iSAYSO
THE LAW THAT LETS THEM CHARGE YOU TO DRIVE TO WORK SWITCHES ON.
ELEVEN DAYS AFTER YOU VOTE, THE LAW THAT LETS THEM CHARGE YOU TO DRIVE TO WORK SWITCHES ON.
Not proposed. Not consulted on. Switched on.
The Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Act 2025 got Royal assent on 18 November 2025. Section 2 says it comes into force on the first anniversary. That is 18 November 2026. The general election is Saturday 7 November 2026. Eleven days.
Here is the part everyone is getting wrong, and I want to be straight with you about it. The charges are not starting this year. Auckland Council staff are working toward a final decision in early 2028. Ministerial approval after that. On the timeline they gave their own councillors, no money gets collected until around 2030 or 2031. Two more elections.
So why does this year matter.
Because the law is the thing. The charges are just what the law does later. And the law that arrives eleven days after the vote was written before anybody was asked.
On 25 August Auckland Council’s Transport and Infrastructure Delivery Committee cut thirteen options down to three and sent them out for public engagement. Option one, a city centre cordon, three to four dollars in the morning peak. Option two widens it to Newmarket, Newton, Parnell and Ponsonby, five to six dollars in the morning, and it captures Auckland Hospital. Option three adds the Harbour Bridge and core motorways out to Point Chevalier and Mount Wellington. Five to seven dollars. Council documents call that one the only option providing significant net revenue. https://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/…/explaine…/
Waitākere councillor Ken Turner tried to add a fourth choice to the consultation. A plain do not proceed option. It was voted down. https://www.rnz.co.nz/…/auckland-commuters-may-pay-up…
Now the enforcement.
The Ministry of Transport ran a consultation that closed on 25 June this year. It proposed making non-payment an infringement offence with a fixed fee of seventy dollars for each unpaid trip. https://consult.transport.govt.nz/…/time-of-use…/
Auckland Council’s strategic transport lead Hamish Bunn told RNZ the technology is likely to be camera based automatic number plate recognition. Cameras. Reading plates. At every entry point. https://www.rnz.co.nz/…/explainer-congestion-charging…
Read the Act now.
New section 65A defines an enforcement authority as the Agency, the Police, and any local authority named in an Order in Council. New section 65ZF is titled Privacy. Subsection one says the data can only be used for collecting the charge. Sounds fine.
Subsection three says disclosure on any of the grounds in information privacy principle 11 of the Privacy Act 2020 is not prohibited.
IPP 11 includes disclosure necessary to avoid prejudice to the maintenance of the law. It also includes disclosure necessary to enable an intelligence and security agency to perform any of its functions. The privacy section contains its own exit. https://www.legislation.govt.nz/…/0064/latest/whole.html
The Privacy Commissioner’s own words are in the Departmental Disclosure Statement. Not included in earlier policy development. Not included in departmental consultation on the Cabinet paper as required in the Cabinet Manual. Responding to a draft on a short timeframe. The Commissioner asked for statutory consultation to be built in and said the very serious privacy impacts should be reflected in the scope of the powers.
Police already make close to seven hundred thousand requests a year against existing number plate recognition systems. The justification for each one is a tick box on a webform saying it is needed for maintenance of the law. https://rnz.co.nz/…/police-use-number-plate-spotting…
Stockholm crops the image to the plate only. Deletes it once the fee is paid. Police cannot access it. London went the other way. In 2015 the Mayor gave the Metropolitan Police direct real time access to the congestion charge cameras, and Transport for London’s retention went from thirty days to a year. Same technology. Two completely different countries at the end of it. https://nzccl.org.nz/submission-land-transport-time-of…/
And then there is the Cabinet paper. It says local variable charging schemes, such as time of use charging and tolling, will be incorporated into national variable charging using technology likely to be adopted as we modernise the road user charging system. https://www.transport.govt.nz/…/Time-of-Use-Charging…
National. Not Auckland.
The scheme board that designs all this is half NZTA appointees, and the NZTA appointed chair holds the casting vote. Auckland is first. Wellington and Tauranga are named as next. Christchurch is on the list too.
Auckland gets its say in November. So does everyone else. Eleven days earlier.
Which of the three options do you think ends up chosen, and does anybody actually believe the cameras only ever get used for the charge?