Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill

Members, we now come to the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill. Members should note that the Business Committee has extended the powers of the committee to permit consideration of the proposed out-of-scope amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 17. Members, we come first to the debate on Part 1, which are clauses 3 to 10 and Schedule 1. This is the debate on amendments to the Land Transport Act 1998. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

I’ll just make a few opening remarks about the debate on Part 1 of the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill. Part 1 primarily makes amendments to the Land Transport Act. Subsequent parts of the bill amend other pieces of legislation across the transport architecture of legislation. I think that at this point of the debate, having gone through a couple of readings, the primary drivers of this piece of legislation are pretty clear to members of the House. It’s a regulatory systems bill, so, in amongst the changes that are proposed, we have a range of regulatory tidy-ups. For example, there are changes to the levels of fines. There is—for example, in this part—an updating of references to the Privacy Act from Privacy Act 1993 to Privacy Act 2020. That is the core function of regulatory systems bills. They often make small, uncontroversial, technical changes to bills to make sure that they keep pace with changing conditions and that they are an effective piece of regulatory architecture. There are a couple of key substantive changes that are made to each of the key pieces of legislation that are amended through the course of this bill, and I’ll just speak to each of those briefly.

The first is that through this piece of legislation, we create the facility for transport instruments. This is actually a very important change that is going to enable a much smoother and cleaner way of ensuring that our regulatory landscape is kept up to date. Our transport legislation is enormously complex and legislates over a diverse landscape of different transport modes with constantly changing conditions, new technologies, and new challenges that need to be dealt with by the regulatory architecture. The creation of transport instruments is about making sure that our agencies—in this case, through the Land Transport Act, primarily Waka Kotahi—have the ability to make ongoing small changes to our transport regulatory regime that are simply inefficient and cumbersome to be made through rules or regulations, which are the tools that we have in place at the moment. So I think that these are going to be a very important tool for us to use to make sure that we have a regulatory architecture that is fit for purpose in the modern age.

There are some important tweaks that have been made through the select committee process and through the Supplementary Order Paper to make sure, effectively, that the use of transport instruments doesn’t run away from the intentions of the Parliament when we set the legislation, and through legislation. So there are clear provisions in place to make sure that transport instruments have to come into place in relation to the scope that has been set by the rules or regulations that they come under. We now have provisions in the bill that make sure that the Minister has to be satisfied that those instruments do indeed meet that test, so that we don’t, effectively, have agencies who are setting instruments that might be doing so in a way that is inconsistent with the rules or the regulations under which they come. That is something that the Regulations Review Committee—

💬 Chris Penk: That’s right.

—and the Transport and Infrastructure Committee did quite a bit of work—and it’s one of our favourite committees, I know, Mr Penk. I’m sure there’ll be some contributions to that effect. I think the parliamentary process has worked quite well in that everyone has recognised the value of the transport instruments, but there has been some work done to make sure that they will be applied appropriately.

The other key change which is brought into effect through this part, and—as we will see—through the other parts, is a range of changes around class exemptions. These are quite an important part of the transport system. So making sure that we have a smoother ability, in particular, to put in place group class exemptions—that’s going to be quite important as we deal with new technologies in the transport system. But what we’ve also clarified in this piece of legislation, through the Supplementary Order Paper, is that those class exemptions will not be subject to appeal through the courts. We already have a couple of mechanisms in which they can be tested. They do, ultimately, come out of secondary legislation, so they are reviewable by the Regulations Review Committee and they are also reviewable through a judicial review process. So the select committee has come to the conclusion—and I agree—that they should not be appealable through to the courts, because we have those protections that are already in place.

So, members, there are quite a few important changes that are brought through in this piece of legislation. As the debate moves through, we’ll see that, effectively, most of them are replicated in a similar way through the different parts. This particular part of the debate relates to the Land Transport Act. Again, those key changes relate to the transport instruments and the class exemptions, as well as a range of other small updates and improvements to the legislative and regulatory architecture. So I look forward to the debate that’s ahead of us, and am happy to answer members’ questions as we move forward.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to Minister Wood for making yourself available tonight to answer some questions about this small and uncontroversial bill—this Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill—one that would have slipped past my email spam filter in the past but has now got my full attention.

This bill, when introduced to the House, described the policy objectives: to address regulatory duplication, gaps, errors, and inconsistencies within transport legislation. For that reason, ACT supported this bill at the first and second reading. The ACT Party believes that there should be less regulation; that regulation, where it needs to exist, should be simple and not complex; and that Government agencies shouldn’t need to come back to the Minister or to the House simply to change a form or a basic business process. So we certainly appreciate the intention of that part of this Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill. The bill also seeks to ensure regulators can keep the transport regulatory system up to date and relevant—and we appreciate how important that is with new technologies—and to remove unnecessary compliance costs from the transport system. The ACT Party would support any effort that any Government or agency would make to reduce compliance costs, so we certainly support those objectives of the bill.

However, what we noticed tonight is that there are a number of amendments that have been tabled which caused us initially great confusion as to why they were tabled so late in the piece and appear to have been neglected prior to committee stage and during the drafting stage, when the concept of an omnibus bill to address some of these risks and some of these outstanding issues with transport regulation had what appears to be widespread support in the 52nd Parliament. Yet there is a very significant number of additional amendments through a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that has been tabled—in fact, two SOPs, one of which seeks to, essentially, legalise what has been an unlawful situation, potentially, where a fuel excise duty has been levied on a group of fuel users who don’t use the road.

The fuel excise duty, which is hypothecated on being applied to roads through the New Zealand Transport Agency, has been collected from recreational and commercial aircraft operators who use a clean, green fuel—what they call motor gas, which is far cleaner and far greener than the old aviation gas, which contains lead. Those businesses and those recreational pilots which have chosen to upgrade their aircraft or upgrade their engines to motor fuel are now captured by this fuel excise duty, and they’ve been asking for an exemption. In fact, they asked the previous Minister for an exemption, and the previous Minister’s office, and they didn’t receive an adequate reply. So they continue to raise this with the ACT Party, because they know that the ACT Party is the association of consumers and taxpayers.

There are many recreational pilots of small aircraft and commercial pilots and flight training schools using hundreds of thousands of litres of fuel a year who have said, “Hey, nobody’s listening in those agencies. Nobody’s listening in the Minister’s office. The officials aren’t listening, or, if they are, they’ve heard us and they’ve decided this is a great opportunity to actually, once and for all, grab that fuel excise duty from aircraft operators who never use the road and legalise that, essentially, unlawful taking”, because it does not make any sense at all to the aircraft operators, and I’m sure it doesn’t to the Kiwi out there on the street, why aircraft operators should be paying a fuel excise duty to use the roads. I’ve never seen an aircraft landing on the road, except on YouTube or on my Instagram.

The ACT Party did support this bill coming to the House to the committee stage because we assumed that as the Minister described, the small and uncontroversial series of amendments to fix forms and enable his departments to carry out their business more efficiently was the sole purpose of this bill. But it appears that not only will recreational—[Time expired]

I raise a point of order, Madam Chair. May I please have another call?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): May I encourage the member that if he wants to continue seeking this call, to come back to Part 1, which is the amendment to the transport Act.

Madam Chair, I will accept your offer, because I have a lot more to contribute to this debate, and I would like the opportunity to come back at Part 1. Thank you for the offer.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for the unexpected pleasure of being able to contribute. I did speak at an earlier stage of the bill and I note that one of its intentions is to avoid duplication, so I’ll try to make my contribution in that light and avoid repeating too many of my remarks from the previous, excellent as they were.

I wonder if Minister Wood can speak a little bit about new section 168H, in clause 8 within Part 1, “Procedures relating to transport instruments”. If there’s any guidance that he can give in relation to that, it would be most helpful. I’m speaking about subsection (1) particularly—that’s section 168H(1). In that we see that “The Agency or the Secretary must not make, amend, or revoke a transport instrument unless satisfied that all persons and organisations that [they think] appropriate have been consulted, having regard to the subject matter of the proposed instrument”, etc. So, is there some guidance that the Minister can give, please, into how it’s envisaged that such appropriateness would be deemed? Is there a set of factors, perhaps, whether that’s—well, I don’t know. I shouldn’t put words in the Minister’s mouth. Why would I make his task easier? But, no, in all seriousness, I think there could be a different range of ways that could be contemplated, and if there’s any advice he can give in that regard, it would be very helpful.

In referring to Part 1 of this bill, I look at the general policy statement, and it talks about maintaining the effectiveness and efficiency of the regulatory system, and it also talks about supporting the whole-of-system view of regulation. If I look at this, everything that I look at in here talks about more efficiency and speeding the process up. So I just wondered, in light of the fact that this bill also covers maritime and given the events that we’ve had in New Zealand today, is the Minister totally convinced that the changes in this bill will make the boat go faster?

Well, the boats are certainly going faster under this Labour-led Government, as we’ve seen today. We could perhaps have a more fulsome discussion on that when we get to Part 3 and 4, which do relate to maritime matters, rather than Part 1 of the bill.

Look, in respect of Mr Penk’s questions, the wording in new section 168H and 168I is, as I understand it, relatively standard wording that relates to the procedures that not just the agencies who come under the ambit of this bill but many agencies have to go through before they consult before they make regulations. So, as I understand it, the processes would be relatively standard. The agency concerned—in this case Waka Kotahi primarily—will have a good understanding of the entities or community organisations who are affected by a piece of legislation. They would therefore make sure that they make reasonable endeavours to contact those organisations to give them an opportunity to respond to the proposed instrument or rules that are being made and to then take those views into account—so a relatively standard process that will probably not be unfamiliar to the member in terms of meeting the threshold of reasonableness in consultation.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I wanted to take this opportunity to ask the Minister a question specifically relating to a very narrow piece of this bill, with regard to new clause 24B. And to provide some context to that question, can I just, firstly, say I’d like to acknowledge and say a very special thankyou to John McLister from the Lyttelton Seafarers Centre for his tireless work delivering services to seafarers and his long standing advocacy of seafarers not only in the Lyttelton community, in my electorate, but nationally. John’s advocacy led my good friends Tyrone Fields and Reuben Davidson to organise a successful petition to champion this policy proposal to fund welfare services for seafarers through their mighty Lyttelton branch of the Labour Party, to our regional and then annual conference, and see it then tonight included in this omnibus bill here in this House at this committee stage. So I just wanted to be able to acknowledge the hard work of those people at the grassroots who saw a need in the community and have, I’m sure with great excitement, seen that come to fruition.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! If I can just get the member to come back to Part 1, please. The part that she’s talking about at the moment is Part 4.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: That’s right. Thank John again.

Thank you, John, again. That’s all I wanted to get in. We’ll cut that, thank you.

Listen, it’s a pleasure to speak on this bill, and I just want to congratulate a new Minister on an outstanding piece of legislation. We would’ve loved to see it being called the “Second Harbour Crossing Bill” or the “Light Rail Bill” or the “Let’s Get Wellington Moving Bill” or the “Remove Congestion Clogging Up Our Cities Bill”, but this is a fantastic piece of work first up. Can I just say we’re very supportive of this very important, practical, common-sense legislation that we’ve got before us, which is obviously doing important things—enabling transport instruments, clarifying exemption and revocation powers, minor regulatory governance, and stewardship improvements.

I guess, in the spirit of Part 1, which is really about land, I was very intrigued by the stunning submission from the Bus and Coach Association—the concerns that they raised in their submission, where they said that they were worried that there was an issue around capacity in an under-pressure Ministry of Transport and New Zealand Transport Agency. They were worried about the cumulative effect of multiple instruments on the reliability of primary and secondary legislation, and they were also worried about the inability of instruments to fundamentally deal with what they think are deficiencies in the primary and secondary legislation. So I’m just curious to see whether the Minister had any view on responding to the very important submission from the Bus and Coach Association.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a very quick question: is the Minister concerned that there might not be any instruments relating to bus transport for a very long time and then a large number will all arrive at once?

Look, just responding to the member’s questions which relate to very good submissions that were put forward, that probably would have been a good debating topic in the second reading of the bill—but, look, let’s have a bit of a talk about them anyway. I think that the point that the Bus and Coach Association is making there is, in part, a valid one, which is that the regulatory landscape within transport is a complex one, and entities who have to engage, particularly commercially, in this landscape do have a lot to juggle. One of my hopes with the process of creating transport instruments is that things actually become a little bit easier for those entities, because one of the challenges that we constantly get told about at the moment by entities in the transport system is that if rules and regulations are out of date and if, in part, they are out of date because it is so difficult and cumbersome and time-consuming for agencies and for Governments to change rules and regulations, the creation of instruments which will enable a smoother and quicker process to make sure that the regulatory regime is up to date is actually going to make things a bit easier for the Bus and Coach Association and other entities.

So while it is true that there is a profusion of instruments—or will be—and rules and regulations, they are all generally important, they give clarity, and they ensure safety in one of the most safety-critical regulatory areas. I think, actually, the instruments will, if anything, smooth things out and make it a bit easier for the Bus and Coach Association and other organisations.

Look, there is always a challenge in terms of regulatory agencies, in terms of their ability to keep up and ensure that they are resourced. But I can give a commitment on behalf of this Government that we’ll make sure that the Ministry of Transport and other key agencies do have the resources that they need, and Waka Kotahi, to fulfil their regulatory functions.

Thank you, Madam Chair. To the Minister: on the subject of transport instruments and recognising that the Bus and Coach Association did make a high quality submission, there was another submission made more recently by way of a burner phone to a Radio New Zealand journalist, outlining some significant concerns that a number of organisations, stakeholders, were so concerned about that they weren’t prepared to make those submissions to this bill for fear of being identified. Those organisations have claimed that the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) has not dealt with them fairly. You can put that to one side, but what they’ve also asked for is for a far greater emphasis on professional development within NZTA, for vocational training to train certifiers and others who would be subjected to these instruments and required to comply with them.

So what this bill doesn’t identify, and we haven’t heard about any subsequent legislation, is how not only will the instruments clarify how to comply—and the Bus and Coach Association had a concern about that, because they were concerned that bus and coach designs might simply be issued from head office in Wellington rather than relying on the experts, the professionals who do this every day, modifying and developing and building new buses and coaches, and that includes things like your motorhomes as well as school buses and other commercial vehicles. So what they’ve asked for and what the whistleblowers have asked for through their communications from their burner phone to a Radio New Zealand journalist is that in consideration of this bill and of NZTA’s functions—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order!

—would the Minister please respond to the question on training and development?

Members, the time has come for me to report progress.

House resumed.