Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I am very pleased to take a call on the third reading of the Road User Charges Bill, which the Green Party will be supporting. I did not have the privilege of contributing to the development of this bill myself, so I must acknowledge the work of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, the submitters and officials, the members of this House who contributed during the Committee stage, and, especially, my eminently qualified colleague Gareth Hughes, who was intimately involved in the scrutiny of the bill up until this point.
As Mr Hughes mentioned in his previous speeches on this bill, we are happy to support the bill because it begins to modernise and simplify the road-user charges system. Road-user charges contributed about 37 percent of the National Land Transport Fund last year, and that was about $1 billion. The goal of this bill is to increase compliance, which is good; to simplify enforcement, which is also good; and to provide an incentive for the efficient use of heavy vehicles. I note that by basing the charging on the maximum permissible weight for a given vehicle class, there is a very small incentive to use a heavy vehicle to its full capacity. Now, by optimising heavy vehicle movements around the country, we can deliver the same amount of freight at a much lower cost to business with better social and environmental outcomes and at a lower cost to the public purse. This is a win-win, and it is the kind of win-win that we could achieve a lot more of with our transport policy and funding.
I believe there is a real role for the Government to play in levelling the playing field and providing an incentive for transport to occur in a more efficient and effective manner. Although we support this bill, the Green Party sees it as a real lost opportunity to encourage greater efficiency, especially energy efficiency. We are currently facing a paradigm shift in transport. If New Zealand seizes this opportunity, we can spend less money and have a transport system that delivers far better outcomes.
In 2008 there was a report to the New Zealand Transport Agency that identified a number of transport market distortions that have lead to an over-reliance on private vehicles for the movement of people and of freight in this country. It was an entirely understandable unintended consequence of Government policy and funding at all levels of government—local government, central government, and regional government—that has led to a transport system that is really not energy efficient and is incredibly overly reliant on cars for personal transport and on trucks for freight. This report identified a number of changes to the road-user charges system, to the petrol tax system, and to transport funding in general that would help deliver a much more efficient transport system for New Zealand, and this is going to be particularly important, as higher oil prices are imminent.
What I would like to identify about this bill is that currently the road-user charges are contributing 37 to 40 percent of our National Land Transport Fund, and that is about equivalent to the amount of money that is planned to be spent by this Government each year just on new motorways. Now, some may think that is fair, but in fact road-user charges are intended to pay for maintenance and renewal of the existing network, and should be used for transport solutions that are going to enable goods and people to be moved in the most cost-effective way possible. Is a new motorway or extending the expressway north and south of Auckland the most efficient way to enable freight to move on our roads? Evidently not. At peak hour, only 1 percent of the traffic on the roads in Auckland is heavy vehicles, so we could easily free up the roads quite significantly for freight and commercial vehicles simply by shifting commuters on to more cost-effective modes such as walking, cycling, buses, and trains. We do not have to force people to do that; we just need to make the costs of transport more direct and people will be able to weigh up those decisions for themselves. What the transport modelling shows us is that people would choose to take public transport, walk, and cycle more if those options were delivered for them.
By continuing transport policy and land use policy that artificially subsidise private vehicles, we are making the transport system more vulnerable to high oil prices, which we know are coming. So spending all the road-user charges on a few motorways is a stupid idea that will not actually be good for the freight industry, as households and businesses have to spend more to get around at peak hour. That means they have less money available to pay for goods in the domestic economy. What does that result in? Lower demand for goods that are transported by heavy vehicles for freight.
I note that despite all of these unintentional subsidies to road transport, the briefing to the incoming Minister of Transport stated that 45 percent of the products destined to become exports are currently moved around New Zealand by rail. The Green Party sees significant opportunities to grow the role of rail and sea freight, and that is a perfectly legitimate use of the National Land Transport Fund because it is actually going to improve the situation for those who are currently in the freight industry, whether they are using trucks or other means.
In conclusion, the Green Party is happy to support this bill, but we feel it is a real lost opportunity. It does not go far enough to changing the transport system in the way that is necessary for New Zealand to meet the challenges of this century. Thank you.
Subscribe to email newsletters
