Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2)

Members, we now come to our final debate, which is clauses 1 to 3—“Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Clauses 1, 2, and 3 are “Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”, and I couldn’t have said it better myself, Madam Chair. This part of the bill does three things. It sets out the title of the bill—or the title of the Act, to be fair. The Act title will be the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Act (No 2) 2025. Clause 2 sets out the commencement date of the Act. That commencement date will be 1 January 2026. That is required so that we can the system in force in time, and we won’t be accepting any amendments to change the commencement date for that very purpose. Clause 3 outlines the principal Act. It lets the public know what the Act is that this bill amends, and the name of that Act is the Land Transport Act 1998.

Now, I know that there are a number of amendments on the Table, some of which make an attempt to possibly improve the bill, and some of which are frivolous and quite rude, really. There’s one there from 3:15:04 which says, “In clause 3, after ‘1998’, insert ‘, widely agreed to be an arcane tangle of Byzantine regulations which is difficult to amend’ ”. I mean, the public can take what they want from those kinds of amendments.

If I look at other kinds of amendments like, for example, the one done at 10:50:28 for the removal of clean car standards—that’s not what it does. The one done at 10:50:29, which says, “No clean car standards.”—that’s not what it does, although it’s quite clever by replacing clause 2 with “No clean car standards.”, and so I’ll give you points for trying.

There’s one there from 10:50:31, which is trying to insert an additional line at the end of clause 1 saying that “This Act forms part of a series of amendments to the clean vehicle system.” I’m not sure that I’ve seen that at the end of a title before. It’s certainly novel, but it’s not something that we would support.

Another amendment by Arena Williams to replace the commencement date was lodged at 10:50:32, and we don’t support that, as I’ve mentioned before. One from Arena Williams, from 10:50:33, is trying to change the commencement date to be a date set as determined by Order in Council. We don’t think that’s necessary, as we prefer the certainty of having it as 1 January 2026. Similarly, with the 10:50:34 amendment, we’d prefer “2026”, rather than “2030”.

There’s a further one from 10:50:35. Arena Williams would like to say that the Act “may be brought into force in stages by Order in Council”. I think that would only increasingly complicate the system, and we want to have legislation which is clear so that people have certainty about these kinds of things. Then there are a couple of other amendments by Dr Xu-Nan which mimic, I think, Arena Williams’ amendments, as well.

Just in general, we don’t support those amendments. We think that we’ve got it pretty bang on with those three very short, concise amendments, and I look forward to their passage after some rigorous debate.

Madam Chair, I’d like to take my call after our spokesperson just to signal—since the Minister himself has brought up what’s unusual and what’s usual in the titles of bills—that my comments and questions will be around how the purpose of the original bill relates to the title. It is a technical question, and, therefore, I think it’s more appropriate to lead with our spokesperson with his questions, and then come back to that, if I may.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): So you’re standing up to speak to tell me you don’t want to stand up to speak just yet?

INGRID LEARY: OK, I’m happy to continue, Madam Chair. OK, I will do this, and I apologise to my colleague. However, the Minister himself—

Tim Costley: Point of order, Madam Chairperson. The clock seems to have reset to five minutes.

Thank you, and I need to point out to the member that she did resume her seat, and so the call has ended.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It might be that the member Ingrid Leary gets her way after all, but we’ll see. I want to comment on—and I don’t intend to make this a lengthy call, but who knows? We have no issue with the principal Act, and, obviously, that’s pretty straightforward in our mind, but the two that I do want to ask questions of the Minister around are the title and commencement.

First, we have the title. The Minister has said that he’s not prepared to entertain any of the proposed changes there. We all know that what’s really important is that when bills progress through this Parliament, they are named so that those who follow them, if they choose to, might be able to actually ascertain what the bill is about. This is going to be called the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Act (No 2). I would have thought that’s quite embarrassing for the Government, because it indicates that there was a “(No 1)” and that they’ve failed to deliver on what it was they wanted to achieve on the first time out.

I know that the former Minister of Transport Simeon Brown is in the Chamber today, and this may be feeling as though it’s a déjà-vu moment for him, because we spent some time previously when we were looking at the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill “(No 1)”—

Hon Simeon Brown: Every time we come back, it just gets better.

TANGI UTIKERE: Oh, he says that it gets better. Well, maybe his replacement is doing the jobs that he himself failed to do, and now he’s moved on to another area to stuff that part up in our country, but anyhow—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): That’s not very parliamentary.

TANGI UTIKERE: Oh, I withdraw that comment, Madam Chair. The—

Tim Costley: And apologise.

TANGI UTIKERE: And apologise. The interesting thing is that it would be good to actually have the name of a bill that really did indicate what it was. While the Minister might not like some of the suggestions that have been put forward, there are some opportunities there, I think, to really signify what it is that this bill is about.

I’ll move on to the commencement date. There are many opportunities when it comes to the commencement about it coming into effect either on a particular calendar date or on the day after Royal assent. Given that a lot of what is contained in this bill is already timebound—i.e., the figures that are set in terms of what people would have to pay are tied to particular calendar years or are tied to particular aspects in time—why not just have this as an Act that comes into effect the day after Royal assent? It’s a very straightforward question for the Minister. Maybe it’s just that it’s trying to keep it clean so that it kicks in from the new calendar year, but from my recollection, there’s nothing in this bill that really provides—if it was to come into effect the day after Royal assent, what is going to be the implication, if that is the case?

These are, effectively, changes to a regime that comes in at a particular point in the calendar year. It might be that there is some sort of indication of trying to give more time to the industry—but just those two clearly discrete questions.

I do have a technical question for the Minister, and let me preface this by saying that we’re in the same situation we were in yesterday, where we had an amendment that was purporting to amend a principal Act, but when we looked at the purpose of the principal Act, it was quite different. So my question is different from my colleague’s question, because this is not really about whether there is confusion over the title. Given the impact of what this does in statutory interpretation in judicial review court cases and so on, whether the title is sufficiently clear to be able to give effect to that principal purpose is a legal question under section 5 of the Interpretation Act. The courts would normally look to the title, as has been said, to get an understanding about what it’s about, and in this case it’s very clearly a bill that is quite substantively different from the original bill.

My questions to the Minister are whether he thinks the title adequately reflects the bill’s effect on New Zealand’s trajectory with our emissions, whether the Parliamentary Counsel Office gave advice on whether a more descriptive was appropriate, and whether there were any concerns raised about a possible mismatch between the title and purpose that could affect the interpretation under section 5 of the Interpretation Act, and I’ll add to that question a question as to whether the Minister actually sought that advice. If the Minister didn’t seek that advice, I do think that opens up a serious question about whether he should then look to the amendments from Arena Williams to see if there is a suggestion in there that would better suit the purpose and better suit the statutory interpretation in section 5 of the Interpretation Act that courts would look to.

Otherwise, what we are really doing is kind of creating sloppy law. We’re not providing certainty to the courts. This is the Minister’s opportunity, I guess, to put on the Hansard how aligned he thinks the amendment bill is to the original one so that when it comes to interpreting the purpose, given the title—if he’s not prepared to change it—at least the courts or counsel can refer to the Hansard to help them interpret what the relationship is between this amendment bill and the original Act.

The Interpretation Act was repealed in 2021, and maybe the member can ask her colleague, who was in Parliament at that time. The title does what it says: it calls this Act the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Act—that’s what it does. In terms of its relation to the principal Act, it amends the Land Transport Act. We need to amend the Land Transport Act in order to amend the Clean Vehicle Standard because the Clean Vehicle Standard is contained inside the Land Transport Act. If we were to try and amend another Act, we wouldn’t be able to amend the Clean Vehicle Standard, because the Clean Vehicle Standard wouldn’t exist in another Act.

We won’t be entertaining any changes to the principal Act, nor will we be entertaining any changes to the title, because the title perfectly describes what the Act does: it amends the Land Transport Act in relation to the Clean Vehicle Standard. It is the second time that a bill has done this in this term of Parliament because we are a busy and effective Parliament that responds to the needs of industry, and where we can make things easier for New Zealanders, we will.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 1, inserting “and Transition”, be agreed to.

Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 1 to insert the words “This Act forms part of a series of amendments to the clean vehicle system.” is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.

Arena Williams’ remaining tabled amendments to clause 1 are out of order as not being objective descriptions of the bill.

The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 2, replacing “2026” with “2027”, be agreed to.

The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 2, replacing “1 January 2026” with “1 July 2026”, be agreed to.

The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 2, replacing “2026” with “2030”, be agreed to.

Arena Williams’ remaining three tabled amendments to clause 2 are out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.

The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 2, replacing “1 January 2026” with “on a date set by Order in Council”, be agreed to.

Arena Williams’ four tabled amendments to clause 3 are out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.

Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

The bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Third Reading