Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to take another call on Part 1 of the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill. We were debating this piece of legislation and a number of tabled amendments last night and so it's good to be back discussing this particular part of this legislation and trying to get from the Minister some answers to the questions that I think New Zealanders are wanting answers in regards to and particularly around some of the very significant powers which this bill gives to the Minister in regards to the decisions.So we still have a number of questions that we are seeking answers from the Minister for. One of the issues that was debated at length last night was around excluded classes. We had a discussion around the exclusion of utes and I think that issue was well traversed. We had a discussion around the issue of disability vehicles and we had an assurance from the Minister that there would be some form of exclusion for disability vehicles. My first question to the Minister is: what other classes of vehicles is the Minister seeking to exclude under regulations? Are there other classes that are being considered? My understanding through written questions is that the officials already have drafted regulations and so I'm assuming that that's an answer that the Minister will be able to answer quite quickly.The second question I've got is in regards to clause 5 which inserts new section 167A(6)(b)(v). This is in regards to the issue and I think we'd just got to this point yesterday in regards to the overs and unders of the charges. It says here the imposition and level of fees or charges are appropriate after considering—whether the estimated revenue to be received from the charges is sufficient to meet the costs and expenses of the clean vehicle discount scheme funded under section 9(1E) and (1F) of the Land Transport Management Act". It would be good to get from the Minister an answer to the question about actually what is the cost and what is the expense of actually administering this scheme—Mark Cameron: He didn't answer me that last night Simeon.SIMEON BROWN: Sorry?Mark Cameron: He wouldn't answer that last night.SIMEON BROWN: No. Well I think it would be very helpful to actually get an understanding of what that actual cost is because New Zealanders will be paying for this effectively. The idea is that there'll be some overs and unders and we sort of got some generality from the Minister yesterday. There'll be some overs and some unders and it will generally sort of wash out in the end. But the question is: what is the cost of actually administering the scheme on a year-by-year basis? Because ultimately there will be a cost—there will be an administrative cost for administering this scheme. There'll be officials at the New Zealand Transport Agency who'll be tasked with coming up with the systems to operate it and to make sure that car importers are abiding by the rules and regulations that they're paying the appropriate fees receiving the appropriate subsidies etc. What is the cost that has been budgeted on an annual basis for that? Because that money effectively has to be taken off consumers. This is where the overs and unders effectively have to mean that you have to get extra money off New Zealanders to not only pay the subsidy but also to pay the administration cost.So it'd be interesting to know from the Minister what it is going to look like and what sort of percentage of the overall costs that people will be paying. So if you do buy a higher emitting vehicle—you may not have a choice as we discussed last night or you may choose to. Those people will effectively be paying the administration of this system. What is the percentage of the money raised which will be going towards administering the scheme?There's another question I'd like to ask in regards to clause 5 which inserts new section 167C "Regulations for purposes of Part 13 (clean vehicle standard)". The question here is in regards to the issue of requiring vehicle importers to include among the vehicles they import in any given year a minimum proportion of vehicles with zero carbon dioxide emissions. This was another issue which was raised by a number of submitters. Some submitters requested the exclusion of this particular paragraph. So it'd be good to get from the Minister some of the rationale as to why he is dismissing that request to remove this particular paragraph. Effectively what this paragraph—paragraph (m) in new section 167C(1)—does is it says if you're importing vehicles a certain proportion and we don't know what that proportion might be has to be zero carbon dioxide emission vehicles—so effectively at this stage an electric vehicle (EV) in the future potentially using some form of other zero carbon emission type of fuel.But the question I've got in regards to this particular subclause is I guess firstly who this relates to. Is this relating to the car yard down the road who brings in a bunch of cars and goes to the auctions over in Japan or wherever they get their cars from and purchases vehicles so they need to make sure that a certain proportion of those vehicles are that they bring in are zero carbon dioxide emissions? Or does it just relate to more of an importer such as a brand for example Honda or Toyota and that they are therefore required to bring in a minimum portion of vehicles with zero carbon dioxide emissions?I guess the following question from that is if it relates to a major brand and importer—for example one of those brands. The question is: if they don't currently produce EV vehicles or a zero carbon dioxide emission vehicle and so can't currently actually fulfil zero carbon dioxide emission vehicles into New Zealand does that effectively mean they're unable to continue to import vehicles into the country until they're able to start manufacturing? As the Minister will be aware if you're manufacturing vehicles it takes time to investigate to design to build and then of course test and then bring something to manufacturing. We know that the vast majority of manufacturers have already invested in this technology but some have not. So therefore they will not potentially be able to meet this criteria in the short term at least. So does that mean in the short term they won't be able to bring vehicles into the country under this particular subclause?The following question which I think is also deserving of some attention from the Minister is what is meant by a minimum proportion of vehicles? So the question is—well of course the legislation doesn't actually describe what the minimum proportion of vehicles is. I assume that again is something which the Minister in his infinite wisdom will be able to decide. What criteria will he be looking at to decide? Is it going to be 5 percent 10 percent 15 percent? I mean for some manufacturers they'll be able to produce 100 percent. If you're Tesla no problem; 100 percent straight away. So they don't care what that percentage is. They're very very relaxed about it. But if you're a company which has just started producing electric vehicles they may not be able to actually bring that many to the market and they may already have commitments to other markets already. That's what we're seeing with supply chains around the world at the moment in the vehicle manufacturing space. Those supply chains are incredibly strained due to a number of reasons and therefore their ability to actually fulfil whatever that minimum proportion of vehicles is could be significantly challenging in the short term.So the question I've got is has the Minister already decided what the minimum proportion is? What is it if he has decided? What consultation has he had with the industry? Does he believe that the industry is going to be able to fulfil that? And if those particular manufacturers or importers are unable to bring in those proportions in the short term what those consequences might be for them to be able to continue to import vehicles into New Zealand?I guess the other question which I'd appreciate some clarification but I did touch on it at the start is if you are for example an importer you bring in a bunch of vehicles you're not attached to one of the main brands. What does that mean for someone who purchases cars for instance from Japan and sells second-hand used vehicles? Will they also be caught by this? And will that mean that they will have to therefore bring in a proportion of zero carbon dioxide emissions? Noting that the Japanese market doesn't actually have significant numbers of zero carbon dioxide emissions—they have a large proportion of hybrid vehicles—and that zero carbon emission vehicles is something which is the Japanese market is still developing. So I look forward to some answers to a wide variety of questions on those issues."