Quinn Paul: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Quinn Paul: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:656;Page:5486] 
PAUL QUINN (National) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to be able to take a call on Part 2 of the Road User Charges Amendment Bill which deals with the notice that applies in respect of the road-user charge. I say from the outset that I hope—it is my sincere hope—that during discussion and debate on this part of the bill the contributions from our friends and colleagues on the opposite benches are a bit more thoughtful than we have heard on Part 1 of the bill. Those speeches seemed to meander around everything except focus on the benefits and the job that Part 1 will do. 
In turning to Part 2 I will make a small contribution on it and talk about why the particular part is before us. We do not have to go back very far—to 2008—when with a rush of blood the then Minister of Transport decided that the road-user charges would go up. 
David Bennett 
: Annette King was it? 
PAUL QUINN 
: Yes I think it was Annette King—the former Minister of everything and master of nothing. That decision led to the roads being blocked and traffic being at a standstill throughout the motu. Frustrated motorists were piled up right across the highway networks of New Zealand as drivers of truck after truck instead of being out delivering the people’s goods and moving parcels along the way were so incensed that they were voting with their feet so to speak although in this case they were voting with their trucks. In fact they gridlocked this city of ours Wellington as they drove on Parliament. The sheer disappointment to them was that out of the blue they got a significant increase on their road-user charge with no notice and for a whole month they had to carry that increased fixed cost to their business— 
Jo Goodhew 
: Don’t you mean out of the red? 
PAUL QUINN 
: Yes exactly—not out of the blue; out of the red coming from the red Government of the day the money-grabbers who just slapped another fine and an impost on businesses and said they had to pay it. Businesses had no chance to be able to recover those costs imposed by the nanny State Government of the day. 
As a result the National Government has reacted to make sure that if road-user charge increases are justified then they should be appropriately announced in terms of forewarning so that adjustments can be made particularly for the owner-drivers who are mostly affected by these sorts of imposts that the Government can place on them. They will then have a chance to adjust their business model and be able to continue in a profitable way contributing to the economy of New Zealand in the way they do moving the traffic along the highways getting the containers to the ships and to KiwiRail and being part of the intermodal transport line that Darren Hughes raised in his rather poor contribution on Part 1. His speech was very much below his normal high standard. In fact none of the previous speakers has risen to the dizzy heights of his or her normal standard. That has been most disappointing. It was interesting in Darren’s contribution that he waffled on about an intermodal transport line which would have been more appropriately dealt with in this part of the debate.