Moroney SueSUE MORONEY (Labour): The Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill is the Government's attempt to make it look as if it is doing something significant about addressing carbon emissions in this country but of course the New Zealand public is not fooled by that. It does not matter how many times Simon Bridges goes and has a photo opportunity with an electric vehicle; no one is going to be impressed by his tiny target of having just 2 percent of the vehicle fleet being electric by 2021.Brett Hudson: That's not the target.SUE MORONEY: That is his target. His colleagues do not even realise how tiny his target is. He wants to have only 2 percent of the vehicle fleet being electric vehicles—Brett Hudson: It's 100 percent wrong.SUE MORONEY: It is not 100 percent wrong. It is 2 percent by 2021—that is what his tiny target is. It is 64000 vehicles. That Mr Hudson represents 2 percent of the entire fleet—by 2021. So it is underwhelming. In order to bring about this underwhelming target by 2021 it is underpinned by this underwhelming piece of legislation. It is a tiny target. I recall that back in 2008 when I was debating—and am still debating actually—in Hamilton the idea of getting a commuter train service between Hamilton and Auckland.David Bennett: Diesel.SUE MORONEY: That is right—diesel. Diesel—because it is better than having 200 petrol cars on the road. It is much better for the environment than that.David Bennett: Oh you petrolhead!SUE MORONEY: David Bennett cannot do that maths but it is. So when we were debating this David Bennett said in 2008 that that would be a waste of time because in 10 years' time everyone was going to be driving an electric car—in 10 years' time from 2008! Well hang on. Let me do the maths. That would be 2018. David Bennett National MP said that by 2018 everyone would be driving an electric vehicle. How underwhelmed and disappointed David Bennett must be with his own Minister of Transport's announcement that not everyone would be driving an electric motor vehicle by 2018. Not only that but he wanted only 2 percent—2 percent—of drivers to be driving an electric vehicle by 2021. So I think the National Government has outdone itself. It used to be—what did it used to say—ambitious for New Zealand. I think it has completely given that away and now just 2 percent will do.Here is the piece of legislation that is going to bring about that tiny target. I agree with Stuart Nash because what all the evidence and research say is that the thing that is going to really drive the purchase and procurement of electric vehicles by New Zealanders is the purchase price coming down substantially. That is the one thing that will make it really attractive for New Zealanders to do better than have 2 percent of the vehicle fleet being electric by 2021. What is one of the things that the Government could do? What is the best thing the Government could do to bring the purchase price of electric vehicles down? The best thing the Government members could do is to ensure that all of the Government vehicles all of the Government fleets as they are replaced are replaced by electric vehicles. Will they do that? No. They have said: Oh we'll think about it. Oh we'll look at a procurement policy." But have they said: "As a Government we will lead the way and we will ensure that as our large fleet of Government vehicles gets replaced they will be replaced with electric vehicles."? No. They would not even go that far. It is no wonder Simon Bridges will commit only to the tiny target of 2 percent by 2021. As Stuart Nash said 40 percent of the carbon emissions in this country come from the transport sector. So that tiny target—2 percent of 40 percent—is barely going to make the difference that we need to make in terms of reducing carbon emissions in this country. The one thing that the Government could do that would make a difference it has failed to do. Instead it is tinkering around the edges of things that we know actually do not bring about a big cultural change. In this bill what it is doing is it is going to allow electric vehicles into bus lanes. How clever is that! Bus lanes set aside for public transport are now going to be cluttered up with cars. How is that going to help? How is that going to reduce carbon emissions? How is that going to ensure that New Zealanders go out and buy electric vehicles? Well it is just not. We know that it is the purchase price coming down that will allow New Zealanders to go out and buy those vehicles not any of these silly rules that are actually designed to congest the bus lanes because that is what is going to happen next. The bus lanes are going to get congested and we know that in Auckland that is a problem already. We know that those bus lanes are already congested with buses. They are full up with buses. Now this Government wants to clog them up further with cars. It wants cars to go and use the bus lanes. It is just nuts. It also has gone down this route of reducing road-user charges for the heavy electric vehicles. However the regulatory impact statement tells us that that is already a failed policy. It is already a failed policy. The Government has already put this in place for light electric vehicles. Light electric vehicles are exempt from road-user charges until 2020. Has that made a difference? Has that meant that people have rushed out and bought light electric vehicles? No it has not. What makes the Government think that this is the magic bullet that is going to address this for buses and trucks when its own advice that it has had is that it does not make any difference? What the regulatory impact statement says is that electric vehicles currently make up a small proportion of the light and heavy vehicle fleet. In fact they make up only 0.03 percent of the light vehicle fleet as at 31 January this year. The number of heavy electric vehicles in New Zealand at the moment is 60—six-zero of them are currently in New Zealand. However what the regulatory impact statement points out is that even though the light electric vehicles have been exempt from road-user charges already that has not made a blind bit of difference in terms of the uptake of them.This is because—and I am going to say it again—we know that the thing that drives the uptake of electric vehicles is bringing the purchase price down and sadly neither of those two measures attempts to do that. What the Government has done is it has reduced the cost for light electric vehicles with the road-user charge exemption of about $558 per vehicle. It has meant that there is less money available in the National Land Transport Fund to actually fund transport projects but it does not mean that there has been any discernible increased uptake in the purchase of light electric vehicles. It has though under the regulatory impact statement robbed the National Land Transport Fund of around $500000 per year already. What we have got the Government coming to the House and proposing to do is to reduce the amount of money available for the National Land Transport Fund which funds all of the other transport policies and all of our infrastructure but it does not do anything to increase the number of electric vehicles that are purchased. The one thing that will work in that area is bringing the purchase price down. The one way in which the Government can do that is to lead by example and use its huge purchasing power with the very large Government fleet—yes I am talking ministerial cars—and also all the cars used by our core Government departments. This Government could have and should have said that it would use its procurement to buy electric vehicles in order to build the fleet up for second-hand car sales of electric vehicles and therefore bring the purchase price down but it has failed to do that. Instead it has set itself a tiny target and has brought this underwhelming bill forward to underpin that."