Hughes Gareth: Road User Charges Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Road User Charges Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 04 October 2011. Volume:676;Page:21698. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Chair. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Obviously painstaking research from the member Tau Henare went into his speech on the Road User Charges Bill. Last week was probably dedicated to writing that speech and members could really tell. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: In big writing too. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: In big writing. I tautoko the sentiment from the member Tau Henare in regard to the Labour spokesperson Shane Jones but I will also mention the chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee David Bennett all the select committee members and all the submitters who came to the committee and who took the time to submit. I think we had a good process. 
This is a really important issue because every year $800 million is spent on road-user charges and 580000 vehicles are paying them. This legislation dating from 1978 is older than I am. It is a few years older than I am in fact. In this call I will look at Part 1 clauses 3 to 6. I will look at the purpose clause. When it comes to the purpose of the bill it is all about facilitating the trucking industry. We see the Government with a whole host of other legislative regulatory and financial support measures for the trucking industry and again this is another part of it. So I would like to look at the purpose of this bill—in particular the purpose to modernise the road user charges system to improve compliance and to establish a framework for electronic management. I contend that in fact all of these are quite inaccurate. The bill is talking about modernising at a time when we could have greater electronic management of our trucks and our vehicles paying road-user charges on our roads when in fact we are not using these tools of electronic management. What we are doing is going down an averaging path. In fact we are going down a dumber path one might consider and with it comes a dumber future Tau Henare might say. 
We are talking about compliance. I want to ask a question. One of the reasons why we do not have compliance is maybe that some of the decisions around our transport fund are of doubtful quality. We are looking at a whole bunch of roads of national significance with dubious business cases. Even the current leader of the ACT Party Don Brash and his 2025 Taskforce were criticising some of these roads of national significance just on their economics. So if we are going to look at compliance a key issue has to be actual quality spending in the transport portfolio. When we look at it we see that across the country for every dollar this Government is spending on all the walking and cycling on all the buses and trains and on all the coastal shipping it is borrowing and pouring $6 into more roads that unfortunately are benefiting only a small part of the country and are of dubious economic quality. 
I would rather invest in smart transport alternatives—things like the central business district rail link in Auckland which would actually reduce congestion on Auckland’s inner-city streets meaning there would be more space on the roads for those plumbers those tradesmen and those trucks using RUC the road-user charge scheme. We would like to invest money in safer roads. I would like to note and I am quite proud to say that the Green Party was the only party to score 10 out of 10 in the Automobile Association’s election ranking because of our prioritisation on safer roads. Our plan would reduce congestion and deliver better economic benefits. 
Essentially with this bill we have missed the opportunity. We have taken the opportunity to bring in a whole bunch of submitters to look at the road-user charge issue. It is important because the Government itself estimates that it will grow by 75 percent between 2006 and 2031. The problem is that if we are going to have all that freight carried on our roads be it by logging trucks in my home town of Gisborne with massive road safety accidents we are going to see more congested roads less safe roads greater emissions and a freight sector that is increasingly dependent on trucks. 
Everyone in this Chamber knows that the road-user charge scheme is one of the only ones of its type in the world. It has considerably huge administration costs. The Road Transport Forum estimated that $120 million a year is wasted in administration of this overly complex scheme which this Government in the aim of modernising with the bill is simply going to continue. Although the Green Party does support a user-pays approach to driving—in particular for commercial vehicles—we do think it is fair that they pay their fair share. But obviously that is not the case because when we looked at the Ministry of Transport’s own research from 2006—I believe it was—we found that trucks were paying only 56 percent of their costs. In other words commercial vehicles are being subsidised 44 percent by the taxpayer. We would like to see an actual user-pays approach when it comes to road-user charges. 
When we look at the purposes and the changes in this bill we see that they are not overly controversial. They are not going to make a huge difference. Hopefully they will make evasion more difficult overall. It is a very important issue. Part 1 clause 3 looks at modernising and simplifying the road user charge system. I wonder whether a fuel excise tax paid at the pump like we have with petrol would be much more effective in modernising the system and doing what the purpose of the bill is which is actually to increase compliance. We have something that is overly complex and very expensive to administer. 
The major change we are seeing in this bill is the changes around the maximum weight. On the one hand we think it is a good idea. We think it will provide an incentive for vehicles to be used to capacity. It is good for overall efficiency and from an environmental perspective. But sadly we are simply seeing this bill introducing only a framework for electronic payment. It does not actually go down the path where we could have taken some of the smart technologies that are on the market right now which we could have been using for full electronic monitoring and payment for trucks. I think we could have looked at trucks above a certain weight level. Obviously for utes it is probably not realistic. But we think it would have been desirable it would have helped us to plan the transport network more efficiently it would have helped the companies themselves with their data management and it would have helped the Government to reduce administration costs because it could have more accurately charged road-user charges. It is absolutely ironic that a bill that is in the name of modernising and simplifying the scheme when we want to access these smart technologies is simply going down an averaging path of averaging weights. So we think that was a missed opportunity. 
The major concern with the changes to the maximum weight was the impact on buses. I acknowledge the Bus and Coach Association which gave us on the committee a very compelling submission. I also acknowledge the committee members who helped to change the legislation in the select committee. Obviously it is a truism that a bus carrying schoolkids and the All Blacks bus are absolutely totally different weights and are a totally different kettle of fish from a truck carrying rocks from the quarry or whatever. I congratulate the Bus and Coach Association on its work in its submission. However it has been left up to regulation. I think this is something we could have looked at in the committee. What we have essentially done is kicked the ball up to the Minister of Transport’s office. That is a theme of this bill; many big decisions have simply been kicked up to the Minister’s office for him to decide and for him to make in regulations. 
The most controversial element in this part of the bill which could annoy literally hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders is that what we see when we look from the big picture level is that owners of small mostly efficient light diesel vehicles will end up paying more yet it is the owners of trucks at the heavier end of the weight spectrum who will be paying less. Officials continually reassured me that this was not true because of the way the Minister would do it with the regulations and the weight bands. I hope the Minister can commit to that because he will have 200000 or more angry light diesel vehicle owners chasing him around the country I imagine. 
The officials advised us that the rises were only in the order of maybe $32 for a light diesel vehicle covering 15000 kilometres and said that is not much. But it is a lot when we look across the whole country. The big fear for the Government of course is that it can be accused that this bill is simply about taking the costs from everyday Kiwis with their efficient light diesel vehicles and in fact subsidising trucks given the Ministry of Transport research that I have already quoted. I think it is critical that this Government does not disadvantage the small efficient diesel vehicle owners. 
Another area where we missed an opportunity is that this bill continues what we currently have in exempting electric car owners from paying road-user charges on our roads. It is great to incentivise electric cars. I think they will be part of the solution in the medium to long term. However electric cars have not been wildly successful. We have only 40 electric cars in the country despite all of the hot air we are hearing from Government members about how they are the answer. The main reason why we are investing or borrowing to invest $13 billion at a time of a deep global recession a deep debt crisis in New Zealand with credit downgrades is for new motorways and new roads of significance to National. We lament the opportunities to actually encourage greater efficiency of use. This will benefit our economy and benefit householders who for the average Kiwi family in New Zealand are paying around $6000 per year on average in fuel charges. 
It is disappointing that this bill seems entirely predicated on trying to help out these heavy vehicle owners yet we are disadvantaging smaller vehicle owners. I hope the Government looks at this in regulations and tackles it but we will be voting for this bill in the Committee stage because overall it is not controversial.