Genter Julie Anne: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) Road User Charges Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) Road User Charges Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 17 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17470. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill make very minor changes that we do notoppose so the Green Party will be supporting the legislation. But I think that in order to understand the minor changes it is important to understand the entire context of road-user charges and the fuel excise duties scheme. For those who are watching at home today road-user charges are charges that heavy vehicles and those that are using diesel pay. Therefore they do not pay their tax directly. They pay road-user charges instead of fuel excise duty.Road-user charges contribute about one-third of the money to the National Land Transport Fund which is used on transport projects. Fuel excise duty which is obviously levied on all petrol vehicles contributes about two-thirds of the National Land Transport Fund—$2 billion. So the total National Land Transport Fund is made up of $3 billion about a third of which is from trucks and heavy vehicles and two-thirds of which comes from light passenger vehicles. This is a change under this Government. When it overhauled the road-user charges scheme it actually reduced the contribution that was being made by large vehicles or heavy vehicles and increased the contribution from light petrol vehicles or households because it put up the petrol tax quite a bit and it basically dropped the contribution from truckies.Of course one of the justifications for the changes to the road-user charges system was that if we made it more simple then we would reduce evasion of road-user charges. But of course when submitters came and spoke to us at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee it turned out that evasion has not fallen at all. Evasion is about the same as what it was before but overall the road freight industry is paying less towards our roads than it was before the National Government came into power.One other important thing to realise is that about $1 billion of ratepayer money goes into our roads and our transport system so although there is often some idea bandied about that roads are user-pays that is not true at all. The entire system is full of indirect charges and cross-subsidies. About one-quarter of the entire transport budget is contributed to by ratepayers but they actually pay for half of local roads and local roads carry half of all vehicle trips travelled. So basically what is happening is that there are as many vehicle trips on local roads as there are on the State highway network but most of the money levied in fuel excise duty and road-user charges from motorists who are driving on local roads which are paid for in part by ratepayers is going to the State highway network not to the local roads. That is also a consequence of policy changes by this Government which has sucked most of the money out of the transport budget and is applying it to just a few very expensive projects that benefit very few vehicles and people.In 2014 you really could not think of a worse time to be spending billions of dollars on State highways because we already have a very mature road network and what it really needs is to be looked after and maintained properly. But by duplicating a few of the networks in the State highway system the Government is actually taking 75 percent of the money for new transport infrastructure and spending it on only 4 percent of the trips. I know that this is a lot of numbers and I know that that might be confusing for members opposite but ultimately it is important to understand these numbers and take an objective look at how we are spending the transport budget. At the moment the National Government is spending the transport budget in a very irresponsible way.What is most concerning is the fact that it is not only spending most of the money on a very small proportion of vehicle trips which is not going to benefit people in New Zealand when they are trying to get to work trying to get to school and trying to get to the shops but also not even going to help our exporters who are trying to get their product from the farm gate to the port because most of the time they are not even travelling on the State highways that are receiving all of the money.The National Freight Demand Study for example shows that most of the freight in Northland does not leave Northland so although the Government is trying to justify an extension to the motorway north of Auckland so that more people can live further north of Auckland and commute into the city by car it justifies it on the basis that somehow it is going to help the economy of Northland. Well thePūhoi to Warkworth “Holiday Highway” does not even go into Northland and most of the freight in Northland does not travel on that road. But it is easy for National to bandy about these slogans which are completely meaningless and say that it is for economic growth when in fact it does not understand the first thing about how to improve economic productivity or how to have a functioning transport system that is going to benefit New Zealanders well into the future.The Green Party is here to say that we actually have a smart Green vision for our country. We are going to use best-practice evidence from overseas to ensure that New Zealanders have safe affordable options for getting to work and to school because that is what is really important. The way that you do that is not by throwing most of the money at a few highways that carry 4 percent of vehicle trips. We need to invest in the City Rail Link in Auckland and finish it on time so that we can have trains every 5 minutes. That will make a real difference to commuters in Auckland. Having a train every 5 minutes will make it much more attractive to take the train and it will take cars off the road so it benefits the people using the road and it benefits those who are using the train.We want to reduce public transport fares because they are too expensive—far too expensive. When you reduce public transport fares it makes it more attractive to take the bus and it means that there are fewer cars on the road and less congestion for those who are driving. It just makes economic sense. We want to make it safe for kids to walk and cycle to school because that is their birthright. Kids are no longer walking and cycling to school at the same rate that they used to because parents are understandably afraid. They fear for the lives of their children because we have spent so much money facilitating the flow of vehicles around schools rather than putting aside safe cycle lanes and safe pedestrian ways for people to walk and cycle to school. Obviously as all New Zealanders know during school holidays there is not the same level of traffic congestion. So a very low-cost effective way of dealing with traffic congestion is investing $50 million a year into safe walking and cycling around schools as the Green Party would.While this Government is wasting most of our tax dollars on projects that are not actually going to help New Zealanders get around the Greens are standing up and saying that we believe in choice we are going to invest in smarter choices and we are going to ensure that there is a road-user charges system that is fair not one that is subsidising road vehicles and road freight at the expense of everyone else. Thank you.