Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: I move, That the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by September 2019.

This bill amends the Land Transport Act 1998 to regulate the maximum fee that can be charged by wheel clamp operators and prevents the public being charged excessive fees by imposing a cap of $100 for the removal of the clamp. It provides protection for motorists who have been subject to aggressive tactics from clampers and sets rules that provide greater clarity around wheel clamping to ensure that the requirements are properly enforced and motorists are protected from unscrupulous wheel clamp operators. The fee cap of $100 provides an appropriate deterrent to prevent people from parking on private property without permission and ensures businesses can enforce parking breaches on their premises.

This bill is necessary because wheel clamping is largely unregulated, causing disproportionate financial loss and emotional distress. Wheel clamping has attracted many complaints from the public. I’ve seen letters from motorists who have experienced bullying and standover tactics as well as having to pay up to $200 to $700 in cash within 30 minutes of being clamped. I consider the disproportionate fines being handed out, with the requirement to pay cash on the spot to unclamp a vehicle, as very unfair. The law is currently unclear on how much wheel clampers can charge in fees. Currently, motorists have little incentive to challenge fees, because they don’t know what level of fee is unreasonable or unlawful. There needs to be a greater deterrent for wheel clampers to overcharge motorists. A fee cap will target the problem, but still strike a balance between protecting motorists and allowing business owners to enforce their rights against people who park illegally on their property.

This bill applies to wheel clamping on private property, and the rules are intended for people who use wheel clamping as a parking enforcement method on private property. These people are private operators, who do not have powers under an enactment to enforce parking. The bill is not intended to provide a framework for wheel clamping by enforcement authorities on the public roads system. Our transport legislation already provides a regime for enforcement authorities, such as the police, our councils, and our parking, and they can enforce our parking breaches. I expect these authorities to use their existing powers of enforcement. The bill does not apply where an enactment or bylaw already permits enforcement authorities to clamp—for example, when local councils use wheel clamping to enforce freedom camping. The bill does not authorise anyone to clamp where they have no legal authority to do so—for example, where a wheel clamp operator does not have permission from the business owner to enforce parking at a place of business.

The bill sets a maximum fee for wheel clampers, and they can charge only $100. This fee cap is intended to provide enough of a deterrent for parking breaches on private property while still being able to be a reasonable amount for motorists to pay. Setting the cap in legislation will enable Parliament to consider and to debate it. However, the bill provides for the ability to amend the cap through regulations—if it needs to be updated to take inflation into account, for instance, or other factors in the future. The bill makes it an offence for a wheel clamper to breach the maximum fee. This will be enforced by our police. This will reduce harm to motorists and make it easier for them to dispute the fee when it has been overcharged.

The bill requires clampers to remove a wheel clamp as soon as possible after a motorist has paid their fee. If the wheel clamper does not do so, the motorist is allowed to attempt to remove the clamp, provided that they minimise any damage to the clamp. A wheel clamper must also respond in a reasonable amount of time to remove the clamp from a motorist’s vehicle. This will help to ensure that motorists do not have to wait for hours until the clamp is removed.

In conclusion, we acknowledge that there is a legitimate need to protect private property, but the practice of what has become a cowboy clamping industry is causing significant harm to many of our consumers. This bill strikes the balance between protecting private property rights and not causing unnecessary harm to motorists for parking breaches. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise to support the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill to select committee. I’m sure we’ve all heard or met with people who tell us stories about people they know or what they’ve experienced personally themselves with respect to the behaviour of at least some wheel clamp operators across New Zealand: tales of standover tactics, tales of clamps being applied within moments of people leaving their vehicles, tales of vehicles being clamped while the occupants are still in them, and then, of course, the egregious charges to have one’s own vehicle released. I saw in the regulatory impact statement examples from officials of, in one instance at least, $760 for 30 minutes of parking, or $480 for five minutes of parking.

The public are absolutely certain—I think it does extend beyond a perception, but we can say that the public perceive that this is an unregulated industry, that there are many cowboy-type operators, and that they, the public, particularly the more vulnerable among us, those least able to afford it, are more unfairly targeted or more unfairly subject to this sort of poor behaviour. The Minister Jenny Salesa, when she introduced this bill in this reading, made the statement that there is a lack of clarity in what charges clampers are able to levy. I’d contend that that’s not actually the case, that through the combination of the Fair Trading Act, the law of contract, and the law of trespass, it’s very clear that a private property owner, or the clamper who’s been delegated to manage that parking infringement, can only charge a charge equivalent to the loss or, under trespass, the considered damage to that property. So there is not necessarily a lack of clarity on the extent of those charges.

What I would contend is that there is an enormous hurdle for the user of the vehicle to be able to contest those charges and to ensure that they are only charged appropriately. It would seem that the only two avenues they really have open to them are the disputes tribunal or the court. Not only is that simply impractical given the circumstances but, quite frankly, the clampers have an enormous lever. They have immobilised the person’s vehicle, and they are able to retain that immobilisation until either the charges are paid or the dispute is resolved. Quite frankly, in the real world, the vehicle owner or user has little choice but to accede to their demand for charges on the spot to get their vehicle released.

So we don’t have an issue with action being taken to regulate that behaviour. On the face of it, the bill, which is going to set a maximum charge of $100, looks like it is seeking to apply a level of regulation that is not too heavy-handed but one which will provide clear restrictions on what clampers do, and is seeking at least to find a balance that won’t create a distortion which would occur if the return or the charge for clamping was so low that clampers wouldn’t wish to undertake that enforcement and, instead, a vehicle owner or operator might be subject to far more expensive enforcement, such as towing. So I do acknowledge that the bill is seeking to do that.

I also note that there appears to be—and I’m going to get into the process behind the bill, which is where the issues are that we certainly have. But before I do that, I will just note—because it’s quite telling, really—that in the RIS, in the regulatory impact statement, officials were very clear that the charge that was put forward to Cabinet by the Minister was $50, not $100. Now, the first point I’d make on that is no one, I think, would believe that that would be a charge that would do anything other than drive clampers out, and the distortion that that would create would mean it’d be more likely that people would be paying large towing expenses instead to collect their vehicle and get their vehicle from wherever it’s impounded. But I also note that, clearly, Cabinet schooled the Minister on the real world and instead had him change that capped fee from $50 to $100. That in itself signals what became apparent in the regulatory impact statement: while the intention of the bill is very well-intentioned, the procedure, the process behind it, is an absolute shambles.

Officials noted in their statement that all of the information around the policy thinking and the decision making is anecdotal. There is no hard data, and no hard evidence; it is all anecdote, and, as the saying goes, “Anecdote is not data.” The officials also point out that no formal consultation was undertaken. They go even further. Quite remarkably, they note that they were under significant time constraints and that they would have liked to have undertaken a comprehensive consultation process. That amounts to officials throwing their Minister under the bus—and I hope he recovers soon—because what they are clearly saying is that they were forced to bend over backwards to create a piece of legislation without undertaking the proper policy work, the sort of work that Government agencies should undertake for any legislation before it is introduced into this House.

Instead, the Government is asking Parliament to do their work for them in select committee. The reality is that the Government and their officials don’t know the extent of the problem. They don’t know what the full range or average charges or costs to clampers are; so they can’t possibly know what is the most appropriate maximum cap that won’t see a distortion and a shift towards an expensive towing enforcement instead of clamping, but they’re asking instead for this Parliament to accept this legislation and to do the work in select committee that they should have given their officials time to do.

Just to make this absolutely clear, I am not contesting that the officials sought to do this quickly. It’s quite the opposite. They make it very clear that they would’ve liked more time, and it’s that the Government didn’t give it to them. It’s now coming—I wouldn’t say quite cap in hand, but that’s a good enough expression—to Parliament and asking Parliament, in its select committee, to do the work of its officials, with its officials, admittedly, which they should have done beforehand. We are prepared to do that—we are prepared to do that—but I would note that there is a slightly shortened report-back date that has been signalled when the Minister introduced this bill. It’s a little over four months, by the looks of it. It is doable, of course, but I’d actually encourage the Government, given they want us to do their work for them, to give us sufficient time to do it. I’d also ask that the Minister instruct his officials very clearly that we will look to do the full policy scrutiny in the select committee, that we will look into every aspect that they would’ve liked to have looked into, that we will seek the evidence they would’ve liked to have sought, and that we will seek submissions and consultation with people from across interests: obviously, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs; obviously, other Government agencies; and, of course, people from within relevant sections of the industry.

We will do their work for them, but this is not the way legislation should be undertaken in our Parliament. The Government has a duty to bring robust, well-thought-out, well-researched work, in bills, into the House. They haven’t done so in this case. It is a travesty of the legislative process. It is terrible. Minister Faafoi, who is the responsible Minister, has cultivated something of a reputation in this term of Government as being a very sound pair of hands and a very competent Minister in this portfolio. Well, quite frankly, he’s let himself and the Government down terribly by bringing this bill to the House; not in its intent—its intent is good—but in the lack of robust, proper work done prior to its introduction. We are prepared to stand up and do the Government’s work for them. We ask for them to help us to do the work they should have done before today. We will commend this bill to select committee.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’m very happy to be here today supporting the Hon Kris Faafoi, the Minister responsible for bringing this bill to the House. Wheel clamping has been the scourge of so many of our communities, and predatory behaviour by the wheel-clamping companies has made life a misery. It’s driven shoppers away from retail centres, it’s created untold hardship for people who have fallen foul of the wheel clampers, and this bill sets out to fix that problem.

Clamping, of course, involves sticking a big metal device that immobilises the vehicle by stopping the wheels from turning. This industry is completely unregulated at the moment, and that’s the problem here—it’s unregulated; cowboy clamping firms have, basically, been free to charge whatever they like. There are no rules, there are no regulations, and communities like Henderson in west Auckland, that I represent, have suffered because of this. In fact, their retail centres have been damaged, their reputations sullied, by the behaviour of these clamping companies. Not only is this so-called industry unregulated but it’s meant that the clamping companies have been able to charge totally unreasonable fees for the release of the vehicle. It’s basically a kind of extortion, and the law is completely unclear. The common law doesn’t help much in determining what fees would be reasonable. So there are no incentives, or very few incentives, for clampers to behave in a reasonable way.

Now, after much public debate and campaigning and reports by programmes like Fair Go and other news media, the former Government put in place a code of conduct in 2012. If my memory serves me correctly, it was the Hon Simon Bridges who was the Minister at the time who brought in this voluntary code of conduct. Well, it’s very clear that this kind of light-handed regulatory touch, in this instance, has completely failed. It didn’t do the job that the former Government hoped that it would. Clamping has continued, for the last six years, to be a curse on so many of our communities who have been subject to this kind of predatory behaviour. Some people have been charged as much as $700 to have the clamp removed from the wheel of their car. In my view, this bill strikes the right balance, and it will put an end to the predatory and aggressive behaviour that’s been a feature of this industry.

I want to recall for the House a situation that one of my constituents experienced in Henderson, in west Auckland, in September 2015. A young woman by the name of Ausky Vailalo—her car broke down in a retail car park in Henderson. She phoned her brother to come and collect her one-year-old son, who was in the car with her at the time, and she waited in the family car for roadside assistance. Her brother turned up and parked in a nearby business car-park because the public area where Ausky was waiting was completely full. It was pouring with rain, and Ausky’s brother left his car and walked over to Ausky’s car, and in the minute that he did that, in the pouring rain, to try and rescue his sister and her one-year-old child, the wheel clamper pounced and put the clamp on his car and demanded $200 for the release of that car. The distress that Ausky and her child were put through on that day was completely out of proportion to what had happened and is not atypical of these kinds of situations.

Only in the last two weeks, another constituent contacted me, Terrence Edwards, who told me of a similar story, actually with the same clamping company. His wife Cornelia, four months pregnant, parked in an area—actually, I think, in the same parking area. She stopped in to drop some children’s books back to the library. The wheel clamper was in the car when she pulled up. She went across to the library, only 30 metres or so away, and in the couple of minutes while she was away, they clamped the car. She rang her husband in a distressed state. He tried to talk to the wheel clamper, who was aggressive and indifferent to the plight of Cornelia. They demanded $200 within 90 minutes or they would face an additional $200 fee. This kind of predatory, aggressive behaviour is totally out of proportion to the enforcement of private property rights that I think most of us would agree is part and parcel of regulating private parking in our urban centres.

This bill, which proposes that the fees for clamping, for the release of a car that’s been clamped, be restricted to a maximum of $100 for release, tries to strike the right balance. It recognises that people who own car-parks have a right to be able to ensure that people don’t park in them when they’re not entitled to, but it tries to ensure that shoppers who fall foul of that restriction, either by accident or deliberately, are not subject to unduly onerous charges.

The previous Government did nothing about this, other than a voluntary code of conduct. We said at the time that that was inadequate, and I think that history has proved that we’re right. We do acknowledge that there is a legitimate need for the owners of parking spaces to be able to manage the use of those private parking places, but this bill tries to strike the right balance.

Let me run through some of the provisions in the bill. The person who is clamping cannot charge more than the maximum amount for a parking breach on private land that requires the removal of the wheel clamp. That maximum amount is $100, inclusive of GST. The breach of that $100 maximum is an infringement offence attracting up to $1,000 for an individual and $5,000 for a company, and if it goes to court, it is a fine of up to $3,000 for an individual and up to $15,000 for a company. If a wheel clamp operator has breached the maximum fee, motorists will have the right to recover payments made in excess of that maximum through the normal processes, and that’s likely to be the disputes tribunal. The bill states that the police will be the enforcement agency for these provisions.

It also requires that a wheel clamp operator must remove a wheel clamp as soon as is reasonably practicable after the fee is paid, or on request of the motorist if no fee is charged. If the wheel clamper fails to remove the clamp as soon as is reasonably practicable, the motorist may remove or arrange the removal of the clamp, and will be immune from any civil or criminal liability.

So this bill sets out to right a wrong. It sets out to protect shoppers and people who may fall foul of the wheel clampers who are acting on behalf of the owners of private property. It aims, I think, to somewhat level the playing field between the wheel-clamping industry and the towing industry, which is regulated and has licensing provisions, a fit and proper person test, and a number of other provisions in the transport rules. My hope is that this bill will restore a situation where people using our town centres and our shopping centres will no longer be subject to this kind of predatory behaviour.

I’m glad to hear that the National Opposition is supporting this bill to select committee, and I look forward to seeing what kind of scrutiny the select committee will bring to this bill and how they may be able to improve it. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on this bill, which the National Party is supporting at the first reading in order to spend some time at the select committee delving into the details. Obviously, nobody’s very keen on having their wheels clamped, and so there’d be widespread enthusiasm for doing something further about it, following the voluntary code that the previous Government instilled.

The question is what is the best solution. I suppose our concern is that the Government’s come riding in and, obviously, a message went out from the ninth floor that “We need more legislation in the House quickly—pronto.” Mr Faafoi leapt up and said, “Well, here’s one, and we’ll stick this out.”, and what we’ve seen with the regulatory impact statement is that officials have signalled that the procedures and the development of this legislation is somewhat shambolic.

There has been no formal consultation. Generally, how legislation is put together is that somebody says, “There’s a problem here.” and the officials go away and say, “Well, let’s talk to the people who are engaged in the industry.”—in this case, it would be the people who own car-parks and who have the very real problem of having people parking in them when they shouldn’t or not paying, and so not having access to the car-parks because there are people who are in there that aren’t actually paying or that shouldn’t be in there. You’d also talk to consumers who have been affected by this, you’d talk to all the players involved in the particular industry, and then you’d get a realistic idea of what the options are. But none of that happened.

They’ve just plunged in and, almost in a kind of Keystone Kops sort of fashion, the Minister has romped in, saying, “Well, I think we should put a cap of $50 in.” And then, around the Cabinet table, they’ve almost had a bidding process and somebody’s said, “No, actually, I think $100 is better.” Someone else probably piped up, “No, $150 is better.” And then somebody—probably Winston Peters—said, “OK. Well, we’ll split the difference between $150 and $50.”, and $100 is where we’ve wound up. So that’s a very kind of amateur way to go about legislating.

What we know is that we don’t have any idea of what the consequences would be. It might well be that $100 isn’t sufficient to cover the cost of the wheel clamping, effectively, and so the net result will be that people who own car-parks and who find that people are illegally parking in them might have the option of putting a ticket on the window wipers, and nobody might pay that ticket; so that’s not a realistic option. The only other option they’ve got is getting in a tow truck, and that creates even more costs, potentially, down the line. That’s the basic thing we’ve got to juggle. So we are prepared, obviously, to have that conversation teased out at the select committee process.

The only point we would make is that, generally, you would expect a good Government to have made a realistic effort before they introduced the bill to the House to try and understand the real trade-offs in this situation and come up with some clear analysis and detailed studies into the scope of the problem and what the potential conflicts would be before they introduced the legislation in the House. But we’ll have to do that process through the select committee process, and I hope that we’ll get some good, realistic assessment of the issues as it’s carried through.

I hope that the Government is prepared to listen so that you can come up with something that is actually practical and helps New Zealanders and that helps avoid the extreme examples that do get thrown up in this situation, so that people can have a little bit more confidence that they’re not going to be treated in an arbitrary and unfair manner in a car-parking situation. So, on that basis, we’ll be interested to see how it works in the select committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Well, I think over the years, this year has been blessed with people who have sat on the Government benches who have seen a practice that is wrong and have sought to right it. Over the years, MPs have on occasion taken note of the scurrilous activities of a sector in the business community who sought to take advantage of their position and to use undue, unfair practices to cause distress—both financial and emotional stress—to members of the public.

In the past, there have been issues like tow truck drivers. In those days, I recall when there was a bit of a wild west out there for tow truck drivers, and the Government of the day intervened and decided to regulate it. There have been issues around landlords, and we still have these conversations even today about the unscrupulous practices of certain landlords who don’t understand their responsibility to their tenants. We’ve had debates in this House around unscrupulous moneylenders. This is an issue that this Government is particularly focused on as well, and I know that the last Government tried in some ways to deal with those matters. We’ve had the issues of rogue security guards, or “bouncers”, as they were called back in those days, and Governments accepted the need to regulate and do something about it.

Today, we are dealing with rogue wheel clampers. Being blessed and living in the provinces, myself, in the lovely Wairarapa—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Yep.

—in Carterton, I can say that we are a little immune, Mr McAnulty and I, from the things that plague the city streets of metropolitan New Zealand, because we don’t have wheel clampers in our district—not that I’ve ever seen them, Mr McAnulty.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: We don’t have a National MP either.

We don’t have a resident constituency MP either, Mr McAnulty, but that’s off the subject so I won’t go there.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Oh, go on.

Oh well, later. But we have listened—New Zealand First has listened—

💬 Hon Jacqui Dean: You lost, mate—you lost.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order!

—to the concerns and the stories that we’ve heard and the distress. We’ve noted the distress felt by families as they’ve not only come back to find their vehicle clamped but have been confronted with a bill of, in some cases, $600 to $750—

💬 Mark Patterson: Outrageous.

—which seems to us to be quite outrageous. Mark Patterson, my colleague, is quite right—it’s quite outrageous. I know that down in Gore and down in Clutha, they don’t have wheel clampers down there either, do they? No, they wouldn’t tolerate that sort of behaviour.

So there’s a lot that could be said—and I think most of it has already been said by the preceding speakers—but this Government does believe that the practices have been unfair. They do believe that they have inflicted harm upon citizens and have caused distress. Charges of around $700 for a family on an average income of $45,000 a year is quite stiff, and I seriously have no idea how some families in Auckland would ever pay such a fine to get their car released.

So I think it’s entirely appropriate that this Government has stepped forward and decided that we’re going to cap those charges. I note that for those who might be concerned that that’s too low and that they’re not able to recover their costs—for the operating costs of their business that might be too low—I do note that the bill allows for changes, in time, through regulation. But right now this is a case of getting the bill to select committee; letting a select committee do its work; recognising that it is time, it’s over, for these people and their quite unscrupulous behaviour; and it is time to bring an end to it.

So New Zealand First is quite proud to support this legislation through its first reading and off to select committee, looking forward to seeing the work of the committee, looking forward to seeing the bill come back to the House, looking forward to seeing the end of this behaviour, which is thoroughly unacceptable in a market which is—it is absolute profiteering; it goes beyond that. For some of us, we cannot really get our head around how one could be clamping the car of some of the families in Auckland, in particular, who struggle to pay the rents that they pay, who might have two or three jobs just to keep their head above water, and then are slammed with the $700 bill. I just simply can’t get my head around that sort of practice and that sort of behaviour. We think it’s unfair, unreasonable, and it should be brought to an end in this piece of legislation.

I want to congratulate the Hon Kris Faafoi. He does tremendous work both in this portfolio and in his civil defence portfolio. I want to congratulate him for bringing this legislation to the floor and we look forward to supporting it further in the third reading. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a very short call on the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill, clamping down on wheel clamping.

I can remember watching an occasional news story about these predatory-type, parasitic wheel-clamping types and watching the poor motorists being caught out and having their vehicle clamped, having the police arrive, trying to reason with the clampers, and watching the hopelessness and helplessness of the police that attended wanting to help the motorist get the clamp off and having no teeth and no legislation to deal with the problem. So we will support this. I see that the voluntary code didn’t work, and there are a couple of examples here. I’ve seen half-an-hour parking and you’ve got a fine of $760 to get his clamp removed, which is ridiculous—bordering on blackmail, really, or extortion—and $480 for five minutes. So I note that that clamping target has been set at $100, but the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) wanted it at $50 and up to $100. I think that’s pretty reasonable.

We’ll support this through to a first reading so that the select committee can scrutinise the bill, but I think there’s too much rushed legislation through the House going through at the moment with this Government, and having to have shortened select committees, and select committees having to do the work that should have been done before the bill was brought to the House. So we’ll support it going through the select committee, but it would have been nice to see a little bit more sort of preparation work done on this bill.

I note that MBIE, in their regulatory impact statement, have said there’s a lack of evidence of the scale of the problem and not enough of a problem to warrant Government intervention. That’s MBIE’s findings. So maybe a little bit more work could’ve been done in that area, but anecdotally there is a problem, I’d imagine, I’ve seen from news reports. So we’ll support that. I see there they’ve got an inclusion in there that the police can fine clampers that don’t comply $1,000 and companies $5,000, and if it goes through to court, it’s $3,000 for the person and $15,000 for the company. So I think that’s good. I like that part of the proposal: that the police can turn up and issue an instant fine for clampers that don’t play ball.

I also note that there’s a provision in there to permit motorists to remove the clamps if the clampers don’t remove them, with no civil or criminal penalty or liability; I think that’s another clause in the bill that’s well worth keeping. So, yep, we look forward to it being under the scrutiny of the select committee and going before the House. Hopefully, some good legislation will come out of it; so I commend this bill to the House.

E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It is a pleasure to follow the one and only Matt King, “King of the North”.

I just wanted to add the Green Party’s support to this piece of legislation—a fantastic piece of legislation by this Government, which I would say strikes the balance. It strikes the balance between private property rights and the currently quite unnecessary harm caused to motorists through parking breaches. It’s all about clarifying the law and creating these regulations, because what we have seen, and as has been alluded to by a number of speakers prior to myself, is that there is a huge amount of horror stories that have made it to the news in the past few years: the likes of cars being clamped while people dart into the shops for 30 seconds, their kids still in the car, and the thousands of dollars that these clampers, these cowboys, have tried to charge them while they have been in the shops away from their car for a moment.

So, in this short call, I’d just like to state that we think that this is an incredibly important piece of legislation in moving forward protection of consumers but also about ensuring that we actually level the playing field and create a situation where there is proportionate enforcement and where our consumers and actually the companies that are operating this wheel-clamping enforcement can have clarity around what the kinds of behaviours are going to be when it comes to this practice of wheel clamping.

We are very much looking forward to hearing what comes from the folks who come to the select committee and are interested in seeing the developments as they progress in the legislation, potentially in the committee of the whole House stage. But, at this point in time, the Green Party is incredibly proud to be backing the Government in introducing this cap of $100, because we would state that it does actually disproportionately impact those in the lower socio-economic brackets, and that is typically where—we’ve seen, at the very least, in the news reports—this kind of cowboy behaviour is largely undertaken. We commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I too rise to take a short call tonight on this Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill. I was really hoping this debate was going to be one of those ones where everyone sort of stands up and declares their transgressions but, unfortunately, I’ve been disappointed so far.

💬 Hon Jacqui Dean: You can.

Well, I will, Jacqui. I actually haven’t had my wheel clamped, I’ll tell my colleagues on this side, so I can’t, unfortunately, speak from a position of experience. But I am aware, obviously—as we all are—that there are some, frankly, outrageous charges being levied: $400, $500, $600, $700 in some cases. There have also been instances where people have had their wheels clamped quite inappropriately, where even, for example, someone might be sitting in their vehicle and one of these cowboys—let’s call them cowboys because they are—comes along and clamps their vehicle. For many people, of course, their car is their livelihood and for others, particularly in regions like mine and rural areas, it is the only real means of transport; there isn’t a lot of public transport in some parts of the country. And so, without their car, if they can’t pay the $500, $600, or $700 on the spot, that puts them without their vehicle and that is very much a disproportionate punishment, I guess, for what is a minor crime of parking in a park where perhaps they shouldn’t.

So we will be supporting this bill tonight. We support its intent. As Brett Hudson has commented earlier this afternoon, we do have some concerns around the wording and so I hope that it gets a good hearing at select committee. Thank you.

I understand this is a split call. I call the Hon Meka Whaitiri—five minutes.

Madam Assistant Speaker, tēnā koe. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. I’m proud to take a call on this bill, the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill. Can I first commend both Minister Faafoi and Minister Twyford for addressing an area of concern, and it’s the job of, particularly, Ministers of commerce to address the concerns around unnecessary wheel-clamping and not having clear regulations or sets of rules to guide when it’s appropriate to use it and when it’s not.

This bill is addressing a concern that previous speakers have raised from around the country. I come from the East Coast, and I can honestly say that we don’t have a lot of wheel clamping up there, but probably for some of the metropolitan areas where parking is at a premium you would find more wheel clampers. But, seriously, the $100 fine and the regulations to strengthen when it can apply and can’t apply must be commended. This is the first reading, and, of course, people who have concerns that maybe $100 is too much or not enough, or that some of the regulations around it aren’t strong enough or are too broad, have the opportunity to come before the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I do encourage folks who have an interest in this to make submissions.

There were some comments earlier—even though the Opposition are supporting this bill—and some concerns around how this bill has come to bear from officials’ reports. Looking at the report myself, particularly from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), the concerns in their own report—and I do note that the industry themselves have issues—they talk about unclear regulation and unreasonable fees. They talk about intimidating and unfair behaviour by wheel-clamp operators, and a lack of opportunity for appeal before paying the release fee. So the officials have advised that we have an issue in this area, and this bill is attempting to address those issues that MBIE officials have raised.

It’s also something much needed by people who probably know about cars a bit more than some of the members in this House. The Automobile Association, on 22 August 2018, cautiously welcomed today’s announcement from the Government to rein in wheel clampers by regulating a maximum clamping penalty of $100, but it believes more needs to be done to regulate the industry. There was also a quote from The Dog and Lemon Guide, talking about “Most wheel-clampers are parasites. While it’s great that the government has limited the amount they can charge, there’s still nothing to stop these crooks blackmailing ordinary motorists.”

This bill is to address an issue that many see needs addressing. Like I said previously, it’s an opportunity to examine it through the select committee process and ensure that the bill fits the concerns that not just motorists but consumers themselves have raised for several years. This is an opportunity to address the concerns around whether it’s appropriate to charge people $470 before they can get their clamps removed, or $700—and we’ve heard the stories in this House in debating this particular bill.

So I support this bill, as I’ve heard all members in the House have. We will have the opportunity to robustly scrutinise it through the select committee. It is an opportunity for folks to come and have their say—and I look forward to the submitters coming to our select committee—and to thoroughly scrutinise it, and to have the opportunity to present it back to this House for its second reading. I commend this bill to the House.

I apologise for an earlier sort of confusion as to my rise to take a call. I was under the impression that I was going straight after Mr Falloon, but obviously I wasn’t; it was a split call after Meka Whaitiri. So it’s a pleasure to rise to speak after her, and I have to say I am in support of my colleagues on this side of the House.

I think that as, earlier, Mr Falloon talked about the experiences of some of us who have actually been clamped or not, I have to declare that I have not been clamped, but I have had my car towed once. We know what that feels like, to pay a big fine after realising that your car was parked in the wrong place—not yours, Madam Assistant Speaker, but mine—and actually having to pay a fine. But to actually have a car clamped on a private property—I have also had a situation where people have blocked my driveway and I was unable to get out, and I wished I could clamp that car but I couldn’t, and you have that feeling.

So it will be a great opportunity for us to sit in select committee and hear people’s stories about the clamping and what their experiences are, but it would seem to make sense that we actually limit the amount of the fine that people pay. It seems an exorbitant amount of money to charge someone $760 for 30 minutes of parking, or, for five minutes, $480. I think we shouldn’t actually prevent people in a private property from actually doing what they like, but, having said that, we should actually set some guidelines as to how much they can charge.

One of the concerns that I do actually have in relation to this bill is that the officials have not done a lot of consultation in relation to this particular bill as to the size of the problem. I think it will be a good opportunity for us as a select committee to realise that. It seems that the select committee will be doing the job of the Government when we actually get this through select committee. Having said that, I look forward to the discussions that we will have in our select committee, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, and it looks like I’m the last speaker before dinner, so I’ll be in a rush, because that’s very important—as is this bill. Can I just say that this is more good news from this side of the House, and I am the good news speaker: every time I’m in the House, I’m talking about good things, and so this is yet another one of those. I heard some negativity. That’s normal—that’s from the other side. The only negativity I saw was the wheel-clamping code of conduct, signed by none other than Simon Bridges as the consumer affairs Minister, about a voluntary wheel-clamping code of conduct. It didn’t work, and that should be the only negative thing being spoken about in this House this evening, because this is all good news.

Can I just talk about fairness, and this underpins, I think, this party’s values around fairness, because this has been completely unfair. Anyone I talk to about clamping, the first thing they say is “This is so unfair. It’s so nasty. It’s so mean.” But that’s not this side of the House, and we don’t do those sorts of things. This, first and foremost, will bring a big, big smile to those people who actually don’t do something that’s worthy of such a nasty act and such an unfair act. There are simply other things to do.

When I looked at this code of practice for who was involved from when the Opposition leader was promoting this, it was never going to work, and so that’s why we needed to do something far more practical. People were given the sense of “If this happens, how much will it cost?” It’s not up to $700 or more, not some confusing process, but a capped fee. So congratulations to Minister Faafoi, who I think has worked extremely hard on putting together something with the sector. So that’s important, to bring people along with you when you do these sorts of things. They’ll be thinking about the financial loss, not the fairness. It’s all about the dollars for them. But this is about treating Kiwis decently and in a way where it doesn’t disadvantage those people unnecessarily.

So we’ve heard how it’s unregulated. That’s a disgrace, and now it’s going to be sorted once and for all. I know that the Minister talked about receiving literally hundreds and hundreds of letters from people who have experience, and the words that came up were “bullying” and “stand-over tactics”. That’s outrageous. The people of New Zealand shouldn’t be treated like that, particularly, in many cases, when people were simply unsure. I hear words like “People are unsure. They get treated unfairly.”, and that’s not good enough.

This, of course, happens on a private property. Just behind my electorate office, in the world-famous suburb of Newtown, there is a bit of this that goes on, and I have sometimes thought maybe I need a wheel clamp to sort out some illegal parkers on private property, but I haven’t had to go as far as that. I know the person who owns the land. He said to me, “Well, the coalition Government are doing something around this space. What are my options?” I said, “Look, take the human decency line: find out who the owner is locally and just talk to them.” Sometimes communication is far better than putting a big yellow thing on a tyre. That maximum fee, I know, will make people happy.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to pick up where we left off from before the dinner break on this fine piece of legislation being put forward by the Government—or so you would think, anyway.

But, unfortunately, we have a few wee concerns about this particular piece of legislation. We will support it at this first reading and see it go through to select committee, but there are a few aspects that are a little untidy. Quite frankly, we would have expected the Minister Kris Faafoi and his team to have done a bit more homework on this.

Look, we have no concern around the fact that wheel-clamping activity happens. Yes, there’s an issue around that. It’s not regulated. We need to put some controls in place around it to ensure that the clampers can maintain their property rights, because that’s an important aspect to consider in this. But, of course, it’s the structure around how we do that, and that’s where we’re seeing this piece of legislation proposing fees—perhaps $50, perhaps $100, or perhaps more—settling somewhere around $100, we think, but that might change through the select committee process because, actually, there hasn’t been much work done in the background to understand what the drivers are for that or what an appropriate setting would be.

And one of the other areas that I’d just like to highlight in my remaining few seconds, it would appear, is that the legislation shows—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise. It would appear that the time clock is—you’ve got about 8 minutes, 30 seconds.

Oh, thank goodness. I thought I’d whipped through 10 minutes so quickly. So one of the aspects mentioned in here talks about the clampers having to unclamp the wheel within a reasonable time after the fine has been paid, but no definition of what a reasonable time might be. And, of course, that then is open to interpretation, and, of course, you could then see that litigated through the courts.

So I appreciate that there’s the expectation that fines will treble should it go through the court process and be awarded duly off the back of that, but that’s an area that I think we could see tidied up, as well as some further work done around understanding the drivers in behind this. So those are a couple of key points I’d like to see the select committee picking up, and I know Mr Hudson mentioned earlier that it’s a hard-working committee and will do the work that the Minister should already have done, but I look forward to seeing that progressing through, and then we’ll consider it in due course for the second reading. Thank you.

I always enjoy coming into this House and speaking on bills that both sides of the House agree on, but one thing that I noticed is that the National Party just can’t help themselves. They have to complain about something. What a bunch of sad sacks. Here we are with a bill that makes sense, a bill that addresses the issues that they stand here today and say that they care about—the unfair targeting and unfair application of a fine through wheel clamping. They can’t just stand up and say, “Good on the Government for doing something that we didn’t do when we were in Government. We will support this bill. We will look forward to working constructively with them at select committee.”

Oh no—no, no, no. They have to have a whinge. They have to have a moan. They have to complain about the $100 fine that’s outlined quite clearly. And you’ve got the likes of Paul Goldsmith fabricating some story that may or may not have happened, a conversation that could have happened between the two. Tim van de Molen cracked on to that as well. What is the case is that the hard-working Hon Kris Faafoi has delivered a solution to an issue that is plaguing this country—the unfair treatment of cowboy clampers coming along and putting an unfair fine on those that happen to have been caught.

What we say in this bill—and it will go through select committee, and it will have the scrutiny applied to it, like every other bill that goes through it, because that, of course, is the select committee process—not if you listen to the National Party. That, of course, is something that they say the Minister should have done. So perhaps I wonder, colleagues: should we do away with select committees, if that’s the approach that the National Party want to take? Is that what they are suggesting, perhaps? I’m sure it’s not. What I think is the case is that they just can’t help themselves. They’re being a wee bit petty. There’s a bill here that they support, but they can’t bring themselves to say it. But I have no hesitation. This is a great bill, and I have no hesitation in commending it to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.