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 second time.

Our Government is committed to protecting consumers from predatory and unreasonable behaviour. We’re strengthening consumer protections across a range of different areas and issues, one of which is private parking enforcement. The Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs engages and listens to a range of people, including people who have been unfairly clamped and intimidated, as well as business owners who are frustrated with people parking where they shouldn’t. It’s therefore important that this bill strikes the right balance between those two interests. It does this by amending the Land Transport Act to set a maximum wheel-clamping fee of $100 that can be charged for a parking breach. It may seem unusual that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs is responsible for this bill which amends transport legislation. However, problems related to wheel clamping are a consumer issue, and I’m certainly pleased that something is being done about it.

The bill does the following. It seeks a maximum cap that wheel-clamp operators can charge. This can be amended through regulations, if necessary, in the future. It requires a wheel-clamp operator to respond to a motorist and remove a clamp in a reasonable period, and it makes it an offence to charge more than a maximum fee or to fail to remove a wheel clamp. We also plan to allow for infringement notices to be issued on the spot to enable efficient, timely enforcement action. These will be enforced by police, and the bill provides additional powers for police to carry out enforcement. The provisions of this bill are intended to apply to private operators who enforce parking on private property. It doesn’t apply to any agencies that have the authority to enforce parking under transport legislation, like councils or police.

I’d like to thank members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and particularly the chair, for their consideration and improvement to this bill. There was a thorough debate at the select committee. The committee received 25 written submissions from interested stakeholders and parties on the bill, and I’d like to thank all of those who took the time to submit.

The vast majority of submitters supported the bill, but in saying that, there were also suggestions for amendments. The key points from submitters were on the level of the fee cap and whether the bill should introduce some additional requirements, such as that around signage. I note that some submitters really wanted to see some mandatory standards requiring signs to be displayed in car-parks, and what these signs have to warn consumers about. These submitters may be disappointed that the bill doesn’t include this. There are already regulation-making powers in our legislation which will allow this to happen without needing to amend the legislation, so this could certainly be something that we look at in the future, if required. In the meantime, passing this bill will be a positive step forward towards ensuring that consumers are protected when they are confronted with wheel clamping.

Of course, the key thing which this bill does is to set a fee cap of $100, which can be amended in the regulations. I know that there was a lot of debate about this at the select committee, both among committee members and submitters. Some submitters said that a fee cap should be lower—as low as $50—while the wheel-clamping companies that submitted said that it should be higher, or that there shouldn’t be a cap at all. So where could we go to from there? Some said it should be higher; others said that it should be lower.

It seems like the $100 cap that was in the bill as introduced is probably the most balanced approach. It will provide enough of a deterrent to people who might otherwise park where they shouldn’t, while also ensuring that people don’t get charged ridiculously high amounts when they’ve only been parking for a short time. It’s worth noting that clamping often happens not where someone has left their car parked for four hours, but, in some cases, where they have parked for only minutes before they’ve been clamped. A higher fee cap would be disproportionate and unreasonable in these cases.

A potential consequence of having this fee cap is that it might force some operators to have to rethink their business models. This is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, some of them may choose to use breach notices more often because this can be a cheaper method which doesn’t have to involve any confronting situations. It may mean that operators and business owners will focus more on deterring people from parking by putting up clear and visible signage to avoid having to take enforcement action later. If the fee cap does drive some of the rogue operators currently charging extortionate rates out of the market, well, I’m sure we’d all agree that’s not a terrible thing either.

The committee has recommended some useful improvements which will ensure the workability of the bill. Some submitters said that the bill should specify a time frame for a wheel-clamp operator to respond to a motorist. As introduced, the bill provided that an operator has to be reasonably available to respond to a request to remove a wheel clamp. An operator also has to remove the wheel clamp as soon as reasonably practicable after a fee is paid. I understand members of the committee were interested in how more clarity could be provided around what time frame might be considered reasonable here. It was something that the Minister was also interested in.

The committee has recommended the inclusion of a new regulation-making power to set out criteria to take into account when considering whether a wheel-clamp operator has responded to a clamped motorist within a reasonable time frame. This power will enable the creation of regulations, if necessary, to provide guidance if there do happen to be disputes about what is reasonable. This is a great addition, and it has the potential to provide more certainty to motorists, wheel-clamp operators, and the police, who will be enforcing these requirements. The bill also clarifies that consumers can go to the disputes tribunal to seek remedies.

Can I once again thank the committee for its careful consideration of the bill and for making these improvements. Strengthening protections where there are obvious problems for consumers is an important matter to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, hence the progression of this bill. There has been a clear problem when it comes to overzealous wheel-clamping and extortionate fees being charged to consumers to have their cars released. I trust that the changes in this bill will provide a fairer system of private parking enforcement.

Ultimately, parking enforcement needs to be carried out in a reasonable and responsible manner. The bill will strike the right balance, I believe, between protecting motorists while ensuring that businesses have the tools to prevent people from parking where they shouldn’t. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As Minister Nanaia Mahuta has said, the Transport and Infrastructure Committee has made some useful amendments to this bill. While committees often do that, the point for this committee and this bill is that the committee had to make these changes because the Government hadn’t done the work prior to the introduction of the bill. We know that, and we know that for a fact, because the officials threw the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs under a bus by putting in their regulatory impact statement that they didn’t have sufficient time to get any robust sort of evidence base for this bill in the first place—an admission that it’s all based on anecdote. While we might all share and have experienced stories of people being preyed upon by some rogue clampers, that does not forgive nor excuse a Government for not doing what it should have done in the first place.

So it fell upon the committee to do the Government’s work for it, and the committee did a very good job, but there were some things, naturally—those holes that come from poor preparation. So there were holes to be filled. For instance, the bill is only intended to apply to private parking arrangements, but it required, therefore, to have a definitional aspect to exclude road-controlling authorities such as territorial authorities, which was supposed to have been done by the definition of “road”. But the committee felt it was important that that was clarified, and recommended some amendments to clause 4 to do just that.

Similarly, it also had to make it clear that the provisions also wouldn’t apply for instances of wheel clamping authorised by other enactments such as, for instance, freedom camping. The committee heard and understood that there was a need to ensure that the cap didn’t override parties’ rights to argue and seek potential remedies through the disputes tribunal. So it makes it very clear that while the cap of $100 for the parking infringement itself stands even in a disputes tribunal process, there are potential areas where parties may seek remedies for wrongdoing or inappropriate behaviours, such as, for instance, where a party that has been clamped and having not, obviously, paid for the unclamping wilfully damages the clamp, damages it more than needed for removal, or damages it without having paid the infringement. So the amendment is required to ensure that the cap wouldn’t override fair and reasonable processes for people to seek remedies.

There was also the discussion about the requirement for the clamper to be “reasonably available”. This was something of a vexed discussion, because while, ultimately, the language can be used that the committee recommended a regulation-making power, I can assure you that not all committee members wanted to do that. Some of us have a view that there are already more than enough regulations in this country and that simply adding more of them as a legislative convenience is not what this Parliament or any Parliament should be looking to do. However, after a protracted discussion with officials, we had to accept that there was not a workable way of sufficiently limiting what “reasonably available” would mean. For instance, it is quite reasonable to expect that if the clamping took place within moments of the vehicle being left and the occupants then came and paid their fee moments later, the clamper would still be somewhere nearby, but, equally, you cannot predict that anything like that will be the case often, if at all. So the committee did accept that while, as I say, not all members wanted the regulation-making power, a regulation-making power was going to be the only feasible option for this particular circumstance.

So at the end of that process, we have agreement on the committee report and the deliberation. We will have agreement still at the second reading to support this bill, but I reiterate that the select committee was forced to do the work of Government because the Government was, quite frankly, too lazy to have done it itself. That was written in the regulatory impact statement by officials—that they hadn’t been given sufficient time to do the work. Therefore, they hadn’t been able to find any evidence, and the entire bill and its premise was based on anecdote. But that’s the feel-good way of this Government in wanting to do something for the sake of doing something—wanting to do something to make it look like they were actually providing some new legislation, instead of simply passing the previous Government’s legislation. So the committee had to beat it into a bit of shape because, as a Government, they couldn’t do it themselves.

However, in saying that, we have all witnessed or heard stories of predatory behaviour by some rogue clampers. We do accept and agree that it is appropriate to take some action to limit that, so we will support this bill in second reading.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a good, important, and sensible bill. On the face of it, this bill does not appear to be that heavy, but this bill touches upon a very important area which has been ignored and neglected so far. The purpose of this bill—nine years of neglect—is to protect motor vehicle users from the unreasonable fees charged by some operators of immobilising devices such as wheel clamps. But the use of those devices, including wheel clamps, is unregulated. Many submitters such as New Zealand Automobile Association (AA) and Consumer New Zealand have long called for regulatory controls on this activity. So this bill is a positive development and will help to provide certainty for both vehicle users and car-park operators.

I congratulate the Ministers: the Hon Kris Faafoi, who introduced this bill, and also the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, who contributed a second reading speech just now. The Government is committed to protecting consumers from predatory and unreasonable behaviour, and we are strengthening consumer protections across a range of different issues and areas.

Parking has never been a trivial matter. Rather, it is a core element of motoring and mobility. In its submission, the New Zealand AA put it in a very vivid and scholarly fashion—and I quote—“All vehicle journeys begin and end with a stationary car-park. Parking is critical to a functioning economy, facilitating the distribution of goods and services and facilitating access to employment, shopping, recreation, and other [fundamental and] essential activities.”

Results from the New Zealand AA’s quarterly rolling surveys show that 7.9 percent of its members have received a parking ticket in the last six months, and how many members do they have? They have 1.7 million members. So this is not an insignificant number, which means a large number of its members would have had some issues with a parking ticket. Wheel clamping is particularly unpopular with AA members and, I reckon, with the general public as well, who often find themselves in a situation that they cannot control—helpless and vulnerable—and this area is unregulated.

The Transport and Infrastructure Committee received and considered 25 submissions from interested groups and individuals. I acknowledge the committee. I have only recently joined the committee, and it gives me great pleasure to join my fellow committee members from the Justice Committee, Matt King and Chris Bishop. We all survived from that select committee. Politicising issues can be a matter for that committee, but certainly not for this committee, and certainly not for this particular bill. Taking a call in this bill’s second reading has given me a sense of exercising the politician’s art of arriving late but claiming all the credit. I acknowledge the committee and chairperson Darroch Ball, and I thank officials, advisers, and submitters.

There were some interesting issues that the committee discussed while considering the bill.

First of all, signage. At the moment there are no standards, and the AA is of the view that this bill could and should go a little bit further by regulating minimum signage standards for the operators of privately owned public car-parks. A common cause of this so-called unauthorised parking is due to inadequate signage. It is not fair to simply penalise those motor vehicle users simply due to inadequate signage.

Secondly, those penalties are harsh and, to a large extent, disproportionate to the offence.

Thirdly, for motor vehicle users—getting frustrated aside—there’s no way for them to challenge the penalty, and that brings us to the next point, which is the legitimacy of wheel clampers. From a number of complaints, we can tell that those wheel clampers are often casually dressed and in unmarked vehicles. This would have some flow-on negative effect on pretty much all law enforcement officers.

Lastly, the grace period. The New Zealand AA, Consumer New Zealand, and Wilson Parking New Zealand submitted that this bill should include a requirement for operators to apply a 10-minute grace period before applying those devices to a vehicle. I agree. Such an approach would help to protect motor vehicle users in that situation from overzealous operators.

Given the practice of this sector is not regulated, there is no meaningful way at all to gather sensible data. It is difficult and unfair to monitor or attend the situation, and nor would it help to develop policy interventions to provide guidance or correct any market failures.

This is a good bill. Thank you.

Madam Speaker, it’s a pleasure. It’s why I came to Parliament, to speak on these sorts of bills: the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill. A big shout-out to the insomniacs out there. It sets a few rules around wheel clamping to get rid of the cowboys. There’s not going to be a Facebook post about me on this one, that’s for sure. One thing—

💬 Michael Wood: No, there never is.

Oh, that hurts—that hurts. I’m on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee with Raymond Huo, and we did some great work. I wouldn’t say it was one of the major bits of legislation that this Government’s brought around, but, hey look, setting up a $100 maximum was an issue. There was only one submitter—one poor wheel-clamper—who came in and made a submission that $100 is not enough, and I acknowledge that in some cases a $100 limit is going to put some wheel clampers out of business.

I’m a former owner of a business that had people illegally parking out the front of my shop. I really wish that I had had the opportunity to clamp some of them myself.

We came to a figure of $100. I didn’t agree with it, but we’re on a select committee and we all had a vote, and I lost the vote. I would have made it a little bit more than that just to keep some of them in business. But the rules around it needed to be put in place. There is some good TV about wheel clampers, with rogue ones causing grief and charging a lot of money and acting illegally and without justification. So this bill does cover that.

I like the fact that we’ve included in there that if a wheel-clamping operator refuses or is not available to remove the clamp, there is a facility in there for the vehicle owner to be able to remove the clamp themselves and not be liable, as long as they minimise damage. I also like the fact that police can be involved. It gives them powers enforceable by police. In the past, police have turned up and not been able to deal with the situation. This gives them the authority to deal with those problem situations.

So everything’s been well traversed. It’s another piece of major legislation by this Government. I commend the bill to the House.

I’m not too sure why Mr King isn’t taking this piece of legislation very seriously, because it is very serious for all of those business owners that it affects, and not only that but all of those victims of the cowboy vigilante clampers that are out there. Not only that, but what he has just told them—I hope they’re watching—is that he didn’t care very much about their submissions when they came forward. They not only came forward and gave oral submissions but there were a number of written submissions describing what they went through, the intimidation that they went through, the tactics that they went through, and the issues that they went through from these cowboy clampers.

So, you know, New Zealand First is taking this very seriously. I want to thank the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and especially all the advisers to the committee too, because even though on the face of it it should have been quite a simple bill and piece of legislation to go through, we actually found—as the committee should do—some issues through it and some unforeseen issues that were opened up through the attempt to curb the cowboy clampers through this piece of legislation.

I’d just like to mention something that Brett Hudson said, actually, which was that the committee was forced to do something. I certainly, as the chair, was not forced to do anything, and I know that all of the other members of the committee on this side of the House didn’t feel forced to do it. It was part of the select committee process called democracy, Mr Hudson. Not only that, but the only entity that was forced to do anything was the Government on this side having to be forced to address the issue of cowboy clampers, because that party over there, when they were in Government, did zero—did nothing. So Mr Hudson might want to stand up and accuse the Government of forcing the committee to do something, but, in reality, the Government has stood up within the first couple of years of being in Government and done something for the victims of these cowboy clampers.

The other thing that I failed to find was any minority view from the National Party. So Mr Hudson stood up and he was leading the charge from the National Party, and he said that they had a number of changes or dislikes in the bill and didn’t agree with a lot that was going on in the changes. Mr King also said that he disagreed with the $100 cap. But there was no minority view. In fact, all of the other members of the committee from this side of the House with me actually can back me up—I hope—and we failed to find any argument that they actually came up with during the select committee stage at all. So I’m quite surprised by the two speeches that I’ve heard so far, and I hope that notes weren’t passed around to repeat them, because they’re just simply not true.

This, like I said, is a very important bill. I’d just like to acknowledge the fact that we heard from a wide variety of submitters, from the consumers themselves to the people who were victims of the cowboy clampers. We heard from the retail outlets as well and the concerns that they had, and also from the clamping organisations themselves. One of the struggles that I had through the select committee stage was that, actually, each one of them had quite compelling arguments from different perspectives and different points of view. It was a challenge for the committee to come up with the piece of legislation that we have, but I think that we’ve come up with a very good and balanced and focused piece of legislation.

I think it’s important for members of this House and the public to understand that all of the people who were the consumers and the organisations like Consumer New Zealand and the Automobile Association, who were representing those who were affected by the wheel clampers, had a common theme—for example, with the cap, they said that it was too high. All of the organisations and individuals and companies, whether they were the wheel clampers or the retailers, were all consistent in saying that the cap was too low. So there was no real, ready, and perfect answer for this. We asked for an extension to it as well because we wanted all of the information and the knowledge and the advice from the advisers—

💬 Hon Member: We looked at overseas jurisdictions as well.

—and we were quite thorough about that. I’ve just heard—which is quite true—that we actually sought overseas jurisdictions’ information on how they applied their different regulations and legislation and what worked over there and what lessons were learnt. We came up with a very thorough, focused, and balanced piece of legislation, and the committee and the advisers should be quite proud of that.

I think it’s also important to note that no matter what part of that continuum they are on, whether they be the retailers, the companies, or the consumers, the vast majority, if not everybody, understood the intent of the legislation and the fact that there needed to be some changes. As has been mentioned on this side of the House, and by the National Party as well, there were, up until this point, some very serious issues and unacceptable circumstances that some people found themselves in, and still find themselves in, where they are away from their vehicle for 30 seconds, if that, and come back to find their wheel clamped and have to pay upwards of $500, $600, $700, or $800, and that’s obviously totally unacceptable.

So the Government’s decided to do something about that. We took the legislation through to select committee, we’ve gone through that, and we’ve made it a very balanced and focused piece of legislation. New Zealand First supports it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it’s not the select committee that I sat on, and this piece of legislation, while it might not seem too weighty, does have an impact on many people. I particularly know of the mobility parks around, which are on private property, predominantly, which are often abused. People want to park right out in front of wherever they want to go shopping and that’s where the mobility parks are, and it must be quite galling if you are a person who suffers from a disability and who lacks the mobility to have those parks taken up by people that don’t have the right to be there, and as it’s on private property, this bill applies to it.

Clamping, of course, is the ultimate sanction, I guess, in this regard, and, of course, as we know, some of those clampers have been quite extortionate. It actually is quite ironic that we’ve had two climate change bills tonight and a bill on terrorism, and now we have one on clamping. I guess you could relate car clamping back to climate change in that you’re not burning any fossil fuels while they’re clamped, and if you’re the victim of having the clamp on, you might say it’s terrorism. So it’s quite ironic that these three bills have all come up tonight.

But I think it’s a very serious issue to deal with, and I’m not trying to make light of it at all. I agree with my colleague Matt King that $100 does seem light. I don’t know the economics of the clamping business and I have no intention of ever finding out, but I suspect that if it is not enough, at least there’s power under the regulations to make a change and adjust that through the process. I think that’s the right way to go. I guess that if it isn’t enough, then the businesses would have to foot that cost, or they won’t have any clamping businesses to operate that deterrent. So with that, I commend the bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I’m not going to be as oratorically adventurous as Stuart Smith, the previous speaker, and try and link it to terrorism legislation and climate change legislation, but I will note those positive bills the House has dealt with earlier on tonight.

This is good legislation. Look, I’d describe it as eminently reasonable. Now, I’m going to explain what I mean by that, because while I didn’t have the pleasure of sitting on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee—and I acknowledge the chair, Darroch Ball, and the members of the committee—the submitters’ amendments were eminently reasonable. There are four areas I want to quickly touch on. The first is claims to the disputes tribunal, which just clarifies that even though a case can be taken to the disputes tribunal, the maximum penalty, which is what this legislation is trying to achieve—that a maximum of $100 can be charged to remove a clamp—stands. It is clarifying that. Now, why I say “eminently reasonable” is because there is also the situation where you might want to actually remove the wheel clamp yourself, and what the committee has come up with is new section 98D(5)(b) in clause 4, which is that it can be removed as long as there’s “as little damage to the … device as is reasonably possible.”—again, another eminently reasonable amendment that the committee has forward with.

There’s also the requirements for being “reasonably available”. What the committee has done is notice that this is a subjective term and it has noted that the time limit where an operator can remove the immobilising device must be reasonably available. Now, they’ve identified that this needs to be changed in regulations, and to the previous member Stuart Smith, who talked about the maximum fine of $100, I know there’s been debate previously that it should have been $50 or $100. We’ve all heard those nightmare cases where people literally with children still in their vehicle are being clamped and charged what I believe is an extortionate amount of up to $700 more in some cases. Now, people might have a disagreement on what the actual figure should be, but I would point out that much like this requirement for being “reasonably available” to be amended in the regulations, so can that $100 fee. So that can be amended in the future.

Now, the fourth big change was the regulation of signage. I think the committee has erred on the right side of the debate, hearing from the submitters that while many submitters thought signage should be required, that wasn’t entirely necessary. So here you have some very explicitly reasonable amendments to make sure this eminently reasonable bill is more workable.

This is really good legislation. I actually recall that maybe the first letter I wrote in this new Government was to the Minister Kris Faafoi. I’d been contacted after the election by the Sunday Star-Times, who had a litany of horror stories from the experiences of regular Kiwis where—as we’ve heard the quote—cowboy clampers had had a disproportionate impact on their families’ lives and had taken literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars out of them in a way that I think any reasonable Kiwi would find unacceptable. So I’m really glad the Minister has acted on this. They’ve moved with the appropriate amount of haste. This is good, common-sense, reasonable legislation that the Green Party is proud to support.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Now when this bill was going through select committee, it seemed at face value to be a pretty straightforward piece of legislation. Putting a cap on wheel clamping—how complex could that be? Well, was I mistaken—goodness! The complexity that arose as we worked through this was quite impressive, actually, and we’ve heard already some of that touched on by other contributors this evening.

But one for me that stood out was around the cap, and we’ve heard around whether that was an appropriate limit or not—whether $100 was too high or too low, depending on who was submitting. But, actually, what it also raised was then the potential issue from the wheel-clamper’s perspective, which is “If $100 was the cap, then perhaps we can’t operate a successful business at that level.” So, therefore, maybe the owners of those car parks would have to look at other enforcement options, and, of course, the two other options available to them are either breach notices or towing, and, potentially, that could result in a higher cost to the consumer than the $100 cap would be.

So that was raised, but, actually, we’d also talked around potentially having caps on those other enforcement options too. That was deemed to be outside the scope of this particular piece of legislation, so I would suggest that perhaps the Minister might want to consider that in future, around whether it is appropriate to therefore bring in a cap on what the maximum amount charged for towing can be, and also for a breach notice if either of those alternative options for enforcement was being used other than the clamping option. So that’s one aspect that we could see a bit more work on.

Now, we had also seen a lot of commentary from submitters around the signage. Just picking up on what Gareth Hughes, the previous member, said in that regard, again, it was an area that was not necessarily considered not relevant but more so considered to be outside the scope of the bill. So, again, that would be an area that I would suggest get tidied up a bit in the future, because a number of people, rightly or wrongly, would claim in their defence for being parked in an inappropriate place that they didn’t see the signage—there was no sign, it was too small, it was obscured by trees or foliage, or whatever the excuse may be. So having some clear rules or regulations around what the signage should be seemed appropriate, but, unfortunately, that was considered to be outside the scope of this. So that’s one area that I think would be important to get tidied up, as well.

On the face of it, though, we do need to see a cap, and we’ve reached the point where $100 seems appropriate. I suspect that perhaps that might need to be reviewed in time and perhaps it’s too low. We do want to ensure businesses can still operate from a clamping perspective, and at the end of the day, the consumer who is parked there has parked there unlawfully, so there is some liability around that. But at this stage, we are supporting the bill, and I look forward to seeing it progress.

This is a split call.

Tēnā koe, Madam Chair. Otirā, e ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. I’m happy to take a call on the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill in the second reading. I’m no longer a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, but I was there to hear some of the initial submissions. But what I did do was I listened to the National lead-off spokesperson tonight, Mr Brett Hudson, and his assertions that the select committee was left to do a lot of work of the Government. I also intently listened to him perhaps drawing us to the areas in which the select committee had to do all that work, but I resorted back to his first reading speech on the bill, again, in trying to look for clues as to the extra work he implied the select committee had to do for this particular bill. Apart from the note that he mentioned around the clamping levy originally being recommended to be $50 and up to $100, there’s actually nothing in his first reading speech that indicates the extra work that the committee had to put in.

So it is a response that when we come to this House and say that in select committee we have had to do the work of the Government, then I expect that a reasonable request is that we come to the House and put those particular areas on the table so that, as a whole House, we can debate that. Needless to say, I didn’t hear that in the speech. I didn’t see that in his first reading speech.

It is a really sensible piece of legislation. We’ve all seen people clamped around the country. We feel that we need some clarity in this industry, both for consumers but also for the operators. I want to acknowledge the select committee, in their wisdom, for inviting more targeted submissions in the development of this bill. I understand that 17 submissions were received on 30 May, but, obviously, the committee felt that they needed more submissions to ensure that we’ve got a rounded perspective, particularly from groups like the clampers themselves and consumer groups. So I want to acknowledge the work of the select committee in extending and targeting some submitters that came forward, like Local Government New Zealand, like Retail New Zealand, and like Consumer New Zealand, and I understand we also had a number of clampers themselves that appeared before the select committee.

So I’m really clear that the work of the select committee to examine this bill was available to those that perhaps didn’t submit in the earlier part of the submissions, and, as previous speakers have indicated, it is around that clarity. It is around giving some certainty to consumers to avoid the cowboy clampers that we see operating in this space, but it also gives some safeguards around, really, clarifying this is on private property—the issue that the select committee reported back to the House in their report around, really, clarifying the enforcement authority that this bill applies to. So it doesn’t apply to people who have contracts in private parking administering the use of those car-parks. It’s not intended to cover those particular operators.

It also makes clarity around the claims to the disputes tribunal, saying not only that if you have a concern, you can only go up to the $100 fee for removing clamps, but also if there’s damage done by the removal of clamps from vehicles, there is, obviously, an avenue for consumers to seek claims in the disputes tribunal. But also, the report of the select committee around requirements for being reasonably available—again, many contributors in this debate have talked about what is reasonable in terms of making sure that once people return to their car, the clamper is reasonably available, and, of course, the signage was canvassed by the previous speaker.

It is a common-sense bill. We want clarity. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in support of the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill in the second reading here tonight. The bill, of course, amends the Land Transport Act 1998 to regulate the maximum fees charged by wheel-clamp operators. As outlined earlier, the Transport and Infrastructure Committee received and considered 25 submissions, and they heard in person from seven submitters. It is a shame that it wasn’t a big number. I am personally a little surprised that those in the industry didn’t show up en masse, considering this could very likely affect, let’s just say, the livelihood that they’ve become accustomed to. But this is addressing the fact that many have considered that what they’re accustomed to is too much, and we have, rightly, gone through a process of hearing from the public on what is an acceptable level of a maximum fee that can be charged before you’re then in breach and it becomes an offence.

I’ve had a quick few discussions with a couple of our caucus members, who may or may not—I can neither confirm nor deny—have fallen victim to the clamping cowboys.

💬 Simeon Brown: Shocking.

A very shocking turn of events. Yes, I can neither confirm nor deny.

I too want to pick up on the signage issue. The reason I want to do that is that in my prior life, I was an Auckland City councillor, and I know from alcohol-related regulations and even from fisheries and so on that signage becomes very important for a number of issues. One is that I think you need to communicate very clearly when there are parameters and when there’s a framework that you must adhere to, but also it serves as a deterrent. So if you’re planning on something, or even not planning on something, seeing something visible can often be a very good deterrent.

So it is a shame that the select committee process has unearthed the out-of-scope nature of addressing signage in this bill. They have agreed that future legislation could address this, and I really think that Parliament should look into that and address the signage issue once and do it right.

We support this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker. We look forward to its further passage in the House.

I’m pleased to speak in support of this bill at its second reading. I want to acknowledge the Hon Kris Faafoi, the Minister who has brought this bill through to the House, and I want to acknowledge the work of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. As we’ve heard from contributions from members, they have given very good consideration to this bill, and certainly the improvements that have been reflected in the amendments make this bill ready to be enacted. We know that a key piece of this legislation will actually be the regulations, which will expand on more of the detail which will be necessary—particularly when clarifying grey areas as to what is a reasonable time for which an operator must respond to actually remove a clamp—and those other more technical areas which the committee considered but, ultimately, thought were left better by putting into regulations which could be modified.

I’m just going to take a brief contribution, but I am interested in the impact that this legislation will have on wheel-clamp operators. Clearly we want to, as a House, curtail the predatory behaviour that they exhibit, but it will be interesting to see the impact that this will have on their business model as operators, and also whether it might be a boon for the tow industry—who knows? That’s why mention has been made about perhaps consistency across parking enforcement to the level of penalties that are applied.

As a whole, this is a very welcome piece of legislation. There is a void in this area. It’s not adequately serviced by either common law or just in practice. There is a need for Parliament to actually put in place some sensible legislation around private parking law enforcement. I think, in particular, the work that the committee has done has put a very good bill in place.

We want to ensure that operators are not preying on people that use private parks, but we also need to balance that, again, with the rights of the private business owners. I think, ultimately, the key to this is to ensure that the vehicles that may be there illegally or clamped are removed because, ultimately, you want parks to be used and for the actual premises which those parks service to be able to get use of those parks. So I’m sure this piece of legislation will achieve that by achieving a good balance between the rights of the operators and also the rights of those who are impacted by clamping activities, to ensure that they have a reasonable fee and can also swiftly have those clamps removed. If not, then the police can intervene and provide appropriate penalties to those operators. Thank you, ma’am.

I rise to take a brief call on the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill. Firstly, I’d just like to acknowledge Minister Kris Faafoi, who’s putting this through. It’s a very good bill. The previous National Government in 2012 had a code of conduct for this.

I also want to acknowledge previous speakers, especially the hard-working MP for Waikato, Tim van de Molen, who’s part of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. He raised a very good point, a very technical point, around capping the maximum amount they should be allowed to charge. Basically, what this means to anyone out there in New Zealand watching this debate is that you’ve got some interesting individuals and companies that charge huge amounts. There’s a huge power imbalance for clamping vehicles. What they do is they often come in and charge $400 or $500 for a fee that should be only $10 or $20. This bill here makes it a maximum of $100, which I think’s a very good piece of work.

Secondly, the other power imbalance you’ve got if you’re there to pick up your car and someone’s charging you $300, $400, or $500 to collect it is it’s not exactly fair. You basically have to pay them off then and there to get a resolution—to get your car back. Some of these predatory behaviours are worse than, say, some of the convicts that were sent to Australia in the late 1700s or early 1800s. So it’s great to see for the consumers out there that this is finally getting tidied up. I commend the bill.

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill in its second reading. As the final speaker this evening, I’ll take a brief call just to sort of sum up what we’ve heard. The arguments have been fairly well traversed. The reason why we needed this bill is because we had nine long years of parking neglect by the previous Government—nine long years of parking neglect. We heard over the past nine years many, many people calling for regulation, but the previous Government didn’t have the courage to do it. But that’s OK, because we are a Government who are taking action. This is just one example of us taking action on this issue here, which is, effectively—as we’ve heard from previous speakers—putting a maximum penalty on wheel clamping of $100.

I’d like to acknowledge our select committee chair, Darroch Ball. I’m a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I only—

💬 Hon Member: Very well chaired.

—very well chaired—recently came on to the committee, so I didn’t have the privilege of hearing the submissions orally, but I have read the submissions. The submissions were generally of a mind that we needed this. There was a bit of conjecture around price. Some wanted it dropped to $50; others wanted it a little bit higher. But the aspect of settling on the $100 is an example of balanced and fair legislation, taking all of the submissions into account, taking all of the issues into account, and settling on a point there, which, as we heard from Darroch Ball, is in line with overseas jurisdictions—particularly the UK and Australia—and other aspects.

So look, I’m not going to take much more time, but I do acknowledge that the aspect of wheel clamping is something that people out there in the public are very engaged in. It is an important issue. It’s important that it’s something that is not trivialised, because it can affect any of us at any time. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Bill read a second time.