O'Connor Damien: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — In Committee 
O'Connor Damien: Road User Charges Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:656;Page:5489] 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) 
: 
 We are on Part 2 and it is probably useful to go back and explain to people what we are talking about. This is the Road User Charges Amendment Bill. It is kind of the “Carrot and Stick Bill” really with the first part of it being the carrot—that is we will incentivise people to buy electric cars by offering $400 a year for 300 buyers of electric cars. That is the carrot part. Now comes the stick in Part 2 which is that if one does not use all one’s road-user charges within 42 days they lapse. Why would this happen? Well probably the only person in this Chamber today who can remember back as far as that is Mr Peachey. He will remember what would happen on Budget day when the Minister of Finance would get up and announce new charges. They would usually come into force at midnight so everyone would rush down to the petrol station or liquor store and buy up large to try to get around the increasing charges. The fact that people spent more money to get there was probably irrelevant; it was the principle of the matter that was important. 
There is a desire in New Zealanders in each and every one of us to pay as little tax as we possibly can and to spend huge amounts of money in trying to avoid tax as the road transport industry has done on occasions. When increases in road-user charges have been announced transport operators up and down the country have rushed to buy forward their road-user charges thereby undermining the potential revenue for the Crown and not really playing a fair game. To be fair to the Government it has come up with I think an astute solution to this problem by saying that if there are any increases in road-user charges—and there will be—there will be a time limit. I ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Steven Joyce to take a call. He could get up and explain when he is likely to increase the road-user charges next because he knows full well— 
Hon Steven Joyce 
: We’ve told you. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: The Minister can take a call. He knows full well that the cost of roading and the lack of investment in infrastructure under the previous National Government through the 1990s means that we have to invest more money. Road-user charges are a big source of income and it is inevitable that he will increase the road-user charges in this country. What Part 2 does is to say that when an increase is announced those people who rush out and buy up road-user charges will have only 42 days in which to use them. I think it is a fair solution and it is not very often that I acknowledge in this Chamber that anything put in place by this Government is fair. 
But I go back to Part 1 as the carrot part of this legislation. The incentive to get people into electric vehicles is rather pathetic rather minimal. The question I ask in relation to Part 2 is why we have not got the same exemption in the same provisions for light diesel vehicles as we have seen in Part 1—that is an exemption for light diesel vehicles with the objective being to reduce emissions up and down this country in the future. The Government omitted to include them. It did not take the opportunity to make a significant change and it has left the owners of light vehicles which are those under 3.5 tonnes to still pay road-user charges when arguably they should be incentivised even if it is just for smaller cars as the Minister knows. 
Part 2 is the good part of the legislation. Part 1 as I have stated before is rather pathetic and rather small. It is not even a germ of a good idea. It is a token gesture towards climate change issues in this country from this Government.