Jones Shane: Road User Charges Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Jones Shane: Road User Charges Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 07 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:135. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora ano tatou. Firstly let me acknowledge the new Minister of Transport Mr Brownlee. It is a complicated area transport but with the experience of his parliamentary years the skill and the Job-like patience he is showing to his task in Christchurch I am sure that with the minimum amount of effort he will eclipse the deeds of Mr Joyce on this point.  
We actually support this bill but there are a number of points that unfortunately I will be unable to make as I am no longer likely to grace the committee David Bennett chairs the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. My services have been called on by Shane Ardern in the primary produce sector. We need to get back to that sector and strip the red tape that this Government has unwisely allowed to grow like some sort of noxious weed through that part of the economy. But that is for another matter.  
Yes modernisation of the road-user charges system is important but why it is important is because that is the basis of the revenue we actually rely upon for the ongoing upkeep and advancement of the infrastructure that we call our transport system. There are a couple of areas. Consultation unwisely by the Government has been deprecated and diminished in status in this legislation. Now really what one of the most sophisticated transport operators in the country actually wanted—Toll New Zealand—I hope Mr Brownlee does have the opportunity to go and meet with the chief executive officer of Toll who I have found to be a very non-partisan chap. He spreads the tickets for rugby around on a very fair and even basis. I am not entirely sure whether or not we are going to reach the threshold as to whether they have to be declared in this irksome process—which has become more and more petty—otherwise known as pecuniary interest. But that is another matter. That is another matter.  
I would say that Toll transport and I think it is a proxy for a host of other companies is bothered by the fact that yes subsidiary legislation will be used—that is regulatory-making powers—but there is no duty on the Minister to go through essentially our justiciable process of consultation with the affected parties prior to the promulgation of the regulations and that is not unreasonable. So that was an area that we pushed quite extensively in our—I would not call them debates—discussions and differences of opinion in the select committee. But by and large the select committee when it dealt with this bill because it is partly technical and partly political found a lot of common ground. We actually did find a lot of common ground. The thing to bear in mind is that there was no overwhelming evidence put before us that the current system was creaking to the point of collapse. There was a sense from the bureaucrats that there was a case for modernisation. There was a case that as the technology improved and people could actually rely upon more efficient ways to ensure that they were being legal we should not stand in the way of this process of actually modernising how we charge revenue collect revenue from the heavy haulage fleet in particular within the country.  
Now we need to be mindful—and we call upon the Minister—in this policy as it becomes law and as it moves through the process of subsidiary legislation that where it is evident that either there are egregious omissions or it is actually not working how the bureaucrats thought it might work there is a willingness and a level of courage on the part of the Minister to actually improve matters as it goes along. Far be it for me to want to spare the Minister the agony but no one actually wants to see what Minister Annette King faced in 2008 as I recall when she increased the costs of road-user charges. It led to something akin to a large truck strike in places like Whangarei and other large urban areas were congested as people were enraged about the way in which the costs were changed at that particular point in time.  
So let us be confident as we move through the latter stages of this that this bill does not represent inadvertently an additional impost on our transport fleet because rest assured that will add an intolerable burden on the tradable sector. It will decrease the efficiency in terms of price and quality of service in respect of our exports and it may also have the effect of chasing more Kiwis out of this industry as they think about going to Australia where unfortunately they are able to earn better amounts of money etc.  
There is an additional area where we were criticised as a committee. People felt that the larger firms with their vested interests and their ability to absorb cost through a larger essentially armada or a fleet of vehicles would actually slowly but surely marginalise the smaller firms and put them out of business. That is not good. No firm actually wants to see a system and no citizen should want to see a system where it becomes calcified it becomes inefficient and the large players have the ability to game the market. So I think it is important that the smaller firms—after all that is the genius of competition; the smaller firms—that are a wee bit more nimble a little bit more flexible hold the larger ones to account. We need to bear in mind that during the process where we received lobbying we received advocacy and we received submissions there was a concern that the smaller perhaps undercapitalised firms would not be able to make the process or the transition.  
I do not think it is unreasonable that those of us who are parliamentarians on this committee or who will be coming on to this committee are mindful not only of the large powerful vested interests but also of the smaller firms. In particular in the areas where I hail from where there is forestry aquaculture and a host of pastoral industries not all the firms in those areas are large nationally spread enterprises. It is important that we have a view about the importance of competition the importance of innovation and ensure that as this modernisation system begins to bite it does not have the perverse impact of actually reducing the ability of some firms to stay in business as a consequence of an ill-conceived and poorly executed new bout of red tape.  
Far be it for me to apply red tape to Gerry Brownlee in relation to what the man has already got to deal with in Christchurch and I am sure I speak for my colleagues on this side of the Chamber. I personally wish the man well in expediting the process to help our fellow citizens down in that part of Aotearoa but please I make a plea. When we implement changes of this nature let us ensure that we hold our bureaucrats to account and that as the process unfolds where they find examples that the policy is developing and creating anomalies and poor results we have got the courage to change it and ensure that our transport fleet remains efficient and competitive because that is going to have a significant impact on our ability to pay our way in expanding the tradable sector or growing our international revenue. Thank you.