If ever you needed an example of why urgency and trying to rush things through is a bad thing this week has given a classic example.
As part of Simeon Brown’s vendetta against all things that may actually address climate change he has proposed the charging of road user charges to electric vehicles.
While there is an argument for suspending the preferential treatment of electric vehicles, despite the good they achieve, and instituting charges on their use of the network, Brown wanted to actively punish electric vehicle owners.
As I noted previously Simeon’s axing of the clean car discount saw the sale of electric cars plummet. Previously one in four new cars entering the fleet were electric, one month after the change in policy the figure was one in 26.
And the pending introduction of RUC for electric vehicles saw a further startling statistic appear. If Simeon had his way it would be more far more expensive for an electric car to use the road that it will be for a petrol fuelled car.
From Thomas Coughlan at the Herald:
[I]n what looks like a bad April Fool’s joke, the Green Party has discovered drivers of EVs and plug-in hybrids will be paying more to use the road than people driving fossil fuel cars.
Someone driving a battery EV on a return trip between Wellington and Auckland (presumably with lots of charging stops) will pay $98.80 in RUC and a driver of a plug-in hybrid Toyota Prius would pay $94.78, comprised of $72.80 in RUC and $21.98 in petrol taxes.
These figures are more than double what a driver of a Toyota Prius, non-plug-in conventional hybrid would pay for that journey, which would be just $42.92 in petrol taxes.
So the Government introduced under urgency the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill. Although there was to be a select committee process the time for lodging submissions was less than two days and the report back was within a week of the bill being read for a first time.
And the inevitable happened. A mistake was made.
From Thomas Coughlan at the Herald:
MPs from the governing parties voted in favour of a Labour amendment in a select committee report, recommending the House reduce a proposed tax rate for hybrid vehicles.
With the bill now back before the House, Labour and the Greens are urging the Government to keep the bill as it is for the sake of the climate.
They might be in luck; Transport Minister Simeon Brown told the Herald he was aware of the report and the accidental change was “something we are open to looking at as a Government”.
The phrase “Keystone Cops” springs to mind. Again from Coughlan:
Labour’s Transport Spokesman Tangi Uitkere said MPs on the committee heard a more appropriate RUC level would be a 50 per cent discount, or $38/1000km. Labour MPs had an amendment drafted to that effect.
They put the amendment to the committee, expecting it to be voted down by the Government majority. Instead, the committee voted it through unanimously, and it now sits in the amended version of the bill the committee has returned to the House.
This is despite the text of the select committee’s report noting that [t]he “majority of us consider that a 30 per cent reduction of the RUC rate effectively accounts for any additional costs in fuel excise duty” – in other words, the text of the report endorses the original bill, but the committee’s proposed changes to the original bill include the reduced RUC rate proposed by Labour.
The chair of the committee, NZ First’s Andy Foster, was informed by the clerk what the committee had voted on and sought leave to have the vote taken again. This was denied.
Chair Andy Foster stated that “[w]e asked to fix it when we realised we got that wrong, [but] Labour denied that”. Clearly he thinks it is Labour’s fault. Of course Labour MPs should have allowed the vote to happen again so that their amendment could be voted down. Can you think of anything more ludicrous?
The report back to Parliament should be interesting. And Simeon Brown may let the amendment go through to try and minimise the embarrassment of the Government.
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