Little Andrew: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16761. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):The Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill now in its current form as reported back from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee is the sort of bill you have when you have made so many mistakes in the previous legislation whether because of urgency or because of an inattentive Minister of Transport.Mike Sabin: Well the Labour Party is qualified to talk about making lots of mistakes of course.ANDREW LITTLE: The truth of this as Mr Sabin well knows is that we were landed with a piece of legislation for which we were told urgency was required. It was raced through its first reading in the dead of night only for us to discover that it was full of holes. It is interesting that this piece of legislation taken out of the context of errors and the haste with which the original legislation was passed looks somewhat reasonable. It adds a bit of flexibility.As the honourable member David Bennett has said road-user charges are very important. Where I think the Labour Party differs from the National Party is that the National Party thinks that there are six roads in this country that are significant whereas we think that there are a lot more roads that are significant. One of the roads in this country that is very dear to my heart—and I have been travelling a lot lately; you might or might not have heard of it—is State Highway 3 in north Taranaki. I can pinpoint it to the nearest kilometre. It is that stretch of State Highway 3 that goes from the borders of Waitara the lovely settlement of Waitara right up to the larger village of Te Kūiti the handsome little village of Te Kūiti which is so important to that area so important to the history of this nation and I might add so important to the history of the National Party. It is the heart of the King Country. The heart of the King Country is where a lot of sheep farming has been going on and it is also an area of New Zealand that not only has delivered up one of the longest-serving National Party Prime Ministers in the form of Jim Bolger but has been fraught with difficulty in other respects for a long time and it gave birth to a very important Māori movement the Kīngitanga movement.So we have the King Country and State Highway 3 is the road that links the important province of Taranaki to the important province of Waikato. I make no distinction in terms of the importance of either of them except that I do want to acknowledge in the context of this debate that as a result of decisions made in the wonderful province of Taranaki only last year the significance of Waikato to Taranaki is even greater because of the decisions of the Taranaki Rugby Football Union. It has now affiliated the good people of Taranaki with a Super 15 rugby team that is domiciled in the heart of the Waikato in Hamilton.It is for that reason that the stretch of road that I talked so longingly and lovingly about—that stretch of State Highway 3 between the delightful settlement of Waitara and the very important settlement of Te Kūiti—is so important. A lot more Taranakians will now be travelling that road in the months to come during the Super 15 season and it is for that reason that I want to see road-user charges being used for all significant roads in New Zealand including State Highway 3 which is why this bill affords—[Interruption] Well I look at the levies being extracted out of the region of Taranaki by this Government and indeed others and added to the coffers of central government—and I quibble not about that exercise; it is an important exercise—but I on behalf of the good people of Taranaki and particularly the people of New Plymouth simply say that we want our fair share. We want our fair share and we want the money that gets extracted from the province of Taranaki to go into the general coffers spent on the infrastructure of New Plymouth including State Highway 3.It is for that reason that we support this bill. Road-user charges are levied in a very flexible way under this bill. It allows specialist machinery requiring specialist operators—machinery that is not often found on the roads whether it is State Highway 3 or any other road in New Zealand—to now have road-user charges levied on it in a sensible meaningful sort of way and those levies can now be used for all the good roads of New Zealand not just the six roads that the National Government thinks are significant.So this bill creates that very important function for the Government of ensuring that there is now flexibility in the regime of road-user charges. It will benefit farmers it will benefit farm contractors and it will benefit the operators of specialist and sophisticated machinery that sometimes might travel on roads but spends most of its time on farmland or on forestry land or in other similar areas because that is what those vehicles are particularly intended for.The other thing that this bill does is correct an oversight in the Road User Charges Act 2012—in particular section 9. It now allows a reasonable excuse defence to be mounted for not displaying the correct road-user charge licence for the machinery. In fact it adds an interesting level of flexibility now. Clause 6A sets up a reasonable excuse defence but interestingly it adds new subsection (4B) to section 9 which means that any other excuse might be a reasonable excuse not just the fact that there is a levy being charged already on the vehicle even though it does not have the correct road-user charge licence displayed upon it.So this is the ultimate in flexibility and like all good legislation it has been scrutinised very carefully in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. It has won a consensus of support at least from the Labour Party and it also reflects and recognises that we need to make sure that those who are the users of our roads pay towards them. But where it fails of course is that it does not go the extra step of ensuring that the use of the money collected and levied in this way goes towards all the roads that are important to New Zealand—every important regional arterial route not just the handful that some consider are important.Darien Fenton: Or railways.ANDREW LITTLE: Or rail—at least for those lines that can be used because not only in Gisborne but also now in Taranaki would you believe there is a rail line that is unusable because of a single washout. It is currently being used by a set of golf carts I might add to supplement the Forgotten World Highway. But notwithstanding that we support the legislation because—Hon Member: Very good.ANDREW LITTLE: —it does achieve a very important objective. It creates a sense of flexibility. It will be good and the next Government when it is elected on 20 September this year—the Labour-led Government—will make sure that the levies collected will be used for all the important roads in this country not just the small half-dozen that the members opposite in the Government think are important.David Bennett: Come to Hamilton and say that.ANDREW LITTLE: There will be levies that will be used beyond the Waikato Expressway. Even though there will be some Chiefs supporters from Taranaki using that expressway occasionally most of the Chiefs supporters from Taranaki would rather that most of the money went to only the delightful beautiful scenic and very important but currently unsafe State Highway 3.