Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. I want to acknowledge the work of the Commerce Committee and thank its members for their thorough and robust consideration of this bill. In particular I note the chair of the select committee, Melissa Lee, and her contribution.

To improve the efficiency of our energy use and to meet our climate change commitments, we need a shift in focus to reduce our emissions and improve our energy productivity. Transport, energy, and process heat are key areas where gains can be made. The bill has four parts and will amend the Electricity Industry Act 2010, the Energy (Fuels, Levies, and References) Act 1989, the Land Transport Act 1998, and the Road User Charges Act 2012. It will support our focus on reducing emissions and improving energy productivity, while ensuring our legislation can accommodate innovation.

The bill will expand the purposes for which the existing electricity efficiency levy, the gas levy, and the petroleum or engine fuel monitoring levy can be used. It will enable the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) to use all three levies to encourage, promote, and support energy efficiency, energy conservation, and the use of renewable sources of energy. Giving EECA access funding from three levies will enable the cost of EECA’s activities to be spread across the levies for transport fuels and gas, instead of being confined to electricity. This move beyond electricity will enable EECA to use its levy funding to undertake a broader range of activities, giving it flexibility to focus on areas where the measurable gain is the greatest. The bill also promises to improve the operation and administration of the levies.

Electric vehicles (EVs) offer a way to leverage greater value from New Zealand’s renewable electricity, and therefore offer the most potential for emissions reduction while ensuring economic growth. This was the rationale behind the Electric Vehicles Programme—a package of proposals announced by the Government last year to increase the uptake of EVs. This bill contains two initiatives from the EVs programme. The bill will clarify that a road-controlling authority may use its bylaw-making powers to give EVs access to special vehicle lanes. Trials in places like Norway and California have shown that allowing EVs in special vehicle lanes is one of the most effective non-financial incentives we can put in place to increase uptake.

The bill also encourages the uptake of electric vehicles by extending the road-user charge exemption to include heavy electric vehicles such as electric trucks and buses. This change is a transparent and efficient way to provide a financial incentive to encourage heavy electric vehicles over equivalent conventional heavy vehicles.

The bill also clarifies how electricity industry legislation applies to secondary networks. Secondary networks are smaller electricity networks that indirectly connect to the national grid, typically through a local distribution network. They offer a unique business model that is becoming more widespread and is attractive to business owners. Owning and operating a secondary network offers business owners opportunities for integrating new energy technologies such as combining solar photo, photovoltaics—sorry, I always have trouble with that one; in other words, solar panels—and battery storage on a residential subdivision and supplying those to consumers.

Consistent treatment under the legislation will help this kind of innovative business model to endure and thrive. The bill will provide regulatory certainty and improve outcomes for consumers in the market as a whole. It will ensure that consumers on secondary networks have the same consumer protection and access to dispute resolution as consumers on local electricity networks.

The Commerce Committee has made some sensible recommendations that will improve this bill. I will touch on some of these now. There have been some concerns raised regarding a road-controlling authority’s ability to effectively enforce the use of special vehicle lanes by EVs. The committee has recommended a change to the bill to permit an image taken by approved vehicle surveillance equipment—or, in other words, an automated camera—to be evidence of the unauthorised use of a special vehicle lane.

Once a number plate of a vehicle has been recorded, information about it can be accessed on the motor vehicle register. The motor vehicle register is in the process of being updated to show whether or not a vehicle is electric. It also shows who owns the vehicle, so that, if necessary, the owner can be sent an infringement notice. This change will provide another option to enabling road-controlling authorities to enforce the correct use of special vehicle lanes.

The bill, as introduced, will also allow heavy EVs to be exempted from road-user charges (RUC) for a period of time by Order in Council. The committee has recommended a change that requires the relevant Minister to be satisfied that any Order in Council under this section has the purpose of encouraging and supporting the uptake of heavy EVs. The committee has further recommended that the initial RUC exemption would expire no later than 31 December 2025 and that any subsequent exemption would last for no more than 5 years.

With regard to the changes the bill makes to expanding existing energy levies to recover funding for EECA, the committee has also made some sensible recommendations to improve operation and administration of the gas levy provided under the Energies (Fuels, Levies, and References) Act 1989. These changes include placing liability for the gas levy on retailers alone to improve recovery of the levy. It has also recommended shifting the existing exemptions to the levy to regulation, to enable them to be kept up to date, and removing the current exemption for a sale of less than 10,000 gigajoules of gas in a quarter so that every retailer is treated the same.

Finally, the bill as introduced makes changes to clarify how electricity industry regulation applies to secondary networks. It does this by adding new definitions for “secondary network” and “secondary network provider”, and a statement that a secondary network provider is to be treated as if they were a distributer for the purposes of the Electricity Industry Act.

During consideration of the bill, submitters raised concerns that the new definitions were too broad and could inadvertently include things they should not. The committee has recommended a minor change to the drafting to more closely match the policy intent, which is that the owners of secondary networks who are undertaking activities that are akin to those of an electricity distributer are subject to the same requirements under the legislation. The committee noted that there were a range of exemption options already in place and that obligations or requirements can be developed or amended to ensure that they are appropriate for secondary network owners.

This bill will encourage energy innovation such as emerging energy technologies and increase variation in energy-related business models, so that New Zealand can respond to its environmental and energy objectives. I commend this bill to the House.

It is my pleasure to take a call on this. Labour is supporting this Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. We supported it at its first reading and we think that there was a good select committee process. I would like to congratulate the Commerce Committee, which I had the pleasure of sitting in on for some time on this bill, the chair of that select committee, as well as all the other members. The Minister has outlined very ably the three main things that this bill—that is packaged up as energy innovation—does. While there are some necessary and good changes in here, let us not over-egg this as being the innovative answer to everything.

Let us go through what each of these three changes mean. The new road-user charge exemption applying to heavy vehicles as well as light vehicles, which the Minister has outlined, is going to be increasingly important as we think about not only how it is that we uptake electric vehicles (EVs) but how it is that we uptake EVs so as to minimise our greenhouse gas emissions. Fundamentally, this bill is part of a patchwork of options that need to be put in place in order for New Zealand to address its greenhouse gas emissions. It is part of a patchwork. I stress that because, personally, I would like to see an analysis of how this bill and its measures fit within a carbon budget so that we can have an idea about how all the component pieces fit together. How does a change in transport impact on what the overall reductions in our greenhouse gases are going to be?

Changing to electric vehicles makes sense in New Zealand more than most other countries in the world. What we see in New Zealand is that every time someone makes the decision to use an electric vehicle there is a direct switch from fossil to renewable energy. Unlike some other countries where people are opting to move from a petrol-powered or a diesel-powered vehicle to a vehicle that is powered by electricity but that electricity is indeed generated by the burning of fossil fuels, in New Zealand it is a straight—usually a pretty much one-for-one—swap between fossil and renewable energy. So we have huge potential to address our greenhouse gases through our transport emissions. Transport emissions currently make up about 20 percent of our entire greenhouse gas emissions in this country, so the potential is immense. Of our transport emissions, 60 percent come from light passenger vehicles, so there certainly are savings that are going to be made here.

But it is not just in terms of the good of the planet and the need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions—it also makes huge economic sense. If you think about some of the things that New Zealand does well, it is the production of renewable energy at relatively low cost, if you compare this with other parts of the world. Renewable energy is roughly the equivalent of 30c a litre in New Zealand, so just do the math on that of what you are currently paying at the petrol pump. You are over $2 a litre for fossil fuels when you fill up your car, and you can see that there are immense savings for people to make.

If we are saying that 60 percent of all our transport energy consumption comes from our light passenger fleet—the cars that drive around and that people use to go from point A to point B in the course of their day—we also need to turn our attention to thinking about the other 40 percent, and that is our heavy-vehicle fleets. That is why the provision that we have here in this bill and the first measure that this does, which is about enabling the road-user charge exemption to heavy as well as light passenger vehicles, is a very important measure.

The other thing that this bill does is it allows the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) to use its levy in a broader way, not just in terms of electricity. This is a good thing, allowing EECA to have a broader remit. We need to think about energy not just in terms of electricity but across a range of things. But this cannot be at the expense of the other very important work that EECA does in New Zealand. My fear is that we are seeing the reduction of funding to some other very important programmes within EECA, such as the ability of homeowners to access home insulation funding, which I think is important.

The other measure that this omnibus bill does is to allow electric vehicles to travel in bus lanes. As you can imagine, this was a part of the bill that attracted some attention from submitters. I think the important point to acknowledge here—the point that, understandably, people brought and were worried about at the select committee phase—was that just letting cars into the bus lanes is going to subvert the purpose that those pro - public transport lanes are there for, which is to allow non-congested routes through our cities where people can elect to take public transport and not be bogged down in the congestion that cars are in. This certainly was a concern that I had around this measure.

But there are some measures in this that do give me a degree of certainty around that. We heard from Auckland Transport, Greater Wellington Regional Council, and Waikato Regional Council, so this was a widely held view. But there are a couple of measures in here that do give me some peace of mind around this. The first is that it is an opt-in provision for individual road-controlling authorities. It is not mandatory now that under this legislation every bus lane in the country will be opened up for EVs, or electric vehicles, to be able to travel in them. This is something the individual territorial and road-controlling authorities will be able to make decisions around. There well could be routes in different parts of cities or throughout the country that just make no sense to allow electric vehicles to go in. It is going to subvert the whole point of having them there, which is actually to free up our roads and to allow people to travel in a less congested manner. So that is certainly something to consider.

At the moment, allowing electric vehicles into bus lanes is not going to cause a huge amount of congestion, for the very simple reason that we do not have that many of them. There are, I think, just over 1,000 electric vehicles in New Zealand at the moment, so we are not going to wake up the morning after this legislation is passed and find our bus lanes across the nation clogged with electric vehicles. The other important provision that this legislation contains is the ability to phase that by-law out. So it will make sense at the beginning, as we are encouraging people to buy electric vehicles, but this is not set in stone for ever. It can be a temporary provision while it makes sense.

Obviously, this is legislation that is put in place to try to sit alongside the Government’s aim of having 64,000 electric vehicles on our roads over a period of time, which, incidentally, is pretty much what the Ministry of Transport’s modelling shows us would happen if we did nothing—if we just allowed nature to take its course and there was not any Government intervention. So in terms of being a radical disruption, this bill certainly is not. This is what I like to call a “standing still measure”. This is what is going to happen anyway. So what we do have, though, is the ability for road-controlling authorities to opt out of that over time. I think that these are important concerns and ones that the committee certainly listened to.

Another issue that did tax the committee for quite some time was the issue that the Minister touched on, and that was around the ability to enforce who should and should not be allowed in a bus lane, which cars should be in there, how we are going to demarcate which cars were indeed electric vehicles, what measures we could put in place that could not be ripped off—so that those who should not be in the bus lane were not putting in place a wrong sticker on their car, or a similar measure, and sneaking into the bus lane and getting a quicker ride to work.

We spent quite a long period of time considering measures around that in the committee. We looked at different models around the world and different things that could happen. It seems to be that the ability to use the photography and the images taken there could be something that can act as a deterrent. But that is something we need to keep a watching brief on, because as we get more and more EVs on our roads, as technology changes, as electric vehicles and normal combustion engine vehicles cease to look different from each other, this could become a problem. I think this is something that as legislators we need to keep a watching brief on and check that that is in check.

This is a bill that brings into place some measures that are important. The third provision very much reflects the need to keep the regulatory framework up with the technology and the different ways in which electricity is now being generated. These are necessary. They are a small part and a small start, and Labour will support the bill for that reason.

It is a great pleasure to rise to support this second reading of the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Before I actually begin, I would like to thank the member who just took her seat, Dr Megan Woods. I am very glad that she enjoyed her time at our Commerce Committee.

This bill is an omnibus bill that was brought before the Commerce Committee last year. During its time before the Commerce Committee, we received and considered 40 submissions—11 of those were oral submissions that we heard. We also received advice from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, as well as the Ministry of Transport. This bill proposes to expand the ability of EECA—the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority—to use its existing levies for wider purposes. The bill also provides incentives and encouragement for the greater uptake of electric vehicle use, through road exemption charges and clarification of the by-laws that are relevant to electric vehicle usage in our towns and our cities.

One such option at the local level that this bill would allow is for the high-occupancy bus lane that the member who just took her seat talked about and for other special vehicle accesses to be implemented by the road controlling authority. And it is an opt-in situation. This is important as it would provide a key incentive, particularly in high-volume traffic communities, to buy into new innovative vehicle technologies that benefit the environment and wider community.

We also recommended that a new clause be inserted into the bill to allow vehicle surveillance equipment to be used on our roads and highways to track unauthorised use of special vehicle lanes. As Dr Woods actually said, we had many amusing discussions as to how those vehicles would be identified—whether it was going to be stickers or whether it was different coloured number plates. So it was a very thorough discussion that we had. This is because the motor vehicles register is in the process of being updated to show whether a registered vehicle is, in fact, an electric one, and this would reduce bureaucracy in the processing of infringement and compliance notices.

The way we have got it, the bill will also make changes to clarify how electricity industry regulation applies to secondary networks, as the Minister has in fact spoken about. The committee recommended clarifying the definition of a secondary network provider, to better match the policy intent of the bill, to make sure that it is clear that if the secondary network provider undertakes activities and practices—if they in fact undertake practices like an electricity distributor—then they should be subject to the same regulatory oversight requirements. The committee also supports the allowance for Orders in Council, which the Minister talked about.

Another important area that this bill covers is the collection of the gas levy. The committee has recommended allowing for regulations to be made for exemptions from the gas levy so that the liability of the gas levy is solely where the gas is sold by the retailer—that is, where the collection is. This would make it clearer as to who is in fact liable for the levy, increase transparency, and not require a complete restructure of the levy liability rule.

Our economy is diversifying, and our choices of travel are diversifying as well, in fact. More public transportation options, more car-share services, as well as more choices in our private vehicles, with better, more fuel-efficient and eco-friendly options at reasonable prices, will continue to benefit New Zealand. As technology progresses, those vehicle costs will come down as well. We are an innovative country with leading science in our R & D industries. An energy innovation amendment bill like this one will continue to see our country embrace greater opportunities for New Zealanders. I commend the work of the previous Minister of Energy and Resources, Mr Bridges, and also the current Minister, Ms Collins, for bringing this bill to the House. I commend the bill.

Having sat on the Commerce Committee as well, alongside my colleague Megan Woods and my colleague across the House and chair of the committee, Melissa Lee, we had a number of interesting discussions around this bill. I want to thank Megan Woods for her considered and quite proactive and constructive comments around the bill. I think she is being very polite in a lot of ways in describing its potential as being a starting point.

Can I just say, though, that this is a bit underwhelming, after 9 years, to be looking at this as being the harbinger of a great strategy to help reduce emissions and to be the introduction of the new technology, the new way of driving—electric vehicles. I know that the previous Minister of Energy and Resources, the Hon Simon Bridges, talked—and no doubt still continues to talk—a lot about how electric vehicles are the future, how this is what we are all going to be doing in the future, and how this is what we can be doing. But if this bill is it, in terms of how we are going to enable and encourage that to happen, then it is, as I said, a bit underwhelming. You could sort of tell, actually—the way the Minister who gave the speech initially in the second reading really did not seem hugely engaged. I am disappointed about that because there is so much more that could be done.

The predictions are that by 2021 there will be 64,000 electric vehicles on our roads, and the part of this bill that deals with how that is going to be acknowledged really is around enabling them to use the special bus lanes. If you live in Auckland, if you live in Wellington, and no doubt in a few other parts of the country, that is just going to create more problems in terms of congestion on our roads if we are not dealing at the same time with a comprehensive public transport strategy and the introduction of light rail in Auckland. There are a whole lot of other infrastructure things that we need to be doing alongside a measure that allows and gives a special status to electric vehicles to be able to travel in the bus lanes.

The reason they are called “bus lanes” is so that the buses can travel in them and there can be a lack of congestion, enabling people to travel backwards and forwards to work—or wherever they are going—using the public transport system on the road and enabling that travel time to be less. If you put 64,000 electric vehicles—or the proportion of them that are in our major cities by 2021—into those lanes, then there are going to be problems without doing anything else. So let us give it a tick as being a start—a good start, a bit of a start—but also let us say it really is not enough.

I want to actually refer back to 2008 under a previous Government, the Labour Government, when the Hon David Parker, who was the Minister of Energy and the Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues at the time, initiated a strategy, the New Zealand Energy Strategy, which was actually quite “big picture” and had some really strong goals in this area and of course in other areas. He established in April 2008 a vehicle energy and renewables group of nine industry and research experts who were looking at promoting the use of renewable energy and transport, especially in the areas of electric vehicles and biofuels. You know, there was some really good thinking happening then. It seems to have gone into a bit of hole.

I want to read a bit from a speech that he gave, I think in April 2008, when he said: “To ensure the best cooperation between industry and government the Minister of Transport has appointed a group of individuals to meet regularly with Ministers and officials.”—that was the vehicle energy and renewables group—“Our goal is to position New Zealand to leverage the benefits of our highly renewable and low carbon electricity supply to provide for our transport needs once electric vehicle technology reaches maturity. Electric vehicles can provide a positive contribution to our trade balance and energy security. We believe it will be beneficial for New Zealand to be one of the first nations to adopt plug-in hybrid and purely electric vehicles. There is a unique opportunity to combine electricity and transport sectors with net benefits for both.” That scenario assumed that there would be a high percentage of the public sector fleet that would be plug-in hybrid, and growing up to 60 percent by 2050.

Where are the Government’s targets in that and where is the big-picture thinking? Is this it in terms of expanding the way that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority levy is used and enforcing the use of special vehicle lanes, enabling special vehicle lanes to be used for electric vehicles, and changes to the collection of the gas levy and regulations made under the Road User Charges Act? These are all small measures. I think Megan Woods described them as small pieces in a bigger strategy, or a strategy that does not really exist.

Labour supports this bill because we see it as being a step. We heard the submissions. We listened closely to what was being said. We heard particularly the submissions from Auckland Transport, the Greater Wellington Regional Council, and the Waikato Regional Council, which did stress the negative effects on the ability to deliver public transport services by allowing electric vehicles access to those special vehicle lanes. What else is the Government doing in this space? That is what I would like to hear. That is what I would have liked to hear from the Hon Judith Collins, and I am hoping that we will hear a bit more about that. It is a pity that Simon Bridges could not have given us a passionate speech about his plans for the future of electric vehicles, but this piece of legislation is pretty underwhelming.

I rise in support of the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill in its second reading. It was actually a very good bill to sit on the Commerce Committee for. I think we are all, on both sides of the House, looking for a good means to provide incentives for people to increase uptake of electric vehicles. The measures were first proposed, obviously, by the Government and agreed to, after some discussion, by the committee. If you look at what we are doing, in modern economics parlance they call it behavioural economics. Of course, this is one of the most egregious tautologies ever to disgrace the English language, but, setting that aside for a moment, it is based on this idea of nudges—gentle ways of steering people into decisions that are good for them and good for our society.

This legislation, or proposed change, is an example, I think, of nudging at its best, where we are offering some small but tangible incentives where people might decide that buying an electric vehicle is, obviously, not only good for the environment through a reduction in emissions but is good and sensible in New Zealand, because the very next watt of power we generate is going to be renewable energy. Unlike, perhaps, in the United States, where their electric vehicles are actually coal-powered, in New Zealand it is most likely that the next watt generated will be renewable, and therefore you are in fact reducing emissions not only in the vehicle propulsion system but also in the electricity that it takes to charge it. This just provides some small incentives that give people further reasons to move in that direction. So the idea of using a special vehicle lane, or at least giving councils the ability to permit electric cars and electric vehicles in special vehicle lanes, is just a small but meaningful way that might help people to say: “I’ll make this investment instead of another form of a fossil fuel - powered vehicle.”

We had some really good discussions about how we could be sure, if we were going to do something as simple as permit the potential use of these lanes, that only the right vehicles were using them. Ultimately, you know, the future is technology-based, and ultimately we have suggested that permitting the use of technology to monitor that compliance is the way to go. Stickers or even coloured number plates might have given a visual reference, but that, in some respects, is possibly the way of the past, not the way of the future. So I think we have returned a very positive bill to the House.

I think the other “little nudge” aspect that I quite like is the exemption from road-user charges for these vehicles—both passenger vehicles, which we did some time ago, and also heavy electric vehicles. Again, it is just another small but tangible incentive that might help people to make a decision now to move to a vehicle propulsion system that is probably going to be our predominant propulsion system in just a few years’ time. So I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. I rise to take a call on the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I do not know whether there has ever been a more misnamed bill put in front of this House. This bill is not about energy innovation; this is about energy tinkering around the margins. This is about energy bureaucracy. This is not about energy innovation. I do not even know whether the Minister has actually looked up in the dictionary what the definition of “innovation” is, because it is not contained in this legislation.

Look, the bill does three things—three pretty reasonable, small things. We will vote for it because they are pretty reasonable things, but they are small things. They are not innovation. The bill moves around the levies that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) can use. That is not innovative. It allows an extension to the road-user charge exemption to include heavy vehicles. Look, it is reasonable, but it is not innovative—not when you look at what is happening in Europe and America and Asia. Then it clarifies how the electricity industry legislation applies to secondary networks. Again, that is just a bureaucratic tweak and hardly innovative.

Let us go through it. Sure, EECA can now access some old levies and put them together, which is probably a good thing. The big problem is, though, that EECA has been consistently underfunded by the Government. We now see the home insulation scheme, run very well by EECA, at the lowest point ever in 9 years. I am proud of what we achieved in working with the Government to insulate 300,000 homes, but now we are doing only 6,000. The funding is running out. It has been left up to absolutely no one at all. The fact is we still have more than 700,000 substandard homes in New Zealand—homes where our kids are getting sick from the damp and cold. There are 40,000 trips to hospital made by New Zealand children because they are sick as a result of their housing, and 1,600 additional wintertime deaths. If we are going to be innovative, let us set a target of upgrading the million substandard homes in New Zealand. It is not innovative to just cap the funding and move some levies around.

We have got a huge opportunity in the energy efficiency and conservation space. The fact is that experts have shown the economic cost of investing in energy efficiency is 0.6c per kilowatt hour. The cost of new generation for New Zealand is, on average, 8c per kilowatt hour, or higher. It is an order of magnitude cheaper. This is why, instead of focusing on burning coal at Huntly or on new gas-fired power stations in the Waikato built from gas drilled from fracking and new megawatts, we should be looking at what are called new negawatts, or using electricity more efficiently. So it is hardly innovative.

When we look at encouraging the uptake of electric heavy vehicles by extending the road-user charge exemption, this is surely one of the most modest electric vehicle initiatives around the world for countries that are adopting it. Look, that is a reasonable thing, but I would point out the deep irony that at a time when the Government is waving a bill around the House and calling itself innovative when it comes to energy, we are seeing our fully electric trolley buses disappear from Wellington’s streets and we are seeing diesel locomotives and the de-electrification of our main trunk rail line.

On the other side of the ledger regarding this bill, the Government is trying to encourage electric vehicles by opening up bus lanes. I know that my colleague the Green Party transport spokesperson, Julie Anne Genter, is going to touch on this and on how it can be detrimental to mobility in our cities. I would point out that we did hear this message very consistently in the Commerce Committee. Why I called it an energy bureaucracy bill is because what we heard from councils was that because this legislation will not give them easier, common-sense ways to enforce it, we are, basically, going to be once again putting another fiscal burden on to local government. Local government is going to go out and will have to buy expensive cameras and will have to monitor which vehicles are in the bus lane or not, in order for us to use electric vehicles. Instead of spending money to support electric vehicles by, for example, investing in infrastructure—and I note that some of our councils are doing a fantastic job of doing that—we are going to be seeing the money being spent instead on bureaucratic monitoring.

If we were really going to be innovative about electric vehicles, we would be looking at measures such as changing fringe benefit tax rates, we would be looking at having a modern State highway infrastructure network, and we would be looking at a symbolic step from this Government—instead of seeing it buying and driving around diesel limousines, we would see it going to the future and driving, perhaps, the Tesla S. This is why—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: We’re doing all of that.

Simon Bridges, you know, has launched the same policy eight times, because it is more about spin, right? The Government is looking like it is spinning its wheels, and that is simply all it is doing. It is not really moving anywhere; it is simply spinning its wheels. It is a Government based on spin.

The third thing is that the bill is clarifying how electricity legislation applies to secondary networks. Small, reasonable—but look, you cannot call yourself innovative when you are standing by when solar homes and businesses are under attack by the old power incumbents.

Look across the country—we have got citizens in Rotorua, Taupō, and the Hawke’s Bay facing solar taxes from the companies that are scared of solar, and what has Simon Bridges done? What has Judith Collins done? Absolutely nothing. You cannot wave around a bill and call yourself innovative on energy when you are standing by while the old-fashioned incumbents are trying to squash a competitor.

If we were going to have an energy innovation bill, I think it would be more along the lines of the energy policy the Green Party launched recently. Here are five areas where we could be innovative when it comes to energy. We could be dealing with the inefficiencies in our distribution sector. We have got 29 different lines companies across the country, all duplicating things, duplicating back-end services, reinventing the wheel—29 different pricing schemes, which means we maybe have 100,000 different retail accounts from the electricity retailers, because there are so many electricity lines companies.

What we see is that they are very good at investing in expensive poles and wires, but less so in investing in cheaper, smarter—Simon Bridges, this is for you—more innovative options like batteries, energy efficiency and conservation initiatives, and solar. What I would like to do is encourage them to be able to work together, to collaborate, to amalgamate. I would like to give them a requirement that they must consider smarter, more energy-efficient and innovative ways of doing business before investing in traditional poles and wires.

I would like to see a more transparent electricity market. I want to see a competitive market where people are operating on a level playing field, but what we hear very clearly from the smaller retailers is that they do not have the ability to compete because they cannot access the hedge markets in Australia, which limit and lack serious liquidity compared with Australia or the US. What we would make sure we can bring is transparency to the wholesale electricity market, so that those cheaper prices can flow through to retailers. When it comes to pricing, what we see is, instead of focusing on the real issue—which is how we encourage more cost-reflective, real-time pricing, for example, in the lines networks; for example, encouraging what Flick does. The Green Party would like to see the big retailers offer that as a tariff, because that way we can see consumers save money, and we can see the country save tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of carbon.

But what is the Government focused on? Well, Judith Collins announced yesterday that she is going to review the low fixed user tariff. This is the only price signal a consumer faces in the New Zealand electricity market to use electricity more efficiently, to encourage conservation. If we can do that, particularly at the peak, we do not have to burn coal at Huntly, we do not have to burn fracked gas in the middle of the Waikato, because we would have smarter ways of doing business. We want to see inefficiencies reduced, alternatives encouraged, more transparency, and fairer, more realistic pricing.

Just lastly, if we can get them right, we can not only have a more innovative electricity system but we could be saving consumers money—those consumers who we know are going to hospital; who we know, sadly, are dying during winter, those who should be using more power. Also, we could see a cleaner electricity system.

The Green Party has got a vision that we could get to 100 percent renewables. It is affordable, it is achievable, it is eminently desirable, but what do we see under National? We see Huntly continue to burn more coal into the next decade. We see a new, massive application get a consent because climate change could not be considered, and National refused to use the power to consider climate change, which is going to increase our emissions by a full 1 percent at a time when our emissions are already going in the wrong direction. What we see is fewer renewables than we had under Sir Robert Muldoon, fewer renewables than we had in 1990. We could get to 100 percent renewables. This is the Green Party vision: cleaner, cheaper, smarter energy—this is the real innovative approach when it comes to energy.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of my colleague Fletcher Tabuteau to speak on the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I agree with my colleague Gareth Hughes that there is nothing innovative about this bill. Can I just ask—hands up all those inside the House who own an electric vehicle.

💬 Hon Member: Oh, look at all those hands!

Oh my goodness. Put hands down now—hands down now. Hands up all those who own an electric vehicle under $20,000. Right. Hands up all those who were on the select committee who own an electric vehicle. Oh, nobody. Righty-o.

💬 Hon Jacqui Dean: Showing off, Tracey.

And where it is going, Ms Dean—let us get real about the changes inside this bill. The opportunity to travel in a bus lane, which this bill does not actually do—what it does is it gives the council an opportunity to have an argument with the owners of electric vehicles about their ability to travel in bus lanes. That is the first thing. And it will have to be repealed or phased out within a 5-year period, based upon the numbers of electric vehicles (EVs) that are coming.

So, ultimately, it is completely useless. Ultimately, it is completely useless. What electric-vehicle owners actually want is more charging stations. The biggest barriers to people buying electric vehicles are (1) access to second-hand vehicles so they are under $20,000 and (2) distance anxiety—it means: “Can I get from there to there, and can I recharge my vehicle to go from there to there?”.

The North is quite well served, and thank you, Vector and Chargenet.co.nz—thank you very much. But if you go south from Auckland, you cannot go very far. There are no bus lanes in rural New Zealand, and rural New Zealand cannot participate and cannot take advantage of the lower cost of running an electric vehicle, because the ability to charge it up and the amount that it costs to charge up your vehicle are so much less than a petrol-driven vehicle. A bus lane will make no difference to anybody in Northland, but Northland has got the most charging stations. But Northland also has some of our most poor inside New Zealand.

What did this Government decide to do in this bill that regards energy innovation, electric vehicles, and other matters? It decided to let urban dwellers drive in a bus lane only if their council or regulatory body decides that they can do so, and it is not going to do so. Auckland has already indicated that it is highly unlikely that it is going to allow electric vehicles in the bus lanes. Ultimately, the Government has done nothing. Ultimately, with regard to electric vehicles, the Government has done nothing. It has extended the lack of registration, or whatever that fee is, for heavier electric vehicles, but for current and future electric-vehicle owners this does nothing.

Let us get real. New Zealand First will support the bill because there are other bits and pieces inside of it that are better than nothing, but this is not a bill for electric vehicles. There is absolutely no mention—no innovation—with regard to, say, Tesla solar roofing tiles. There is no capacity to expand inside of that industry, or whatever. There is no capacity to expand the charging network, because the Government will support it to happen. There is no capacity to expand and encourage people to purchase electric vehicles. There is no capacity to actually say: “What are we going to do with the electric vehicle batteries once they”—and I will use a bit of EV speak—“get down to 10 bar or 5 bar?”. What that means is the recharging capacity of the battery that is underneath the car.

In other nations, they can take it off and place it on the wall of their wash house or whatever, and they can use solar power to recharge that battery at lower capacity and then run their houses. Where is that innovation? It does not exist inside this bill, and it obviously does not exist inside this Government. So, again, on behalf of my colleague Fletcher Tabuteau, I take a call to say that New Zealand First will support the bill because it is better than nothing. But the word “innovation” should be removed from the title, and probably when we get to the select committee we might just suggest that. And, also, somewhere along the line, “electric vehicles” should probably be removed—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: I think you’ll find it’s been to select committee.

—from the title because it does nothing, Mr Bridges. It does nothing. It is another piece of spin by the Government to suggest to the New Zealand public that it has actually taken this issue seriously. It has not done a thing.

I am not going to go any further. I think I have made my point perfectly clear. We will support the bill because there are bits and pieces that actually make a slight difference, with regard to the secondary networks, but with regard to electric vehicles, let us not kid ourselves and try to kid the New Zealand public. There is nothing in this bill.

I was a little bit concerned about that last speech by Tracey Martin. It was sort of like one of those early versions of electric vehicles. It sort of ran out of puff after 20 kilometres.

I am very pleased to take this call on the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill in this, its second reading. It was a real pleasure to sit on the Commerce Committee. There was actually a lot of robust debate, and, you know, the differences aside, actually it was a very interesting set of discussions. A lot of it focused around probably those tangible elements that we as MPs can identify with, which is cars, how they are going to work in their special vehicle zones—a lot of discussion about how we might identify these things.

💬 Clare Curran: Bus lanes.

Some person over there said “bus lanes”, but, actually, there are more than just bus lanes within the category of special vehicle lanes. In fact, the member is very welcome to come to the great seat of Tāmaki to see some of those.

A lot of the focus easily moves towards where the electric vehicles are going to drive, but I think it is relatively important in this somewhat short contribution to note that the bill actually has four purposes. One, certainly, is around how we better encourage the use of electric vehicles, but one really important one is actually around the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA). Most of you will know that the ads on the television—the very short 20- or 30-second ads that encourage us to think about energy conservation—are funded by a group called EECA. Many people probably do not know what that stands for. That is the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, and this bill, quite importantly, is changing not only its focus, if you will, but, really importantly, how it seeks to get its levy. At the moment the levy for EECA is paid purely through electricity use, and so this bill is expanding how that levy can be sought—importantly, something like gas, if someone is going to use that. So that is, I think, relatively important. As I said, it is a chance to really spread across a variety of areas of how this levy is to be sought. It really is a way to introduce some flexibility and transparency into the sector. I think that is particularly—particularly positive—

💬 Kris Faafoi: Come on, take us to 10.

—particularly positive. Colleagues across the House are very keen that I keep talking for a while, but, you know, this is about energy efficiency and conservation, and so because of that interjection I am going to conserve some energy and allow my colleagues across the House to continue this debate.

The next call is a split call. Julie Anne Genter—5 minutes.

Kia ora. Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. What I want to speak about in this bill has to do with the Government’s spin on electric vehicles, because it is very, very clear that the Minister of Transport, Simon Bridges, would like to give the appearance of supporting a transition to electric vehicles. That is great. I applaud him for having the ambition to at least demonstrate that he is supportive of the idea of electric vehicles by showing up to all the photo opportunities every time a charger station is opened or announced. Of course, his Government had nothing to do with funding them or investing in them.

What is really sad about this bill is that it actually is not going to do anything to make electric vehicles more attractive to people who would like to purchase them. Treasury gave that advice to the Minister and to the Government. It said, very clearly, that the major barrier to people buying electric vehicles is the upfront purchase price, and so unless we have a policy that does something to reduce the expense of buying a new electric vehicle, people are not going to be able to do it. So I think it is a bit disingenuous and a bit hypocritical, really, for the Minister, who is on a very high salary and can afford to buy an electric vehicle himself, to go out there exhorting people and businesses to buy electric vehicles when he has not actually done anything to make it more affordable and realistic for them to make that purchase.

Of course, the worst part of this bill—the one part that we really do not support—is allowing electric vehicles to use bus lanes. That is actually going to be incredibly disruptive to the operation of public transport in our major towns and cities. That is completely counter-productive when we are trying to reduce carbon pollution from transport and we are trying to create cities that are more livable, more affordable, and easier to get around. The facts are that allowing electric vehicles to use bus lanes will make traffic worse for people in the bus lanes and people outside the bus lanes. We have the numbers to back that up. It is funny, because Minister Simon Bridges said to me earlier that the reason Auckland Transport and all the transport planners did not support the policy was that they were left wing. I informed him that in fact—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: And now you wonder why I can’t be honest with you, Julie Anne.

Geometry is not right or left wing, Simon. It is not right or left wing; it is just geometry. And the geometry of it is that buses move many more people than cars do, so buses are a far more efficient way of moving lots of people around towns and cities than individual cars are.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.