SpeechLAND TRANSPORT (CLEAN VEHICLES) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill.SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I move That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.It's not that often that a Minister is able to stand in the House and speak to a bill in his or her name with clear evidence on the table that the policy is already working. I don't mean modelling or predictions from officials. I don't mean by reference to overseas examples. I mean clear evidence that the policy has already started to work. But I'm very pleased to be able to inform the House tonight that that is the case with the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill and that's because from 1 July 2021 the initial parts of the Government's clean car package took effect. These were the discounts that were implemented on battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Those changes did not require legislative amendment to take effect. The effect of those provisions has been extraordinarily successful and I would like to show to the House briefly the effect that those measures have had. The clean car discount has already led to an enormous increase in the number of clean vehicles entering the New Zealand fleet. The number of electric vehicles coming into New Zealand and being registered has roughly tripled month on month since the introduction of the clean car discount. Since 1 July and the discount coming into effect the average emissions of new vehicles coming into New Zealand have decreased by 15 percent across the fleet. It took eight years before 1 July 2021 for us to achieve that reduction in emissions previously. In September for the first time ever the top-selling new vehicle in New Zealand was an electric vehicle and one in four electric vehicles on the road today has been purchased since 1 July when the clean car discount commenced. New Zealanders are voting with their feet. They're voting with their wallets. They want cleaner and more affordable vehicles for themselves their families their communities and for our environment. This policy is already working. The implementation as it will happen after this bill has passed of the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill will ensure that we keep up that momentum.I do think it's worth just tracking back a little bit to the why—why it is we are moving forward with this policy. It goes back to the fact that we have this enormous challenge in front of us one that this entire House virtually has accepted: the challenge of actually taking decisive action on climate change. We know that we have to take up that challenge if we want to reach net zero by 2050 and barring one party currently in this House every party represented here including the National Party voted to try and reach net zero by 2050 voted to set up an independent climate commission and voted to set up five-yearly carbon budgets to ratchet down our emissions to reach those targets. Well having done that we can't just sit on our fine words as a House; we actually have to introduce the policies that will make the difference and that is a challenge for every party in this House as they come to vote on this piece of legislation tonight.The independent Climate Change Commission—which again I say every party in this House except for the ACT Party voted to establish—said that they should have the independent capacity to tell us what we needed to do and they have told us what we need to do: we need to reduce our emissions from the transport sector by 41 percent by 2035. We need to achieve around about 30 percent of the vehicles on our road by 2035 being zero-emissions vehicles. We're going to have to do something if we want to achieve that because the truth is that New Zealand's performance in this area has been woeful. We have one of the dirtiest fleets in the world. Since 1990 the part of the New Zealand economy in which emissions have increased the most has been our vehicle fleet where emissions have increased by 90 percent. Only New Zealand Russia and Australia—of developed economies—do not have an emissions vehicle standard. We are currently the laggards and if we don't take action as the rest of the world and car companies countries all around the world clean up fleets we will become the dumping ground for the world's dirtiest vehicles. And that's why this piece of legislation is so important. There are two strands to it. The first is the clean car standard and the standard is about supporting and incentivising importers to get cleaner stock of vehicles into New Zealanders. It incentivises them by having a steadily increasing target for bringing cleaner vehicles into New Zealand year by year. Importantly—and many of those New Zealand - based importers tell me this—for the first time it is giving them leverage when they go back to their head offices in Europe or Japan or Korea or China to say We need to get cleaner vehicles into New Zealand." They previously haven't had that because we haven't had a standard; so we've got the dirty vehicles. The clean car standard gives those New Zealand - based companies the ability to go back and get cleaner vehicles here for Kiwis to be able to drive. It's important to note that this is also a manifesto commitment. The Labour Party campaigned on setting up a 105 grams of carbon dioxide per tonne of emissions target by 2025 and via this piece of legislation we will follow through and we will implement that commitment that we made to the electorate.The bill seeks targets that go through to 2027. Countries all over the world have targets with an increasing level of ambition up to that point and beyond. The bill sets up the Minister with the ability to review those targets in 2024 and I acknowledge the Transport and Infrastructure Committee very ably led by Greg O'Connor who have proposed a number of changes to the bill including strengthening the consultation requirements around how that review will take place.There were many submitters on the bill. The majority supported the bill. Some people who submitted asked us to go even further. The committee has made a range of other changes including introducing a transition period before the clean car standard takes effect; strengthening the provisions for review; as I said clarifying how carbon dioxide emissions are determined to ensure that that's clear and understood across all vehicle types coming into the country; and improving the definition of a used vehicle. I thank the committee and all of the submitters for the work on that. It's important to note that with the clean car standard through the consultation process prior to legislation being drafted considerable flexibility has been built into the scheme. So importers of vehicles across their fleets can bank borrow and trade in credits to make sure that they achieve those targets across the average of their fleet that they bring in on an annual basis. The second part of the clean car package in this bill is the clean car discount that I spoke about earlier on. As I said it's already working. Modelling shows it'll prevent over 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050 and the result so far is that we're ahead of target. Even our most optimistic upside scenarios for the numbers of electric vehicles coming into New Zealand have been significantly exceeded. Since the clean car discount came into effect on 1 July five of the top-selling new vehicles have attracted the discount and it's either seven or eight of the top-selling used vehicles attract the discount. This is providing cars that Kiwis want to get into. The standard and the discount work together to increase the supply of clean vehicles and then to incentivise and support Kiwis to get into them. Modelling from overseas jurisdictions where discounts have applied clearly shows this is a progressive measure and it's also one that makes economic sense. For every tonne of carbon that we avoid through this policy it doesn't cost New Zealand money; it saves our country money because we save so massively on the national fuel bill that we currently have to use and that'll save Kiwi consumers up to $7000 or $8000 over the lifetime of their vehicles.As I said at the beginning this is a policy that's already working. The National Party my friends over here supported the establishment of the independent climate commission. They supported net zero. They support via that five-yearly carbon budgets and the need to reduce our emissions from this sector by 41 percent by 2035. At some point they are going to have to stop opposing every single measure that is actually put forward to achieve any of their targets. And I'll guarantee one thing to this House: at whatever point that party pulls itself together and is able to get back into Government they will never repeal this policy because not even they are backward enough to go backwards on a policy and make the New Zealand vehicle fleet dirtier and make clean vehicles more expensive which is what would happen were they to repeal this policy. And so my question for them tonight: is the Christopher Luxon National Party actually any different from the Judith Collins one or any of the other previous leaders they've cycled through? Are they actually going to step up and support a policy that follows through on what they have stood up in this House and said they support which is actually taking meaningful action on one of the great challenges of our time reducing emissions so that this is a decent world to live in for this generation and those to come? I commend this bill to the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."