Court Simon; Doocey MattSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. Minister I have a number of questions just relating to the departmental disclosure statement. I'm just—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member I'm assuming is about to ask questions on clause 4 of the bill.SIMON COURT: That's right Madam Chair: clause 4. The departmental disclosure statement says there was no regulatory impact analysis undertaken and what I'm interested in is what is the cost to administer the temporary reduction in the road-user charges scheme what is the cost to the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) how many additional staff will be required to administer it at the agency and will they be employed on a fixed term or casual contracts? What is the cost to the agents who administer this scheme—that's where people go to buy road-user charges say from their local Vehicle Testing New Zealand or wherever they buy them from in their local town—and what information has NZTA or the Minister received about the cost to businesses to participate in this scheme? Just having had a look at the information provided by Transporting New Zealand offering to assist Waka Kotahi develop a simple scheme that's easy to administer it seems that what's being proposed here in the bill is quite different. So my question to the Minister is: what is the cost to business? So three questions there and my fourth question is: what alternatives were considered by Waka Kotahi NZTA when coming up with a scheme to give temporary relief to those businesses who need to purchase road-user charges? Thank you Minister.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much Madam Chair. As signalled by my earlier contributions I think it'd be important if the Minister wouldn't mind tying off just some of the questions around the road-user charges (RUC) collector whether the Minister thinks there'll need to be an increase in the number of RUC collectors to facilitate this initiative and a specific question around new section 42E in clause 4 at b" in the formula where it says that the RUC collector considers what would have been "reasonable to purchase". I think it would be helpful for the committee to have a bit of detail about what will drive that decision. Thank you Madam Chair.Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): In response to a couple of those questions the administration costs to Waka Kotahi as the collector are estimated at approximately $2.15 million and they will be met by the overall funding envelope of $350 million that the Government is providing. There'll need to be a small number of additional staff who are employed to oversee the system. I believe that might be in the vicinity of around about eight to 10 temporary staff for the duration.In terms of costs to businesses these are very limited indeed. The cost of purchasing a licence depending on the circumstances is around $3 to $7 depending on the type of licence which is much more than offset by the benefits of the reduction that is in place here.In respect of new section 42E and Mr Doocey's question about Waka Kotahi's ability to conduct assessments I note that this is something that Waka Kotahi does in the normal course of events within the RUC system so there's a well-developed understanding of how they do that and really I think the answer to Mr Doocey's questions are in the following parts of new section 42D is it we're talking about—new section 42E which outline the measures that Waka Kotahi will consider. This can include the advice that Waka Kotahi has provided to the public and can include a consideration of the purpose and intent of this piece of legislation in terms of understanding what is unreasonable. As I've said publicly there is a bit of a common-sense thing here. If someone regularly purchases a 5000 kilometre licence for a three-month period and then suddenly pops up and wishes to purchase a 25000-kilometre licence then there would be a question to be asked."