Fenton Darien: Road User Charges Bill — In Committee 
Fenton Darien: Road User Charges Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:676;Page:21777] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I think that was a very very useful positive and helpful contribution from my colleague Stuart Nash. Actually I am very very disappointed that the outgoing chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee David Bennett—never to be returned after 26 November—has not bothered to take a call. We spent quite a lot of time in the select committee on Part 3. 
Labour supports most of this part albeit with the questions that have been raised by my colleagues. The first question is why the compliance with road-user charges needs to be improved. I welcome the fact that the Government is trying to address the fact that we have road-user charges evasion which is conservatively estimated at around $30 million a year $30 million a year for heavy vehicles alone let alone any other vehicles. What that means is that the honest people the honest players the people who are trying to do business and do it in an honest way in this industry are subsidising those who evade payment. The Government is not able to collect that revenue to invest back into the transport system. 
We support Part 3 which strengthens the whole system around collecting road-user charges. There was quite a lot of suspicion on the select committee about nominated weights versus gross vehicle weights and there was suspicion about electronic systems but there was particularly suspicion about the ability in Part 3 of the regulator to get information and enforce road-user charges. Quite a lot of suspicion came through from the industry and I am a bit sympathetic with that; with a National Government in power I would be suspicious as well. However Part 3 proposes some changes and I think the select committee took those changes on board. 
We can see from the report that there are some recommendations from the select committee to amend Part 3. There is a suggestion from the select committee of an amendment to clause 57(b) around the information that is obtained from the road-user charges collector how that information is retained and how it is used. There was quite a lot of unease from the industry about the ability of the Government to collect information on road-user charges that it may use for other purposes. There was a lot of suspicion actually. I am pleased that the select committee listened to that and has recommended an amendment that the road-user charges collector may retain only information taken from the vehicle management system regarding the distance travelled by the vehicle. The other information cannot be used for other purposes. 
The other debate was on how far the information went back and how extended the records were. There was quite a lot of discussion and debate on that. So in terms of the select committee report we support the amendments to clause 59 to remove any retrospective effect. There we go. There is that phrase “retrospective effect” and have we not been talking about that quite a lot recently? Will we not be talking about it tomorrow? Have we not had acceptance from this Parliament and actually from the Government that retrospective effects are not a good thing? They are not a good thing. So there is an amendment to clause 59 recommended by the select committee to remove that retrospective effect and reduce the time that records need to be retained for the purpose of assessing a person’s road-user charges payment obligations. There was concern as I said from submitters and the select committee discussed that. There was discussion with the officials about the scale of the records to be kept and the time for which they should be retained. 
We have also recommended an amendment to clause 60 that requires the road-user charges collectors to provide a receipt for records or other information removed from an operator—