Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill does two things. It amends the Land Transport Act to ensure that the Government is able to amend the clean vehicle standard by regulations rather than for it to be set in legislation. Secondly, it allows for the cost recovery of the clean vehicle standard process, rather than for that cost to be put across all New Zealand taxpayers.

This Government is committed to retaining a clean car standard. We see that as playing an important role in ensuring that New Zealand gets the mix of vehicles that New Zealanders rely on—affordable vehicles, cleaner vehicles, and the mix of the types of vehicles which can help New Zealanders with their day-to-day lives, including those who are on our farms, in our cities, and in our small towns. We want to ensure New Zealanders have that mix of vehicles at an affordable and increasingly sustainable approach.

However, the last Government, when putting in place the clean vehicle standard, effectively, legislated what that standard should be right out to the end of 2027. And what this bill does is it says instead of having it legislated, it allows that those standards can be amended by regulation, just as they are post-2027—those can already be amended or put in place by regulation. And the reason for doing that is because the law actually requires a review of that standard to happen. So it legislated a standard and then it legislated a review. But after doing a review, which it required me as the Minister of Transport to start prior to 30 June 2024, it did not have any ability for the standard to actually be amended.

The reality is that if the standard is kept as it currently stands, we’re going to get to a point where our standard becomes more and more stringent, to a point where New Zealand as a car market—people importing vehicles and consumers—will either have to pay more and more for those vehicles because there isn’t the global supply for them, or ultimately they won’t have the mix of vehicles that they rely on. So we’re reviewing it to ensure we’re getting the balance right in regards to affordability, the emissions reduction, and also making sure that New Zealanders can get the mix of vehicles that they need.

That review is under way and, post this legislation being made, will allow decisions to be made in regards to what those standards should be going forward. But this bill also ensures an appropriate cost recovery mechanism is put in place. For the clean vehicle standard operation, currently there’s $11.8 million that’s being given per year to the New Zealand Transport Agency to operate an IT system, which, by the way, is then used by people who import vehicles. Well, in every other aspect of importing vehicles, there are cost recovery methods put in place to ensure that the systems are user-pays and those costs are recovered. So this bill enables regulations to be set for those costs to be recovered.

But the interesting thing is, despite the last Government allocating $11.8 million each year to the standard, it was actually only costing around $6.5 million to run. It just shows how the last Government actually operated. They’d allocate almost twice as much—almost twice as much, just appropriate it, which is what they used to do; the magic money tree—just appropriate it. And then, of course, what’s the incentive? “Oh, let’s just spend it.” Well, actually, on this side of the House, we actually think that this is taxpayers’ money and it should be treated far more carefully. And so that’s what this bill will do.

So this bill makes two, I think, very sensible changes. I thank members from across the House for their engagement in the committee of the whole House stage. The bill is going forward without amendment because, ultimately, the decisions made by the Government allow that review to take place, any changes to happen, and that cost recovery method to be put in place. We stand by this bill and we commend it to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Kia orana. Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, the House has been sitting since the late hours of last night, all through today, to deal with this one piece of legislation.

💬 Andy Foster: Whose fault was that?

Well, whose fault it was, Mr Foster, was this Government’s, who clearly want to take this country backwards in terms of meeting our emissions targets and being ambitious, because there is absolutely no ambition in relation to that.

This is a piece of legislation that has been rammed through this Parliament, through all stages—first reading, second reading, committee, and now third—without any opportunity for any select committee scrutiny or engagement. But the Minister of Transport, as this bill has been making its way through the Parliament in the last 24 hours, has made very clear that consultation under his watch will take place, but it will only take place with the importers that this bill will affect. Those are the only people that he is interested in. He’s been very clear about setting regulations. He will only consult with importers. He will not consult with any environmental NGOs. He will not consult with anyone else that might want to have a view on this. And this is just emblematic of the approach that this Government seems to take in terms of making decisions that will have a real impact on the ground, but they don’t care about that. They are simply focused on being in it for those that will support them.

This is very, very disappointing. Parliament has spent a number of hours reflecting on the fact that an officer of this Parliament, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, took the time, bevvied into this process by sending an open letter to the Minister of Transport expressing concerns and opportunities around the fact that this was a bill that would have huge implications on the environment. Yet there was not an opportunity for an Officer of Parliament to directly feed into that and has had to, effectively, issue an open letter to make his views known. And you know what? When those views were put to the Minister, time and time and time again, he simply said, “Well, it’s got nothing to do with that, actually, because it’s got to wait for the review process.” I think that is absolutely disgraceful, on the part of Simeon Brown, that that is the response that he has.

There is a requirement for the Minister to consult whenever he is going to issue regulations and he’s made it very clear around who he is going to consult with. You know, members on this side of the House have attempted to be very conciliatory in a number of the amendments that we’ve put forward in this process. Now, the Government has had, in many instances, a lot of time to actually have a look at those Amendment Papers because they were tabled, I think, on the night or within the 24 hours of the Budget, so at least three weeks to pursue or peruse through those.

Now, one that I thought was actually very sensible, and would have provided an opportunity for the Minister to have a look at, was the creation of the sinking lid, to ensure that the risk of, actually, an increase in those targets would be mitigated because it wouldn’t be possible. But the Minister did not give any consideration to that and it is rather unfortunate that that is in fact the case.

There is no ambition here in this legislation. What we have currently as the state of play is a legislated specified list of targets that run us through the next three-year period, and then we revert into regulations as an opportunity. What is wrong with that—what is wrong with that? The Minister has failed to address that.

This Clean Car Standard is a piece of legislation that was introduced as a way of workability in tandem with the clean car rebate or the discount. Now, this Government slated that within their first hundred days. They basically chopped out households from having an opportunity to access a no- to low-emission vehicle opportunity by saying, “No, no, we’ve hit the target.” As a result of that, we have seen the sales of those vehicles actually plummet. And this will do nothing to support the reversal of that as well. This was something that was phased in from December 2022, and its focus was primarily around driving down the carbon dioxide emissions for light vehicles, to target those who use light vehicles—everyday households, others that have it in the fleet as well—let alone the environmental factors that are at play.

We have heard time and time again in this House about the fact that we have to drive down our transportation sector emissions if we are going to make any real progress to delivering on the outcomes that we have signed up to as an international player. It’s interesting when we look at the numbers—there are 1,000 or thereabouts vehicle importers that import 300,000 vehicles each year into this country. Now, what is interesting is that this is going to be, effectively, a car tax that is thrown on to each vehicle. It’s the only logical way that the Government will be able to administer this—by saying, “Actually, we’re not going to set an across-the-board fee, X amount of money that’s required, spread that over the 1,000, and everyone pays the same amount.” There are equity issues with that. What they are going to do is they’re going to say that every single vehicle that is sold in New Zealand is going to have an admin fee tacked on and something else to meet the costs of this. So it is a car tax. It is something that they are putting on to households and purchases as well.

Now, this is clearly a Government that is looking to authorise and permit dirtier cars on our roads, dirtier cars in our communities, less efficient cars out and about. That would be vehicles that have higher operating costs over the life of the vehicle as well, and they are going to continue to penalise those for whom it is just a little bit more difficult to make the decision to actually migrate over to a no- to low-emitting vehicle. And that is rather unfortunate. It is important that we do have a sense of ambition. This is something that is lacking from this Government—that they’ve taken urgency to ram through this piece of legislation—

💬 Simon Court: Coming from your side!

Oh, Mr Court—that’s got him going. You know, he’s been sitting there silently for quite some time, and now whenever we tinker with the suggestion of no ambition from him and his party, as a member of this Government, that’s what riles him up a little bit.

But there is no ambition from this Government to seek to drive down the emissions in this country. If we look at what the levels are contained here in the actual piece of legislation, there was a real opportunity for Minister Simeon Brown to come to the House to say to the Parliament and to those who are listening, “You know what? Actually, I give a commitment that the targets that I set as Minister of Transport will not be higher than the targets that exist here today.” And he refused to do that. That was an opportunity to signal to everyone in this House and out there in the community that we are serious as a Government about driving down our emissions in the profile. He refused to do that, and I think that is just absolutely an unfortunate opportunity that has gone by.

An aspect of this bill is to push those costs to the industry via the cost recovery. It’s something that Minister Brown has talked about ad infinitum—that this is about user-pays, it’s about cost recovery. That will find its way on to the consumer. The money that is currently being paid by the public for an element of public good is going to make its way on to the consumer. And we’ve had this conversation, as part of the committee of the whole House, about whether it was appropriate to amend as the principal Act, the Land Transport Act, or whether there had been some advice sought or some advice that may have been given. Actually, this sat more squarely within the consumer rights, consumer guarantee space; or maybe it sat in the energy efficiency, climate change space. We didn’t actually hear from—well, no, we did hear from him, to be fair. He said, “No, no, this is because this is what the previous Government did.” Since when did previous Governments bind future and current Governments—since when did previous Governments bind future and current Governments? Because, if that was the case, the Government wouldn’t be on its mission and heading in the direction that it seems to be heading in as well. So that is absolute and utter nonsense—absolute and utter nonsense. The Minister is simply running a ruler through all of these specific targets that will kick in, and that is really unfortunate.

The focus of the Land Transport Act is around a rapid reduction in emissions, in terms of Part 5. This piece of legislation that’s been rammed through the House under urgency at the moment over the last few hours, or many hours, is doing nothing to do exactly that. It is doing nothing to actually drive down our emissions profile as a country. What that means is there will be significant implications for households and for us as a nation as we fail, under this Government, to take climate change seriously, and we fail to meet the targets that have been outlined and the responsibilities that have also been outlined and underpin the emissions reduction plans 2 and 3. It is unfortunate.

So, on this side of the House, we will continue to oppose this ridiculous, dire piece of legislation that seeks to do nothing but to put a further barrier on those that want to make a difference. I oppose this bill.

Better things are possible. The whole reason I was motivated to stand for the Green Party and get involved in politics is because I am eternally hopeful and I have seen places that make better decisions than New Zealand currently does: places where people have warm, dry, affordable homes, where they use more renewable electricity, where they have lower fuel bills and they have cleaner air and kids walk and cycle to school and people are healthier and happier as a result. Ironically, in those very places that the National Party identified as the countries in the world with the “best roads”—the Netherlands, Singapore, Japan—what do all these places have in common? The majority of people in the cities are not using cars, and the reason for that is because they’ve invested in alternatives.

All of this is possible for New Zealand as well. But as long as we are going to be totally focused on cars and roads, as this Government is—if they want to realistically do anything to meet our climate targets, which they say over and over they are committed to, we have to do something about the cars coming into the country and reduce those emissions, and we have to be evidence-based about what is going to work.

I want to acknowledge my predecessor Jeanette Fitzsimons, co-leader of the Green Party, the late Jeanette Fitzsimons, someone who was way, way ahead of her time and calmly persevered in here. She set up the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, and worked alongside the Hon David Parker on fuel economy standards—which were then thrown out by the National Government in 2008 and as a result of that, we were lagging behind the rest of the world. That’s very clear when you look at these graphs from the International Council on Clean Transportation, which compare New Zealand, Mexico, Japan, Chile, South Korea, Australia, China, Brazil, India, the United States, Canada, the UK, and EU and shows that up until very recently, the average fuel economy of the vehicles coming into New Zealand was worse than all of those other countries. Nobody benefits from that here in New Zealand; nobody benefits from being a dumping ground for polluting vehicles. It just means we spend more money on petrol and diesel, and we have worse air quality and more people die as a result, and we have worse carbon emissions.

Here’s the opportunity that we had to have evidence-based policy that was going to get results—objective results—that would benefit everyone in New Zealand as proven by the benefit-cost analysis that was done. But, in fact, the policies exceeded expectations. They were working even better than planned. The Clean Car Discount combined with the Clean Car Standard saw a drastic reduction in the average emissions of the vehicles coming into this country.

Before we brought those policies in, the industry said, “No way, can’t be done—can’t be done.” That’s what they said. But then guess what happened? We did bring in the policies, and it happened, and the average fuel economy of cars coming in—and bear with me, I know the other side of the House doesn’t like numbers, they don’t like to get into the numbers—went from 189 grams of carbon per kilometre to 136 grams of carbon per kilometre. It was decreasing at 50 grams per kilometre per year—an incredibly fast rate. On that trend, the average emissions for May 2024 would have been 92 grams per kilometre, and now they’re up to 161 grams per kilometre. So, objectively, ditching the Clean Car Discount, putting up the road-user charges for electric vehicles, and now introducing certainty in the sense that the standards for 2025 to 2027 are going to be watered-down means that we will get more polluting vehicles in New Zealand than we would otherwise get. Who benefits from this in New Zealand? Who? Anyone? Oh, a tiny percentage of people—the only people the Minister of Transport is actually going to consult about this policy, because he’s put this legislation through under urgency with no select committee process.

We’ve heard from heaps of people, actually, in the vehicle industry that they are very concerned that this means ditching the standards. It’s introducing uncertainty and it’s at a time when electric vehicles are increasing globally—sales are drastically increasing, but they have plummeted in New Zealand and this locks in emissions for 20 years from now because brand new vehicles that come into the country, they’re still going to be driven in 20 years. Every year that we import more fossil fuel vehicles that have high emissions, we’re locked into those emissions for ages. So it’s just a total own goal but, you know, entirely expected from a Minister who takes very seriously the comments on his Facebook page, but, rather than looking at evidence, rather than looking at what is going to be effective, turns everything into a culture war, makes it all about blaming certain categories of people when, in truth, we all have to face climate change together. The farmers are being affected by the floods and the droughts. We have to work together to solve this problem. And we were; we were solving it together. But those people on the other side of the House, they will use hate and division and utter propaganda to stop progress—to stop progress. Why? Because the people who donate to them stand to benefit. A tiny percentage of people—a tiny percentage of corporations and very rich individuals.

My colleague Tangi Utikere said that these parties are not ambitious. Well, they are very ambitious for a very small percentage of people. They want a very small percentage of people, who already own the most and have earned the highest profits, to earn even more—double-down on the status quo and pretend that letting a few people get richer or a few overseas corporations make more money at the expense of New Zealand’s atmosphere and air quality is somehow going to make New Zealand better off as a country. What a joke—what a joke. It’s positively Orwellian, the propaganda and the words that come from this Government when they describe their actions. We had a Government policy statement today, supposedly about increasing economic growth and productivity—what a joke. Every action it takes is setting us backwards on the failed policies of the 20th century that have led to New Zealand having an incredibly inefficient transport system, incredibly high petrol and diesel bills, and it’s going to keep doing that.

The Minister said, with respect to this legislation, that it was increasing certainty for the industry. It’s doing the exact opposite. As he admitted during the committee stage, putting it into regulation means that the standard for next year—just six months from now, 2025—could be higher or could be lower. He said he’s done this to make it consistent with how the standards were going to be set two, three, four, or five years from now. The truth is it’s increasing uncertainty and it’s making it very clear that the Government is going to water down the standards irrespective of the evidence about the climate impacts, irrespective of the evidence about the economic cost to New Zealand of doing that, irrespective of the evidence of the health impacts. The Government is going to carry on down this track because a small number of overseas vehicle manufacturers will find it slightly more profitable because the rest of the world is not taking these polluting vehicles any more.

I’ve heard the ACT Party say during this debate that, “Oh, it’s so great that the vehicle industry is making more electric vehicles and reducing emissions.” The only reason they’re doing that is because most of the rest of the civilised world has understood that in order to get them to increase efficiency, we had to have fuel economy standards and price incentives like the Clean Car Standard and the Clean Car Discount. That’s literally what every other country in the world, and the EU, and China, and the US are all doing right now. When we water down the standards and we get rid of the price incentives, what’s going to happen? Again, New Zealand will be getting the more polluting vehicles that are more costly to run, that are more damaging to our health and our cities. And all of this, for what—for what?

Do the members opposite actually think that’s going to make us better off as a country? If so, I’m intrigued as to the rationale for how one could think that we’ll be better off as a country by importing more highly polluting vehicles that cost more money to run and that mean we have to import more petrol and diesel. Why is that better for New Zealand?

💬 Hon Member: Listen to our speeches.

Yeah, I haven’t heard anything that makes any sense from anyone in the Government parties on this topic, particularly not the Minister. But it’s just one of those things that if they say something enough in the media, they know that a certain percentage of people will believe it. So they just keep saying, “Black is white, white is black, up is down, let the rich get richer and then we’ll be richer.” Oh, yeah, that’s what’s happened over the last 30 years—that really works! Double down on neoliberalism, double down on lack of regulation.

Actually, what I do see—the common thread from the Government parties—is there’s a constant trade-off where we allow a small number of people to get richer, a small number of corporations to increase profits at the expense of life itself. It’s more cancer, more car crashes, more climate chaos—for what?

Oh, enough of this climate doom and alarmism. C’mon, everybody! It’s Thursday. It’s Matariki tomorrow and we’re going to go home soon. Some of us will go home in aeroplanes. Did you know that today Air New Zealand received its first shipment of sustainable aviation fuel made at Exxon Mobil’s refinery in Singapore? How good. New Zealand is doing sustainability better than anyone else.

The problem this bill tries to solve is that the previous Labour Government got it all wrong when it comes to clean vehicle standards. Instead of listening to all of the auto makers who said, “Oh, it wouldn’t be a good idea to introduce these standards years earlier than the jurisdictions where the cars are made. How about you give us a bit more runway to make sure New Zealand has affordable and efficient vehicles?” But, no, the previous Government didn’t listen, so this Government’s here to fix yet another problem. We’ve solved sulphur dioxide in diesel. We’ve got some of the cleanest diesel in the world. We solved lead in petrol back in the 1980s. Now we can actually get lower-emission vehicles. But we’re not going to get them the way the Green Party says.

What was interesting was that the previous speaker, the Hon Julie Anne Genter, a former transport Minister, quoted Sweden and Norway as being great examples of having great roads and low emissions. Well, Ms Genter, Sweden is a nuclear-powered country that has one of the biggest mining operations in Europe and that makes an inordinate amount of money by selling weapons to its friends and allies. Norway has some of the biggest State-owned oil and gas sector in the world. Where does the money come from?

How do we get lower emissions? Well, New Zealanders become wealthier, we can afford better cars, and they’re lower emissions—job done. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Look, this is a very small bill. There’s been a huge amount said about so little.

💬 Hon Member: Commend the bill!

You didn’t ask him to do that! This is a very common-sense bill. The first part of the common sense is that the Minister of Transport, the Hon Simeon Brown, has been asked, or required, to do a review. This just gives the Minister the ability to do something with that review rather than having to change the legislation again.

The second thing it does is allow the Minister to get the powers now that he was going to get anyway in 2028, which, again, is common sense.

The third thing is that we heard from the other side that this about a new tax. Well, no, it isn’t. What it is doing is it is taking a cost off the taxpayer and putting it on the user. That is not a tax.

And the other thing to congratulate the Minister on is that he’s actually managed to cut the cost in half. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call. I call Helen White.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to remind the House that in the three years that the standard will be taken away by this bill and replaced by what is a discretion over criteria, 2,200 people every year will die of pollution because of the emissions of petrol and diesel vehicles, and 6,600 people will die. There will also be 27,800 people hospitalised, and that’s our kids. That’s our kids with asthma. That’s a whole lot of illnesses that are utterly preventable.

What this previous situation did was it put in place a target so that the industry knew that it had a place it was going and it was utterly certain about that pathway. What the Minister of Transport has done is taken away all that certainty. I listened very carefully to what the Minister talked about when he was given repeated opportunities to assure this House that he would not use his new discretion to lower the situation with regard to the safety of New Zealanders through these kinds of chemicals. He was offered that opportunity repeatedly and he did not take it. So people who are listening today should know that those are real lives, those are real injuries, and this Government has not actually prioritised the public interest here.

Now, I want to come to the tax issue, because that’s another way New Zealanders get hurt. Yes, I do call it a tax. What we have here is a removal of what actually sounded like, from the Minister’s speech himself, only $6.5 million of administrative cost which was being paid by the taxpayer in recognition of the fact that this is important for our kids, it’s important for our older people, and it’s important for our people in our cities. It’s a health issue and it’s an environmental issue, so it’s a public good. So we were doing that as a Government and I’m proud we were doing that. Instead, it’s been removed, and all that cost will be put into a pool that will be paid presumably, actually, ultimately, by the consumer, because it’s going to the industry.

I just want to actually make people think about where that is. Who will be actually visited with that cost? Well, actually, people who run an electric vehicle and people who run a petrol vehicle. How the hell is that fair? How’s it fair that all of the injury is being done by one group and yet everyone shares the cost? Isn’t it interesting, and a logical issue, that that’s what this Government has done? It’s visited the cost on people who have done no harm, who are doing no harm, who are doing the right thing. There’s no nuance in this. This is a bill that gives the Minister the discretion so that he can water down standards. That’s what he’s doing. There might be a lot of weasel words around it, but that’s why I cannot support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill enables the Minister of Transport to change the clean vehicle standard carbon dioxide targets through regulations without consultation. Is he likely to strengthen or weaken those targets, or, potentially, leave them exactly the same? We don’t know, and the importers don’t know either. It seems anti-democratic to leave those changes to the whim of the Minister, who has consistently refused to answer during earlier debates who will be giving advice on what those targets should be. Random comments from donors and voters probably don’t really match those of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the Climate Change Commission chair, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research scientists that have probably just been sacked, or all of the other scientists.

💬 Simon Court: They’ve been replaced with AI—it’s much cheaper and faster.

And it gives you the shitty little lies that you want as well—[Interruption]

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, all right. Well, there has been one or two words creeping into Parliament the last couple of days; we’ll just calm down and perhaps not use some of those words.

OK, I shan’t mention artificial intelligence any more, then, Madam Chair. Let’s give the certainty of direction to the vehicle industry, because this kind of Government policy has a really significant impact on the vehicle market, on what’s brought in here. That lack of any emissions standards—I remember when garages were about to bring in emissions testing equipment, when they would have done it during the normal warrant of fitness process. Quite a lot of garages made that investment, and then—good idea evaporated. This country’s average carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles are among the highest in the world, and the rate of improvement needs to be as rapid as it was after the first introduction of these targets. Look, the Government’s decision to—

💬 Simon Court: Honestly, these people used to be opposed to GE—I mean, come on!

💬 Hon Julie Anne Genter: Just ignore him.

Who? I didn’t hear anything.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s not related to the bill; don’t worry about it. Keep going.

The Government’s decision to delay the entry of agriculture into the emissions trading scheme puts even more pressure on the transport—[Interruption] When the Clean Car Standard was introduced, several submitters at the Transport and Infrastructure Committee—do you remember what select committee was, for bills?—wanted the targets to be more ambitious. Many of those submitters might’ve hoped that they could educate the members sitting in the select committee, but there is not a great deal of evidence of that.

But have we stopped having a climate emergency? I think the people in Wairoa, Heretaunga, Haumoana would say the climate emergency is here, it is now, and if it’s this bad now, it’s going to be a lot worse in the next 20, 30, 40 years. Whose grandchildren are you condemning to coastal retreat from their much loved homes? We need to adapt, for sure, to what can’t be avoided, but we have a moral obligation to do what we can, and the ridiculous thing is that this is a win-win-win opportunity: you increase the targets, you save people money, you clean up the air, and you make us more productive altogether.

This Government seems to me very focused on trade-offs. It’s either the environment or the economy; it’s either “Freddie the Frog” or the motorway. Well, I think you can actually put them together and have a productive economy.

💬 Dan Bidois: We agree with you, wholeheartedly.

I think I might like to have that on record, that I’m agreed with wholeheartedly. Thank you.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s on record—it’s on the Hansard; it’ll be on record.

So I just want to say: for what reason, rather than private lobbying instead of public scrutiny, does this Minister want to amend the targets on his own?

Well, great news: we have almost passed this bill—great news. But the greatest news of the day is the fact that the Brynderwyns are open, Northland is open, and you’re all welcome to come and visit. Please do; we need people to come and visit. The businesses of Northland need it. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Well, we’ve been here since about 11 p.m. last night debating this bill, which has moved through all stages under urgency. We haven’t had answers to our questions from the Minister. We had a valiant attempt by the Minister Erica Stanford when she was in the chair, but we haven’t heard from the Minister of Transport about why he is giving himself new regulatory powers when, in fact, they could be set through the mix of what exists currently. And he also hasn’t been able to be clear with us whether these are clean car standards anymore or whether he has created dirty car standards in the wrong piece of legislation.

But I’m glad we’re here. I’m glad we’ve got this time in the House to be able to run through things. I want to thank everyone around the House who’s made fulsome contributions to the debate, to thank my colleagues in the Green Party for their contributions, and to thank the number of Green Party MPs who have been down here keeping the debate lively and engaging. Also, thanks to those members of staff who have put up with us as we have been going through this urgency into the long Matariki weekend with no clear line of sight about when it will finish, so thank you for putting up with us as we’ve been going through this process.

Also, I just want to bring us to the outstanding questions that Labour members still have about this piece of legislation. Because the Minister is right: at the end of his committee stage, he did get to the point where he was saying, “Look, all of these questions are good questions, but they’ll be open to Labour members to ask when I review the regulations as they are now.” So let’s recap what those questions are that are still open.

Who will the Minister consult with? Will it be only the importers, or will he actually consult with those members that he is required to consult with under section 175(1) of the primary legislation, which he didn’t repeal. He didn’t propose to change his consultation obligations, and so he has some when he sets these regulations, and one of those groups that he will be required, under the common law, to consult with is Māori. He has come here into this House during this committee stage and told us that he will not be consulting at all with Māori who will be interested in this and its effect on te taiao—and good luck to the bloke. I’ve told him several times that he’s opening up the Government to further risk on this, and look, we’ll have a fun time in the Regulations Review Committee, I’m sure.

Another question that is still open is whether the Government’s policy position is, in fact, to ratchet up the requirements on the car industry to bring in more clean cars or not. The Minister refused to answer that in committee stage, although he did continuously say in his speeches that he was still committed to New Zealand’s climate change obligations. So, really, the question remains: will he do his part as the Minister of Transport to impact the profile of emissions in New Zealand’s transport sector so that his ministerial colleagues—like, just today, the Hon Todd McClay—can answer in question time that they are committed to New Zealand’s international climate change goals, or will it be that he will not use his regulation-making powers to do that? And will it be that Ministers of his Government will then stop saying things like that because it will become clearer and clearer to New Zealanders that this is a Government intent on taking New Zealand backwards and resiling from its long-term commitments?

Those are the questions I still have in my mind. But it has been a privilege to be a part of the committee stage on this bill and all three readings of it today. Thank you to everyone who’s been a part of it, and we’re voting against it.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I’ll keep this contribution short because we have had a really fulsome debate across the process of this bill coming through the House. There has been a long process through the committee stage, really well fleshed out. The Minister gave superb answers from the chair. There was really great leadership from the Minister when he was in the chair. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The sad thing about this legislation is that the Government hasn’t yet worked out what it’s going to do to reduce light vehicle transport emissions, given that they’ve knocked over the Clean Car Discount, which was a feebate scheme that was highly successful. By the end of that scheme, 75 percent of the vehicles coming in month by month—that’s about 25,000 per month—were either hybrids, plug-in hybrids, or fully electric vehicles. Since they abolished that scheme, the ratio has changed, and the number of cars being imported into the country that only have internal combustion, diesel or petrol power, has doubled, so that now more than 50 percent of the cars coming in are not hybrids, plug-in hybrids, or electric vehicles. So the Government is even more reliant on the Clean Car Standard to drive the efficiency that we need in cars that are coming into the country.

As has been noted in this debate, once a vehicle enters the fleet, it lasts for about 15 years, and until it’s worn out, it’s used and it’s pumping out those greenhouse gas emissions. So the only chance you get to improve the efficiency of the fleet is as those vehicles are being added to the fleet, because once they’re here, someone uses them until they’re completely worn out. You’ve got to get them at the point of import, and the Government has ruined that. They could have come to this House with legislation that said, “Look, now that the Clean Car Discount is gone and the number of these more polluting vehicles has gone through the roof, we need a tougher standard, and we’re going to do it through that standard.” But they haven’t, and they haven’t done that work.

This, of course, is typical of the Government’s non-performance on climate issues. Having signed up to the zero carbon Act, I believe, as a ruse to get voting support at the last election, they’ve turned back the clock on everything. Agricultural emissions—it is just not economically responsible to exclude agriculture, the 50 percent of our emissions, from a price-based measure. That doesn’t mean to say they should go to zero, but they should not be cross-subsidised by the rest of the economy. We protected them, in the last Government, through the split-gas target, meaning that methane doesn’t have to be reduced to zero, like long-lived gases do, but we do need a price-based measure.

They say that they’re going to rely on the price of carbon under the emissions trading scheme to drive emissions reductions, and yet the private sector doesn’t believe them, because the private sector price for those emission units has dropped from $75 a tonne to $50 a tonne, a decrease of 30 percent. So the private sector knows that the rhetoric from the other side is not matched by the stringency of measures that are needed to drive a price on carbon, which is, in turn, necessary to drive the emissions reductions that we need as a planet. We can’t support this bill.

To use the racing parlance, this Government has achieved the trifecta. We’ve scrapped the subsidies on electric vehicles, which were neither self-funding nor sustainable, which saw over $500 million paid out of two years at the expense of hard-working farmers, tradies, and taxpayers. Of course, in the first 100 days, we also scrapped the ute tax—remember that? The ute tax. Farmers and tradies are now no longer unfairly punished. Now, the Government is delivering more workable, more realistic clean car standards. I commend the bill.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I find it extraordinary that that member Cameron Brewer just stood up and celebrated three great lurches backwards—

💬 Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Imagine his grandkids seeing that.

—in respect of our climate. The member to the right of me says, “What will he say to his grandkids when the tide comes in?” There is a real problem there.

Many speakers have spoken very eloquently on this, but my real objection to this is that it’s part of the Government’s programme to move decision making away from this House, to move it away into the executive and into the shadows. These are some of the most important decisions that can be made in respect of the Government of New Zealand: how we achieve our climate targets, and how we address the climate catastrophe that’s facing us in the world—how we uphold our international obligations to be good citizens.

We’ve had a long committee stage about the details of the bill. But in the big picture, what we’ve got is the Minister taking power unto himself so that he can make decisions without—as Arena Williams said—any real, effective consultation or transparency and just choose. In his third reading speech, I was here in the House and I heard him say that we’re going to make the clean vehicle standards more workable. In the language of the other side of the House, what that means is less carbon-friendly, more emissions. Just as they have with agricultural emissions: let the agriculture sector off the hook again because they don’t want it to be an undue burden. What that means is unfettered emissions. What this means is more emissions from our car fleet. As David Parker said, the cars that come into today will be emitting for 15 years. That’s what the Government on the other side is happy to see, to see a more carbon-emitting fleet for a longer period of time than would otherwise be the case.

💬 Simon Court: The cleanest vehicles that have ever been made in the history of mankind.

Here we go—here we go. The ACT Party, the friends of the oil sector. I can smell the coal tar on your breath. It comes as no surprise at all, to me, that the friends of the oil industry want to see dirtier cars. This is the “Dirty Vehicle Standard Amendment Bill”.

Of course we’re going to oppose it, because, on this side of the House, we stand for a sustainable New Zealand that stands up and adheres to its international obligations and makes decisions now and into the future so that we can look at our children and grandchildren and know that we were good stewards of this country, unlike that Government.

Mānawatia a Matariki—happy Matariki, Madam Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.

As the last speaker in this debate, I commend this bill to the House.