Bridges Simon: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBridges Simon: Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:13035. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources) on behalf of theMinister of Transport: I moveThat the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to consider the bill. The bill will amend the Road User Charges Act 2012 and the Land Transport Act 1998. The Road User Charges Act 2012 provides for the regulation and administration of the collection of road-user charges for the use of roads and road wear caused by vehicles subject to road-user charges or RUC. The Land Transport Act 1998 provides for a range of functions relating to land transport including the registration and licensing of vehicles. The main purpose of this bill is to address an anomaly for some road-user charge vehicle owners who are required to purchase road-user charges for their vehicle but are unable to do so because their vehicle is not registered and not legally required to be. Its secondary purpose is to enable annual charges in lieu of road-user charges to be collected through registration and licensing processes for vehicles exempt from road-user charges. The bill also makes other minor changes to the Road User Charges Act 2012.Unregistered road-user charge vehicles that are exempt from registration are not required to be registered or are operated under a trade plate in an unregistered state are subject to road-user charges unless they belong to a class of vehicle that makes them specifically exempt. However it is not possible to issue road-user charge licences to these vehicles because road-user charge licences are linked to a vehicle’s registration number. These kinds of unregistered vehicles make only limited use of roads and it is not cost-effective to try to collect road-user charges for them. The Road User Charges Act 2012 will be amended to allow regulations that exempt unregistered vehicles from road-user charges.Vehicles are exempt from road-user charges primarily because it is uneconomic to collect road-user charges for these vehicles. Most of the vehicles that are exempt fromroad-user charges do very little travel on roads. However some exempt vehicles such as fast tractors do a sufficient amount of travel on roads to cause road wear so it is fair that the owners of these vehicles should make a contribution towards the cost that they impose. This bill allows for the collection of an annual charge in lieu of road-user charges for these kinds of vehicles. By doing so it allows for the fair and practical application of road-user charges where collecting them through the normal process would be impractical and uneconomic. This bill also amends the Road User Charges Act 2012 to add offence provisions where light vehicles conditionally exempted from road-user charges are operated in breach of those conditions.Finally the bill contains amendments of a technical nature which support the policy aims behind road-user charges and rationalise enforcement activity. These clarify that a person who has entered into an arrangement to pay overdue fees by instalment will not be subject to additional penalties allow the road-user charges collector to set a licence fee for one-off vehicles that are not covered by prescribed road-user charges types and make minor amendments that allow the effective functioning of the road-user charges system. In closing the proposed changes allow for the fair and practical application of road-user charges in a range of unusual circumstances. This is a great bill and I commend it to the House.