SpeechHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Just responding to a few of the queries that have come through from members. The first is from Mr Brown who raised a series of questions around the regulation-making powers in respect to the maximum charges under the scheme. They'll be determined by the Minister and set through secondary legislation. The legislation itself doesn't set specific parameters on what the maximum or minimums for those should be but as we're discussing the criteria by which the Minister must determine those are set in the legislation. I think that's the appropriate way to take this forward bearing in mind that those criteria point the Minister of the day to a range of quite real-world factors including the supply of clean vehicles the market response the need to have a balance within the scheme between incomings and outgoings. So for example if a Minister chose to set very high fees that brought in a lot of revenue that would imbalance the scheme and the obligation under—I think is it clause 5—is to ensure the scheme is balanced. So those sort of controls will be there as well as broader questions of political acceptability when the Minister of the day sets those levels.The Government as members of the committee will be aware has broadcast both the discounts and the fees very transparently from the beginning of this process and they're beginning to have a useful effect already. The regulations are beginning to be drafted and they will be confirmed following the completion of this legislation but in time for the planned 1 April implementation date.Mr Simpson raised questions about who would be consulted in the course of the setting of those fees and charges. As the legislation sets out as returned by the select committee there is an obligation for the Minister to consult such persons as the Minister considers appropriate. I do think it was useful of the select committee to make that addition to ensure that the requirement is there in black and white in the legislation for the Minister to consider who should be consulted. That wasn't there previously and that would certainly be our intention. The point I'd make here is that I don't think that it makes for good legislation to be very specific about that at the point in time at which the legislation is being set. We don't quite know exactly who the groups will be—maybe in five years' time or so—who the Minister at that time would be wanting to consult with to make sure that they got the right outcome and got the right information in these decisions.I can give some assurance to the committee that we are consulting widely. I've established a clean car leadership group which includes key representatives including the Motor Industry Association the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association (VIA) and other groups with a strong interest in the sector and it will be my intention to continue working with them and consulting with them as we develop up regulations under this piece of legislation.In response to Mr Menéndez March—I think I've addressed that point in the first instance. We do want to consult widely. So that group for example also has representatives from Consumer New Zealand on it and a mana whenua voice on it because we want to make sure that we're actually hearing from everyone who's affected by this. Yes the commercial parties who import vehicles but also the consumers and also the communities who ultimately are affected by our success or our failure in reaching our climate change ambitions.The evidence is very clear internationally that the overall effect of these schemes is a progressive effect that it gives the biggest advantage to the lowest income people and there's strong evidence particularly out of the Californian schemes to support this and that's because there's a massive lifetime saving for people who get cleaner vehicles in terms of the ongoing fuel costs. It's something that people are feeling at the moment. To fill up an electric vehicle if you have one is the equivalent of filling up at the rate of 20c to 40c per litre. The more of those vehicles we can get into the fleet now the more we'll start cycling through the fleet and becoming more affordable. Already under the modelling for this scheme we know that there are large vehicles including hybrid vans that either do not attract any charge or attract a discount under the scheme that's here. And again the point of this is to incentivise the importers to bring in the cleaner models that are not currently available to purchasers in New Zealand because there is no incentive for that. That will advantage middle and low income earners who will save money by getting more efficient vehicles to use.