Road User Charges (Temporary RUC Reduction Scheme) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Road User Charges (Temporary RUC Reduction Scheme) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Can I thank members from across the House for their participation in the debate that we have worked through this evening. Some useful points have been brought out over the course of the discussion. I think the House has conducted itself generally well. You know, from the Opposition, there has been a little bit of a foot in both camps. They are voting in favour of this legislation and I thank them for that. At the same time, they sort of had to put up a bit of a show and try and raise points of opposition. I understand why that is, but none the less, I thank them and other parties who are supporting this piece of legislation.

The reality that is in front of us, I think, was well summed up by the Government chief whip in a contribution that he made earlier, which is that I think that New Zealanders expect that in these extraordinary times sometimes we as a Parliament do just get on with it and do what is needed to support families and communities and households at challenging times. The reality is that this is an extraordinary era that we are living in, and I think sometimes we forget that in the midst of it. We are coming through two years of a global pandemic that has knocked international supply chains around enormously. We are dealing with a massively disruptive international event—that being the abhorrent Russian invasion of Ukraine that is having profound impacts on supply chains, including the cost of fuel around the world. We do know that Kiwis have been feeling the pressure of that, and that is why it was very important for the Government to move forward with our package of changes to assist Kiwi families and businesses with those increased costs caused by the war in Ukraine.

The package includes the 25c reduction to fuel excise duty, which we turned around within about 12 hours of a Cabinet decision on 14 March. It includes the half-price public transport fares which came in effect from 1 April, which have gone down very, very well in towns and cities all around New Zealand. It is reducing costs for those public transport users and is also incentivising and encouraging people to give public transport a go.

The third part of the package was the bill that we have been debating tonight—that is the equivalent reductions to road-user charges (RUC). This will be of significant benefit to households, but, of course, our freight sector, as well, is a very significant user of diesel and therefore road-user charge licences, and we’ll see that benefit going there and reducing costs that go down the supply chain. The benefits do add up over a three-month period. As I outlined in the debate earlier on, a person with a light vehicle who purchases a 5,000 kilometre licence will save around about $135. Now, that’s not everything, but that is a useful contribution for a household that is dealing with some increased costs at this time, and combined with other changes that we have made, that will make a real difference. There is a broader package of initiatives that the Government has brought forward alongside these changes, including the 1 April changes to a range of supports that we are providing to families. When you put those together, they do make a real difference.

I do want to acknowledge the arguments made by the one party in the House that has decided it will not support this piece of legislation, which is the Green Party. While I disagree with their position because I think it is important that we do deal with the very real cost of living challenges in front of people, I do understand where they are coming from, and I just wish to convey confidence that as a part of this package we are sending a clear message through the funding that we have provided for half-price public transport fares, to incentivise the mode-shift—the shift towards more sustainable transport that we know is necessary. And, of course, we are working very hard on the emissions reduction plan that will be confirmed next month as well. So I just wish to acknowledge that point, despite disagreeing with their vote on this particular piece of legislation.

Finally, I do wish to acknowledge and thank officials from the Ministry of Transport and Waka Kotahi who have worked on this piece of legislation. In the course of this debate, we sort of sometimes heard from speakers that we should have just clicked our fingers and jimmied this up one or two days after the Cabinet made its decision on 14 March. In reality, it is not that simple to change a piece of legislation like this. The RUC system, as we heard from Mr Court, does have some complexities. There are around about 200 different rates applying to over 80 different kinds of vehicles. Those rates are currently set through a complex regulatory mechanism. There is a provision in place which means that those regulations can’t be changed in a shorter period than 42 days. For officials to pull together a piece of legislation that deals with that, deals with the questions of transition that we have discussed over the course of this debate, deals with the questions of system integrity, and deals with the questions around equivalence—because we determined that we wanted to make this reduction equivalent to the fare reduction, and that’s not a totally simple or straightforward question, either. For officials to turn all of that around and come up with a well-formed piece of legislation that we will pass into law tonight and that within a couple of weeks will provide a significant reduction to Kiwi families and businesses, that is a good piece of work at a time when they are already very busy because of the Government’s programme, and I do just wish to thank them for turning that around so quickly.

So, once again, can I thank members of the House for their participation in this debate. We only move forward with urgency on issues like this when we really need to, and I thank members for their understanding of that—for the most part—and thank them for their participation in the debate, and say to Kiwis that this is a Government that does hear the challenges that people are facing with the cost of living and does hear the challenges around the increase in fuel costs because of the war in Ukraine. People can see that we are taking action and I trust and hope that this measure will be of assistance to Kiwi households and businesses. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to take a third call on this Road User Charges (Temporary RUC Reduction Scheme) Amendment Bill. I do just want to take a note of the Minister’s comments there where he said, “The Government does listen; the Government does take note.” When you read the preamble of this piece of legislation, we’re all told this is a very serious, well-thought-through response to the energy crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, when you actually boil it down, this is a panicked reaction to a bad poll on 10 March, which got the Government thinking, “We’d better do something.” And so what they decided to do was an announcement: “We’re going to announce that we’re going to reduce the fuel excise tax, and we’re going to announce that in the future, we’ll make an announcement about a reduction in the RUC rates.” Well, we’re now here, three weeks and one day on from that announcement, finally putting in place legislation to give effect to that announcement, and it still doesn’t come into effect until 21 April, another 16 days from today.

So when the Minister says this is a Government which listens and responds to the issues in front of them, actually what they’re doing is they had to quickly come up with an announcement and then actually work through the detail. And so when the Minister says the Government needed to act with urgency—well, if he really wanted to act with urgency, he would have actually done the work and made sure that this was ready to go when that announcement was made, not a whole three weeks later.

So the National Party will support this piece of legislation. We do believe that New Zealanders need relief from the cost of living crisis that they are suffering under at the moment. And it didn’t just start with the war in Ukraine. This has been building over the last few years with the cost pressures that this Government has been piling on hard-working New Zealanders—rents up $150 a week, the price of fruit and veges up significantly, other cost pressures building over the last couple of years, inflation recorded at the end of last year at 5.9 percent. I see Mr Greg O’Connor over there, rolling his eyes and saying, “Well, actually, no, you’re wrong.” Well, actually, inflation was 5.9 percent at the end of last year, before the war in Ukraine started in February this year. So don’t try and rewrite history. This Government needs to take some responsibility for this cost of living crisis that New Zealanders are suffering under.

So whilst this provides some relief, it doesn’t go the full way to actually help to relieve the pressure New Zealanders are suffering from. National has a comprehensive plan. We want to cut taxes; we want to ensure that New Zealanders can keep more of what they earn so that they can spend that money on the areas where they are facing those cost of living pressures and make those choices themselves. So whilst we will not oppose this piece of legislation, we do propose a much more comprehensive plan which we know will make a real difference in New Zealanders’ lives.

Finally, I do want to note, and I made this point in my second-reading speech, that New Zealanders pay their road-user charges (RUC), and they pay their fuel excise because they want to get stuff done on our roads. They want to see things built, and under this Government, we’ve had an infrastructure deficit which has been caused by this Government coming and cancelling road after road: Mill Road cancelled; East-West link cancelled; Ōtaki to Levin cancelled until the member for Ōtaki re-announced it this evening—and I just want to congratulate her and Helen White for standing up from the backbenches and actually speaking for their electorates for once. Well, no—Tauranga-Northern link cancelled, now they’re restarting it; Whangārei to Marsden Point cancelled; we’ve got Cambridge to Piarere, cancelled. This Government keeps cancelling; New Zealanders keep paying. They want a Government which will deliver; National will deliver. We’ll be back in Government next year, and we will actually get things done and put people’s hard-earned money to good use. We commend the bill to the House.

You always know when the Opposition fully support what our Government is doing on this side of the Table, this side of the floor, because they attack everything other than the piece of legislation that’s before us. Because when you get a piece of legislation that has had to be brought to this House to do what Governments do, which is to mitigate the impacts of those overseas effects that we don’t have any impact on. Sorry, Madam Speaker, is there—?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Yeah, thank you. The House may be aware that we are experiencing some difficulties with the remote hybrid arrangements that we have. The techies are working hard to resolve them. It just sounds like there might have been a bit of audio spillage coming out of the tech room.

Hon Members: Oh, no.

Hon JACQUI DEAN: I don’t know. That’s my ruling.

GREG O’CONNOR: Madam Speaker, when you speak as much sense as I do, even through some sort of sound upset, it will still come across, I’m sure, as a very sensible piece, a very sensible delivery. So I’m very relaxed about that. So given the time constraints, I will say that we are now mitigating the impacts of overseas events which we have no control over, and we’re ensuring that we minimise the effect of that on New Zealanders. For that reason, I have no hesitation in committing this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the National Party in support of the Road User Charges (Temporary RUC Reduction Scheme) Amendment Bill.

Let’s be very clear: this bill’s passing tonight in its third reading is a win for the National Party. The National Party got this win over the line for hard-working New Zealanders. The National Party prosecuted the issue of the cost of living crisis when the Government wouldn’t even mention the word. They wouldn’t even mention the word, and here we were, standing up for New Zealanders, speaking on their behalf because we knew things were getting tough for hard-working Kiwis, especially at the petrol pump. The Government has come kicking and screaming, dragging their heels. They wouldn’t even accept there was a crisis, and then, what happened? A poll came from above and spoke to them, and isn’t it interesting that the knee-jerk reaction was tax relief—everything they had denied for days on end.

Let this be a warning, because the public have now a taste for this—for standing up for themselves and asking to keep their hard-earned dollar in the back of the pocket. So this won’t be a one-off, let me predict. The public will start standing up more and demanding that they get more tax relief for the cost of living crisis. I will put money on it. I’ll bet the Minister here a steak and cheese pie that very soon, this Government will address the creep in tax bracket scope that National has been calling for, because the call for tax relief will only grow louder and louder.

It’s fascinating. Here they were, denying a crisis. Here they were saying that they would never give tax relief because, of course, it’s not in their DNA. But, of course, there was a poll and, straight away, a knee-jerk reaction—here we go. Well, I shouldn’t say “straight away”, because, as we’ve traversed over this night, it has been several weeks to drag them, kicking and screaming, into the House to deliver this bill.

I fundamentally disagree with comments in the House tonight that when we say that maybe you could do more in tax relief, then that is incompatible with saying that we don’t want roads cut, because, I’ll tell you what, there’s a lot more expenditure that could be targeted at the expense of tax relief. The light rail, for example—tens of billions of dollars. I’ll tell you what, being a South Islander and a regional New Zealander, nothing annoys hard-working regional New Zealanders more than watching their hard-earned road-user charges going into the National Land Transport Fund and being siphoned off for pet public transport projects in Auckland—and, finally, they’re getting some relief.

But if you want to cut some things, don’t make it the roads. How about the billions for light rail? How about the billions for a bribe for three waters? What about half a billion dollars for restructuring the health system in the middle of a pandemic? They’re the things that need to be cut.

I’ll tell you what, what great news it was, as my learned colleague Simeon Brown said, about the announcement of Ōtaki to Levin tonight? But isn’t there some cynicism with that, because you’d argue why did they delay it for six years if they were going to do it?

Ōtaki to Levin—why has it been delayed, and the nerve of them to stand up and say, “No worries, it’s going ahead.” all because something’s happening. It’s called a poll—it’s called a shift of vote. Everything they’ve rallied against—watch them—will all just blow away in the wind as they finally start listening to Kiwis, because you can’t have your head in the sand too long and be arrogant like this Government is. New Zealanders were saying to them that things were getting too expensive, but those members couldn’t say the word “crisis”. They were in denial until we had that poll.

So it is a good thing—and good on them—but, in fact, this wasn’t their idea. It wasn’t their decision. It was forced upon them.

I acknowledge the other parties in the House that are voting for this bill tonight, because it’s a good win for the Opposition. What has been good about it as well is those things we got accused of doing tonight: the pesky questions. Good on the pesky questions, because that’s our job as parliamentarians. We stand up and we ask the hard questions. It’s not fun in Opposition. You don’t get to do much, because that’s the job of the Government. That’s why everyone wants to be on the Treasury benches. But, I’ll tell you what, you don’t walk away because it’s tough. You stand up and you raise the issues, and that’s what the Opposition has done with this bill.

That’s what the Opposition has done tonight, and, I’ll tell you what, the Opposition has got a taste for it now as well, just as much as the country has. Those members can sit there tonight and say, “Oh, job done. We’ve reduced the road-user charges for three months and cut the excise for three months and given a few bus tickets out.”, but they know as much as we do on this side of the House that things are a lot more in train, aren’t they? This is all where it’s going to go, because Kiwis have now a taste for this. As the Hon David Bennett said tonight, “Really? Is the Cabinet going to meet and decide to increase this?” That will be fascinating, with all the income cost pressures we have and inflation.

One thing I will leave the House with. I started with a quote in my speeches in the readings earlier on from Brad Olsen, who said, “Inflation isn’t an offshore problem that New Zealand is caught up in.”, because we all know it’s not, is it? The issue here in New Zealand is domestic inflation. You only need to see the last quarter of 2021 to know that. But what I will leave the House and the Government with is another quote, from independent economist Cameron Bagrie. What he said was that “Now is not the time for a big spending 2022 Budget. It will only add to the excess demand and inflation.” Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on this, the third reading of this amendment bill. Can I say that it’s absolutely a win for all New Zealanders. There seemed to be some confusion in the last speech, around who the winners were: it’s all New Zealanders—it means that if you’re driving a car, a diesel-powered vehicle, or catching a bus, you’re a winner under this plan. I want to acknowledge the transport Minister for his vision, and the Government executive.

Also, I just want to correct one other thing. It was halfway through last year—so I encourage the Opposition to catch up on when things are announced: the Ōtaki to north of Levin expressway. So catch up, mate, by about nine months, and you’ll be back on to it. But never mind; I’m not one to remind people of their tardiness, but tonight is the night for something for the first time, as always.

So can I just say that this will impact on people’s pockets and make a positive difference. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of the Green Party, unable to support the Road User Charges (Temporary RUC Reduction Scheme) Amendment Bill. It’s been really interesting throughout this urgent process hearing members of the Opposition describe this bill as a knee-jerk reaction to the increase in the cost of living as if our communities haven’t been suffering the effects of the inequality crisis for some time now.

We’re disappointed that despite multiple reports such as the Welfare Expert Advisory Group that is now four years old recommending interventions to address inequality and the cost of living, what we’re seeing is a subsidy to fossil fuels in order to try and address the increase in fuel price as a result of the war between Russia and Ukraine. We’re concerned that this is setting a precedent when we’re seeing inflationary impacts locally, and what we’re calling on the Government to do is to explore other measures that are good for people and the planet, such as making public transport fully free, as well as improving the resilience of our freight infrastructure so that we’re not so vulnerable to these sort of geopolitical events.

We’re keen to see the study that will be conducted after to assess the impact of this bill. And we take the Minister at his word that this will have a positive distributional impact. We hope to see the extent of this and we’ll keep campaigning to ensure that future measures to address the cost of living are ones that genuinely benefit those doing it the toughest. Kia ora.

Madam Speaker, thank you. This problem is a cost of living crisis. This bill won’t solve the cost of living crisis. Simply reducing road-user charges on diesel-powered vehicles for a few months is a short-term solution. The underlying problems that the ACT Party is asking a Government to solve—and we don’t have any hope that this Government will solve it, but a future Government involving ACT will—are the underlying issues that are causing so much cost pressure on energy: long-term increases in the cost of energy—not just liquid fuels like petrol and diesel—like natural gas that powers industry, that heats our homes, that delivers electricity to business and communities; energy that makes sure that communities can thrive and that we can have a healthy economy.

The underlying issues identified by the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, which said in their report that a long-term problem with transportation infrastructure—a lack of investment and transportation infrastructure—has meant that house price inflation is 70 percent higher than it should have been between 1978 and 2018. And this Government has cancelled roading project after roading project—it’s Mill Road, it’s the East West Link: a project specifically designed to get heavy vehicles off local roads.

These are the underlying problems that are causing a cost of living crisis, a housing crisis, and an energy crisis—and this short-term measure will not help. The ACT Party will support this bill because it involves reducing taxes and giving money back to hard-working Kiwi families and businesses. However, this is not a long-term solution; it’s barely a short-term solution.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my honour to speak on the third reading, this evening, of the Road User Charges (Temporary RUC Reduction Scheme) Amendment Bill. We’ve heard the discussion this evening about the need to support families with the cost of living—that’s what this particular piece of legislation going through the House this evening is all about. The community that speaks to me, that tells me that they are struggling: this will make a difference for them. Alongside the halving of public transport costs, the work that this Government is doing, we’re taking action now. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party supports this bill, as we’ve seen in the House tonight. We have some questions around the long-term effect of it and what the implications will be on the Government, and we note that they will probably have to continue this process through a future of longer than three months, but I look forward to it progressing through the House. Thank you.

Just a quick call, to end this third reading of the bill, to say that, again, we support New Zealanders, and part of that is this bill, supporting New Zealanders at that pump, to be able to live well, put a bit more pūtea in their pocket. Hopefully, we can get this bill through quickly so we can start to do that as soon as we can. Ngā mihi.

Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House is suspended until 5 a.m. tomorrow.

Hon Members: 5 a.m.?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): What did I say?

Hon Members: 5 a.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Oh, 9 a.m.—that’s much better.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 9.55 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)