Road User Charges Bill

We now move to debate Part 2, clauses 7 to 47, and schedule 1.

Kia ora, Mr Chairperson Tisch. We are back here ploughing our way through this extraordinarily interesting legislation, and members on this side of the Chamber, unlike the chairman of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on the other side and various other members, have placed ourselves under considerable duress and actually read this part of the bill.

💬 Hon Members: Aw!

This may come as a substantial surprise, not to the member from Dunedin, I must say, who is on our committee. I want the Committee to note if there is a person who has told the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee how much he has suffered as a consequence of poor transport capital allocation decisions being made and of items of vital importance to transport infrastructure being made in China, it is that member opposite. Everyone in Dunedin should know that no one has been more critical of National than that very valuable member, who occupies—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Really?

Unfortunately, he has not shared it publicly, but from time to time he does share with the select committee members how hōhā he is. Now, I understand that, having suffered a wee bit of demotion myself over the last—

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

—totally unnecessarily, I have to say; it was almost gratuitous.

But let me come back to the bill. Modernisation is a key feature of this bill, and road-user charge vehicles must have a distance recorder, but I want it to be noted that there are some dispensations or some concessions. During the select committee process some rather burly characters arrived. I think they were from Waikato or Hamilton, and they run crane companies. They were characters, and if one was unwise enough to shake their hand, one found they had hands like a square-mouthed shovel. They were quite disinterested in the life of a parliamentarian, but they were more disinterested in portions of this bill that might have had their paying inordinately large road-user charges although their vehicles were being used only for very specialist tasks. We had also my friends from the far north saying similar things. They were from the building relocation sector and the Heavy Haulage Association. It is good to see that as a consequence of the Labour Party advocacy during the select committee process, and of listening whaitaringa to the various submitters who made the effort to come and use their constitutional opportunities to address the committee, there will be some wriggle room and the people who operate those large vehicles will not be penalised disproportionately. In that sense that is another reason why we should support this bill through the duration of the Committee stage.

In the far north and various other parts of the country, there are a host of our road-user vehicle owners driving around on beaches, chasing wild pigs, and occasionally chasing other things that might take their fancy, and they do not always pay the nāna. They do not always pay their way. They are probably not the most egregious of the offenders, but this bill, in terms of ensuring that all vehicles have the appropriate road-user charge technology, is designed to ensure that the net is spread widely enough to catch all users. There will be situations, as the Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister of Transport, has said, where, for example, vehicles are being used predominantly on a forestry road, a private farm road, or in the oyster industry, and they hardly ever come on to a main road. They will not be disproportionately penalised, but they will still require some technology so that the authorities can be assured, and the broader community can be assured, that all users of vehicles, when going on the road, make a contribution to the cost of maintaining our roading infrastructure.

Those vehicles often use rural roads, and it is sad that rural roads have been starved of funding as a consequence of the misallocation of transport financial resources by the current Government, in its headlong pursuit of ideological trophies such as the “Holiday Highway”, which will never be built—never. It will certainly never be built in the life of the Minister who, unfortunately, blights New Zealand by continuing to hold the transport portfolio. But, wait; help is on the way; taihoa. That road will not be built during his time. The funds that have been tagged for that road need, in many respects, to be spread across meeting the costs of our rural roads. Before the milk tankers and the host of other road-user charge - levied vehicles, whether they are logging trucks or stock trucks, get on to the much-vaunted roads of national significance, they are on rural roads and provincial roads. It is important when we think about the collection of this money that the technology is up to the task, and, more important, that when the funding is applied to the roads they are using, where these costs are incurred, it is spread evenly.

I will have more to say about that later—[Interruption] I sense an air of anticipation from the chair of the select committee. He is just looking forward to a further iteration. Far be it from me to disappoint both of those men from Hamilton. They need to prepare for Sue Moroney and a host of our other colleagues sweeping all the votes into the kete. Now, this political kete is not like the Māori Party kete, which, when we put a pipi into it, the pipi comes out the bottom—no, sir. Once those votes go in there, it is like an eel pot—like a hīnaki.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

I am just introducing a bit of cultural education for the benefit of the Hamilton-based members. Your message is not wasted on me, Mr Chairperson, given that this is the second to last day that I will occupy this particular position during this parliamentary session.

I need to come back to the importance of modernising technology as we go about the business of collecting road-user charges. The technology needs to be very efficient and effective, because $2.7 billion is the overall amount. Not all of it comes from road-user charges, but they are a key contributor. We will support the simplification and the modernisation. This particular part may not excite very many of our voters. I dare say it has not excited even the bureaucrats, but unfortunately they are paid to suffer under this unwise Government—they are paid to suffer. But, wait; help is on the way.

This measure does outline the importance of ensuring that people who own these vehicles are not tempted to fiddle with the system, in terms of collecting accurate data. I need to tell a story about someone in Ngāti Hine, one of the tribes of Northland that is unwisely trying to break away from the Ngāpuhi tribe, but that is another matter—that is another matter. I met a chap in Moerewa—Kawakawa—from Ngāti Hine, and he complained to me about whether the gadget measuring the amount of distance he had been travelling was consistent with the amount of miles he had purchased, because the roads were so bad in that Ngāti Hine area. They were so starved of transport capital that that had shaken the innards of this technology. So I learnt something very simple there. I learnt to make sure that the technology is robust in order to deal with the rural roads of Northland, which have been starved of resources as a consequence of misallocation by the current Minister, despite the fact that this road-user charge money is being levied and collected on a regular basis.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9 56 p.m.