This policy is actually working though. The Minister held up his graphs. He held up his graphs—Oh there's a graph." He held it up—"It's actually working." It's working to take money from tradies and business people and family owners who need big vehicles and who have got to pay a $4000 tax on the wharf and maybe a $2000 $3000 or $4000 tax on the wharf! This is two taxes mind you. This is not a single tax policy; this is two ideas about how to solve this problem of encouraging more low-emissions vehicles put together into one bill. The officials said "You don't need to do that." The industry said "You don't need to do that." But apparently this is a Government that wants to pull all the levers. Now I've driven a digger. In fact I drove one a few weeks ago on the Christmas break. I was reminded that if you pull all the levers at once a couple of things happen: either it spins around out of control or it just comes to a dead stop. I think that's where this Government's climate policies are going to end up.But thinking about this Government's climate policies this new style of Labour Party policy must be very very confusing to Minister Wood's former colleagues in the union movement; this fact that his policy has resulted—and the motor vehicle importers confirm this: that more Teslas were imported into New Zealand than BMWs in the last quarter. The policy's definitely working but not in the way that traditional Labour voters thought it might. When this bill was introduced the transport Minister admitted that more than 100000 New Zealanders could be hit with the car tax in the next year. These vehicles being taxed include utilities utes tradies' vans and of course larger vehicles that larger families particularly people with young children or in mixed families with parents and grandparents young children all living in the same home—families who need those kinds of low-cost vehicles. They are the ones who will be hit. Now we don't know what sort of cars people will buy but let's assume the average fee is about $3000 per vehicle. That's going to net $273 million from New Zealand motorists buying new vehicles in the next year. Under any plausible scenario because they won't be spending even a fraction of that on subsidising Teslas this policy is nothing more than a tax grab; in fact it's an ugly tax dressed up as an ugly climate fairy. Now when this bill came to select committee the industry made some very interesting points. They said "Only a few countries drive on the left-hand side of the road." Now I know not many New Zealanders have left recently and the ones who are stuck overseas can't come back but most countries in the world drive on the right which means there are very very few cars available to New Zealand in left-hand drive configuration. That was a surprise to some of the Government members on the committee. The suppliers said "Look you're not going to be able to have these vehicles until we start making them." This bill doesn't solve the supply-side problem because the factories where these vehicles are made are getting retooled right now to churn out hundreds of thousands—millions—of EVs and hydrogen electric vehicles over the next 10 to 20 years but until they start making them you can't have them. So if you apply a tax at the border and if you apply a tax at the lot where people go to buy a new or second-hand car then all you'll be doing is taking money out of Kiwis' pockets because we can't supply you with the vehicles. But there is some hope. I don't need to wish for policy. I don't need to go out on the campaign trail and make manifesto commitments. I just need to listen to the motor vehicle importers and the suppliers who say that by the late 2020s there'll be millions and millions of these vehicles and they'll be relatively low cost.Now unfortunately in addition to the costs hitting Kiwi families actually this bill won't reduce emissions. That's because New Zealand already has a comprehensive emissions trading scheme which caps the limit of climate emissions. And so not a single policy apart from the cap and trade policy of the emissions trading scheme—it's a fantastic scheme; it allows the free exchange of people's money for carbon credits although to be fair it is limited just to this little New Zealand bubble. I can't buy carbon credits on the London carbon market; they can't buy ours but they certainly can plant a lot of trees here and turn our farms into carbon farms—but that's a story for another day. This bill will not reduce carbon emissions by a single tonne of carbon because if you take carbon out of one part of the economy if you reduce it by subsidising EVs and actually reducing the amount of emissions from cars and trucks all that will happen is that carbon will be available to be emitted by a factory or some other producer.Now if the Minister in conjunction with his coalition or support hand-holding partner the Green Minister for Climate Change wanted to reduce the amount of New Zealand's emissions they'd simply lower the cap on the emissions trading scheme. The Climate Commissioner himself said that New Zealand could meet its emissions reduction targets if the carbon price was $50 a tonne. Well I had a look at my carbon news the other day and it's $72 a tonne. That means that the New Zealand Government doesn't need to do anything else to reduce carbon emissions. This policy is completely unnecessary. It won't work except to take money from hard-working families tradies and farmers and hand it over to people who might have bought an electric vehicle anyway but now will receive a $7000 or $8000 subsidy.So not only is it an unnecessary regulation and a cost to business it's actually going to cause a heck of a lot of confusion with the Government agencies asked to administer it. When you look through the papers the Customs department said "We don't want a bar of this thing. Please don't give us this crazy thing to administer. We don't want to have to take away from our real job of protecting New Zealand's borders to try and administer a clean car tax on the wharf. What do you want us to do? Take some sniffer machine around the docks getting the importers to start the cars so that we can check the emissions." But that's what the Government wants to do. They won't even accept the emissions data from the vehicle manufacturers. They're going to set up their own department and they're going to make up their own mind about what the emissions are. So I tell you what: this thing's not going to help the supply chain; it's not going to help get stuff off the wharf.Simeon Brown: It's a make-work scheme.SIMON COURT: It is a make-work scheme. Unfortunately we've got a labour shortage and a whole lot of resource demand; so it's only going to lead to not just inflation but slowing down of the entire New Zealand machine.And I want to leave the Government members and the people watching this tonight with one last thought. Any Government policy which claims to reduce emissions that makes the Suzuki Swift off limits—that the Suzuki company said "We can't meet your standards. We're going to stop sending you Swifts because your standards are stupid and wrong."—that's not good policy. New Zealanders know that; Japanese carmakers know that. New Zealanders will be asking themselves: why on earth do this when it won't solve one tonne of carbon emissions and is only going to put the price of cars up? Thank you Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Good evening.The House adjourned at 10 p.m."