Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill

I move that the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

💬 SPEAKER: I think you need to present a legislative statement.

Sorry. I present a legislative statement on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill.

💬 SPEAKER: The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill.

💬 Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Oh, those are some words we haven’t heard much of!

At the appropriate time, I intend to move the bill be reported to the House by 14 March 2024. The committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

This piece of legislation is being brought to the House as a part of the Government’s commitment to ensure that all vehicles that use our roads are paying their fair share and contributing towards the upkeep of our roads. In 2009, the previous National Government exempted electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid vehicles from paying road-user charges (RUC), to encourage their uptake. This exemption was always planned to end when electric vehicles hit around 2 percent of the light vehicle fleet. We’ve now passed the 2 percent mark for electric vehicles in the light vehicle fleet and it is only fair that those vehicles now start paying their fair share to contribute towards maintaining our roads and the upkeep of our roads. Transitioning electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids to road-user charges is also the first step as part of the National Party and ACT Party coalition agreements to bring all vehicles into the road-user charges system.

This transition is about fairness and equity, ensuring that all road users are contributing to the upkeep and maintenance of our roads, irrespective of the types of vehicles that they choose to drive. With the increasing uptake of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids being brought into the road-user charges system, this transition to road-user charges means that these vehicles will now be contributing towards the maintenance of our roading system, like all other road users. This supports the coalition Government’s commitment and priority of building and maintaining our roading network and we’ve also outlined those priorities in the draft Government policy statement on transport which we released yesterday.

This bill smooths the way for the entry of light vehicles into the road-user charges system when the current exemption expires at the end of March. It brings light electric vehicles into the road-user charges system, as it was going to be a large and complex task for the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA). To ensure that this integration proceeds smoothly I’m proposing a set of legislative amendments to the Road User Charges Act 2012 and a range of regulations that sit under it: the Land Transport (Road User) Rule 2004 and Land Transport Management Act (Apportionment and Refund of Excise Duty and Excise-Equivalent Duty) Regulations 2004. These amendments will also ensure that all light electric vehicle owners are paying a fair and comparable amount for the use of our roads.

When electric vehicles are brought into the road-user charge system, owners of plug-in hybrids could potentially be taxed twice if we didn’t make this change, and that’s why we’re making sure that there’s also a lower rate for plug-in hybrids than the full RUC rate which will apply to electric vehicles. Whether you drive a plug-in hybrid or are an electric vehicle owner, at the moment you’re currently exempted from paying road-user charges, and this means that there’s a fair transition for those vehicles. So for light electric vehicles, they’ll be paying a cost of $76 per 1,000 kilometres, but there will be a lower rate for plug-in hybrids, acknowledging the fact that they also use petrol or diesel as they travel on our roads. This is to ensure that we compensate for that difference, to ensure that they’re not paying twice as part of the system.

This bill addresses this issue by creating the ability to set a reduced road-user charge rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A reduced rate, as I said, reflects that they already contribute towards the National Land Transport Fund through fuel taxes on petrol. The Government has decided that the reduced rate should be set at $53 per 1,000 kilometres. The rate offers plug-in hybrid EV owners a 30 percent discount on the standard light vehicle rate of $76 per 1,000 kilometres, to account for the petrol consumption that they use.

The last Government consulted, back in 2022, with the public on a rate for plug-in hybrid EVs. They proposed as part of their consultation a 20 percent reduction of the full rate for EVs. We think it’s fair and equitable to increase that to 30 percent, acknowledging that the 20 percent was based on the average of those vehicles—on what the manufacturers estimate their fuel consumption to be. But when you look at what they actually use, we’ve taken a more conservative approach, and that is why we’ve increased that to a 30 percent reduction based on the light road-user charge rate. Setting the reduced rate at this level may incentivise some plug-in hybrid owners to change the way that they use those vehicles—operate more based on the battery, less based on petrol—and those will be decisions that users of those vehicles will make.

The reason we needed to also put in place this reduced rate was, if we hadn’t, the reality for plug-in hybrid EV owners is that they would have to go and seek a refund from the New Zealand Transport Agency for any petrol excise that they used. So they’d have to pay because they, effectively, use two fuels motoring those cars—they have a plug-in battery which fuels that vehicle and they’re considered an electric vehicle so would be required to pay a road-user charge under the legislation; they also pay for petrol. So if we hadn’t made this change, they would have to pay the full road-user charge and then they would be able to recover their petrol excise by putting a claim in to the New Zealand Transport Agency.

This process of applying for and obtaining a refund would be time consuming, there would be risks in terms of how accurate it would be, and there would be a huge amount of time and additional resource required at the New Zealand Transport Agency by effectively doubling the number of refunds that NZTA would have to process per year. Therefore, the Government believes it is a fairer way to reduce the required RUC rate for those vehicles to 30 percent of the full RUC rate.

The bill also exempts very light electric vehicles from road-user charges. Those are vehicles under 1,000 kilograms. There are only a few of these vehicles on the roads. We don’t think that it’s necessary to put a road-user charge on those vehicles but, at the same time, the Government has outlined our intention to move all vehicles to a road-user charge over time. One of the things that this debate has highlighted is the variance in terms of what different types of vehicles pay, based on the type of fuel that they use. If you drive an electric vehicle, a plug-in hybrid, a diesel car, a petrol vehicle, or hybrid, the system is based, currently, on the type of fuel that motors the vehicle rather than how many kilometres that vehicle operates on our roads.

So, at the same time as progressing this bill through the House, we acknowledge that there are variances and that we need to move all vehicles to a road-user charge where they are paying the same amount based on the kilometres they travel and the weight of those vehicles rather than the type of fuel that they use. We see this as a temporary measure that we’re bringing in now while we also undertake the significant piece of work necessary in order to move all vehicles to a road-user charge.

This bill will go to a select committee and whilst I acknowledge it will be a short select committee, I think it is important that the particular issue around whether or not the plug-in hybrid rate has been set at the right rate is examined by that select committee and whether the additional discount over and above what the last Government proposed is the right place for that to sit. So I look forward to seeing what the select committee advises us based on that.

To support the transition, the Government is also giving those owners of light electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid owners a two-month transition period by which they will have to buy their first RUC licence, and that period begins on 1 April 2024.

So this is an example of a piece of legislation that we’re bringing to the House due to the fact that the last Government did not deal with this problem. Prior to the election, we said all vehicles should be paying for the use of the roads. The last Government acknowledged it but did not make any preparations for this transition. So here we are in this House putting this legislation to Parliament. We believe it’s a fair way to deal with this challenge but also we believe that there is further reform that is needed to make sure that there is a fair and equitable way for all vehicles to be paying their fair share. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take the first call for the Labour Party on this bill. I thought the Minister was generally doing OK up until the last sort of minute of his contribution, where he decided to take a swing at the former Government. I really feel the need to respond to that because the new Government has had opportunity to place on its legislative agenda this particular bill. It has, effectively, waited for the clock to run down at the expense of members of the public and the community to be able to have an adequate say on the provisions contained within this bill, and so that is rather unfortunate in terms of the use of urgency.

I heard a colleague mention, when the Minister said that this was going to be referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, that “Well, finally we actually have a Government that is prepared to refer something to a select committee.” So I look forward to hearing submissions as part of that particular select committee, albeit for what is a relatively short period of time—and we’ll come back to that in a moment.

This is a bill that will seek to make some changes that will align with, effectively, the road-user charge (RUC) exemptions scheme for some vehicles that will come to an end on 31 March—so not too far down the track. It does, as the Minister has indicated, set a set rate, which is a differential rate, for plug-in hybrid vehicles alongside those that might be defined as light electric vehicles (EVs) as well. It’s pleasing to see that the bill in its current form does also provide an exemption for what are very light electric vehicles and the payments that would be, effectively, attached to those in the form of RUCs wouldn’t be applicable.

I’ll put the Minister out of his misery and say that we are prepared, on this side of the House, to support this through to select committee—albeit a very, very short process indeed. The concern that I have with the truncated select committee process is that I’ve already—and I’m sure members around the House will have—received some feedback from constituents around this. The Minister has talked about the consultation that was undertaken by the previous Government. What we have in front of us is a copy of the departmental disclosure statement, which identifies at 3.6 that there was that consultation; that there were a range of matters, actually, that stakeholders and others were consulted on.

But it also identifies that the submissions on this bill were rather mixed. I think that’s even more of a reason as to why a select committee process should allow for the full range of individuals and collectives to submit in and feed in to that process. I get the point, Minister, in that the date that you’re aiming for here is 1 April. While that might lead to some sense of urgency, I do think it is unfortunate that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, if the House does agree to a truncated select committee process, will have to turn its mind to that rather quickly.

Because I have one of my constituents who said not actually just—look, he has no problem, actually, with moving to a RUC approach for his vehicle, but he has some concerns about the weight variance and perhaps there should be a different rate when it comes to those that weigh less than one tonne. The threshold in this bill is setting it at 3½ tonnes. Sure, that will mean quite a quite a lot to many people, but when we’re looking at incentivising use of EVs and plug-in EVs around urban areas and the like—I think of Palmerston North—actually, it’s perfectly suitable for someone to use a motor vehicle that weighs much less than the 3½-tonne threshold that’s there. So it’s unfortunate that members of the community won’t be able to necessarily easily feed into this process.

I’ll end my contribution by just touching on the fact that what would be helpful is an undertaking from the Government that there is going to be some incentivisation in terms of the uptake for electric vehicles. Yes, we’ve heard from the Minister about the 2 percent of fleet being the particular target, or threshold, and that that has been achieved. But I really do start to question the motives of the Government when they, effectively, remove the Clean Car Discount, when they effectively remove other rebates, when they are not seeming to incentivise the uptake. Just because it’s 2 percent doesn’t mean that we should stop there and not go any further—far from it.

So, on this side of the House, we will support this through to the next stage, which will be a truncated select committee process, for which that is rather unfortunate. But I’m sure we’ll have a few more things to say about that.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I heard the Minister say in his speech that the previous Government had done no work on this, and I have to say that is patently untrue because, obviously, they’d all gone out and done some consultation on it, firstly. Secondly, I think it’s really important for this House to consider the outcome of bringing in this particular legislation at this time.

Now, obviously, it was a previous National Government who removed road-user charges for electric vehicles (EVs) as a kind of incentive tool. It didn’t really have the desired effect; our uptake of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids was very, very low. Back in the day when Simon Bridges was the transport Minister who brought in that incentive at the time, I, as transport spokesperson for the Greens, brought up the fact that Treasury had given advice that if you are to provide a financial incentive to increase the number of electric and low-emissions vehicles coming into the country that it would make more sense for that incentive to be at the point of purchase or registration of the vehicle. Which is why, later on, we developed the policy—alongside best practice international evidence about what works—of the Clean Car Discount and Clean Car Standard.

And the reasons for this are really kind of clear and obvious, right? Once people have the sunk cost of the car, they have an incentive to use it as much as possible. And what really makes the difference is the upfront purchase price of the car. So if we can provide a rebate at the point of purchase, then that has a much bigger impact not only on what consumers choose but on what is on the market here in New Zealand. We saw a huge transformation when the Clean Car Discount was brought in, massive increase in import registrations and use of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, and that has a positive consequence for our overall emissions as a country and the amount of oil we rely on to get around.

Now, obviously, this Government had campaigned on ending that policy. They don’t, and still do not have—they did not at the time have an alternative policy to support the increase of electric vehicles into the country, and on top of that, now they’re bringing in road-user charges for electric vehicles. Now, the Minister’s statement claimed this was fair and balanced and people paying their fair share, yet in answers to written questions to me he makes it very clear that what is proposed in this bill is not electric vehicles paying their fair share, it’s electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids paying significantly more—more than double a comparable car—for the use of the roads.

So in answers to written questions—and members opposite can look up the New Zealand Herald article reporting on this which links to the answers to the questions—I asked: if you were driving a pure electric vehicle on a return trip between Wellington and Auckland, how much would they pay in road-user charges under this proposal? It’s $98.80. How much would a plug-in hybrid Prius pay? So that’s a plug-in electric vehicle, one that also uses fossil fuels when the electric battery runs out. That vehicle on the same exact trip would pay $94.78. The proportion of road-user charges would be $72.80, and $21.98 in petrol tax. So they’re paying both petrol tax and road-user charges because they’d be using petrol as well as paying the road-user charges.

So we have a pure EV and a plug-in hybrid Prius paying $98.80 for a trip, $94.78—nearly $100—and a conventional fossil fuel Prius would pay, in fuel excise duty, $42.92 for the exact same trip. So that is less than half the price. So there’s clearly problems with the current road-user charges categories that they don’t take into account that light vehicles—light diesel vehicles and light pure electric hybrid vehicles—should be paying the same as a comparable petrol car and yet they’ll be paying more than twice that.

So the combination of this Government’s policies and actions—to get rid of the Clean Car Discount, to probably water down the Clean Car Standard, they’ve indicated they will do that, and to now overcharge electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles—will be that we will get fewer low-emissions and zero-emissions vehicles into the country—

The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This was a well-signalled policy. As the previous speaker, Julie Anne Genter, has just said, this was signalled by the previous Minister of Transport Simon Bridges, when he was in that role, that at 2 percent of the fleet this exemption would be removed, and that time has come. It is fair that everybody pays their fair share, including a reduced rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

A two-month transition is also a good time for people to get prepped for this. As someone who’s a diesel vehicle driver myself, I understand how streamlined the process is when you’re actually purchasing road-user charges, so I do not believe this will be a huge imposition on people who have previously not needed to deal with this because of the type of vehicle that they drive.

I look forward to hearing more submissions at the select committee about this and finding ways that people in the public think we can improve the income stream to pay for our roads, because there is no free lunch, and particularly when it comes to roading, which has been underfunded by no small amount in the last six years—but I am glad to hear that Labour is supporting this bill. The coalition agreement also provides an investigation mechanism into electric road-user charging, and when that is worked through, I look forward to hearing about that, but for the time being I support this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I was actually going to start with exactly the same words that my colleague Cameron Luxton has, which is to say that this has been well signalled, it’s been well expected, and we’ve heard from the Labour Party member Tangi Utikere as well that in fact they were working on exactly this thing.

Why has it been so well signalled? Well, because—and we actually have to do something here—the existing rebate arrangement expires on 31 March. So if you actually want to continue that in some way, as seems to be the suggestion that the member from the Green Party, the Hon Julie Anne Genter has said, you’d actually need to pass some form of legislation anyway. So to me, this is very much about something that has been anticipated for some considerable period of time. It is about fairness; this is about contribution. We’ve known that there was an arrangement for electric vehicles (EVs) to not be liable for paying anything at all towards the roads for a considerable period of time. That was always going to come to an end, and now is the time that that will come to an end, when the current exemption expires on 31 March.

I think there might be some debate around the level of discount. I think the Minister, the Hon Simeon Brown, has suggested that—around the level of discount for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and whether it’s 20 percent or 30 percent or whatever—and we will look forward to hearing people’s views on that, and also, as the member Julie Anne Genter has pointed out, on actually what the level of charge ought to be and what is fair and what works.

There is a very sensible exclusion around very light EVs. I took the opportunity to have a look at what the weight of EVs is, and even relatively small vehicles like a Fiat 500 electric vehicle are 1,400-plus kilograms. So that kind of vehicle would still be caught. You’ve got to have a very, very small vehicle not to be caught by the 1,000 kilograms. Also, there is an exclusion, which I don’t think we’ve heard about, for electric off-road all-terrain vehicles, so they are not being penalised.

I think we will need, as a select committee—and I will speak on behalf of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, as the chair of the committee—to look at the recent consultation and see what sort of advice we had through that. We will need to call for submissions immediately because the time frame that we’ve been given is to report back by 14 March—i.e., by next week. And so members of that committee can expect a very, very truncated submissions process and a very quick approach to getting those submissions in front of us and hearing from people.

We also heard from the member opposite about EVs and incentives and he questioned the motive around that. Now, I don’t see that as being a fair question, because on this side of the House there is clearly an intention to roll out EV infrastructure right around the country. So that clearly says we want to see more people using EVs. It’s a matter of what the price arrangement is so that they’re paying a fair price.

Julie Anne Genter asked why we are doing it at pace. Well, it’s always been around 31 March. That’s the time the exemption expires. It’s got to be done by then. Look, maybe it could have been done earlier in the legislative programme of this incoming Government; maybe it could have been done by the past Government. It hasn’t been, it needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed now, and that is exactly what we are going to do. She also questioned, again, the incentives for the use of EVs, and, as I said, I think the Government has said we are going to be supporting the roll-out of EV infrastructure, and I am going to be interested in the exploration of the costing around an EV trip versus a PHEV trip versus a petrol car trip. So I am very happy to support this and to commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou katoa. If I may, Mr Speaker, just to acknowledge this is the first time back to the House since the tangi for Efeso: anana, tēnā tātou katoa.

Ka tū au, just to speak to this pakē road-user charges. Te Pāti Māori do not support this Government’s transport agenda. Our policy would see the use of both accessible and efficient free public transport: free for tamariki, free for students, free for community service cardholders, and made free for everyone within five years. Our policy also ensures that urban planning and infrastructure allows for safe cycling and walking paths; cheap, accessible public and active transport; and prioritising regional and rural Aotearoa.

We know that cars and private transport will always be a reality. We know that most of us rely on petrol and diesel vehicles to get around to support our whānau. This is why it’s necessary to bring down the costs of electric hybrid cars. We must make electric hybrid cars an affordable option for our whānau. In reality right now, for many in Tai Tokerau and for many Māori across the motu, it’s just a bit of a pipe dream, to be honest. This bill works directly against that. That is where this bill comes in and the whakaaro behind our position today.

We understand that the road-user charges exemption is set to end in April. We also understand that this bill is setting a transition phase for that. However, we also understand the bigger picture behind not extending this exemption. For example, this Government has campaigned to build 15 new roads and are pledging $500 million to fix potholes. The one pothole they cannot fix, however, is the $24 billion pothole in their budget. Road users will end up paying for their reckless policies—regos are to be put up by $50. This money will go towards funding 50,000 roadside drug tests, which they will be making back by increasing fines—how does that work?

The cancelation of cycleway and walkway projects will contribute to road congestion, and, by extension, the increase of congestion charges at peak hour traffic. This Government is taking the option away from people to use reliable public transport, forcing them to sit in traffic and then for them to pay for it because the Government cannot plan more than three years ahead. By disincentivising electric vehicles while at the same time cutting public transport, this Government is fuelling climate change.

The Government has put sustainable transport options out of reach, making it harder for our people on lower incomes who already spend their income on transport to pay more to catch the bus. It makes no sense to justify more road-user charges to maintain roads and fix potholes with a policy platform that will lead to more congestion and creating more potholes. So I’m looking forward to seeing this go to select committee. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Tēnā tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As I’ve been driving around the roads of Northland, observing the state of those roads and observing the number of electric vehicles and hybrids, along with all the other users on the road, it’s become apparent to me that all people using the road should pay their fair share. It’s important that we have a fair transition to eventually go to a situation where we have a road-user charge applicable to everybody. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

I’m happy to take a call on this bill and signal not only Labour’s support, as my colleague the Labour spokesperson for transport Tangi Utikere did, but also set out some of the questions that we think are really important to explore as we go through that. I would like to signal that, given the importance and the complexity of this, I do think that four weeks at the select committee is a very light period of time in order to get the expertise to come to bear on what are important questions.

We heard the Minister who introduced this bill making wild claims that no work has been done on this in the previous Government and then in the next breath talking about the work the previous Government had been doing around road-user charges (RUCs) come 1 March 2024. So this is a long-term piece of work, and indeed there was a piece of consultation that went out, I think, two years ago around what the future of the road-user charge would be

So we have before us today a piece of legislation which really deals with that gnarly issue of the definition of what it is. So the primary piece of legislation that we’re looking in has hard-wired into it definitions of what electric vehicles are, and this was legislation, of course, that was put in place before some of the technology that we have today—before we had purely electric and plug-in hybrids and had the plethora of technological options that we have today in the fact that we do have decarbonising transport.

What I really want to stress is that when Labour was doing this work, we saw this very much as a suite of policies, extending this exemption out for the light vehicles through to 1 March 2024 being part of how we did drive that massive uptake of electric vehicles in New Zealand that is going to be needed to meet our emissions budgets, to reduce our carbon, our greenhouse gas emissions.

We saw it as sitting alongside things like the Clean Car Discount so that we could ensure that more New Zealanders could have access to not only lower emissions but lower-cost forms of transport. That was really important. Also, that sat alongside the work that we were doing around electric vehicle charging and the massive boost that we gave to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority in terms of how it rolled out our charging infrastructure around New Zealand. These all need to be seen as an interrelated package that needs to go together, and when this bill goes to the select committee, our members will be asking questions—what will removing this now do to the uptake of electric vehicles? How will that sit alongside the targets that sit inside emissions budget 1 but also the work that’s been done around the second emissions reduction? How are we going to achieve those targets, which the Government is saying it is committed to achieving? What are policy implications from a greenhouse gas emission perspective of this piece of legislation?

The other thing that I’d like the Government to consider as this bill goes to the select committee is that this is a piece of legislation that is looking at definitions, which, as I said, is one of the gnarly pieces in the policy work in this area. We know that 44 percent of our energy-related emissions in New Zealand comes from the transport sector and 20 percent of all of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transport, and the bulk of vehicle fleet, light-duty passenger vehicles are the vast majority. Heavy vehicles only make up 4 percent, and this piece of legislation is only looking at heavy vehicles and light vehicles. But we know that 4 percent of heavy vehicles make up 25 percent of transport’s total emissions.

And there was work done by the previous Government—in fact, in the consultation that went out on that issue of definitions about the fact that we now have new fuels that were never envisioned when the legislation was written in terms of fuel-cell technology, hydrogen, when it comes to heavy-fleet vehicles. I think we are missing a vital opportunity to think more broadly about how it is. Do we now say we’re going to bring in the RUC for the light-vehicle fleet? That time has come. But we should be putting in place, to decarbonise that much more difficult part of our transport sector—the heavy-vehicle fleet—hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. What do we need to do and what is the future policy work we need to do to achieve what we have all signed up to in emissions budgets 1, 2, and 3.

Thank you, Mr Speaker—really pleased to stand in support of the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill in the name of the Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown. Quickly, in 2009, the previous National Government exempted electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid vehicles from paying road-user charges to encourage their uptake. This exemption was always planned to end when EVs hit around 2 percent of the light vehicle fleet, and, right now, New Zealand has reached that target. This transition is about fairness and equity, ensuring that all road users are contributing to the upkeep and maintenance of the roads irrespective of the type of vehicle they drive. I commend the bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill.

I will begin my contribution with a brief comment about the select committee referral. This is something that my colleagues and I will be seeking to debate, and it’s something that the chair of the committee—a hard-working committee and a hard-working chair—has brought to the attention of the House, given that he has commented that he will need to open submissions almost immediately, because it has been proposed in this House by the Minister that the committee would be reporting back on the 14th. It is Labour’s position that that is not enough time to delve into some of the issues which need to immediately be addressed within this bill. So I will come to the reasons for that in my speech, and then I’ll be asking for a call on the motion when the Minister moves it.

So just to quickly recap about what this bill seeks to do, as the Hon Dr Megan Woods has said, it redefines and checks in with the definitions of things like electric vehicles (EVs). This is meaty policy work. In an environment where the technology around this is changing constantly, it is for the committee to give itself an assurance that the definition that we create today in the legislation is fit for purpose not only now but in the future.

What is drafted currently is backwards-looking. It deals with the problems that we have had now, and the Government work on this—which the Minister has had the benefit of speaking to today—was done broadly since 2021, but we need to ensure that the advances in technology are captured within the definitions here.

It also sets a differential rate for plug-in hybrids and an exemption for very light EVs. But one of the things that the committee will be asked to deal with is whether those weight ratings are appropriate, given the kind of policy problems that the House is being asked to solve here about everyone paying their fair share, when large vehicles only make up a very small proportion of New Zealand’s transport fleet.

So what needs to happen next? Well, the questions that the Labour members have addressed in our speeches on this side of the debate have not had an opportunity to be addressed. They are about what the impact of this policy will be on New Zealand’s transport fleet as a whole. That’s something that the select committee needs time to delve into and understand, because the impact of this policy decision will take us away from, essentially, what was a subsidy of users of electric vehicles in order to incentivise their uptake and their use. That was a decision to expand the number of electric vehicles which were being imported into New Zealand, alongside other policy decisions like the Clean Car Discount.

Those were incredibly effective. They meant that New Zealand had one of the highest rates of increase of uptake in electric vehicles in our fleet in the world, and when we take away those options for people, it means that we will see an ongoing effect over several decades in terms of what is available not only in the primary vehicle purchasing market but also for the secondary vehicle purchases, which is most New Zealanders. Many New Zealanders will not then have the opportunity, if newer vehicles aren’t coming into the country through things like corporate fleets, to be able to buy them in the secondary market, and it will have an ongoing effect on the emissions of our vehicle fleet as a whole when people hang on to their older vehicles that do not use EV technology.

So we need to give ourselves some assurance, as this House, that this isn’t having a long-run effect on our emissions profile over time, and those numbers aren’t available for the House today. They are unlikely to be made available to the select committee in a four-week process. We need the time to be able to delve into the impact of this decision on coming generations.

There’s also some work to be done on what the Government members have presented to the House as the 2 percent of the vehicle fleet being sort of a goal of the EVs represented within that. That certainly doesn’t represent the number of EVs in the vehicle fleet. That would be a good idea. We still, I think, have a general agreement in this House that it is good for our transport fleet to reduce in its emissions profile and also to become less dependent on foreign offshore oil. Those are good things, and so we need some assurances at the select committee level about how we continue to incentivise the uptake of ordinary people buying primary or second-hand cars to purchase EV vehicles. Those are the sorts of things we will need to delve into. We will also need to understand the implications for, say, those hard-working taxi drivers in Manurewa, in my electorate, for whom this will completely change their business profile. For those reasons, we’ll be seeking calls on the motion to refer this to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

I’m very pleased to stand and talk to this particular bill. I think it’s very pleasing, as a country, to think that we’ve got up to 2 percent of these types of vehicles at the level here that are traveling upon our roads. But it’s also of no surprise to any of us that we think it’s only fair and reasonable that they actually now start to contribute to the cost of our roading itself. The fact that we’re looking at moving this to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee—it’s absolutely appropriate that they do take calls of submissions from the public about the rate at which those particular vehicles pay—whether it be the $53 for the hybrids or the $73 per thousand kilometres for the electric vehicles. So I’m very supportive of this bill moving to the next stage.

The question is,

Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.