Utikere TangiTANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana Mr Speaker. Look this is the second reading stage and usually in the normal scheme of things we would now be referring to a select committee report; we would be thinking about the various aspects that those who had submitted to that process will have said about this proposed legislation. Whether it is narrow small or otherwise it would have still been subject to the same process.What we've heard is less than five minutes from the Minister of Transport in his second contribution this evening on this bill and I don't think members on this side of the House are none the wiser as to some of the issues that we raised in the first reading contribution.We've asked the Minister to share with the House who he consulted with as part of the process of bringing this bill to the House. It's not as if he ran out of time—there were minutes on the clock—and yet we have still not had that particular issue addressed. I think that's actually very serious because usually by now we would have heard from the community and submitters and heard what their views are. Now the Minister has clearly undertaken some consultation—we know that—but we do not know the details of who he has consulted with and why is that? Is it because he is ashamed of the fact that he hasn't actually consulted with some industry participants who would give him some information that actually it's not a good idea to bring this bill to the House? We are still waiting for him to address that.Look the Clean Car Standard was phased in from December 2022 and the prime focus was to target a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions for light vehicles. Now that has an everyday impact; it has an everyday effect. When we look at the context of light vehicle emissions across the entirety of the emissions spectrum we know that they are a significant source of transportation emissions within this country of Aotearoa New Zealand.Yes we know about the environmental factors but what we're still waiting to hear from the Minister is the level of consultation of the individuals that he's had. Has he talked with any environmental groups?Hon Peeni Henare: Probably not.TANGI UTIKERE: Probably not Mr Henare we don't know. I guess we will have the committee the whole House stage to work through that. We can pose the questions to him but we can only hope that the Minister will actually address them.There is an absolute need here in New Zealand to increase the number of low- to no-emission light vehicles within the fleet so that members of the public and others can actually—and companies and the like—access that in terms of their provision. That's exactly what the Clean Car Standard does.What we are talking about here is effectively enabling the Minister by way of secondary legislation to water down potentially what the standards would be. At the moment they are in primary legislation. If the Minister chooses to execute it via regulation yes there is a requirement for the Minister to consult prior to exercising those secondary legislation rights. I am still looking forward to hearing hopefully from Simeon Brown how he intends to approach that—if he intends to approach that—and why it is that he identifies the industry participants or the individuals who he would consult with or thereabouts.There is absolutely a need to encourage and incentivise an uptake of low- to no-emission light vehicles and there is nothing from this Government—and certainly nothing in this legislation—that locks that in and seeks to address and support that as well. Earlier this evening my colleagues the Hon Dr Megan Woods and the Hon Damien O'Connor talked about the fact that if we don't do anything in this space then our country will simply have to write a cheque to address the limitations as a form of mitigation as a result and that is simply unacceptable. When the Government has an opportunity to do something about it and they're choosing not to provide the certainty that is completely unacceptable.What we do have in front of us is a copy of the regulatory impact statement so let's have a look at that. The regulatory impact statement does have the numbers and it tells us that there are around 1000 vehicle importers who import around about 300000 new and used motor vehicles over the course of a year. Now there are two options that have been identified in the regulatory impact statement as to how this particular user-pays charge—as the Minister has said it is—could be garnered.The first is that you could simply just spread the total amount across all of the importers and basically there would be an annual fee that would come out at the end of the machine. Now there is some inequity in that because if you are a smaller player—a smaller importer—you still pay the same amount or the same fee on an annual basis as a big importer right? So I get that.The other option is that it could be by way of recovery and I sense this is the direction in which the Minister is heading by way of a per-car fee. So it didn't matter what the price of the vehicle is but the car would have a component—and there's a table that outlines the various costs per vehicle and how much that would look like noting that there is a set administration fee regardless of the price of the vehicle—and that's how that would happen. Now that's perhaps a little bit more equitable but there are administration costs in there as well.What's really interesting is this suggestion from the Minister that Well it's $5 to $20. It's really a small amount $5 to $20." Well how does that compare with the $2.25 that senior citizens got from this year's Budget per week? Just a small amount: $2.25. Now the Minister seems to think that $5 to $20 is a small amount. When he reflects on his own Government's Budget—and noting that this was part of the Budget urgency motion originally that didn't manage to get through for the Government—there are questions around that. So the Minister might take the view or the perspective that this in the general scheme of things is a relatively small amount of money. But we need to balance that with the incentivisation that it provides for purchasers to think about what their choices will mean for emissions in this country.Now I do accept that yes the fixed-fee percentage might be small but it could be seen as a tax. Call it what you like it could be seen as a—it is a tax actually. When you apply it onto a vehicle it is a tax. Every single bit of dollar that this Government seems to need to meet the promise to fund $2.9 billion for landlords perhaps that's the reason that is driving this decision from the Minister. He will argue of course I'm sure—well we don't know because we don't seem to hear from him; he doesn't take his full call allocation as part of this debate. But he might form the view that actually all of this sort of stuff does add up in the end of the day but it's not actually really worth it.I think this will allow the Government to effectively authorise and permit or allow dirtier cars less efficient cars to increase in numbers coming in of vehicles that would have higher operating costs over the tenure of the vehicle's lifetime as well and will also seek to penalise those for whom it's a little bit more difficult to make the decision—it's a little bit more difficult.That's why this standard and this piece of legislation worked in tandem with the clean car rebate—the Clean Car Discount; they were two pieces of legislation that worked in tandem. Now we could give the Government a little bit of fair dues I suppose if they—as they have—rolled back and struck out the Clean Car Discount in that rebate. But they have not replaced it with any other adequate incentive to encourage purchasers to uptake no- to lower-emission vehicles as part of their household choices or their company choices and this is really really unfortunate.It is important for those carbon dioxide targets to have a real sense of ambition. When we're talking about the transportation sector—which we all know the sector emissions are huge; they are significant—taking steps within this sector and making a change will make a huge difference in terms of our emissions profile and the role that New Zealand will play in terms of continuing to do our bit. In fact if we are to have any progress or make any progress towards our climate change aspirations we need to ensure that we are actively pursuing—and that the Minister is actively pursuing—ways in which the transportation sector's emissions can actually be reduced. This piece of legislation is certainly not doing that.So we continue to oppose this bill and that's actually a very easy choice for this side of the House. Because from first reading to second reading we have not heard anything in terms of addressing the concerns answering the questions that we have posed to the Minister and others and we still encourage the Minister—as we work through to the committee of the whole House stage—to provide the answers to give some answer to us at this stage. We continue to not support this bill."