Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am very happy to take a call on this bill and in doing so I would like to comment particularly on some of the changes made at the Commerce Committee and some of the very good submissions received in respect of electric vehicles. The focus there will be on amendments to section 145 of the Land Transport Act and inserting new section 37A into the Road User Charges Act. Before I get on to those I just must say I have stuck in my mind a comment from Minister Collins about the potential for the refuse industry to shift to electric vehicles. I have got to say whenever I think of that particular industry I think of Tony Soprano. So I have this image of Tony Soprano and the New Jersey mafia leading the way towards a brighter more sustainable future for us.Moving on from that can I reflect a little bit on a couple of these changes made at select committee. The first one is new section 37A inserted into the Road User Charges Act. By and large these seem to be sensible changes and they relate to giving an exemption to heavy vehicles from road-user charges.Sue Moroney: Electric vehicles.MICHAEL WOOD: That is right that is right—heavy electric vehicles. I guess there are just a couple of things I want to comment on. The first is the change made in select committee to section 37A(1A) which I think just makes the fairly common-sense but useful addition that when the Minister is making this recommendation—that these vehicles may be exempted from road-user charges—that the Minister does need to show that they are satisfied that the purpose of that will support the uptake of those vehicles. Just wearing my Regulations Review Committee hat I think it is really important when we do hand these powers to Ministers through the legislation like this particularly when it is a power that directly relates to the economic incentives within an industry—it is effectively an impost being applied to some people and not applied to others—that we do put some onus on Ministers to actually demonstrate that there is a tangible benefit that is linked to the purposes of the original Act. So I thought that that was a sensible and constitutionally appropriate addition for the select committee to make to that. Perhaps one question for the Minister would just be what her expectation might be of the kind of evidential basis that we might expect to see from a Minister in showing that they are satisfied with that. I think sometimes we can be a bit light and airy with these things. Again there are real impacts on an industry and on businesses. It would be good to get some satisfaction from the Minister that when these decisions are made there is some evidence on the table to base them upon.The second thing related to section 37A and the changes made in select committee are that we have clarified in respect of any orders made under this part of the bill—which will then be an Act of course—that the period in which the exemption ends must be no later than 31 December 2025. It would just be good to hear from the Minister why exactly we have chosen that date. I can see the purpose in having a date built into the legislation. In subsection (2A)(b) we say that for any orders made subsequently the date is 5 years after the date on which the period of exemption starts. What is the particular reasoning behind firstly 31 December 2025 and latterly that 5-year period? I think the reason it is important to get a bit of clarity around those is that the particular kinds of vehicles that we are talking about heavy electric vehicles are going to be costly investments for any kind of business—for the Sopranos of Mount Roskill or whoever it is—to make. We are talking about $100000-plus vehicles easily and I think it is really important that we are able to give some certainty to those people that the period of exemption has some sort of rational basis and has not just been plucked out of thin air. So if we could hear from the Minister about exactly why those dates are the ones that have been inserted at the select committee stage into this legislation I think that would be really helpful in terms of our consideration of the bill.Moving on to the changes to the Land Transport Act 1998 we have got some changes made there to section 145 of that Act under clause 17A of this bill. These relate effectively to the capacity of local authorities that may choose to go down the route of giving electric vehicles the right to use special purpose lanes particularly bus lanes. This goes to their ability to actually be able to enforce that and of course that is pretty important because it is all very well for this Parliament to say that something should happen or say that local authorities should or can do something but if they do not actually have any realistic capacity to enforce it then that is pretty pointless. I do want to go on and just talk a little bit shortly about some of the submissions received about possibly the utility of this whole area of the bill that is allowing electric vehicles to use special purpose bus lanes.In respect of the enforcement issue we received a number of very good submissions. I thought particularly it is worth taking a moment to have a look at the Ministry of Transport submission in respect of what the implications might be for electric vehicles using special vehicle lanes. What the ministry identifies in its submissions is that there are a number of additional steps that are going to need to be gone through here. Of course we are talking about the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) here and if I think about Auckland for example this means the bus lanes not on arterial roads like Dominion Road but potentially on such roads as the northern expressway or potentially—if we ever get it and let us pray that we do—a bus lane on the Northern Busway. So actually the kinds of busways that the Ministry of Transport is talking about here in its submissions are amongst the most important ones to get this right on because they are the ones that have huge capacity. Now more than half of the vehicles crossing the Auckland Harbour Bridge come across on the Northern Busway so we have got to get this stuff right.There was a question put by the select committee about the cost of installing cameras for enforcement of NZTA-controlled special vehicle lanes and the ministry identified the costs involved for automatic enforcement solutions—costs that included cameras infrastructure communications applications installation staffing and back-office systems. So we are talking about a pretty significant outlay and I do have a bit of a concern here that in putting these provisions in here we are not necessarily thinking through the next step—not only whether it is desirable but if it is desirable whether it is even particularly practical for the road-controlling authorities be they NZTA or the local authorities to go down this track.The other question I did have for the Minister of Energy and Resources—and I am hoping that it is just an area that I am not too familiar with and she can answer it fairly simply—relates to clause 17 which replaces section 22AB(1)(r) and has been inserted by the select committee. In that text it talks about—let me just read it out—prescribing subject to the marking of lanes on the roadway that on any road any traffic lane may be used or any turning movement may be made only by vehicles of specified classes or vehicles carrying specified classes of loads or no fewer than a specified number of occupants:". What I just want to confirm with the Minister in the chair is that the purpose of this bill is to ensure that electric vehicles can potentially gain access if a local authority chooses to go down that road. But by defining it as "specified classes" does that potentially open it up further for a local authority to make other exemptions? So if we could get some clarity from the Minister around that that would be very helpful thank you.In coming to the end of my comments in this area I do want to reflect on this whole area of the bill. It is probably the most contentious one. The Opposition is not opposing the bill on the basis of this and that is probably because we are making it optional for local authorities rather than compulsory. I suspect there would be some far firmer speeches and a greater degree of opposition if we had made these provisions compulsory. But we do wonder about the utility of them. We received some very very good submissions. There is one here from the Bus and Coach Association which notes that when Norway did go down the route of doing this—and Norway is put up as an example of why we should allow electric vehicles into bus lanes—it made congestion worse. It made congestion worse.Probably the very best submission of all came from the Auckland Regional Public Health Service. It also noted that point and it noted that in every single case it has looked at—and it looked at the case of Tāmaki Drive where Auckland Council was pressured to make it a T2 or T3 lane. Every single time you go down this track of allowing additional vehicles into bus lanes no matter what the other public policy objectives are you make congestion worse not only for people in the bus lanes but for everyone else. You actually defeat the fundamental purpose of those bus lanes. Of course those bus lanes not only reduce congestion but make for a healthier and cleaner city as well. I do not think many local authorities are going to take up that option for this reason. We support this bill but it would be good to hear some answers from the Minister on those questions."