Moroney Sue; Mallard TrevorENERGY INNOVATION (ELECTRIC VEHICLES AND OTHER MATTERS) AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Electricity Industry Act 2010SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on Part 1 of the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I will have some questions for the Minister in the chair on this—I am just giving the Minister a heads up—on Part 1 because—Matt Doocey: I seek leave for the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill to be debated as one question.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Is there any objection to that proposition? There appears to be none. That will be the case.Parts 1 to 4 schedule and clauses 1 and 2SUE MORONEY (Labour): I will indeed have many more questions probably. I guess from the outset just to let the Minister know I did not have the opportunity to sit on the Commerce Committee so I am looking at the bill as returned from the select committee with fresh eyes—in particular Part 1.Part 1 effectively allows EECA—the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority which I will hereafter refer to as EECA—to be able to actually have levies it has not had the ability to have before in order to go right across the whole spectrum. One of the spectrums that EECA can now bring levies down for is in the transport sector. Of course that is in reference to the increasing role that we hope that electricity will be playing in our transport sector with the increasing uptake in purchase and use of electric vehicles on a private-use basis but also we hope increasingly in the commercial field and in the public transport field as well. I note that new section 129A inserted into the Electricity Industry Act 2010 by clause 6 of this bill gives EECA the ability—or requires EECA actually—to submit a request to the Minister seeking an appropriation of public money for the following year or any change for an appropriation for the current year that relates to costs that are intended to be recovered by way of levies.One of the questions I have for the Minister is—given that now one of the main features of this bill is that it allows EECA to gather levies from a range of sectors—is the Minister being referred to in that clause of the bill the Minister of Conservation or is it the Minister of the particular sector from which the levy is being derived? From my perspective what I am very interested to learn about is if levies for electricity use are coming from the transport sector is that reference about submitting a request to the Minister in that instance to the Minister of Transport or the Minister of Conservation? I very sincerely ask the Minister in the chair who is shepherding the bill through this part of its process whether they could provide some clarification to that.I just note Mr Chair while I am on my feet that I am not sure whether the advisers have made it here to be able to give advice on those matters.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): It is not a matter to be raised on the floor.SUE MORONEY: OK. I hope the Minister knows the answer without the advisers being available to give that. I would be very interested to learn about that.One of the most controversial features in this bill—oh I should have said at the outset that Labour supports the bill. We think it is inadequate to deal with the very exciting future that we have in front of us of renewable energy being so involved in sectors like transport but we think it is at least a start and that is why we are supporting these parts.One of the very controversial parts of this bill is the ability for electric vehicles to be using bus lanes. I think it is Part 2 of this bill that allows that to happen. It is controversial because of course the whole idea of bus lanes is to promote the use of public transport not private transport. That is the whole idea—that we are trying to increase the number of people traveling per vehicle. In Auckland for example they are called bus lanes but what they are in fact are T2 T3 and T4 lanes. What that means is that yes buses use those lanes but also so do private vehicles that are transporting two three or four or more passengers. If we are trying to improve congestion in the horribly gridlocked city of Auckland which that Government has allowed to—you know it just sat back and watched while the gridlock has got ever worse in that city. If we are trying to unlock that gridlock then why would we allow vehicles that may have just one passenger in them—may just have the driver in them—to actually continue to use those sorts of lanes?That is the impact of the change in that part of this bill. Lanes that have been set aside in our most congested city and in other cities actually which actually require people to have multiple passengers—in fact they are really designed for buses to use to get people out of their one person per car habit and into buses so that they can expediate their journey by having a lane dedicated to them. Now increasingly the lanes are going to be clogged up potentially by single-user vehicles whether they are electric or not. I do not know and I would be interested to hear from the Government what the policy setting is that it is trying to address by this. What is the policy setting? Because I have no evidence internationally or in New Zealand that suggests that opening these precious bus lanes up to single-user electric vehicles is somehow going to magically lift the number of electric vehicles that are purchased in this country.All the international research and evidence says that the important thing about improving our use and uptake of electric vehicles is going to be about the purchase price—that is the single biggest driver of whether there will be a large uptake of electric vehicles or not. And yet this Government is not using the best tool at its disposal to address that issue. The Government owning one of the largest fleets in the country is not even requiring its own departments and ministries to purchase electric vehicles. That would be the single best way of having a mass purchase of electric vehicles. That would by definition bring the purchase price down and that would be the thing that would increase the uptake of electric vehicles. But no this Government instead says: Hang on hang on. We've got congestion rising in all of our major cities actually but particularly Auckland. Let's clog up the bus lanes more."As I understand—I am not from Auckland but many Aucklanders tell me that actually the bus lanes are pretty heavily congested these days. That is a great thing because that is about a great uptake of public transport. But why does this Government think that the best thing it can do is start to put electric vehicles—often cars driven by one person with no other passengers—in those lanes and make it even harder for our public transport system to be the most efficient it can be?I throw that challenge out to the Government: please explain where the evidence is that that measure will significantly increase the uptake of electric vehicles in New Zealand and where the evidence is that it will not instead have the possibly unintended but very obvious consequence of making the public transport system in Auckland and our other major cities less efficient. If that happens if our public transport system becomes less efficient because the buses and the people driving with two or three people per car and the taxis which can also use those routes—they are getting clogged up increasingly by people one person a car in an electric vehicle.I think there is a common misunderstanding: people seem to equate electric vehicles with fixing all of the woes of our transport system. Well there is no difference. The one thing it will do is it will reduce carbon emissions and I applaud that. I absolutely applaud that. But there is no difference in terms of congestion road safety or those other aspects of our transport system we should be concerned about that an electric vehicle delivers over a petrol-powered or a diesel-powered vehicle. They take up the same amount of space on the road. They add to our congestion. There is no road safety improvement from introducing them.So I want to finish my contribution by putting the challenge out to the Government to please show us the policy advice that tells us that having electric vehicles move into bus lanes is the best thing that we can do for our transport system."