Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2), Road User Charges Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Transport: I move, That the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill be now read a third time. These bills are the product of the dividing of the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill at the Committee of the whole House. The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill correct a small number of anomalies with the road-user charges system that affect a small number of vehicles and their owners. These changes allow for the fair and practical application of road-user charges in a range of unusual circumstances. The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) amends the Land Transport Act 1998, which provides for a range of functions relating to land transport, including the registration and licensing of vehicles. The purpose of the bill is to enable annual charges, in lieu of road-user charges, to be collected for vehicles that are exempt from road-user charges.

💬 Mike Sabin: Interesting.

Exactly. Some classes of vehicles are exempt from road-user charges because it is uneconomic to collect road-user charges for them. Most of these vehicles also do very little travel on roads, and already make a significant contribution to the costs they impose on the road network through the vehicle licence fee. However, some exempt vehicles, such as fast tractors, do a sufficient amount of travel on roads to cause road wear, so it is fair that their owners should make a contribution towards the costs they impose. The bill amends the Land Transport Act to allow for an annual charge in lieu of road-user charges for these kinds of vehicles, collected through registration and licensing processes. By doing so, it allows for the fair and practical recovery of costs where collecting them through the normal processes would be impractical and uneconomic.

The Road User Charges Amendment Bill amends the Road User Charges Act 2012, which provides for the regulation and administration of the collection of road-user charges for the use of roads and road wear. The main purpose of this bill is to address an anomaly for some vehicle owners who are required to pay road-user charges for their vehicle but are unable to do so because their vehicle is not registered and not legally required to be. The bill also makes other minor changes to the Road User Charges Act 2012. Unregistered road-user charges vehicles that are exempt from registration are not required to be registered or operate under a trade plate in an unregistered state, but are subject to road-user charges unless they belong to a class of vehicle that makes them specifically exempt.

However, it is not possible to issue road-user charges licences to these vehicles because the licences are linked to a vehicle’s registration number. These kinds of unregistered vehicles make only limited use of roads, and it is not cost-effective to try to collect road-user charges for them. The Road User Charges Act 2012 will be amended to allow regulations that exempt these unregistered vehicles from road-user charges. This bill also amends the Road User Charges Act to add offence provisions where light vehicles conditionally exempted from road-user charges are operated in breach of those conditions.

Finally, the bill contains amendments of a technical nature, which support the policy aims behind road-user charges and rationalising enforcement activity. These clarify that a person who has entered into an arrangement to pay overdue fees by instalment will not be subject to additional penalties, allow road-user charges collectors to set a licence fee for one-off vehicles not covered by prescribed road-user charges types, and make minor amendments that allow the effective functioning of the road-user charges system.

In closing, the changes proposed in these bills improve the functioning of the road-user charges system and allow for the fair and practical application of road-user charges in a range of unusual circumstances. I commend the bills to the House.

It is a pleasure to take a call on the third readings of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill. These are the bills that the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill has been divided into. We have been very pleased to help the Government get this legislation through. It has been quite a long saga. I think what it shows is that the Government does not always get things right. We on this side are very generous and happy to give the Government a hand to fix its mistakes.

I think the only concern I have about it, though, is the long period of time, the length of the saga, around these bills. They go right back to when the Road User Charges Act was amended by the Government back in 2009, I think it was. At that time, I was on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. Road-user charges bills are always very interesting to debate, and we have a range of people who come along and have views about how we should be charging for the use of the roads. There is always a great deal of interest from a range of road users, and submissions can be highly technical. At the time, we expressed our concern about the regulation-making powers in that bill, and we did warn the Government that it could end up in some tricky territory with it. Of course, that is exactly what happened.

We have rehearsed the saga of the Regulations Review Committee and the disallowance motion moved originally by the honourable Charles Chauvel, and then the unprecedented overriding of that by the Minister of Transport by reintroducing the same regulation the day after it was disallowed, I think. Then it was back to the Regulations Review Committee, which by that time was ably chaired by my colleague the Hon Maryan Street—

💬 Grant Robertson: More than ably.

More than ably—more than ably. And guess what happened. The regulations were disallowed again. This has gone on and on.

Last August, in the middle of winter in 2013, we were in this House debating the first reading of this legislation under urgency. The provisions in the legislation that the Government were trying to get through by regulation—through the sneaky back door, if you like—were due to come into force on 1 August. Of course, that could not happen, because of the disallowance motion, so we ended up under urgency, and I do remember very clearly that it was about quarter to midnight when I took my first call on this legislation. I found myself very bemused about why we were debating it under urgency. And could I say that I am still bemused, actually, given that it is now April and we have finally reached the third reading of this legislation.

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: Hurray!

Yes, hurray—it is good. As I said, we have been delighted to help the Government get this right. There is no doubt about it; there were anomalies in the Road User Charges Act, which was brought in by the National Government. The proposals under this legislation are mainly to exempt fast tractors. We had quite an education on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about what fast tractors are. It was the first time I had ever heard of fast tractors. In fact, I thought that all tractors were slow. I thought they crawled along. Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, you probably know more about this than I do, but I had never ever seen or heard of such a thing—a tractor that could go over 40 kilometres an hour. I do remember one tractor going very slowly up the steps of Parliament several years ago, driven by that very nice member Shane Ardern. What were they protesting about?

💬 Grant Robertson: It was about climate change and their ignorance of it.

Oh, it was about climate change—that is right.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: What was the name?

It was Myrtle the tractor. It was about climate change and carbon tax. That is right. It just really shows you, I suppose, how out of touch and backwards looking the National Party was back then.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: Well, “backwards” was the word.

The Hon Simon Bridges likes to think he is forwards looking when it comes to things like carbon emissions, but I have my doubts about that, really, particularly when we are passing legislation just before Easter to allow fast tractors to be exempted from road-user charges. Fast tractors are those that operate over 40 kilometres per hour on the road. Instead, they will be paying an annual charge in lieu of road-user charges, to cover the costs that they impose on the road network.

The legislation also proposes to exempt all unregistered vehicles—that is, vehicles exempt from registration or not required to be registered, and those operating under trade plates—from road-user charges and apply to them an annual charge as well. As I said, we have agreed with this. I guess our major objection has been to the way the Minister tried to sneak this through by way of regulation instead of fronting up and saying: “Look, I made a mistake.” This very generous Opposition understands that the Government gets it wrong quite often, actually, and I think we have done our best to cooperate with this and get it through.

We agree that we need a modern and simplified road-user charges system that has appropriate provisions for compliance as well as appropriate monitoring mechanisms. The history of the road-user charges system in New Zealand goes back several years—about 30 years, I believe. But the interesting thing that I have discovered in the various road-user charges bills that I have been part of debating on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and the chair over there, David Bennett, will agree with me on this—is that New Zealand is actually way ahead of the game when it comes to road-user charges. In fact, many, many countries rely on petrol and diesel tax, but what is happening now in Europe is that it is increasingly turning to a road-user charges system, particularly for heavy vehicles. If you think about where things are heading in New Zealand, and if we think about how—

💬 Carol Beaumont: We’re thinking ahead. They don’t do that over there.

No. Well, we do. Labour is thinking ahead to what sort of transport system we are going to have in the next 20 or 30 years. The reality is that petrol tax, as it is today, which funds the roads through hypothecation—thanks to the Hon Annette King, who actually brought that in—is declining. It is declining because cars are becoming more efficient and they are using less petrol, and also car ownership is going down. So we are going to have to find a different method of funding road-user charges, if you like. It may be, in fact, that all vehicles in the future have a system, an electronic system, of flagging their use and paying for it. We had a very interesting presentation last night from a company that was talking about electric cars and the future of electric cars. In my mind, I thought that where we were going with electric vehicles is that we would have to have plug-in stations all around the country—a bit like petrol stations. But now what is happening with solar power and other methods of renewal energy is that people are going to be able to have their own battery charging systems at home, where they will be able to charge their electric vehicle. They are going to become much more accessible to people and, over time, they will become much less expensive. I also believe that diesel buses and diesel trucks will, over time, adopt electric technology.

So we are going to have to turn our minds to a new system—a completely new system of funding our roads. Certainly, we in the Labour Party have been thinking about that, and it is a challenging thing because we will have to think about different methods of charging for use of the roads. It is always tricky. People do not like additional charges like network charges or congestion charges. Even people who pay road-user charges on their light diesel vehicles do not like that. So it is a very challenging and demanding consideration, but we are going to have to face up to it.

So although I am really pleased that the fast tractors are going to be exempted under this bill, that is only a temporary solution, and I can confidently predict that we will be back sometime—if not us, then the next generation, perhaps—debating a completely different way of how we fund our roading network, our transport network. We can only vaguely imagine how different that is going to be, and that is the big challenge. We are happy to support this legislation in the third reading. It has been an interesting debate, but I think the debate is about to get a whole lot more interesting around how we fund our transport system.

I just want to take a short call on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill because everyone has been pretty much in agreement. I was quite surprised with that last speech from Darien Fenton, actually, and why somebody in the Labour Party would want to talk for 10 minutes about transport after this week. I have got a lot of time for Darien Fenton. She is actually a good member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. She is very good to work with. Actually, the last minute of her speech was more insightful, concise, and important transport policy than anything that has come out of David Cunliffe this week.

When Labour members talked here today about fast tractors, why did they not make fast tractors part of their transport policy? Why did they not make fast tractors have to stay in the slow lane? Can fast tractors overtake a truck now, under the Labour Party transport policy? I think they can. If you go down the Auckland motorway—all six lanes of it—you are going to have the fast tractors overtaking trucks. That is all right in the Labour Party, because it is all about the ability to get from central Auckland to your holiday home, like David Cunliffe wants to. That is what the policy is about. When you are on the southern motorway, instead of being held up by a truck, you are now going to be held up by a fast tractor under the Labour Party. David Cunliffe will not get to his holiday home, because there is a fast tractor in front of him. I will have you know that that is about the only thing that the Labour Party will do for the agricultural sector—letting fast tractors pass trucks.

I appreciate the Labour Party actually supporting this legislation here today. It is good to see Darien actually doing that. It is a shame that you did not have any input into your transport policy, which was a total disaster and gives us so much ammunition. It is the end of the Labour Party again in transport, but it is good to see. Thank you.

After that contribution from that member, David Bennett, on the eve of the celebration of the Resurrection, I am surprised that he should wax so eloquently on this issue. When I look at the loudest members in the House at this very point—Mr Bennett himself, Mr Auchinvole, Dr Calder, and even Mr Simon Bridges—the theme of resurrection is most apposite, because these are careers that are about to come to an end, and those members are desperate for something to bring them back. Of course, they are not the only ones. There is at least one other Minister who is hoping for a miracle this weekend, and, of course, we all know what is going to happen to her.

I want to say this. With this legislation arising from the former Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill and with a fairer management of road-user charges for heavy vehicles and diesel vehicles, and, add to that, Labour’s policy on effective management of heavy traffic on big roads, I think we have the makings of something very special for New Zealand travellers and New Zealand drivers.

I look forward to the day—very soon, in the next few months—when the next Labour-led Government will be able to complement this legislation with its new transport policies. We will not have the freedom campers in their mobile homes and those towing their registration fee - free caravans being held up by the big, heavy lorries in the fourth lane or in the third lane of the Waikato Expressway, which that member David Bennett trumpets about loud and long every opportunity he gets. I look forward to those days when we will complement this legislation with those sensible and—I might add—very popular transport policies, because the feedback has been phenomenal. The feedback has been phenomenal. People love it and they look forward to it. They know that they have only a few months to wait. They will get to their Christmas holidays this year and the roads will be clearer. They will be able to move more rapidly—safely but rapidly—and with a lower breath-alcohol rating, and life will be a lot better.

I could not possibly let further comment on this legislation pass without mentioning what I know this House understands to be a very important piece of roading infrastructure for New Zealand, and that is State Highway 3 in North Taranaki. That is a very important piece of roading. It carries a lot of heavy lorries, certainly a lot of trucks—in fact, maybe a fraction more than one or two—and a few heavy farm vehicles that are not routinely on the roads but move on those roads as they are moving between the very well-managed and efficient farming sector in North Taranaki. It is a very lush and green farming sector in North Taranaki, and, I suspect, it is more lush and more green after this week, too.

This regime, this provision in this legislation, will allow a change to the regulation of road-user charges, which means a fairer system can be put in place to levy those vehicles so that they are not overburdened and overcharged for the impact they have on our roads. Most important, through doing that we allow ourselves to approach the issue of road funding in a way that is a little more sophisticated, that is a little fairer, and that buys in that consent of the Government, which is so important to democratic institutions like this Parliament. It is so important, too, when we are considering the allocation of the resources gathered through these levies and where they should be applied.

That, of course, is the yawning gap in transport policy at the moment, because areas like Taranaki and roads like State Highway 3 are the ones that miss out. A road like State Highway 3 in particular is, sadly, rapidly deteriorating because of a lack of attention from this Government when it comes to the fair allocation of road funding. This Government is quite happy to plough billions into the Waikato Expressway just because it has got a new velodrome, and it wants to make sure that Mr Bennett can leave the place in quick order, but provinces and the regions in the country that actually generate the wealth that props up this Government—this shabby, nasty, grubby little Government—are the ones that miss out. We are the ones that miss out.

The good people of Taranaki are looking forward to a change of Government and to a change of MP because they know that it is high time that they had somebody in this House who has a proven track record of advocating for their interests and for their key road, their main road, which goes in and out of North Taranaki, because it is not happening now.

So on that note, I reluctantly conclude my remarks and my comments. I just say that this is good legislation and that it will do good things. I would like to conclude—

💬 Simon O’Connor: Wish us a happy Easter.

I was about to wish the House a very happy Easter, but I will exclude Mr Simon O’Connor for foreshadowing my comments, because that is an unkind thing to do in the House at this time. I wish you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and, indeed, all members of the House a safe Easter weekend on our roads, and for those travelling on State Highway 3 north of Taranaki, as I will be doing, I wish them an even safer weekend. Thank you.

The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill make very minor changes that we do not oppose, so the Green Party will be supporting the legislation. But I think that in order to understand the minor changes, it is important to understand the entire context of road-user charges and the fuel excise duties scheme. For those who are watching at home today, road-user charges are charges that heavy vehicles and those that are using diesel pay. Therefore, they do not pay their tax directly. They pay road-user charges instead of fuel excise duty.

Road-user charges contribute about one-third of the money to the National Land Transport Fund, which is used on transport projects. Fuel excise duty, which is, obviously, levied on all petrol vehicles, contributes about two-thirds of the National Land Transport Fund—$2 billion. So the total National Land Transport Fund is made up of $3 billion, about a third of which is from trucks and heavy vehicles, and two-thirds of which comes from light passenger vehicles. This is a change under this Government. When it overhauled the road-user charges scheme, it actually reduced the contribution that was being made by large vehicles, or heavy vehicles, and increased the contribution from light petrol vehicles, or households, because it put up the petrol tax quite a bit and it basically dropped the contribution from truckies.

Of course, one of the justifications for the changes to the road-user charges system was that if we made it more simple, then we would reduce evasion of road-user charges. But, of course, when submitters came and spoke to us at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, it turned out that evasion has not fallen at all. Evasion is about the same as what it was before, but, overall, the road freight industry is paying less towards our roads than it was before the National Government came into power.

One other important thing to realise is that about $1 billion of ratepayer money goes into our roads and our transport system, so although there is often some idea bandied about that roads are user-pays, that is not true at all. The entire system is full of indirect charges and cross-subsidies. About one-quarter of the entire transport budget is contributed to by ratepayers, but they actually pay for half of local roads, and local roads carry half of all vehicle trips travelled. So, basically, what is happening is that there are as many vehicle trips on local roads as there are on the State highway network, but most of the money levied in fuel excise duty and road-user charges from motorists who are driving on local roads, which are paid for in part by ratepayers, is going to the State highway network, not to the local roads. That is also a consequence of policy changes by this Government, which has sucked most of the money out of the transport budget and is applying it to just a few very expensive projects that benefit very few vehicles and people.

In 2014 you really could not think of a worse time to be spending billions of dollars on State highways, because we already have a very mature road network, and what it really needs is to be looked after and maintained properly. But by duplicating a few of the networks in the State highway system, the Government is actually taking 75 percent of the money for new transport infrastructure and spending it on only 4 percent of the trips. I know that this is a lot of numbers and I know that that might be confusing for members opposite, but, ultimately, it is important to understand these numbers and take an objective look at how we are spending the transport budget. At the moment the National Government is spending the transport budget in a very irresponsible way.

What is most concerning is the fact that it is not only spending most of the money on a very small proportion of vehicle trips, which is not going to benefit people in New Zealand when they are trying to get to work, trying to get to school, and trying to get to the shops, but also not even going to help our exporters who are trying to get their product from the farm gate to the port, because most of the time they are not even travelling on the State highways that are receiving all of the money.

The National Freight Demand Study, for example, shows that most of the freight in Northland does not leave Northland, so although the Government is trying to justify an extension to the motorway north of Auckland so that more people can live further north of Auckland and commute into the city by car, it justifies it on the basis that, somehow, it is going to help the economy of Northland. Well, the Pūhoi to Warkworth “Holiday Highway” does not even go into Northland, and most of the freight in Northland does not travel on that road. But it is easy for National to bandy about these slogans, which are completely meaningless, and say that it is for economic growth when, in fact, it does not understand the first thing about how to improve economic productivity or how to have a functioning transport system that is going to benefit New Zealanders well into the future.

The Green Party is here to say that we actually have a smart Green vision for our country. We are going to use best-practice evidence from overseas to ensure that New Zealanders have safe, affordable options for getting to work and to school, because that is what is really important. The way that you do that is not by throwing most of the money at a few highways that carry 4 percent of vehicle trips. We need to invest in the City Rail Link in Auckland and finish it on time so that we can have trains every 5 minutes. That will make a real difference to commuters in Auckland. Having a train every 5 minutes will make it much more attractive to take the train, and it will take cars off the road, so it benefits the people using the road and it benefits those who are using the train.

We want to reduce public transport fares because they are too expensive—far too expensive. When you reduce public transport fares, it makes it more attractive to take the bus and it means that there are fewer cars on the road and less congestion for those who are driving. It just makes economic sense. We want to make it safe for kids to walk and cycle to school because that is their birthright. Kids are no longer walking and cycling to school at the same rate that they used to, because parents are, understandably, afraid. They fear for the lives of their children because we have spent so much money facilitating the flow of vehicles around schools, rather than putting aside safe cycle lanes and safe pedestrian ways for people to walk and cycle to school. Obviously, as all New Zealanders know, during school holidays there is not the same level of traffic congestion. So a very low-cost, effective way of dealing with traffic congestion is investing $50 million a year into safe walking and cycling around schools, as the Green Party would.

While this Government is wasting most of our tax dollars on projects that are not actually going to help New Zealanders get around, the Greens are standing up and saying that we believe in choice, we are going to invest in smarter choices, and we are going to ensure that there is a road-user charges system that is fair, not one that is subsidising road vehicles and road freight at the expense of everyone else. Thank you.

That was an excellent speech for the National party vote in Northland. I will take the speech of Julie Anne Genter and email it far and wide because it is a very, very good demonstration as to why the Greens are ranked absolutely nowhere on the political platform. If the member had done her homework, she would know that $800 million of the Northland economy travels down State Highway 1 and out of the Northland district. If the member had done her homework, she would also know how, in Northland, the idea of relieving congestion by building footpaths so that children can walk and cycle to school more safely is not going to help someone from Pawarenga get to school in Kaitāia. Does the member even know where I am talking about? No, because the member has no idea about Northland.

I am going to make a once, and once only, special offer to Julie Anne Genter. I am going to build a little soapbox—I will even paint it green—for the member to go and stand on in Northland to talk about the “Holiday Highway” and how they want to get rid of it, because everyone in Northland knows that it is a trade and economic highway. When this National Government fast-tracked that motorway, what did they do in Northland? What they did in Northland was that everyone stood up and said “Fantastic.” Why? It is not just about safety and about the economy of that road in terms of the costs saved and the efficiencies created, it is also because what that says to the people of Northland is that Northland matters and Northland is a place that this Government values and wants to ensure that the infrastructure exists for the economy of Northland to realise its true potential.

During the economic summits I ran in 2012, the No. 1 piece of infrastructure that Northland wanted to see happen—and that was everywhere from Whangarei to Kaitāia, from Kaipara through to the Bay of Islands—was the Pūhoi to Wellsford motorway. That says something. The reality is that if that member took herself out of the bustling city for a moment and came to Northland to stand on the soapbox that I am happy to provide for her, she would actually find that out.

In the real world, the philosophical ideology that the Greens think—that everyone can unicycle their logs to market—is just an absolute load of tripe, and probably why Roy Morgan Research has them on 11.5 percent today. It is probably why Roy Morgan has them on 11.5 percent. It is not because Labour has rocketed up, because it is down to around 28-point-something. That is a little more than we had Labour on in our internal polling, with Mr Robertson, of course, at around 26 percent. I wonder what conversations will be had with Mr Cunliffe now.

Anyway, I must wind this up because our very fine senior whip has just given me the old fine whip nod. In any event, this is very good legislation because tractors and road-user charges matter. The way that this Government provides pragmatic solutions for the people who actually create the economy that this country relies on is what the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill are about. It is excellent work from Gerry Brownlee, and I am happy to commend it.

New Zealand First has expressed concern about a number of amendments to road-user charges made during this term of Parliament. The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill seek to correct some of the stuff-ups made so far. We will support the bills on that basis as far as they go, but there are many more stuff-ups that are not being addressed in these bills at all.

New Zealand First has concerns for the 22,000 motorhome owners registered with the Motor Caravan Association, although the total number affected is, of course, many more than that. Vehicle operators in that category justifiably oppose having their road-user charges increased—mostly doubled, and sometimes trebled—because of new bandwidths and maximum permissible on-road weight charges, when their weight is constant or, in most cases, considerably less than their maximum chassis weight. There are a great number of motorhomes that are built on chassis that have a greater gross vehicle mass rating than the actual on-road weight of the motorhome. This matter should have been attended to as part of these particular stuff-up correction bills, so that the owners of these vehicles would not be required to purchase road-user licences for a greater laden mass than the actual laden mass.

The purpose of road-user charges legislation is to continue the system by imposing charges on heavy vehicles and certain other vehicles for their use of the roads that are in proportion to the costs that the vehicles generate. That is the whole thrust of the system. That is not what is happening with these motorhomes, and they are suffering huge and unjustifiable increases in charges as a result. There should be a provision to enable motorhome-type vehicles, which are never likely to operate at near the maximum permitted laden weight, to be assigned a road-user weight that would be sufficient to cover their actual laden mass. An example is a motorhome with a gross vehicle mass of 12,000 kilograms but an actual on-road mass of, say, 8,500 kilograms. Under the 2010 road-user charges their charge was $120.24. Under the 2012 changes the owner is now required to purchase road-user charge licences for 12 tonnes, at a cost of $246.26. That, of course, is an increase of $126.02, or, in other words, an increase of over 104 percent. We in New Zealand First think that is absolutely outrageous.

The requirement to have all heavy vehicles operating with a road-user charge licence to cover the maximum permissible laden weight as the lesser of the rated gross vehicle mass or the vehicle’s dimension and mass—referring to rule 2002—has resulted in some excessive increases in costs to the owners. That should have been put right in this amending legislation, and it has not been attended to. The greater percentage of private motorhome owners in New Zealand are retirees, as you would expect. These people have limited income, and in many cases will not easily be able to absorb such large increases in their costs. This amending legislation should have included a provision to allow motorhomes to have a road-user charge licence weight allocated that covers the actual on-road mass of the vehicle. The current regime, which captures motorhomes and hugely increases their road-user charges liability, is grossly unfair and should have been addressed as one of the Government’s many stuff-ups where road-user charges legislation has been concerned.

Although these bills are supportable as far as they go, New Zealand First places on record our strong objection to the way motorhome operators have been treated. They have not even been considered as part of these amendments, and we think they certainly should have been. I am glad to see that since I made my first reading speech on this issue the Labour Party has adopted New Zealand First’s policy on the issue. I congratulate it on doing that. We are always willing to share our policies with other sympathetic parties. I now call upon the National Government to do the same.

This is a short call on the third readings of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Road User Charges Amendment Bill. By amending this legislation we allow reasonable charges for diesel vehicles and all vehicles over 3.5 tonnes to be charged accurately. The vehicles that make heavy use of the roads, usually for the purposes of a successful commerce or agricultural venture, will be assured that they are paying the correct charges. Private vehicle owners will also get to share the benefits of having well-funded roads, so that we can more safely and easily reach our home or holiday destinations this coming weekend.

On that note, as the final person to speak in the House today, may I wish all colleagues a happy and holy Easter. I trust that we can all return restored, regenerated, reinvigorated, and ready to engage again in decisive, determined debate. Thank you.

Bills read a third time.