Woodhouse Michael: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) Road User Charges Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoodhouse Michael: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) Road User Charges Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 17 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17465. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Associate Minister of Transport) on behalf of theMinister of Transport: I moveThat the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill be now read a third time. These bills are the product of the dividing of the Land Transport and Road User Charges LegislationAmendment Bill at the Committee of the whole House. The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill correct a small number of anomalies with the road-user charges system that affect a small number of vehicles and their owners. These changes allow for the fair and practical application of road-user charges in a range of unusual circumstances. The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) amends the Land Transport Act 1998 which provides for a range of functions relating to land transport including the registration and licensing of vehicles. The purpose of the bill is to enable annual charges in lieu of road-user charges to be collected for vehicles that are exempt from road-user charges.Mike Sabin: Interesting.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Exactly. Some classes of vehicles are exempt from road-user charges because it is uneconomic to collect road-user charges for them. Most of these vehicles also do very little travel on roads and already make a significant contribution to the costs they impose on the road network through the vehicle licence fee. However some exempt vehicles such as fast tractors do a sufficient amount of travel on roads to cause road wear so it is fair that their owners should make a contribution towards the costs they impose. The bill amends the Land Transport Act to allow for an annual charge in lieu of road-user charges for these kinds of vehicles collected through registration and licensing processes. By doing so it allows for the fair and practical recovery of costs where collecting them through the normal processes would be impractical and uneconomic.The Road User Charges Amendment Bill amends the Road User Charges Act 2012 which provides for the regulation and administration of the collection of road-user charges for the use of roads and road wear. The main purpose of this bill is to address an anomaly for some vehicle owners who are required to pay road-user charges for their vehicle but are unable to do so because their vehicle is not registered and not legally required to be. The bill also makes other minor changes to the Road User Charges Act 2012. Unregistered road-user charges vehicles that are exempt from registration are not required to be registered or operate under a trade plate in an unregistered state but are subject to road-user charges unless they belong to a class of vehicle that makes them specifically exempt.However it is not possible to issue road-user charges licences to these vehicles because the licences are linked to a vehicle’s registration number. These kinds of unregistered vehicles make only limited use of roads and it is not cost-effective to try to collect road-user charges for them. The Road User Charges Act 2012 will be amended to allow regulations that exempt these unregistered vehicles from road-user charges. This bill also amends the Road User Charges Act to add offence provisions where light vehicles conditionally exempted from road-user charges are operated in breach of those conditions.Finally the bill contains amendments of a technical nature which support the policy aims behind road-user charges and rationalising enforcement activity. These clarify that a person who has entered into an arrangement to pay overdue fees by instalment will not be subject to additional penalties allow road-user charges collectors to set a licence fee for one-off vehicles not covered by prescribed road-user charges types and make minor amendments that allow the effective functioning of the road-user charges system.In closing the changes proposed in these bills improve the functioning of the road-user charges system and allow for the fair and practical application of road-user charges in a range of unusual circumstances. I commend the bills to the House.