King Annette: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — First Reading 
King Annette: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 You are feeling very generous today Mr Speaker! Mr Hughes our spokesperson on transport made a start in this debate on Tuesday evening. In his few brief minutes of speaking he expressed the Opposition’s concern that the Minister is requiring such a very short report back— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I may have missed something here. I apologise to the member if I have just interrupted for no good reason but am I to assume that Mrs King is now taking the balance of the speech for another member? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is my understanding of the situation. As I understand it she is entitled to do that. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: So it is a split speech? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Yes indeed. I am sorry; I thought I had announced it as a split call. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I genuinely apologise to that member for not hearing that. I certainly would be appreciative if her time starts again. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Thank you Mr Speaker. I am so happy the House is feeling incredibly generous today. I think it must reflect the fact that our Speaker is getting married on Saturday and that we are all feeling very joyous for him—especially those of us who have happy marriages ourselves. We genuinely hope that he has a wonderful day and a long and happy marriage. 
As I was saying Mr Hughes our spokesperson made a start in the debate on this bill on Tuesday. He had only a few brief minutes to speak but he raised a concern that I would like to repeat now which concerns the Minister’s requirement that there be a report back of this bill by 21 July. Of course that is a mere 19 days away and in the middle of that time there is a 2-week adjournment so Labour is very concerned that there is a very short time frame in which to look at this bill. In fact the Minister has given no justification and no explanation as to why he needs such a short time frame to look at this bill and we would like to note our concern at the process. We are happy to accommodate the bill and if he wants to talk to us about it we would certainly be very happy to do that. But we would have liked to know the whys and wherefores of the need for this bill to be rushed through in a mere 19 days. 
This bill the Road User Charges Amendment Bill proposes to amend the Road User Charges Act 1997 and it has two outcomes. The first is to enable the exemption of light electric motor vehicles from the requirement to pay road-user charges. The second is to provide a 42-day notice of increases to the road-user charges to all diesel motor vehicle owners and to— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: If members want to have a discussion would they please move into the lobbies. There is a lot of noise around and it is disturbing the member speaking. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. The second part of this bill is to provide 42 days’ notice of increases in road-user charges to all diesel motor vehicle owners and to minimise the potential revenue loss caused by pre-purchasing of road-user charges by the trucking industry following notification of an increase. The bill provides that a heavy vehicle road-user charge licence will expire 1 month after the increase comes into effect. 
We support both of these measures. We strongly support the removal of road-user charges from electric vehicles; it is a great idea. It reinforces a lot of the work that we as a Government did towards the introduction of electric vehicles in New Zealand. In fact when we issued the transport strategy last year part of that strategy was the inclusion of a commitment to electric vehicles. I have to say that at the time there was a certain amount of tut-tutting and pooh-poohing by the National Party about the importance of electric vehicles in New Zealand and the part such vehicles would play. I did point out that we were at that time making our own electric buses in Ashburton for example and that when we looked internationally we could see that the need for electric vehicles was growing and the commitment to them was growing. So when a Government puts together a long-term strategy it should include electric vehicles in it; I say to Dr Smith that I am glad that the National Government has seen the light of day and that it supports Labour in the commitment to enhance the manufacture and use of electric vehicles in New Zealand. We will see greater use of electric vehicles over the years to come and taking off road-user charges from those vehicles—certainly in the early days—I think will help towards that. 
The second part is around the area of road-user charges. If anybody knows this issue it is certainly me. If anybody knows the heat of this issue it is certainly me who as the previous Minister of Transport faced the revolt of truckdrivers when I put up road-user charges last year with no notice. Of course at that time I increased road-user charges because it had been my experience the year before when we had increased them—along with increases other motor vehicle owners had—that I had given a certain amount of notice only to see a lot of forward purchasing of road-user charge certificates. In fact a large amount of revenue to the Crown was lost through that forward purchase. It was made clear in my meetings at that time with the head of the Road Transport Forum the Hon Tony Friedlander that the forum would want to work with the Government to put in place a regime that was fair to the Government but also fair to the forum—to increase road-user charges without a great loss of revenue to the Crown but also with sufficient notice in particular to truckies who were purchasing the road-user charge certificates. So this bill actually addresses what came out of the inquiry I set up and it was announced by the new Minister of Transport in May this year. 
The working party report that was done on road-user charges recommended that 6 weeks’ notice be given of any future increases in road-user charge rates; in fact this bill gives 42 days’ notice of such an increase. But what is just as important is the provision that those who purchase road-user charge certificates in that time will have only 1 month to use them. So the bill will close the loophole whereby people could go out and pre-purchase a lot of road-user charges at an old rate thereby saving themselves money and then use them indefinitely until they ran out. Under this proposal people will be able to use them for up to 1 month and then if there are any left over they will get a refund. I think the bill has come up with a good solution. 
However we have a couple of questions that we would like answered in the select committee. We would like to know—and perhaps it will not be possible at that time to tell us but I hope it will be—how the legislation will actually work in practice. I mean a lot of these things sound good but I know that the Hon Maurice Williamson who has had something to do with this in the past knows that often we can make these changes only to end up creating even bigger problems. So I think we would like to know how this requirement will work and what it will cost—how many more staff will need to be employed will the legislation mean additional resources in the ministry in order for it to be implemented and what avenues will exist to enable trucking firms in particular to rort the system? Everybody is saying that we need to be fair to everybody but we do not want to see rorts in the system. And what would be the total leakage of funds that would not be gathered from the Government? Does the Government have any idea? One of the issues in this whole scheme has been the leakage of funds. 
I am pleased that the review supported the continuation of the road-user charge system. I think that it is in the main a pretty fair system; this bill will certainly help its fairness even more. Labour will certainly support the bill but we will be looking in the very brief time we have for some of those questions to be answered.