Utikere TangiTANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to take the first call for the Labour Party on this bill. I thought the Minister was generally doing OK up until the last sort of minute of his contribution where he decided to take a swing at the former Government. I really feel the need to respond to that because the new Government has had opportunity to place on its legislative agenda this particular bill. It has effectively waited for the clock to run down at the expense of members of the public and the community to be able to have an adequate say on the provisions contained within this bill and so that is rather unfortunate in terms of the use of urgency.I heard a colleague mention when the Minister said that this was going to be referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that Well finally we actually have a Government that is prepared to refer something to a select committee." So I look forward to hearing submissions as part of that particular select committee albeit for what is a relatively short period of time—and we'll come back to that in a moment.This is a bill that will seek to make some changes that will align with effectively the road-user charge (RUC) exemptions scheme for some vehicles that will come to an end on 31 March—so not too far down the track. It does as the Minister has indicated set a set rate which is a differential rate for plug-in hybrid vehicles alongside those that might be defined as light electric vehicles (EVs) as well. It's pleasing to see that the bill in its current form does also provide an exemption for what are very light electric vehicles and the payments that would be effectively attached to those in the form of RUCs wouldn't be applicable.I'll put the Minister out of his misery and say that we are prepared on this side of the House to support this through to select committee—albeit a very very short process indeed. The concern that I have with the truncated select committee process is that I've already—and I'm sure members around the House will have—received some feedback from constituents around this. The Minister has talked about the consultation that was undertaken by the previous Government. What we have in front of us is a copy of the departmental disclosure statement which identifies at 3.6 that there was that consultation; that there were a range of matters actually that stakeholders and others were consulted on.But it also identifies that the submissions on this bill were rather mixed. I think that's even more of a reason as to why a select committee process should allow for the full range of individuals and collectives to submit in and feed in to that process. I get the point Minister in that the date that you're aiming for here is 1 April. While that might lead to some sense of urgency I do think it is unfortunate that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee if the House does agree to a truncated select committee process will have to turn its mind to that rather quickly.Because I have one of my constituents who said not actually just—look he has no problem actually with moving to a RUC approach for his vehicle but he has some concerns about the weight variance and perhaps there should be a different rate when it comes to those that weigh less than one tonne. The threshold in this bill is setting it at 3½ tonne. Sure that will mean quite a quite a lot to many people but when we're looking at incentivising use of EVs and plug-in EVs around urban areas and the like—I think of Palmerston North—actually it's perfectly suitable for someone to use a motor vehicle that weighs much less than the 3½-tonne threshold that's there. So it's unfortunate that members of the community won't be able to necessarily easily feed into this process.I'll end my contribution by just touching on the fact that what would be helpful is an undertaking from the Government that there is going to be some incentivisation in terms of the uptake for electric vehicles. Yes we've heard from the Minister about the 2 percent of fleet being the particular target or threshold and that that has been achieved. But I really do start to question the motives of the Government when they effectively remove the Clean Car Discount when they effectively remove other rebates when they are not seeming to incentivise the uptake. Just because it's 2 percent doesn't mean that we should stop there and not go any further—far from it.So on this side of the House we will support this through to the next stage which will be a truncated select committee process for which that is rather unfortunate. But I'm sure we'll have a few more things to say about that."