O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Madam Speaker thank you. Chardonnay sales are going to take a big jump in the Northern Club and other places habituated by the National Party members because despite what the previous speaker Simeon Brown has been talking about there is a lot of support on the other side and has been for electric vehicles: National is the party of electric vehicles." Chris Bishop press release 9 September 2020. Energy Minister: "The Government wants to see more people swap to electric vehicles which are cheaper to run and maintain than petrol-fuelled vehicles." That was the Hon Judith Collins in 2017. Chris Bishop last year: "They're the way of the future and the next National-led Government will encourage their uptake." "A move from petrol and diesel to low-emission transport is the natural evolution. That is our aim to encourage that switch sooner rather than later." Simon Bridges press release 2016.I could go through several of these quotes but I think you're getting idea. Just in case I bring another tome to the House where Simon Bridges if I can go to page 226 [Reading from Simon Bridges' National Identity]: "I also recall at the time for whatever reason we were down on our luck polling wise. A number in my team MPs included wanted to support the tax measures as they thought it wouldn't look green and modern if we didn't. But I spotted an opportunity. I instructed the team to go all guns blazing on social media against the car tax." We will hear from other speakers from the Opposition but anyone who is listening tonight I would just say: take it with a grain of salt because we know that this is an idea whose time has come. In fact its time came some time ago.If we'd been here debating about 120-odd years ago—and despite claims I wasn't there then—what we would have seen is the internal combustion engine was the answer to a problem not the problem. It was the answer to the problem of the time of a major environmental problem which was horses. Horses whose excrement was all over London was all over New York as were dead horses. "Something's required to fix this major environmental problem."—along came the internal combustion engine. And now as we know with that engine like many things the cure can become the disease itself.Now as has been outlined by the Minister we are in an era where even as I've shown from those quotes there is generally full understanding and agreement that we have to do something about this. So this bill is a very timely bill that has come at the very right time. As the Minister has pointed out already before we have actually had to implement the bill we are seeing this massive uptake in electric vehicles. Just to put some numbers on those figures that the Minister mentioned: 6899 battery electric vehicles in 2021; there were 1554 in 2020. That's a pretty good uptake. Two thousand four hundred and sixty-one plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in 2021 as opposed to 756 in 2020. It goes on. It is very important that we have a framework something that is actually now clearly well under way that we now put some very good legislation and regulation around that and that's exactly what this bill does.Just to get down into some of the detail of it—because it is important that people do understand how it will work—largely it's our importers who are the ones who will be determining very much the importation of these vehicles. Because what will we see happen? There will be a market established which will enable them to actually bring in some of the higher-emitting vehicles that will be offset by the low-emitting vehicles they bring in. So it will actually be a relatively neutral experience as will the cost. So all those that are on the opposite side that are talking about how much this is going to cost actually once this is implemented it will be a relatively cost-neutral exercise.The other thing just some of the details some of the opposition we are seeing or hearing tonight certainly wasn't evidenced during the select committee because we did have some very good submissions. Most of the importers came. They talked of their agreement largely of this new piece of legislation. They talked about yes concerns as to whether the technology will keep up. And also there were concerns that even our standards by 2025 are maybe actually starting to get ahead of some of the European standards; however they will be aware that the European standards are being reviewed and will be tightened considerably. Also there is the ability—in fact this will be reviewed in 2024—to ensure that we don't actually get too far ahead and we'll be actually reviewing this.The select committee had the opportunity to go through this. We've made some recommendations. Those recommendations have now been incorporated into the bill. So I'm happy to commend this bill to the House. This is a piece of legislation whose time—well I won't say its time has come. Its time is probably overdue but certainly it is going to ensure that New Zealand—we'd mentioned the fact that we're now in the salubrious company of Australia and Russia with being without a scheme such as this; so this ensures that we are going to be in a position to ensure that we now do what we can that New Zealanders will be doing their bit and more importantly we'll actually be a very modern fleet to ensure we can do that. I commend this to the House."