Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) Link to this
I move, That the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) be now read a third time. I thank members and officials for their work on this bill. It has been given a thorough examination, and the amendments have made a good bill better.
This bill deals with three quite separate, but in their own way important, land transport matters. They concern new powers to deal with the problem of drug-impaired drivers on our roads; a comprehensive rewrite of vehicle registration and licensing laws, including a new system for managing the release of vehicle owners’ names and addresses; and the continuation in force, pending further reforms, of legislation that, amongst other things, empowers local authorities to undertake parking and bus-lane enforcement and to make traffic by-laws.
People who drive while their judgment and reactions are impaired by drugs—and by that I mean both controlled drugs and prescription medicines—are a danger to themselves and to others. This bill aims to reduce this risk by creating an offence of driving while impaired and with evidence in the bloodstream of a controlled drug or a prescription medicine, and by empowering police to determine whether a driver is impaired by means of a compulsory impairment test. If this test shows that the driver is impaired, it will be followed by a blood test to determine whether drugs are present.
Only recently, drug researchers at Massey University announced the findings of the latest in a series of illicit drug monitoring reports. It was found that 90 percent of P users, 62 percent of Ecstasy users, and 90 percent of injecting - drug users surveyed had driven under the influence of a drug other than alcohol in the past 6 months. Many reported driving too fast, losing concentration, losing their temper at another driver, driving through a red light, and nearly hitting something, while driving under the influence of a drug. An Institute of Environmental Science and Research deceased driver survey conducted between 2004 and 2008 found that 257 of the 826 deceased drivers, or nearly a third, had cannabis in their system. Those people may have survived if they had not mixed cannabis use with driving. These are very disturbing statistics. This bill will provide police with additional tools to get drivers impaired by drugs off the roads before they add to the death toll and the injury toll on our roads.
This bill was introduced by the previous Government back in 2007, and I give it due credit for that. I am proud to bring this bill through for its Committee stage and third reading within 6 months of the new Government being sworn in.
I acknowledge the spirit of bipartisanship in which the House dealt with the bill during the Committee stage last week. Discussions with the Hon Trevor Mallard led to the bill being amended to strengthen its anti-drugs message. The amendment deals with the issue of drugged drivers who are injured or otherwise incapacitated and who cannot undertake the impairment test, and thus who could not be charged with the new drug-impaired driving offence. The amendment enables drugged drivers to be charged with another new offence—that of driving with class A drugs, such as P, in the bloodstream—without the need for an impairment test when injury prevents it.
I can assure members that we are well aware that this bill is just the first step in dealing with the drug-driving problem. When a practical, affordable drug-testing device that can produce results that can stand up in court becomes available, then I will be very happy to bring legislation to the House to enable it to be used as an enforcement tool.
I would like to respond to media articles on Monday that queried why the bill does not cover Valium and related drugs, known collectively as benzodiazepines. Given that the bill has been in the public domain for the best part of 2 years, I am only sorry that this issue was raised after the Committee stage was completed last week. I am advised that when the previous Government had the bill drafted in 2007, the professional medical advice was that these drugs should not be included. That advice had not been challenged until the weekend. I am not a pharmacist, but, based on the evidence I have seen in the past 24 hours, I believe that these drugs should be considered for inclusion in this legislation. I have officials working on this matter now as a matter of priority. If their advice supports the inclusion of benzodiazepines, I will write to all political parties and ask for their support for a special amendment to that effect before the legislation comes into force, which is currently scheduled for 1 December. I know that the Green Party in particular is keen on including benzodiazepines in the legislation, and I thank Metiria Turei for her work and support since this matter was brought to light over the weekend and on Monday.
I stress again, and I think that this point was made by members on both sides of the House during the Committee stage, that this bill is a first step towards tackling the problem of drugged drivers on our roads. No doubt more issues will come to light as time passes, and we will deal with them in a measured way as they arise.
I turn now to the motor vehicles register. Currently any person may obtain the name and address of a vehicle owner simply by quoting a plate number. A person who complained to the New Zealand Transport Agency about this said: “I might as well have my name and address stencilled on the back of my car.” Some disturbing evidence of harassment was reported to the select committee, and mass-marketing campaigns using names and addresses have been sourced from the motor vehicles register. This bill will not ban the release of names and addresses from the motor vehicles register; instead, it will enable the public interest to be balanced against privacy concerns. Other reforms implemented in this bill are powers to deal with vehicles where the owner’s identity is unknown, free competition in the marketing of personalised plates, and empowering the registrar to require that mopeds are inspected prior to registration in order to deal with concerns about the current law, which allows unsafe machines sold by unscrupulous traders to be used without any safety inspection.
Finally, the Transport Act 1962, which contains the traffic enforcement and management powers of local authorities, expires at the end of this month. New legislation is not yet ready, and the Transport Act needs to be extended in the meantime. Once it is passed, this legislation will achieve that.
This bill will make a significant contribution to road safety by getting drug-impaired drivers off the roads. It will contribute to vehicle owners’ peace of mind by reducing the opportunity for harassment, or worse, through the uncontrolled release of name and address details to anybody who asks for them. Finally, the bill maintains in place various local authority traffic powers pending a wider reform. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) Link to this
I want to reinforce what the Minister of Transport said in his opening comments on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). The bill was dealt with on a multipartisan basis in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and I commend both the chair, David Bennett, and Tau Henare for the work they did. A comment was made coming out of the committee that it was pretty hard to tell who was from what party as we were working through the particular issues, which I think was healthy. For most members of the committee, it was a late experience. We came to the committee after the evidence had been heard and we had officials back to explain things to some of us quite a few times to make sure we got our heads around the bill, because the effect of drugs is not simple. The point we got to at the end was that a lot of our intuition is correct and the evidence is very clear that people who drive with drugs in their system, and especially those who drive with both alcohol and drugs in their system, are much more likely to have accidents and they are more likely to be serious accidents.
From the time of the work Harry Duynhoven and Annette King did on the legislation—and, I think, David Parker; there may have been another Minister on the way—going through to the current Minister, there has been a positive approach to the legislation. The passage of time has meant that it was improved in the select committee, and again there was a lot of openness to that. The one issue I would have preferred more work to be done on was that of a non-primary legislative arrangement for the introduction of devices for random testing for drugs at the street level as the machines came in and for machines that would have avoided the need for a blood test later on. It is not beyond our wits to design something in primary legislation that allows for that to come in by way of Order in Council, the way that breath-testing devices are currently certified by the Minister at the moment. If it can be done for breath-testing devices for alcohol, it should be able to be done for breath or saliva-testing devices for drugs. My view is that our Regulations Review Committee arrangements in New Zealand are sufficient protection against the executive because any of those regulations would go to that committee and if any one member of that committee wished, it would be referred to the House and the House would have a vote on it. So that is a way that I think Parliament reserves its position against Ministers who abuse the regulatory process, and it is a pity we did not use it.
The Minister is correct that there were a couple of amendments that I am very pleased he agreed to promote and, certainly, improve in their drafting. The ideas worked their way through the Labour Party caucus and through quite a lot of positive discussion—not always supportive, I must say—on the Red Alert blog site. It was interesting to use modern technology to consult on issues like this and to get an instant response. Some were gut responses, some were intuitive responses, and some were very well-researched responses to the way that Red Alert is beginning to work.
Another issue the Minister referred to was the group of drugs known as—and I will not attempt to pronounce the long name—Valium, and the effects on people who drive with excess amounts of Valium in their systems. I tell the Minister that my understanding of the legislation is that if someone is involved in an accident and is clearly showing the effects of drug use of some sort—and I am told people who use Valium in a way beyond the way it is prescribed end up pretty dopey, tired, and slow—the impairment test could be applied to them. If they fail that impairment test, then they can have a drug test, and their only defence would be that they were using it within the prescription regulations. That is roughly what we aimed to get, and if we have a person who is very anxious about that, and obviously our hearts go out to people whose relatives have been killed in such a situation, I am not sure that this detail of law change is exactly what is needed.
I think there is room going forward. I know that this will not be a unanimous view amongst all members of the House, but some of those issues should be in the review of in the Misuse of Drugs Act. One of those issues is whether the class A category is the only category that can be tested for, or, where the results are positive without an impairment test, there can be a conviction. As has been pointed out to me, there is still room for careless driving, reckless driving, or a number of other charges to be brought against people for careless or reckless driving causing death. People should not get off scot-free, but we need to look at, for example, people who use amphetamines as opposed to methamphetamines, or people who use some of the more serious of the cannabis family, and whether drugs that are not currently in the class A group could be there.
In the end, the suggestion I promoted was something that will get a relatively broad consensus, it will not be too controversial around Parliament, and it will take care of the worst drugs, especially methamphetamines, which appear to be the most commonly used drugs in conjunction with alcohol and cause some of the most serious overconfidence and reckless behaviour. If we can get the worst of them now, and work on the rest of the drugs going forward, then that will be something positive. I commend the bill to the House. Like most work in this House, it is a progress report. If people say “We’ve finally got this issue nailed.”, they are fooling themselves.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this
I reiterate what the Hon Trevor Mallard just said. I thought that was a pretty good summary of the situation we have, and it followed on from what the Minister of Transport said, about how the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) is really just a starting point. When we look at the idea of drug-impaired driving, we know that sensible citizens would expect that it would be illegal anyway. They would not expect a Government in 2009 to have to pass legislation prohibiting it, but the reality is that it is not illegal. The other reality is that if we look at the statistics that came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, we see that there were a large number of potential cases where drug-impaired driving had had a very detrimental effect on road safety, and where many people had lost their lives. It is long overdue that something is done about the issue, and this legislation is the starting point in trying to address it. In no way is it the final solution in making sure we cover off all the angles, but it is a very good starting point.
I congratulate the Minister on the work he has done in promoting this bill through the House. He has made it a personal endeavour to make sure we get this legislation through the House in a timely way, and that has met with public opinion and also with the need to get some runs on the board in regard to having the prohibition of drug-impaired driving delayed no longer. I also thank members of the select committee from both sides of the House. I think Trevor Mallard should be singled out for his contribution to this legislation. He was the most senior member in respect of experience on the committee. That showed, and we were grateful for his experience, so I say thank you to Trevor for his work in regard to that committee and the legislation. That was good stuff.
Hon Lianne DalzielWe actually gave him a letter of thanks, so it was good.
When we look at the legislation, people have to understand that technology is not where we want it to be—
No, I say to Mr Mallard that his political career is over anyway. The politics of this debate will be lost on some.
In regard to the nature of the legislation, we found that the technology was not quite at the level of the political will. If the technology had been at the level it is in relation to drink-driving—where we can easily test on the side of the road, and within a quick and cost-effective testing regime pick whether someone is under the influence—we would have taken on board a much stricter approach. This legislation really does reflect the level of technology out there, which is not at the level we would expect for drink-driving technology.
A case that has been highlighted this week is another example of the other point the bill shows, which is that in relation to drugs it is very difficult to cover off all the bases. It is probably a lot easier to detect the place of alcohol in the system of the human body and at a relevant point in time, whereas drugs have the potential to be tested and seen in the body for a long time after they have been consumed. There is also a range of drugs, ranging from those that are prescribed to those that are illegal. There will be a huge market for drugs in the future, and although there will no doubt be drugs that will be very beneficial to people’s lives, we may not want to have people driving high under the influence of those drugs. So there needs to be a bit of flexibility in this legislation, because it is dealing with a pretty fluid area. There is constant change in the number and use of drugs in our community, but this bill is primarily aimed at those drugs that are basically controlled or illegal. Any genuine citizen out there would expect that anyone caught in a car accident under the influence of those drugs would face a conviction. That has not been the case up to now, but will be changed under this legislation.
In relation to drug-impaired driving, a two-part test has been introduced in the bill. The first part is quite a simple impairment test, which goes back to the good old days of the drink-driving test before that technology advanced. Following that test is a much more expensive blood test. In effect, we are creating a situation where the number of cases that will go through that full testing regime is reduced to those cases that are most likely to have a success rate for conviction. In doing so, we reduce costs and the workload on our police in undertaking those testing regimes. The impairment test seems to be a test that the police will need some help in enforcing, in the sense that they will need to be trained and given some idea of what potentially could be seen as part of that test in the future. A lot of work has to be done in implementing this legislation to make sure it is a reality, not only in regard to the police but also in regard to any blood-testing arrangements. There will be development issues as we go forward in implementing the legislation.
Another thing we probably need to look at in this legislation, and which became much more of a subsidiary issue, is the issue of the motor vehicles register. This issue has been sitting there for a while, in the sense that a lot of people have felt their privacy has been compromised and that they need to have a situation where they can protect some of their personal information. This bill attempts to do that, in a way that protects the legitimate interests and uses of motor vehicles register information but at the same time provides personal protection for individuals. All in all, I think there is a good balance in regard to the motor vehicles register. The issue was much simpler, in the sense that we could suggest stringent rules that would apply and know that those rules would be seen to be effective in the areas sought for them.
The drug-impaired driving part is still a work in progress and will be so for many years, as technology develops, as changes come in drug use, and as Parliament looks at all the options available—through not only the Misuse of Drugs Act but also the drug-impaired driving legislation.
All in all, I thank members of the committee, the officials, and all those who submitted on this legislation. The bill was introduced in the previous Parliament and has been carried through. I think that it is a good start in that process; it is not the final solution but certainly it is the good start we need. It will give us a very strong base to work from as we work towards making sure that drug-impaired driving is not legal on our roads any more.
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this
It is a pleasure to speak in the third reading debate on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). In doing so, I note that today we are voting on an improved bill, thanks to the efforts of the Hon Trevor Mallard, and the agreement of the National Government last week to adopt his amendments.
I tell the honourable member that I will get to that. The previous Labour Government introduced this bill in 2007. In late 2007, the previous Transport and Industrial Relations Committee considered 49 submissions from a range of groups, and heard 21 of those submissions. The committee reported back before the last election, and the bill has made its way into the legislative programme of the new Government. Much of the first part of this bill has had most of the attention, and I suppose that is rightly so. That first function enhances the powers of the police to deal with drug-impaired drivers by creating a new offence for when the driver is impaired and there is evidence of drugs in the driver’s blood.
As we have heard through the debate on this bill, Parliament supports the bill. We have heard many passionate speeches from members about drug-driving. There is no doubt that everybody agrees that getting into a vehicle and putting any life at risk by driving with drugs in one’s system is not acceptable. We inevitably turn to thinking about our family members and friends when this kind of debate takes place. We think about our children, many of them just embarking on their lives as drivers, and we worry about the awful things that can and do happen. Therefore, I am pleased that the passing of this bill today will provide another means of getting dangerous drivers off the road. It is not the taking of drugs that is the focus of the bill, but the driving while using such drugs; this bill is about transport safety.
This week we have heard some criticism of the bill in the media, because benzodiazepines are allegedly not covered by the bill. Having followed the bill from start to finish, I believe that it is not as straightforward as that. It is true that the Hon Trevor Mallard’s amendment that enables the prosecution of injured drivers who are unable to carry out an impairment test is confined to class A drugs, but without that amendment being subsequently adopted by the Government there would be no prosecution of such injured drivers. However, it is not totally true to say that benzodiazepines are not covered by the bill and have been overlooked. New clause 4(3)(a) in Part 1 of the bill describes what controlled drugs are, and new clause 4(3)(c) describes what prescription medicines are. In our advice to the committee way back when we were first sitting, we were advised that the controlled drugs that would be tested for were cannabis, benzodiazepines, opiates, amphetamines, and so on. That was the advice given to the select committee at the time.
Clauses 5 and 6 describe the offence under the bill that a “person may not drive or attempt to drive a motor vehicle while (a) impaired; and (b) that person’s blood contains evidence of the use of—(i) a controlled drug; or (ii) any prescription medicine.” I emphasis that last point: “any prescription medicine”. That includes benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepines are prescription drugs, which means they must be prescribed by a doctor. To obtain them in any other way is illegal. This bill states that anyone who is impaired and who is identified through a blood test as having a prescription medicine such as a benzodiazepine in his or her system, and who has ignored the instructions of the prescription and/or their medical professional, is just as liable as any other drug-driver for prosecution.
The issue is a little more complicated than it seems at first appearance. I was a little bit disturbed that the Minister could not give answers to the media when asked about the claims that benzodiazepines were not included in the bill. His response was to blame Labour. He said that the bill was the way Labour drafted it and the way it came back from the select committee. Well, I am sorry, but I call that a cop out. I call that a failure of responsibility. This is an issue for National not Labour, because National is the Government. I thought it was a job of the Minister. I thought he got paid lots of money to check such things. After all, was it not the Minister who was telling the country not that long ago that this legislation was a priority for the Government and that it failed to get through the select committee, which is rubbish? The bill did not get through in the last Parliament because we did not have time. It is one thing to pick up a bill drafted by Labour and with amendments pushed by Labour members, but it is quite another to try to blame them and the select committee—and I take offence on its behalf—including his own National members, for the omission that, at best, is questionable.
However, I agree with the Greens that we need to get this bill right. I agree that drugs such as benzodiazepines need to be covered, perhaps beyond the requirements of prescription medicines. Perhaps the bill does not cover the issues to the extent that at least one submitter would like to see, but the select committee had to consider all submissions, all advice, and all issues, and make the decisions that are being reported back today. When considering this bill, as I have from its inception and through all stages in the House, I wanted to ensure that the purpose of the bill, which is a transport safety measure, was paramount.
I noted the Green’s first reading speech in which Metiria Turei commented on the assurance that the then Labour Government had given that the bill was not a Trojan horse for blood testing under the Misuse of Drugs Act. I also note the comments of my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard. My view is that the Misuse of Drugs Act is being reviewed by the Law Commission, and that is the place for that debate to happen. The debate around the extension of testing procedures for that Act should take place in Parliament, with extensive consultation and involvement of the public. Maybe we will get there, but let us do it properly. This bill is about getting drug-drivers off the road. It is about adding another protection to the armoury of the police to ensure that that happens. It is about being able to take the next step in prosecuting such drivers so that there is a clear message to anyone who thinks it is OK to get into a car in an unsafe state of drug influence.
The second part of this bill, which has not had a lot of attention, is about protecting the vehicle register from abuse. New Part 17 came about in the original bill because of complaints about the misuse of private information. Vehicle owners have no option but to register their information. They are required by law to do so. Thus, the Government has a responsibility to protect that information. The bill deals with this issue, but it does not deal with the other major series of complaints received from the public, which are about the misuse of vehicle registry information from direct marketers. Direct-marketing is the sending of unsolicited mail to prospective customers. As one man said in his complaint about direct-marketing, “I will give you a false address in future. My car was written off but I am still getting junk mail about my warrant of fitness. My details should only be released for law enforcement. My name has been given to a marketing company, who has given it to someone else. I am forced to give my details but disagree that this information should be given to anyone else.” The select committee was advised that the best way of managing this was through a process called opting in—in other words, those who registered their cars have a choice about whether they receive information from marketing companies. That seemed pretty fair to me and the Labour members, but unfortunately the National Government disagreed with it and has gone for an opt-out process, which means that vehicle owners will continue to be pestered with unwanted and intrusive junk solicitation. Let us wait for the complaints to continue.
Having said that, Labour believes that the good in this bill is stronger than the problems, which is why we are supporting it along with the changes made with the advocacy of Trevor Mallard and supported by the Government. I will take a moment to thank the advisers and officials. The select committee tested them considerably, particularly with a new committee that started in this Parliament. Having the work go over two Parliaments made the process more difficult. The advisers and officials had to go over much of the work that was previously done and explain the whole thing from the beginning. I assure those listening today that Labour is serious about cracking down on drug-driving. Labour started the process. It has worked with National since the election. This bill that we are passing today will make a real difference in the road safety concerns around drug-driving.
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Green) Link to this
I am happy to rise to address the third reading of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). The Green Party supports this legislation. We do so with some unease, as the bill does not do quite what it was intended to do and it does not meet all of our objectives. We want to encourage the creation of deterrents, and the use of enforcement against drivers who drive while they are impaired. We do not want legislation, though, that appears to address the problems, but simply complicates the issue with what could be well-intentioned but otherwise ineffective provisions.
The Greens are always after the best possible law—law that is effective and just. Although it is not always the case with legislation in New Zealand, we have worked hard to make sure that the bill goes some way towards meeting those objectives.
In the first reading, my colleague Metiria Turei noted our great concern that impaired drivers are on our roads, causing harm to property and, most important, causing harm to our communities and people. The primary culprit for this harm is, of course, the use of the drug alcohol while driving. Alcohol remains the No. 1 problem drug for road safety, and we believe that further measures could be taken to reduce that harm.
Although acknowledging that fact, it is true that other drugs can cause impairment. It is important to have legislation that is concerned with drug-impaired driving overall, whether alcohol, lawful drugs, or unlawful drugs. Thanks to the Green Party, this bill has been extended to include legal drugs and prescription medicines.
We have retained this legislation’s focus on impaired drivers and we have not allowed it to become a back-door way of prosecuting drug offences. Legal prescription drugs that are used in such a way as to cause impairment will also be captured by the new offence provisions in this legislation. This is a consistent and cohesive approach to removing dangerous drivers from our roads, irrespective of the cause of their impairment. The victim of a crash does not really care why the driver was impaired; the fact that the driver was impaired should be sufficient reason for getting the driver off the road.
However, we are extremely concerned—this is one reason for the unease about this bill, as I said earlier—that this bill excludes a major class of drug, benzodiazepines. I note the comment made by my colleague Darien Fenton. I can only be guided by my colleague Metiria Turei, who has worked intensively on this bill, whereas I have not. Benzodiazepines are commonly known as sedatives and are a widely used prescription medicine. They have been implicated in a number of road accidents and deaths. They are exactly the kinds of drugs the Greens were worried about when the negotiations on this bill began. They are the kinds of drugs that the Greens expressly wanted to be included in the bill, because they have been implicated in road accidents and deaths.
Metiria Turei, our spokesperson, has talked with the Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, about this issue. Her understanding is that he recognised this was an oversight, and he has called for a scientific report into whether these drugs could be included in the legislation. She said that the Green Party will support any parliamentary measures to ensure that this legislative gap is filled as soon as possible—and it must be filled. We look forward to seeing the Minister progress this issue to make our roads safer.
Although we have argued that the impairment test should remain so that the new law is not used as a back door to prosecuting under the Misuse of Drugs Act, we none the less remain concerned about the misuse of the impairment test by enforcement officers. The physical impairment test referred to in the bill will be administered by the police. We are concerned about the test’s subjective nature, particularly as it leads immediately to a blood test.
One concern relates to the discriminatory filters in the police force that lead to unjustified targeting of Māori, and, in particular, Māori men, when it comes to drug offences. Research in 2002 from the Christchurch Health and Development Study—the work of Professor David Fergusson, who has done very good work in this area—clearly shows that one of the primary risks for being targeted by the police for drug offences is being a Māori man. The research concluded that the administration of current cannabis laws was inequitable, and biased against Māori and males, and that the current cannabis laws were discriminatory. The difficulty is that the choice to target one particular person for a search or to stop that person’s car is strictly a matter of individual police decisions. Such discriminatory filters have been recognised in the areas of policing and health. Of course, similar discriminatory practices have been known to affect younger people and those who are already known to the police. Although many police officers are well aware of these practices and operate fairly, it is not the case for all officers, who exercise considerable power in the community, particularly over young people. Professor Fergusson has produced further research suggesting that young people are simply not aware that driving under the influence of cannabis or other drugs can cause impairment. In large part, that is because of the legal status of the drug. It creates considerable barriers to getting across to young people truthful and trusted information about the harm cannabis can cause. Again, I hope that, some time in the near future, we may take a much more mature approach to this issue.
A blood test is used for detecting alcohol-impaired driving. If a person goes over the limit, that person is in breach of the law. That limit is established through proven scientific methods that show definitively that, at that specified level of blood alcohol, a person is impaired and should not drive. But for the evidence-based legal blood-alcohol limit, a blood test would otherwise be an unreasonable search and seizure.
The same principle should apply in relation to other drugs, particularly cannabis. The law should establish, using quality science, a level of drug use for specified drugs that definitively shows that a person is impaired by the specified drug at that time, and that limit should be set out in law. That is more difficult to show for most drugs than it is for alcohol. Our laws, though, should be evidence-based and scientifically sound. The subjective view of a police officer is not a robust test, nor is the simple presence of a drug with no scientifically based assessment of the level of impairment that that drug can cause.
This bill is a very blunt tool for dealing with the issue of impaired driving. In this respect, science and technology will eventually provide us with much better guidance to enable us to have good-quality law that is based on science, that is based on evidence, and that does not abuse the fundamental rights of our citizens. Until then, we have some way to go, but the Greens support this bill as a first step.
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) Link to this
Ā, kia ora tātou katoa i tēnei pō. Ka nui te mihi ki a tātou, otirā, ki a koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I read a statistic today that confirmed even more for me the importance of doing what we can to reduce injury and death on the roads. Fifty-one percent of Māori people who died due to injury, died on the street or highway in road deaths. Forty-six percent of these deaths were due to motor vehicle crashes. That is one hell of a waste of Māori potential that is just being ripped away from us because of hazardous driving and reckless drivers.
It is not just the loss of life that we are talking about here, which is a tragedy in itself, but also the estimated social cost of road crashes, which includes loss of life or life quality, medical and rehabilitation costs, legal and court costs, property damage, and loss of output due to injuries. In 2005 that was heading well beyond a $100 million amount. That is a huge amount to spend on all of those particular aspects that occur from death by road accident.
I stated in my second reading speech that in my electorate alone in the Eastern Bay of Plenty there were some 62 injury crashes on local roads and another 47 injury crashes on State highways in just one year, in 2006. Some of these injuries were due to drivers not having gone through all the requirements to be on the road in the first place. Of the at-fault drivers and crashes in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, 14 percent were driving on a restricted licence, 3 percent were disqualified drivers, and 10.7 percent held a learner licence. But by far the most significant factor in doing something about road safety is actually in what this bill is trying to do. It is introducing a new duty of not driving while impaired by drugs.
In 2006 driver alcohol and drugs were a contributing factor in 99 fatal traffic crashes, 409 serious injury crashes, and 1,128 minor injury crashes. These crashes resulted in 109 deaths, 556 serious injuries, and 1,768 minor injuries. These numbers are based on crashes where alcohol or dugs were proven or suspected to be a contributing factor in a crash: 100 hundred people who did not need to die; over 2,000 people who will never ever forget the idiot in charge of the wheel, for what he or she did to impair their loss of enjoyment of life. I am told that at the select committee submissions were received from people who claimed that cannabis does not impair driving. In fact, some even testified that it made a person drive even better; that it made that person become a better driver. Well, as this House knows, research to date confirms that cannabis, and its active ingredient THC, impairs driving and has a considerable effect when consumed at high levels. So let us not dream on that this is not the case. I have been to too many tangi, courthouses, and hospitals not to see the effect of drug-driving as being a serious issue that must be considered.
Some people may say that those people who drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs should cop whatever damage comes to them. But it is not about just them. For every 100 drunk or drugged drivers or riders killed in road crashes, 56 of their passengers, as well as 39 sober road users, die with them. This Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) is for those people. It is to preserve our people power, to protect our whakapapa, and to invest in the lives of all of our whānau.
The current threshold for the offence of drug-impaired driving is being “incapable”, which means being incapable of having proper control of a vehicle. This bill lowers the threshold to being “impaired”. Where there is evidence of controlled drugs or prescription medicines in the driver’s blood, it is determined by a robust test. We support the move to penalise drug-driving and the introduction of a testing and penalty regime that mirrors alcohol testing. But we do have two important concerns. These were concerns that I raised during the Committee stage debate. I had two specific amendments. The first concern related to informed consent, and the second one concerned the prohibition on storage and analysis of blood samples.
Firstly, there are a number of widely accepted and established ethical protocols in the field of research, and arguably the most important of these is the principle of informed consent. Informed consent means that the people being subjected to research are properly informed of the research to be undertaken, what it entails, and its implications, and that they give their consent to it without interference. New section 209A compromises this fundamental principle, and it was on this basis that we put forward an amendment to address it. We hope that having raised these issues consistently around the bill, the Minister will ensure that the ethical considerations are given due respect so that we can seem focused going into protocols around research.
The other amendment that I put up responds to a number of concerns about the storage and re-analysis of blood specimens for research purposes. The blood specimens that are taken from drivers who fail drug or driving-impairment tests give rise to a whole host of concerns about who has the right to such samples, and, in particular, our anxiety that the information should not be tampered with. We are concerned about the wide implications of the State having legal rights to use blood samples for further research, such as what kind of research, by whom, for what purposes, and for whose benefit. Although this might sound like a conspiracy plot, there have been such examples in our recent history, and, indeed, examples concerning indigenous people around the world. It has been discovered that highly questionable genetic research has been conducted on body parts, and on tissue and blood samples, without permission, without ethics approval, and without the opportunity for public debate.
In a desire to understand why so many of their own developed stomach cancer, one whānau underwent genetic blood-testing, and unbeknownst to them, these blood samples were passed on to international genetic companies for further analysis and commercial exploitation. This was done without their consent, and, for some time, without their knowledge even. If members are interested, I refer them to a paper entitled Hands off our genes: A case study on the theft of whakapapa written by Donna Gardiner. The research done by a whakapapa on its blood is not for exploitation or for profit; it is not up for grabs.
The Minister of Transport gave me an assurance following that debate that the issues have been resolved and that the Institute of Environmental Science and Research had some pretty tough criteria around how any research is conducted. The samples are not allowed out of the facility, for security and biohazard reasons, and, therefore, the officials have assured us that the samples will be kept for only 12 months. We will leave that issue there. Suffice to say, these are very important issues to the Māori Party that we have signalled. We must ensure that we do the right thing.
The Māori Party has previously stated in the House that it is fully supportive of the need to put in place a testing regime for drug-driving. We accept that current limits on saliva-testing technology mean that the taking of blood is the best way to do so at this time. We also accept that the very best of intentions may lie behind the idea of storing the blood samples for further research, specific to drug-driving. However, we cannot accept the very real risk that unwittingly this might create a situation where whakapapa is able to be compromised. We do support this bill in its final reading, and we will always support any interventions concerning the protection and preservation of life. We will be watching, as one would understand, to see that the protocols are adhered to, and that the proper protections are in place. In closing, I offer thanks and congratulations to the Minister of Transport for working with the Māori Party on our concerns. Kia ora tātou.
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) Link to this
I am pleased to speak in the third reading debate of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). The bill has three main purposes. They are to provide for more comprehensive anti - drug-driving laws, to provide more privacy provisions regarding access to the register of motor vehicles, and to preserve certain provisions in various transport Acts that are due to expire on 1 July this year. It is the first purpose that most New Zealanders will relate to. This bill is about getting unsafe drivers off the road in order to make the roads safer for us—that is the prime purpose of this bill for me. We already have an established mechanism in relation to drink-driving; that has been well accepted and well publicised. Drink-driving is simply not acceptable. There is a very easy screening test that can be done at random, and it takes just a few seconds. But that is not the case, at all, for people who take drugs and drive.
This bill establishes a regime for prosecuting drug-impaired drivers who have consumed a controlled drug or a prescription medicine. The penalties are aligned to those that apply for drink-driving. The police will have similar powers in such circumstances to those that are in the drink-driving legislation. There will be defences for people who have consumed prescription medicines in accordance with a prescription, or in accordance with instructions from the manufacturer of the drug or a health practitioner. The screening test for a person who has taken drugs and driven is a compulsory impairment test that tests coordination, physiological reactions, and markers for drug impairments, such as pupil dilation, and a blood test. It takes some 10 minutes or so to complete the compulsory impairment test. Police officers will be trained in the technique.
The compulsory impairment test will not be used as a screening test but it will be used as the breath test can be used with regard to alcohol. It will be used in a targeted way—namely, if an officer notes that a car is being driven dangerously or erratically, the officer will stop the driver, and if the driver passes the alcohol breath test, the officer can then proceed with the drug impairment test. Provision is made for the impairment test to be done away from where the driver and the car have been stopped. That takes into account the fact that the terrain where the car has been stopped may not be conducive for the test to be undertaken there, or the roadside may be poorly lit. That provision is there to ensure that the test is done in the safest possible situation.
There have been a couple of changes since submissions on the bill were heard by members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The first change concerns situations where a person has been injured in a road traffic accident and is unable to do the impairment test. In the original bill, if the driver was hospitalised and unable to perform the impairment test, the driver could not be prosecuted. A Supplementary Order Paper introduced by the Hon Trevor Mallard in the Committee stage will ensure that hospitalised drivers can be prosecuted for a new offence of driving with class A drugs in their blood. That is the same process that occurs already when injured drivers are proved, by way of a blood test, to be over the alcohol limit.
The second change is to clarify the situation whereby the police can advance both an alcohol test and a drug impairment test at the same time on the roadside. The change makes it quite clear in the law that if a person marginally fails the alcohol breath test and the officer is concerned that the person exhibits signs that he or she is more impaired than the level of blood alcohol suggests, such as having slurred speech, then the officer can proceed to do a drug impairment test. If the person fails the impairment test, then he or she will have a blood test to check for drugs.
The select committee heard very concerning interim evidence from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research. It presented reports that really made the point that drinking and taking drugs and driving cause death. I will quote from a couple of studies that the institute gave the select committee. One study, which was carried out over 4 years from June 2004 to July 2008, was of 826 drivers who had died as a result of a motor vehicle accident. Samples were taken from deceased drivers whose deaths were deemed not to be due to medical problems that occurred prior to the accident or due to intentional harm, such as suicide. The study found that 80 percent of the drivers were culpable for their own accident, and that that was particularly true for those aged under 20 and over 80. Those drivers were all analysed for drug and alcohol use, and the interesting statistics are that 48 percent had no alcohol or drugs in their system, but that over 52 percent had used alcohol and/or drugs. That is over half of those drivers.
The select committee asked the institute how many innocent people had died as a result of drivers taking drugs. The institute provided a further evaluation of the data for the 5 years from 2003 to 2007, and looked at 90 people who had died in crashes where drugs were cited as a contributing factor. Of those people, 53 were drug-affected drivers who had died as a result of their own driving, having taken drugs, but 28 were the passengers of those drivers, and a further nine were other road users. So out of the 90 deaths, 37 of them were innocent victims—that is, over 40 percent. That was quite a horrifying statistic to me when I heard it, and that is why it is so important to pass this legislation. It will ensure that drivers can be tested for drugs through the impairment method that has already been described.
The second purpose of this bill relates to the motor vehicles register. The bill improves the protection of personal information held on the register. Applications for the name and address of a vehicle owner will be dealt with under the Official Information Act, which applies a public interest test, and there will be special provision for approved bulk users. This bill also implements new measures to deal with vehicles where the name or current address of the owner is unknown. It also provides for much of the detail that is currently contained in the statute to be dealt with in regulations, where it can be easily updated.
In summary, this bill is timely and necessary, and it will save lives. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) Link to this
I am very pleased to take a call on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). I thought as a starter I would talk a little bit about the principle that I hold with regard to this issue. I have not been involved in the select committee process, so I probably do not have the level of detailed knowledge on the bill that members who were involved in hearing submissions may have.
When I go out into the electorate and talk to people about the issue of driving whilst impaired, I find that people do not necessarily make a distinction between somebody who is driving whilst impaired as a result of drugs and somebody who is driving whilst impaired as a result of alcohol. I think the fact that this bill deals with some anomalies around driving whilst impaired by drugs is very important.
The bill has two main functions. The first is that it enhances the powers of the police to deal with drug-impaired drivers. It creates a new offence for when a driver is impaired and there is evidence of drugs in the driver’s blood. The second function is to make changes regarding the registration and licensing of motor vehicles, and I will talk a bit more about that function in a few minutes.
The Labour Government introduced this bill back in 2007, and the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee further improved it over 2 years. We acknowledge the good work done by the select committee. I was particularly interested in the approach taken by my colleague Trevor Mallard, who has taken a very active involvement in this bill, to seeking public feedback and public opinion on this issue. He put several blog posts on the Labour MPs’ blog Red Alert, and I am told that over the totality of the two posts he had 46 comments; some of those were from him replying to other people’s comments.
Hon Anne TolleyWe know Anne Tolley read it, because she has mentioned it in the House.
I think it is a novel approach, because it is a very accessible way for members of the public to have a direct say on a particularly technical piece of legislation before the House. Some of the matters Trevor Mallard raised in his blog post were technical, but he was also seeking feedback in a fairly immediate way. People can give feedback without having to come to Parliament or write a submission; they can simply post a comment on the blog, and the comment goes directly to MPs. Other Labour MPs have read it, and we know that Anne Tolley has read it. So members of the House are able to get immediate feedback from members of the public. I think that is particularly good, and we can see the value of that approach in the amendments that Trevor Mallard has put forward and that the Government has indicated it will support.
I acknowledge the work done by National when it accepted Labour’s amendments. They are sensible amendments, and we are very pleased that National will be supporting them. They will give police the ability to test for class A drugs when people are hospitalised, which is common after car crashes, and they will allow the police to carry out drug tests after a driver has failed a test for alcohol, where that is considered to be appropriate. So I think we agree that those things are very sensible. We recognise the dangers of drug-driving, particularly with the growth of the P menace, which I think many in this House acknowledge is increasingly becoming a problem. So we are pleased that National has picked up this legislation and is working to have it implemented.
However, I will depart from the bipartisan approach slightly at this particular point in time—just for a change—and say that it is kind of strange to be talking about a bill that will enhance the powers of police to crack down on drug-driving when the Government has just pulled $49 million out of the road-policing budget. Presumably, the police will hitchhike to catch drug-drivers. I am not entirely sure how many cars were to be taken away from the police, but they will presumably have to hitchhike. Maybe they will be given bicycles to catch drug-drivers. It is a bit strange, really, to see this bill come before the House while at the same time there is publicity around the reduction in the budget for police cars.
One of the other things, I guess, that has been interesting about this debate is that we have seen a reasonable amount of common agreement across the House that this bill is necessary and should be supported and pushed through. But we also saw through the course of this particular debate this afternoon—I have not seen all of it, but I saw part of it—an acknowledgment that this is not an absolute solution to the problem and that there is more work to be done. It is quite unusual that both sides of the House—or all sides of the House, really—admit that there is still more work to be done. We certainly welcome that work.
The roadside impairment test will become compulsory under this bill. When an officer at the roadside has reason to suspect that a driver is impaired, the driver will be required to carry out a series of tests. If the driver cannot satisfactorily complete this series of tests, he or she will be required to provide a blood specimen. If an illegal drug is detected in the blood specimen, an offence will have been committed. In the Land Transport Act there is already the offence of driving while incapable of proper control due to alcohol or drugs, so, together, these two offences will send a clear message that people must not drive whilst under the influence of drugs.
The new impairment offence will enable an officer to make a well-informed decision about a person’s ability to drive safely, and if that person is not safe, he or she will not be able to continue. I think that will provide a significant level of reassurance to the public. It should, however, be noted that any evidence of drug use that is gathered as evidence of a driving offence will not be able by law to be used as evidence of any other offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act, because this measure is particularly a transport measure.
I want to talk about the second part of this bill, which deals with the motor vehicles register. The bill implements measures to improve protection of personal information held in the motor vehicles register. I think everyone in this day and age is becoming more and more aware of issues around privacy and the protection of personal information.
It is interesting to note that under the current law, any person can obtain the names and addresses of the present and previous owners of a motor vehicle simply by quoting its registration plate number. That is quite interesting, because motor vehicles change hands frequently. It is interesting to note that my name and address may be available in relation to a vehicle that I may not have owned for 4 or 5 years. That obviously creates some interesting privacy issues, and this part of the bill helps to deal with that. The information is available over the counter at present at post shops and other registration agencies, and there are no safeguards on how this information can be used.
The system is clearly open to abuse. There are examples where angry motorists, in the aftermath of a road-rage incident, have used the register to trace a person and then harass that person. I think that is something we would all be very concerned about. Professional car thieves can also use that information to target high-value vehicles. They can use the register to find out where the person who owns that car lives, and then they can effectively go and steal the car. I think that is an issue. Looking very closely at the requirements around making that information a little bit less accessible is, I think, very valuable.
The names and addresses of vehicle owners began being made available over the Internet in bulk during the 1990s, and, of course, that has probably exacerbated the problem. The Internet has created a whole range of new problems with making information available. I think we would all agree that making information available over the Internet is a good thing, but when that information is personal information new moral and ethical issues are created. The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) helps to address that situation.
It is interesting to note that 2.3 million people are on the register of names and address for vehicle ownership, so this will impact on a significant number of people. The information on the register of drivers’ licences is well protected, so I ask members why motor vehicle owners should be treated any differently. This bill addresses that very concern. It removes the current obligation on the Registrar of Motor Vehicles to release information to anyone who asks for it. Instead, requests for information will be dealt with under the Official Information Act in the same way that any other request to a Government department or Crown entity is dealt with. To assist with the consideration of Official Information Act requests, the bill clarifies that the principal purposes of the motor vehicles register—and this is very important for those familiar with the use of the Official Information Act—are law enforcement and the collection of revenue.
The bill recognises that, on occasions, the individual’s privacy interests may be balanced against the wider public good. Therefore, the bill will empower the Minister to authorise information to be released for certain purposes at the discretion of the Minister. Prior to issuing such an authorisation, the Minister will need to seek the views of the Ombudsman and the Privacy Commissioner, and that authorisation may be a one-off or it may be a standing authorisation that is valid for up to 5 years. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon NATHAN GUY (Associate Minister of Transport) Link to this
It is great to rise and take a call on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). It is a bill that I am very supportive of. I need to acknowledge from the outset the work on the bill that was done by the Labour Opposition. The Hon Trevor Mallard proposed some amendments that we were able to incorporate with the Government’s thoughts during the Committee of the whole House stage. Now we have a very robust bill that will endeavour, I believe, to make motorists safer in their communities. It will stamp down on drivers who are drugged, and it will give the police more powers to act on those drugged drivers.
I will make a few introductory comments about this bill and then I will conclude by making a few comments around the motor vehicles register, which the previous speaker, Chris Hipkins, alluded to. This bill aims to reduce the road safety risk created by persons who commit the offence of driving while impaired with the evidence of drugs in their bloodstream. It will give the police the ability to perform the impairment test. I need to talk a little bit about the impairment test, because it will be made compulsory under this regime. It will involve instances when a police officer stops a driver and suspects that he or she is driving under the influence of drugs. Drivers will have to walk and turn—this is outside the vehicle—they will have to be able to stand on one leg, and they will have to undergo a test that determines the size of their pupils, as well as their reaction to light. That measure is very important. It will enable police to have greater powers to crack down on drivers who choose to drive under the influence of drugs.
The other important thing that this bill does is determine that, from time to time, some people are on drugs that have been administered by a specialist or a general practitioner. This bill allows those people some relief from prosecution. If they have medicine, in accordance with a current prescription, from the manufacturer, they will be allowed to have that medicine. One example could be someone in hospital who needs morphine. The schedule covers all drugs; this point is very important. I have had a briefing from the police, and if we think about it, we see that we have a long, established history of how we can test for alcohol, but we do not have such a test for drugs, because drugs in today’s society are always evolving. Whether it is cocaine, heroin, cannabis, or LSD, all of those particular drugs are ongoing and evolving. That is an important thing to note.
Hon Trevor Mallard Link to this
I don’t think cocaine and heroin are evolving. They evolved a long time ago.
They evolved a long time ago, but, as Mr Mallard knows from getting around his electorate, new drugs are coming into society. I think we need to be aware of that.
The other important point I make in wrapping up is to make some comments around the motor vehicles register. From time to time an incident might occur on the road where a vehicle cuts someone off, the driver of the vehicle that was hit jots down the registration plate number of the vehicle that hit it, and then that driver looks up the owner of that vehicle. For a small fee, anyone can do that by going into a post shop. We need to ensure that that information is protected. It is my understanding that the information relates to over 2 million vehicles. Of course, there are people who choose to use the register as a marketing ploy. They get out there and bombard through direct-marketing all those people who have a vehicle licensed through this mechanism. We need to be very, very mindful of that.
The other significant point is that, from time to time, a part of a vehicle might need to be recalled. That happened to my vehicle recently. I got a note from the Ford motor company saying that I had to go in and have something taken off the vehicle and replaced. Under this bill, motor vehicle companies will still be allowed to send mail directly to people who purchased a vehicle from them. It will also allow the police, the Ministry of Justice, the Customs Service, the Ministry of Fisheries, and the like—agencies that are involved in law enforcement—to access the register.
In summary, this is a good bill. There is a great deal of support across the House for it. I need to acknowledge the work done by the officials, and the good work done in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee by the chair, David Bennett, and his good team. I commend this bill to the House.
SUE MORONEY (Labour) Link to this
It is my pleasure to rise to speak to the third reading of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). Every party in the House has acknowledged that this bill was introduced by the previous Labour Government, and it has enjoyed good support throughout the House as a result of its being well-drafted legislation.
Before I come back to the detail of the bill and its very good intentions, I will speak to the very serious issue of the way in which the changes in this bill will be resourced, given that, as my colleague Chris Hipkins pointed out, the funding for road policing has been reduced in Budget 2009. It has been cut by $49 million. Yet here we are debating in the House today this bill, which is about to pass its third reading—this bill is about to become an Act—and this will put even more pressure on those road policing resources because of the additional issues that the police will now have the ability and powers to deal with.
Well, the facts were actually in the Budget, and also in the media today—$49 million has been cut out of road policing.
On top of that, as we discovered at question time today, an additional $21 million is being cut from police resources, and this will have an impact on the fleet of vehicles available to the police. The involvement of vehicles in road safety policing is quite fundamental. If members on the Government side of the House are really stuck, I can probably offer them my family horse, which won the Melbourne Cup in 2000 and, on retirement, became a police horse in the Melbourne police force. I could probably bring Brew home if they get stuck for police vehicles!
He was a good horse, but I have to alert the Government to the fact that he was owned by my family and sometimes he had to be chucked out of the police academy for bad behaviour. So perhaps he would not be terribly reliable, but maybe he would be more reliable than having no transport at all. All joking aside—of course, that was not a serious offer—and to come back to the bill itself, I am concerned about the level of resourcing that will be put into road policing as a result of this legislation.
This bill amends the Land Transport Act 1998, and it has two main functions. Its first function is to enhance the powers of the police to deal with drug-impaired drivers. That is a new power, and new powers require resourcing and always have some teething problems. That is the reason why I raised the concern about the funding cut to road policing in the Budget that has just gone through the House. This bill creates a new offence for a situation when a driver is impaired and there is evidence of drugs in his or her blood.
The second thing that this bill does is make changes to the registration and licensing of motor vehicles. I think that is probably the least contentious part of this bill, because it is about people’s ability to maintain their privacy. Many members have made great contributions on this part of the bill and talked about how it will stop the abuse of people’s private information by marketing companies.
Chris Hipkins gave a very detailed explanation of some of the criminal activity that can be associated with this information being freely available, but I would like to draw the House’s attention to another area of great concern. That issue is about access to information via the registration and licensing of motor vehicles. This is a concern for women and families who live in fear of previous violent partners or of other violence associated with their lives. There were instances outlined to the select committee where women who had protection orders against former loved ones had found that the access to this information had worked to their disadvantage. When they had tried to move in order to not be easily located by people whom they had protection orders against, they found out that their previous partner had been able to track them down by using the registration and licensing information from the motor vehicles register. The openness of this register and the way in which its information has been used are very serious issues that have many consequences. Sadly, we now live in a society where the openness and the freedom of that information have worked to undermine the protection of individuals within our society. It is a sad thing that we have needed to do, but across the House everyone agrees and understands the rationale for why the changes must be made.
I want to acknowledge the good work that was done across the parties in the select committee; select committee processes do not always work in this way. One of the very important things about the type of democracy that we have here in New Zealand is that our select committee process—and many people come from overseas to observe this process—has the ability to do exactly what we have seen happen in respect of this bill and its development. It is a very fine feature of our democracy that parties can get together and work on a very detailed issue. I can see from the work that has been done in the select committee that there was a great deal of detail for the officials to impart to members of Parliament. Members were then able to work through not only all of that detail but all of the very tricky issues that come with the detail.
Of course, issues involving people’s access to, and use of, drugs are very contentious and difficult to deal with. However, the select committee has been able to deal with this issue in a way that has accepted all members’ perspectives. Many members who have spoken about the select committee process have praised the Hon Trevor Mallard’s participation—and I am loathe to join in with them in doing that! Obviously, they recognise that many good ideas have come from this side of the House. In fact, some of us would say that any of the good ideas that the Government has had have been based on Labour policy or previous bills put forward by the previous Labour Government—and this bill is just another example of exactly that.
In summary, I commend the bill. I thank the select committee members for their very hard and detailed work on this issue; obviously, they had a great deal of support from the officials. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon TAU HENARE (National) Link to this
I was going to just go through a summary of where I think the bill is, but the previous speaker, Sue Moroney, brought up the issue of horses. I say that that member not so long ago spoke publicly against the very tax break for horses that she agreed with when Winston Peters was the Minister for Racing. That is the sort of thing we get from the Opposition. The debate on this bill started really, really nicely, with everyone was patting each other on the back, but the last two Labour speakers, the one before Sue Moroney—
Yes. Chris Hipkins suggested all sorts of things about there not being any money in the kitty. Let us be serious about this. This bill was introduced in 2007. It is now midway through 2009, and the only reason this bill is where it is today is because of the good work of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and because of the efficiency of a National Government that wants to do things. It is about good chairpersonship, it is about a good Minister, and it is about a Government that wants to get ahead and stop dilly-dallying and playing politics like the last member was doing.
The bill is about three things. Let us concentrate on the small, administrative matter: the continuation of the Land Transport Act 1998, and other little bits and pieces that have to happen. That is the administrative part. The next part is about protection; it is about protecting the privacy of individuals in this country so that private citizens know that their information will not be bandied about by stalkers, by all sorts of miscreants, and even by some of those people who get into telemarketing.
The big stuff I want to talk about, in the third part of the bill, is the drug issue. I think that is the key issue to this bill. The Greens have called it a blunt tool, some have mentioned that it is a discriminatory practice, and some have called it other things. The key here is about saving lives. The key here is about making sure that if you drink and drive, and if you take drugs and drive—yes, I am speaking absolutely to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and that is why I am using the word “you”—then you are pinged for it. We can go through all sorts of reasons why people drink and drive, and take drugs and drive, and we can blame it on this, that, and the other thing. But drink-driving and drug-driving would not happen if people did not get behind the wheel of a vehicle. It is as simple as that. This is one time when I think the psychologists, the researchers, and the analysts of all kinds who dream up reasons why people do things have got it wrong. The clear message is that this community does not put up with, and will never put up with, people getting behind the wheel of a vehicle in a drug-impaired state. The message is quite simple: people should not smoke and drive, needle and drive, or swallow drugs that they should not be using and drive. It is quite clear that this bill is about the protection of the innocent.
I finish by mentioning something that came up in the select committee about research, and what happens to the blood samples after they have been tested in a hospital. My colleague Te Ururoa Flavell mentioned this issue in the Committee stage, and I raised the issue also at the select committee. I am satisfied that the further research that the bill talks about is only about the drug issue. The blood samples will not be used for any research purposes other than that. I want to put that on the record, and assure my colleague that I think the issues he raised, and that I raised in the select committee, have been worked out in a manner that assures us that those samples will not be used for some sort of Frankenstein research along the way.
I commend this bill to the House, but we should be mindful that it is only a small step. As some of my colleagues have said previously, different drugs come on to the market—it seems like an everyday occurrence—and we have to be up with the play. We also have to be up with the play in terms of the technology that we have at our disposal to grab these people, who do not like themselves and do not like anybody else. Why else would they be drug-impaired and alcohol-impaired behind the wheel of a vehicle? Kia ora.