Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time.

I’m pleased to be able to rise on this final reading of the bill after we have worked through the previous readings of the bill over the last couple of hours. I do thank members of the House who did engage in the committee stage debate. I do particularly acknowledge Simon Court for the discussion and questions which he put forward in that debate. We clearly have some disagreements about the importance of there being a carbon dioxide emissions standard to apply to the imported fleet in New Zealand, but I did appreciate some of the questions that he asked, which I do hope, for the benefit of the committee and now for the House and the public, do provide some further detail about the substance of the bill that is before the House.

In general, I think that there has been a good ventilation of views about the Clean Car Standard and this bill over the course of its readings in this House. From the Government’s point of view, we remain committed to urgent action to reduce carbon emissions in our country. Transport is the second-biggest emitter in New Zealand. It emits 40 percent of New Zealand’s carbon dioxide emissions, and, unfortunately, it has the worst trajectory. Transport’s emissions have increased by about 90 percent since 1990, far over and above any other sector. Most other sectors have had small increases, small decreases, and have stayed about flat. Transport’s had the worst increase. The primary driver of that has been the growth of our fleet, the growth of our light fleet, to some degree our heavy fleet, and the fact that our fleet internationally is a dirty fleet. The average carbon dioxide emissions of vehicles in the New Zealand fleet and coming into the New Zealand fleet, until recently, have been amongst the worst in the developed world. There is a very straight line that we can draw between that and the fact that New Zealand is one of very few countries in the world that doesn’t have a carbon dioxide emissions standard. Only Australia, Russia, and New Zealand, in the OECD, to date, have not had a carbon dioxide emissions standard. So this is one of the key moves that we can make to make sure that we rapidly transition New Zealand’s vehicle fleet to being cleaner.

The benefits of that are manifold. We reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. We give Kiwi consumers a greater choice of clean vehicles to be able to purchase. Those people who are able to purchase a cleaner vehicle, whether it is a zero-emissions vehicle like an electric vehicle, whether it is a low-emissions vehicle like a hybrid, or whether it is even a cleaner petrol vehicle, those consumers will benefit from significantly lower lifetime costs for their vehicle as well. So it’s an important piece of legislation.

The reason this amendment has been brought forward is to make sure that it can be implemented as smoothly as possible. There are two key changes which have been canvassed in earlier readings of the bill. The first provides clarity that motorcycles and mopeds should not be captured by the scheme, and for the benefit of the House and those who are listening, as things stand, if there was no change, motorcycles and mopeds would not have to pay charges or receive rebates under the scheme. The requirement simply is that they establish a carbon dioxide account. We, after consultation with the industry, agree that there is not huge benefit in retaining that requirement, and so the simplest and best thing is to remove that requirement to be very clear about that in the legislation. That wasn’t the intention of the original legislation. That’s something I’ve acknowledged in the House today. We try to be pragmatic about these things when we get feedback from the sectors that we’re working with.

The second key change that the legislation makes is for category 2 importers—that is, importers that tend to bring in smaller consignments. So, under the original legislation, they would receive rebates or pay fees on a consignment basis instead of an annual basis. There is a deferral of their obligations to pay fees and to be able to engage in trading of rebates from 1 January to 1 June. So those fees or rebates will continue to occur through that period; that has not changed. But it is simply the obligation to either pay fees or to engage in trading of rebates that is deferred until 1 June. This is quite an important point. I note the Green Party’s position voting against this piece of legislation. It is just important to underscore that this change does not in any way actually affect those obligations, and, therefore, does not in any way reduce the emissions abatement potential of the scheme. It is simply a pragmatic change to ensure that that sector has enough time to be ready to engage with Waka Kotahi’s online system to be able to pay those rebates or to engage in trading to pay the charges or to engage in trading of the rebates. So we get the same outcome but we simply smooth the pathway for the sector.

From my point of view, as Minister, that’s what we should do. We have to make changes in this sector. We cannot keep doing the same things that we have done for the last 70 years which have led to growing carbon dioxide emissions, a terrible impact on our climate. We have to make these changes, but if we can do that in a pragmatic way that brings people along and makes it a bit simpler to comply, then why wouldn’t we do that? That’s the purpose of this legislation. So those are the core reasons why the Government’s brought this legislation to the House and believes it’s an important and good piece of legislation.

As I said, the debate has ventilated views about the legislation. I do want to respond to some of those views that I’ve heard over the course of the debate. The National Party’s position, frankly, is a confused one. They have raged and raised multiple objections to action to clean up our vehicle fleet. But they are finally actually supporting the legislation. This reflects the dialogue we’ve had over the past couple of weeks where they have shifted their position from not supporting and then supporting—I can’t remember quite the order—the Clean Car Discount, eventually saying that they do support a Clean Car Standard, then being a little bit unclear about what kind of Clean Car Standard they do actually support. Either way, it is some progress. They voted against this legislation initially. They spoke against there being a Clean Car Standard in place when this legislation was brought to the House. But they have, through the course of this debate, confirmed that they do support the framework of the standard, and that is a positive move. We will be a dumping ground for the world’s dirtiest vehicles without this policy. So we do need to move it forward and implement it in a pragmatic way.

But further, in respect of the views that have been ventilated in this debate, the problem that we have here is that we have another party in the House, and that is the ACT Party, who is voting against this legislation, that remains trenchantly opposed to any action to reduce emissions beyond the emissions trading scheme mechanism, including the Clean Car Standard.

💬 Simon Court: That’s right.

The member confirms that is an accurate conveyance of that party’s views. So what New Zealand needs to understand is that they can rely on this Government to make the policy changes to reduce carbon pollution, but any alternative Government with the National Party and ACT Party working together would pull down all of the progress that we have made to clean up our vehicle fleet—

💬 Simon Court: That’s right.

He confirms that’s right. That would be the price of the ACT Party coming into Government. They oppose this very strongly. They even oppose this bill, which is a pragmatic way, which responds positively to what the sector has asked us to do. They are so trenchantly opposed to action—positive action on climate—that they would even oppose this legislation which smooths the way and makes it easier for the sector to comply with the Clean Car Standard. That is how dogmatic they are in their opposition to the Clean Car Standard in any of these policies.

So let’s be clear that under an alternative Government, all the measures that we have put in place to make clean cars more available and cheaper would be gone, and clean cars would become more expensive and more scarce under a National-ACT Government. That has, effectively, been confirmed in the debate today. And what the public can see through the Government’s passage of this piece of legislation is that we do remain committed to cleaning up our vehicle fleet. And let’s just remember the benefits of that: less carbon pollution, more choices for consumers, cheaper lifetime costs for consumers who get into cheaper vehicles, and, actually, much cleaner air for people. The Health and Air Pollution in New Zealand 3.0 report, which was released in July, on the impact on transport emissions on human health, reveals that we have 2,200 New Zealanders who die prematurely each year because of air pollution caused by the transport sector. Around 13,200 cases of childhood asthma are caused by that carbon pollution.

So there are multiple reasons why it is extremely important we move forward with a carbon dioxide standard. That is what our Government is doing. That is what we would not get from an alternative Government. This piece of legislation is a pragmatic way of implementing that to make sure it can be implemented smoothly by the sector. We get all of the benefits—the over 1 million tonnes of carbon abated between now and 2050. We get all of the benefits of that under this bill, but we simply have a smoother way of implementing it for the sector. The sector has welcomed that publicly and I thank them for the pragmatic way that they have worked on that.

I thank all parties in the House who are supporting this legislation. As I said at the beginning of my first reading speech, it’s Doughnut Day in Parliament. The National Party have now “doughnut-ed” on this one, but it’s a positive move that they’re now supporting the Clean Car Standard. I hope they keep making “doughnuts” and actually become a climate-friendly party at some point in the future. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

That was the Hon Michael Wood, the worst Minister of Transport that New Zealanders have ever had, and I hope he enjoys his doughnuts—big red zero. But the point is that this Minister of Transport can’t even fix the potholes, and now he’s here, bringing legislation to fix a stuff-up in legislation that he was warned would need to be fixed back in February. What has this Minister actually achieved in transport in New Zealand? How many potholes are peppering the highways? Fifty thousand—50,000 potholes—peppering our highways. Even in Tauranga. Even in the Bay of Plenty. Even in the “Waimak”. Speed limit reductions. He’s wanting to reduce speed limits. That’s about the only thing he’s managing to actually do—reduce a few speed limits. Can’t do light rail, wants to solve the climate crisis with light rail, which embeds more carbon emissions than, actually, if you did it another way. Cycle bridge. You can’t build a cycle bridge to try and cut cycle emissions—cycle emissions or car emissions. Cancels roads.

Then, what he didn’t talk about is how much coal—how much coal—this Government is bringing into the country, three times as much coal as was being imported under National. The Huntly coal-burning power station is going overtime because this Government has not been able to get the investment in renewable energy that is required. And that is the absolute shame of this Government. They’re woke virtue signalling on climate change, trying to tell us and lecture the National Party about what should be done, when they are the ones importing the dirty Malaysian coal to keep the lights on. That’s the reality of this Minister of Transport and his Government’s record when it comes to climate.

So while we support this piece of legislation to fix this stuff-up, we do say to this Government that, actually, we don’t support where the current Clean Car Standard is set at, because what it is doing is it’s actually going to make things go backwards even further. We’ve already heard today that the New Zealand Police can’t even buy utes for their fleet anymore because—

💬 Todd Muller: What about the farmers?

—none of the importers—and what about the farmers and the tradies? Because the Clean Car Standard to be has been set at such a standard, and such a tight standard, that our farmers, our tradies, and those people who don’t have choices currently will not be able to get the vehicles that they need. So for all that the Minister stands up and talks about how this is going to mean we get cleaner vehicles into the country—well, actually, he forgets two things. One is that he can’t dictate to car manufacturers around the world what type of cars they’re going to produce. We’re a very, very small country. The EU, the Japanese standards—they are the people who will set the standards. We need to make sure we’re actually able to get those vehicles. But, at the same time, we shouldn’t be punishing those who don’t have a choice or where there isn’t the supply available at the moment, like for our farmers and our tradies.

So the message from the National Party is very clear: we will get rid of the “feebate”. The “feebate” which is the reverse Robin Hood scheme which is taking money from farmers and tradies and it’s giving it to people in the inner city leafy suburbs to buy their very expensive Teslas—the Teslas they can already afford to purchase, thank you very much, and that are being subsidised by those who don’t have a choice and from those on lower income. This is the Labour Party, the party of the worker—the party of the worker—they used to be. They’re now the party of the Tesla—they are the party of the Tesla. They’re helping Elon Musk out more than they’re helping the people in South Auckland. That’s what this Government’s track record has been: helping the Malaysian coal industry and helping Elon Musk to bring in more Teslas. They’re not helping the workers. They’re not helping the people doing it tough. They’re not helping our farmers, the backbone of our economy, who got our economy through COVID-19. They’re not helping any of those people, but they’re helping those who can already make those choices.

So we’ll get rid of the “feebate” scheme and we will make sure that the standard is something which is achievable, but which also ensures that those who require vehicles like utes for their work—farmers and tradies—and, now, we learnt, even our police, who are doing it tough enough, thank you very much, who need those type of vehicles to respond to emergencies and can’t wait around—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: What about the dog handlers?

—and the dog handlers—and actually have jobs to get to and can’t plug their ute in for 14 hours to wait for it to be recharged. Those people actually need to have options, they need to have choices, and this Government is taking those choices away. We will stop that and we’ll make sure that there is accessibility for those people so they can get the vehicles they need, whilst, at the same time, reducing emissions over time in a sensible, pragmatic way. We work with the industry and we don’t keep stuffing it up, bringing legislation to the Parliament every five minutes, and we still don’t get an apology from the Minister—he doesn’t even say sorry. He can’t even say to the Parliament, “I’m sorry, we stuffed it up.” Can’t even say that. That’s the arrogance of the man who wants to be the next Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Well, I can tell you what, New Zealanders won’t accept that level of arrogance. They’re sick and tired of that arrogance. They want change. They want a Government which will actually listen to them, which will actually address the cost of living, which will ensure that we’re not screwing over our car market here in New Zealand, and actually making sure we have pragmatic solutions to address the climate challenges and the issues that we have facing New Zealanders. We will fix this law when we win the next election, but we will support this because it is making a small, tiny, little difference, and we will do anything which helps make a small, tiny, little difference. But we’ll fix it once and for all when we get into Government. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. That was a disappointing speech from the Opposition spokesperson on transport, Mr Simeon Brown. He continued to tell us what he won’t do, he talked a big game on pragmatic solutions, but the reality is that the National Party has to tell us how they are going to reduce emissions. That is the problem that we are all trying to solve there. And for people that live in the Coromandel, you can see it first-hand, the impacts of climate change.

Coming back to this bill—because it’s important that we acknowledge this piece of work. As the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, I heard first-hand from submitters their contribution when we put this particular bill through the submission process, and we did hear very strongly from industry the importance of a just transition, enabling them and supporting them to take this piece of legislation on board.

That’s what we achieve by the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill (No 2), and I commend this bill to the House.

Well, as the member who has just resumed his seat, Mr Shanan Halbert, shakes the dirty coal dust from his hands and blows it away in the notes that he’s been prepared, the reality is that Labour’s dirty little secret about climate change, and this particular policy area that they want to muck around with again, is that coal imports are at record levels under this Labour Government—and they’re burning it to make electricity. We used to use good New Zealand natural gas, but now they use imported Indonesian coal, so that’s Labour’s dirty little secret: that emissions continue to go up under this Government.

So here we are, under urgency, discussing a bill that is a Labour Party stuff-up. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the Minister who aspires to be Prime Minister before the next election and to take over from the leadership of the Labour Party, and he wants to make fewer mistakes—he’s the Minister of Immigration, he’s the Minister of Transport, and he is the Minister for Labour Party stuff-ups.

Here we are, trying to amend a mistake—several mistakes, in fact—that were made during rushed, not-well-thought-through legislation presented by this current Government. They were warned at the time—not only by us in the Opposition—that there were flaws and unintended consequences of their rushed legislation around this piece of legislation. They were warned, more importantly, by the car sector, the car industry themselves, who had made it very clear that the New Zealand Transport Agency would not be able to meet the time frame deadlines that the original legislation had put in place, that they were too ambitious, that they were largely put in to provide some speaking bullet points for the Minister, without any thought about the practical reality of the implications.

Well, now, we are here in urgency making amends for the Minister’s mistake. The Minister didn’t even have the good grace to come to this House and apologise, not even the good grace to acknowledge that the mistake was his, that it was his arrogance and his inability to understand the practical reality of his portfolio area, and he did not even have the good grace to come to this House and apologise—not only to the members of this Parliament but to the people of New Zealand—for his egregious errors, and just another one in a series of egregious errors that that Minister has been making. In fact, what he did do was come to this House and just insult members of the National Party, and particularly my colleague the Hon David Bennett, who, for some reason, seems to have incurred the ire of the Minister. He told the truth about the Minister and the Minister didn’t like it; the Minister didn’t like hearing the truth. Well, in the Labour Party, they don’t like hearing the truth, they don’t like hearing reality, and they just like to stay in their own little echo chamber of self-aggrandisement, self-affirmation, and they don’t stay in touch with the real people these days.

Simeon Brown made the point, “What happened to the Labour Party of the working people? What happened to that Labour Party of Michael Joseph Savage?” Michael Joseph Savage would be rolling in his grave if he could see the impacts of this piece of legislation that has promoted thousands of rich Tesla buyers able to purchase cars using free money that has been collected from people who have little choice, and, by and large, often do not have an ability to pay. Those are the people—it’s a reverse Robin Hood scheme, as my colleague Simeon Brown has mentioned on many occasions. It’s a reverse Robin Hood scheme, and we will put it right.

On this side of the House, we actually do believe in equity of outcome; we do believe that if the State is to be involved in people’s lives, then it needs to be on an equitable basis. That the current Government has no clue how to do that is an embarrassing shame upon them. If they spent a little bit more time actually listening to ordinary New Zealanders, they wouldn’t be in the electoral trouble they are in now. If they spent a little bit more time listening to trade sectors and the industry sector, who give them good advice, they would not be in the electoral trouble that they are now.

Notwithstanding all those matters, we are supporting this piece of legislation. As Simeon Brown has said, it is a small, incremental, beneficial change to a flawed piece of legislation—but it does make it slightly better. On that basis, and that basis alone, we are supporting this legislation, notwithstanding that it’s here, being rushed through the Parliament, under urgency, without any prospect of a full select committee scrutiny and hearings where people could make submissions, where the Minister would have to be accountable for his egregious errors, and where members of the Labour Party backbench—actually, some of their last actions as parliamentarians should have been to sit in a select committee and hear about the mistakes that they’ve made. Well, they have avoided that neatly by rushing this legislation through Parliament, under urgency, without that kind of scrutiny and without that kind of feedback that they actually do need to hear.

So, on that note, we will support the bill, but, by crikey, it would have been very, very helpful if the Minister had come to the House and apologised to the members of this Parliament and to the people of New Zealand for his very gross and obvious mistakes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. After all the pollution coming from the speaker who just took his seat, the Hon Scott Simpson, it’s really good to hear that they do support the electric vehicles (EVs) and they do support this bill. So thank you for that.

We’ve traversed this bill, I think, to its nth degree. We can all agree that reducing our carbon emissions, and supporting New Zealanders to be able to afford options, including EVs and hybrids and clean cars, is the important message to take away here.

We know that the bill provides three legislative measures: a six-month phase-in to give importers time to adjust to the standards, a clarification around the extension of the standards, and a technical correction to enable the refund of charges imposed. We know that this shows that this Government is listening. We’re nimble. We’re flexible. We’re listening to our importers. We’re able to move when we need to on legislation. This also shows that this Labour Government is continuing to support New Zealanders. For that reason, I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. In my first speech in this debate, I talked about how important it is that we have meaningful action on climate change and transport, where we have huge opportunities to get benefits right across the board by making it easier for New Zealanders to live and get around in ways that use less carbon and cause less harm to the environment, because the less we use fossil fuels and the more energy efficient our transport system is and the more land efficient it is, we will be taking action on climate change but we’ll also be making it easier for people to get around towns and cities in terms of the financial costs. So it’s one of those areas where what’s good for the environment is good for people and is good for the economy, and we do have to address different market distortions that have led to this situation we’re in.

Now, most OECD countries have had fuel economy standards for quite a while now, and many have had a type of price incentive on cleaner vehicles to help support people to buy vehicles that consume less fossil fuels. And it’s fair and reasonable for those who buy more fuel-inefficient vehicles—gas-guzzling vehicles—that use more petrol and diesel, that they make a contribution to that, because the way that we pitched this or explained it at the time when we went out in consultation on this policy quite a few years ago was that not everybody can get into an electric vehicle or a low-emissions vehicle, but that everybody who’s getting a new - to - New Zealand vehicle can be part of the solution. And the way that they’re part of that solution, if they’re buying a gas-guzzling vehicle, is that they’re helping to chip in to get more low-emissions vehicles on the road. And that’s how we all work together to reduce our emissions as a country. Of course, there is a classic way of pitching this in a kind of individualistic way that says there are winners and losers from the policy. But I think it’s entirely fair that those who are buying more polluting vehicles make some contribution to cleaning up the rest of the fleet, because we’re all responsible.

Now, some people have suggested that we can do everything through the emissions trading scheme (ETS), and that’s really interesting. When it comes to vehicle efficiency, we know from evidence that the only policies that work are fuel economy standards and price incentives at the point of purchase of the vehicle. We can’t do it through ETS on fuel, and that’s why transport fuels actually aren’t in the ETS in Europe, but they lean very heavily on fuel economy standards and price incentives, and that works very well. It’s really because when people are making a choice about purchasing a vehicle, the ongoing cost of fuel is not something they’re thinking about well into the future. And the technology to have more fuel-efficient vehicles is a little bit more expensive for the manufacturers, and so they make bigger profits off less efficient vehicles. And so if you don’t have standards, then they supply less efficient vehicles to the market, and we had clear evidence of that. So, you know, Toyota Corolla—no, wait, what was it? Yeah, a Corolla, or other vehicles of similar nature, consumed more fuel per kilometre in New Zealand and Australia than they did in the UK. Now, left-hand-drive vehicles—wait, it’s right-hand-drive vehicles that drive on the left—that are supplied to the UK or Japan. Those are the big markets and they have fuel economy standards, much higher ones than New Zealand. So there’s really no issue with supply other than that without the standards, we actually struggle to get the supply of low-emissions vehicles in New Zealand for people to buy.

And that’s why the standard’s so important. We’re well behind on bringing standards in, because they were cancelled in 2009, or late 2008, by the last National Government. So New Zealand’s really, really far behind, and if we’re going to address our need to respond to climate change, then we have to do something about the vehicles that are coming in. So the discount and the standard have worked together. We’re already seeing a huge drop in average fuel consumption per kilometre since the discount was brought in. The Green Party is not voting for this bill, because it’s delaying the implementation of the standard, which we think we just don’t have time to do.

But I do feel that there’s a lot of misinformation or disinformation that comes around from the National Party on these topics. They keep talking about coal consumption. If their Government had done something about phasing out coal from Huntly and having a plan for a transition to renewable electricity, then we wouldn’t have had this problem during the dry years. But you can’t magic up that type of storage in just a few years. It’s just not possible. These are huge investments. Huge planning has to go into finding these solutions, and the truth is that the last National Government didn’t care about climate change, didn’t do anything to futureproof our electricity system, partially privatised the energy companies, and then they blame the Government of the day for importing coal, as if we didn’t have, you know, a wholly independent organisation that was responsible for making those decisions. You know, it’s Genesis that makes the decisions about how much coal gets imported. But that’s why we need a national strategy and why the Greens were calling for a plan to phase out coal from Huntly 20 years ago. And this was brought up in the debate, so I just feel I need to correct—it’s very confusing for people at home when they think that the Government is responsible for importing coal or that—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! David Bennett will just calm down.

—somehow poor people are paying fees in the “feebate” system, which is ridiculous because the only people buying new - to - New Zealand vehicles, which were the most polluting vehicles, which contribute to the fees, are people who can afford extremely expensive brand-new vehicles. The most polluting vehicles are these luxury sport utility vehicle (SUVs) like Range Rovers and Land Rovers. Those are the most gas-guzzling vehicles. I see a lot of brand-new Range Rovers driving around Central Wellington, carrying one person. It is their choice, and it’s their choice to pay an additional fee to get some more zero-emissions vehicles on the road.

So the truth is that the National Party doesn’t care about equity. If they did, they would have different tax policies and different income support policies. These policies are about reducing emissions, and it’s a fair and empirical way—it’s a way in which we actually have evidence that this is going to work to reduce our emissions as a country. And we can work together to do that. But if the National Party cares about equity and helping poor people, then they might want to look at their tax policies and their income policies and their proposal to make things easier for landlords, and maybe they’d like to look at rent freezes and they’d like to look at their minimum wage policies. There’s all sorts of policies you can do to help working people, and subsidising highly gas-guzzling, luxury SUVs and double-cab utes—which are really, largely, lifestyle vehicles in the leafy, wealthy suburbs—is not the way to get a fairer New Zealand.

They are just misleading about that, because, in truth, they don’t have any policies that are going to work to reduce emissions. And we saw that when they were in Government. Luckily they had lots of rainy years, so they didn’t have to worry about dry-year storage for renewable electricity, but they implemented zero policy to actually increase the uptake of zero-emissions vehicles and low-emissions vehicles, and you can see a clear difference between when National was in power and they did press releases with other people, with private investment installing vehicle chargers but the Government doing nothing about it. You can see, now, we have a huge uptake in low-emissions vehicles. That’s because of policies like the Clean Car Discount and standard, which make it available to people. They make those low-emissions vehicles available to more people, and they provide an incentive to buy them. And so that’s why that is a logical policy.

I remember when Todd Muller said that he supported the policy. He was in a television interview. It was wonderful. There used to be National Party members who were curious about problems and interested in evidence-based solutions, but, sadly, that’s not where we are today, and I think it’s very sad for our country because we do need to work together and we do need evidence-based policies, not ideological claptrap, driving what we’re doing to solve the climate crisis. The people of this country and our children and our future generations deserve politicians across the House who are going to be curious and open to effective solutions and who will work together instead of standing up and misleading and just making things up about how policies work.

💬 Hon David Bennett: Point of order.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Point of order, the Hon—

💬 Simon Court: Oh, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Sorry, I’m dealing with a point of order.

💬 Hon David Bennett: Earlier in the day, the Minister was accused of exactly the same thing, and the member was asked to withdraw and apologise. And that member has actually been proven incorrect in select committee last week—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK. All right. Thank you. [Interruption] No. Thank you. The member—[Interruption]. No. The member—[Interruption] No. The member started out OK and then strayed into a debating point.

Oh, thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, for the benefit of New Zealanders listening to this debate today or watching Parliament TV at 12.45 on a Thursday afternoon, hoping to get some insights into the thinking behind this Government’s and its support partner’s, the Greens’, approach not just to climate policy but to policies that they believe are for the betterment of New Zealanders, I want to quote a French philosopher—Albert Camus—who said, “The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.” That’s how New Zealanders feel about not just one ute tax but ute tax 2.0, which is what this Government is imposing through this piece of legislation. Now, this French philosopher was known as an absurdist because he used to write stories, essentially, looking at the futility of searching for meaning in an incomprehensible universe.

What we’ve experienced today in Parliament is the futility of searching for meaning in an incomprehensible policy and regulation, because the Minister of Transport was right: the ACT Party firmly believes that the emissions trading scheme, the market-based scheme which puts a price on carbon emissions, is, in fact, the only logical and rational way for New Zealanders to pay for emissions, and creates an incentive to reduce the amount of carbon they emit, and that no other policy is required. We know that because the Climate Change Commission said that in their advice to Government: no other policy is required except an emissions trading scheme, and they even set a price of about 50 bucks a tonne of carbon that will be enough for New Zealand to reach its net zero carbon goals by 2050.

What we have today is an emissions trading scheme price of $88.40 a tonne—I know because I’ve just looked that up—and if you fill up your car, your ute, your truck and trailer unit, or your digger, or your boat, for that matter, with diesel right now, you’ll be paying 23.5c a litre for your emissions under the emissions trading scheme, because when you buy diesel, you pay for your emissions. And if you’re buying petrol for your car or if you’ve got a really fast V8 ski-boat or a jet-ski, then you might be paying 20c a litre for your emissions. So not just car drivers; even people who use boats recreationally pay for their emissions under the emissions trading scheme. We think, at about 20c or 23c a litre, that’s enough of an incentive to use less fuel.

We know it must be about the right price because the Labour Government recently reduced the fuel excise duty by about 25c because they said that was hurting Kiwis too much. Well, I’ll tell you what: 23.5c a litre on the emissions trading scheme for diesel—that’s enough of an incentive to use less. Buy a more efficient truck, buy a more efficient digger, and actually decide whether we’re going to take a sailboat out today or whether we’re going to put diesel in the big launch and go out cruising.

Now, look, the Minister said that without this piece of legislation, New Zealand will suffer greater expense and a scarcity of low-emission vehicles coming to New Zealand—a scarcity. Well, it’s simply not true. The vehicle manufacturers who came to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee last year made it very clear. They said, “Here’s the scenario you face, New Zealand: between 2015 and 2018, the car manufacturers built a whole lot of factories around the world to produce things like the current model of Toyota Camry, for example, which is actually—some of them are hybrid. All of those current models that come out of factories in South-east Asia, Japan, Korea, and Europe were built in factories that had a 10-year model design life.” What these manufacturers told us is that between 2025 and 2028, all of their factories will be retooled to make, pretty much exclusively, battery and hydrogen electric light vehicles. By 2030, you won’t be able to buy anything except an electric vehicle of some kind, coming to New Zealand as a new vehicle. So the scarcity that the Minister warned about is a false flag. It’s fake news. It’s not just misinformation; it’s disinformation, and the people of New Zealand need to know that.

Now, what will this tax at the wharf do? Well, it’s going to put hundreds of dollars, if not thousands, on to the price of a new or used vehicle—like a ute, like a courier van or an SUV or a people mover, which large families depend on—when it hits the wharf. That’s on top of the tax that you pay at the dealership now under what the Minister calls his Clean Car Discount—what ACT calls the “ute tax”, which takes money from people who need to buy larger petrol and diesel vehicles and hands it to the wealthiest New Zealanders so they can buy Teslas.

Now, what the Minister said was without this charge, actually we won’t get all of these low-emissions vehicles—complete nonsense. We can only get the vehicles we can get because there’s a worldwide shortage of supply. Taxing New Zealanders twice now—this is ute tax 2.0—won’t make another single battery or hydrogen electric vehicle pop out of a factory miraculously in Japan with this tax. It’s complete nonsense—the policy doesn’t work.

The Minister also pointed to pollution. He mentioned that thousands of people die every year in New Zealand because of petrol and diesel vehicles. Well, I didn’t see that as a problem in his Road to Zero policy, where he proposes to reduce speed limits and stop New Zealanders driving. He doesn’t mention pollution, but, if he did, this is what I’d say. Since I got my driver’s licence back in the 1990s, New Zealand’s removed lead from petrol. That caused brain damage and did kill people. We don’t have lead in our petrol anymore. We’ve removed sulphur from diesel. Sulphur in diesel used to cause heart problems as well as lung problems; we’ve removed it. If you drove around New Zealand, in any of our major cities on any given day, you wouldn’t be able to see, let alone smell, any pollution whatsoever. Another false flag disinformation hashtag fake news Minister Michael Wood.

So what are the options? The Government could intervene in markets like they are. They could subsidise like they are with ute tax 1.0, subsidise Teslas. They could tax people’s vehicles. Well, they’re doing that with ute tax 1.0, ute tax 2.0—this bill we have here in the House today. That’s what Governments could do—they could intervene. Or they could do what ACT proposes. Get your hands off the wheel, Minister. Let New Zealand drivers decide their own destiny.

Now, the emissions trading scheme, which I mentioned before, you already pay for your emissions if you put petrol or diesel in your car, truck, boat, bus. That raises about $1.5 billion a year, and that’s the money that this Government, with the help of climate Minister James Shaw, sees fit to allocate to all their pet projects. I’m talking about the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry fund, which hands out hundreds of thousands of dollars—millions of dollars, in fact—to big businesses like breweries and dairy companies, to upgrade their energy systems, converting from, say, coal to electricity. Sounds great. Who knew that breweries and dairy companies need the help of the taxpayer in order to replace old equipment with new equipment? But that’s what this Minister in this Government thinks is helping save us from climate change.

This is what ACT says: take that billion and a half dollars that this Government is currently handing out to pet projects, buying political favours, engaging in corporate welfare, and give that money back to Kiwis. ACT would give the revenue, the one and a half billion from the emissions trading scheme, back to New Zealanders in the form of a carbon tax dividend. About $250 per person—that’s $750 to $1,000 per household. Every year, the emissions trading scheme sets a cap on emissions; no other policy tool is required. The emissions trading scheme has a price on emissions; no other policy scheme is required. The revenue from that scheme, Kiwis have paid it. They paid for their emissions, and what ACT says is give the money back to New Zealanders so they can decide whether they want to invest in low-emissions vehicles, buy a heat pump for the home, or simply pay the bills like putting diesel or petrol in the family car.

That is what ACT would do. New Zealanders will agree with us—2023 election can’t come soon enough. Thank you.

Thank you. I want to actually reply to Mr Court’s latest statement that, in fact, it was fake news when there was a discussion about the deaths caused by the emissions from the vehicles that we’re trying to change over by this policy. I just googled—if you look at the Otago Daily Times from 7 July 2022, that study is reported as saying that 3,300 people are killed each year by that. Those are often people in a city. The highest one in this particular study was Invercargill. But I’ve been concerned for a long time that in our cities we get places where people live, particularly children, and they get killed by this kind of thing. Yes, we got rid of lead, and absolutely we should. Yes, we got rid of toxins, and absolutely we should. Now we must do this, Mr Court—we must do it—and we are doing it and we are proud of doing it. Yes, we will respond to the needs that the industry has for us to slow down a little, if it’s to keep everyone in the camp. But I’m certainly absolutely rejecting the idea that it is fake news to consider clean car emissions as an issue that we are making up. We are not making up climate change and we are not making up this. Thank you.

Members, the debate is interrupted and will resume this afternoon. The House is suspended and will resume at 2 p.m. for oral questions.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 12.57 p.m. to 2 p.m.