Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) Link to this

I need to inform the Committee that I am withdrawing the amendment to clause 12 on Supplementary Order Paper 226 and the items relating to the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Rule 1999, to allow these same provisions proposed in Supplementary Order Paper 229 to proceed.

Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) Link to this

Tēnā koe. I am uncharacteristically using a modest voice. I shall correct that deficiency.

As has been intimated to the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Transport, in broad terms Labour supports the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Two particular areas have caused us considerable angst, and I will talk about the first one. It relates to the blood-alcohol limit. The Minister in the chair made reference to the fact that as a consequence of his history and his physiology he was more than capable of absorbing the equivalent of three handsome glasses of vino without it impairing his ability to drive, and without offending the regulations pertaining to people driving whilst having had a bit to drink. Quite apart from the lack of wisdom of a Cabinet Minister making such a statement, when one believes one walks on water one can say virtually anything until such time as the forces of nature, otherwise known as the electorate, correct that misapprehension.

The reason we were hoping we could find some common ground with the Government on this issue is that we felt that a lowering of the limit would send a message that would amplify throughout the spectrum of drinkers. As I have said earlier, we know that there is an element of awkwardness in people making a transition. There would be hardly a member in the Chamber who has not been to a rugby game or to some other spot, had a drink or three, and then chanced his or her arm and driven home, believing that he or she was not over the limit.

We are very concerned about the young, impressionable drinkers. They absorbed a new set of cultural standards and they realised that society—as reflected through their submissions and interaction with the Law Commission, and as was evidenced through the media reports over the last, dare I say, 12 months—is repulsed by the notion that more and more of our young people are suffering as a consequence of not being able to handle their alcohol, and of getting behind the wheel of a vehicle and creating havoc. All we have been saying is that, had we taken that particular stance, it would reinforce the message that New Zealand needs to hear.

We heard from a whole host of parents and advocacy groups. We have only to read about such prestigious institutions as King’s College to see that there is an endemic culture. If we as parliamentarians feel disinclined to challenge that prevailing youth binge drinking culture, then I think that is a very serious indictment. I do not personally believe that the current Minister of Transport wants to let that binge drinking youth culture go unimpeded. However, I think he has missed a very good opportunity by not lowering the blood-alcohol limit.

There are a variety of other things that we agree with, though; I do not want to be too churlish. But I do not think that there is anything petty or unreasonable in challenging the Minister to suffer a road to Damascus experience, have a change of heart, and agree with my colleagues and me and with the work done by my predecessor, Mr Darren Hughes, who hopefully has the time to listen into these contributions. We are carrying on from work that he initiated. If we want to attack the element of our societal culture that either celebrates or remains indifferent to binge drinking, then a good way to do it is to pass a regulation and cause young people, or their parents or other role models, to suffer as a consequence of not being prepared to change their ways. It sounds brutal, but it tends to work in other spheres of life.

It would be good to hear the Minister give the Committee an account as to why he has not taken on board the public’s concerns. I know that he lives by the polls. Of course, he will die by the polls, but that is another matter. I know that National members poll on a tediously regular basis. He has obviously taken a poll outside the Titirangi Golf Club, up at the Auckland Bridge Club in Remuera, down at the Waitematā sailing club, and at the various other pursuits that this Minister, who is unfortunately known in the north as the “Minister of Dead Ends”, is up to. But I ask Minister Joyce to please tell us why. We will not attack him on his profligate approach to roads of national significance in this context—well, not in this speech, anyhow. We just want to know why he has not taken on board the concerns of, and the appeals for leadership from, mothers, brothers, sisters, and schoolteachers.

He should not hide behind the media and he should not hide behind the usual smug, somewhat supercilious garb. He should come out and tell New Zealand why he is leaving this limit the way that he is proposing to leave it, and why he is relying on goodness knows what kind of research, which he has lumbered the police and various other agencies with. The majority of the anti - drink-driving advocates and garden-variety parents—and, as I said, vocational guidance counsellors, ministers of religion, doctors, and people who operate our hospitals and the actual emergency wards—have all told us that we need to take every proactive step to stop the suffering of more young people, their families, and, indeed, innocent people.

Not long ago, not far from where I hail from, a person in his middle age was so drunk that he wiped out a beautiful young woman and child, and injured other people. People expect the courts to deliver a decision, but the courts will deliver a decision only when the highest court in the land, the sovereign court—Parliament—has spoken. The party on this side of the Chamber is making a very sensible plea to Minister Joyce to please change his stance, to not hide behind more reports, to trust in the instincts of the people who are at the front line dealing with this carnage, and, on these issues of life and death, to not hide behind polls.

This is the kind of thing that we would expect a senior Minister of the Crown to embrace and race towards exercising some leadership on. This is not some sort of shady commercial transaction that we have recently tried to pin on him—no. This is about simple, God-fearing Kiwis being afraid that this culture of binge drinking is going unimpeded. No one has more power in this area than the Minister of Transport, so I think it is right that we amplify the fact that he has remained impotent on the issue.

It is not unreasonable for us to have a go. I know that advocates from sports clubs and from entities such as the Automobile Association will have a go at whichever Government might be in power over whether this is too heavy-handed, but we cannot trade on the language of strategies such as Safer Journeys or, in our case, See You There—Safe As. The rhetoric is fine, but unless we are proactive on changing the elements that make for safer driving and a safer culture, I have serious concerns.

An additional area that has concerned me is the disproportionately high level of negative statistics that come from our young people—by that, I mean rangatahi Māori, young Māori drivers. I have a fear that if we put up the age of licensed driving, it will have a disproportionately negative impact on our young people. As the Automobile Association has said, there seems to already be a different culture governing the decisions of many of our young Māori drivers. Te Puni Kōkiri has long since stopped doing anything proactive in that stance, as befits the approach of the current Minister of Māori Affairs and his party.

This Minister has an opportunity to deal with the elements in society that disproportionately need leadership. They do not want to change their ways until such time as some State fiat forces them to change their ways. It could affect the pockets of our community and, dare I say, our people—te rangatahi Māori—who seem to be operating to a different set of cultural principles when they hop behind the wheel of a vehicle. I am not seeking to countenance that, and I certainly do not want to give anyone that impression, but I have seen it myself.

If one indiscriminately changes the way that licences are to be obtained; if one does not take into account how the most vulnerable group, who need the ability to travel safely and legally on the road in order to get a job or better training whilst they are young, will be affected; and if one makes it more difficult for them then one is actually making it difficult for them to escape from the poverty trap that many of them find themselves in.

A whole host of attack lines are coming out of the New Zealand media. We do not need to repeat them so early in the debate; the Minister knows what they are. We will amplify them during the course of this year. I come back again to this: a simple demonstration of leadership from this person, who prides himself of being the unseen force behind the current senior Ministers—

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this

I am happy to take a call on Part 1 of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Part 1 is the guts of the bill. It has the majority of the various provisions in the bill, so I imagine that we will have a fairly long and lengthy debate on this part. I too want to address a couple of concerns upfront. I will start with the blood-alcohol limit. My colleague Shane Jones has started the debate in a very eloquent way. I advise the Minister of Transport that Labour is here to help. We have tabled an amendment that will allow him to save face by agreeing to decrease the blood-alcohol content limit from 0.08 to 0.05 grams. The reason he needs to take this amendment seriously is that everybody supports a decrease. We have only to look at the variety of polls there have been; numerous polls have been conducted throughout the country. People are extremely puzzled about why the Minister and the National Government are not prepared to put this amendment into this bill or into another bill, if it were the appropriate vehicle.

I am not sure that the Minister has taken an awful lot of notice of the submissions on the bill. There were a lot of submitters who came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. There were 81 submitters and we heard from 31, I think. Many of them were concerned about the lowering of the adult blood-alcohol content. We are saying very strongly—like the New Zealand public has been saying very strongly—that we think now is the time for us to do it. We do not agree that the Government should be kicking this to touch and using the excuse that it needs to have 2 years of research. The advice from officials is very, very clear that a lower blood-alcohol limit will prevent between 15 and 33 deaths and from 320 to 688 serious injuries. That on its own is enough to take action, rather than waiting for a couple of years.

There have been 300 international studies—300 international studies—that have all shown the road-safety benefits from lowering the blood-alcohol concentration. We do not believe that collecting New Zealand - specific data is necessary, because of those 300 international studies. What is so different about New Zealand? We do not understand why we have to go to the expense, why we have to spend money when the country is struggling, why we are wasting money on collecting research that we do not need, and why we are not taking action right now.

I want to refer to some of the submissions that came to the select committee. There were a range of groups. There were some very concerned groups. A group from Whangaparāoa and Rodney came down; 77 of them were involved in putting together a submission. The Seventh Day Adventist Church, Grey Power Auckland area committee, Active West Coast, Christchurch City Council, the Drug Foundation, and the Cycling Advocates Network all said that we should be taking the opportunity to reduce the blood-alcohol content from 0.08 to 0.05 grams. Alcohol Healthwatch strongly supported that also. It should know—it has to deal with the consequences of people who have problems with alcohol. We know we have a culture of binge drinking. We know we have alcohol problems in our country at the moment. The Law Commission has highlighted that very clearly. Alcohol Healthwatch talked about how we need to change people’s drinking behaviour. That would not only stop crashes and people dying on the roads but also it would lead to better outcomes in other areas, such as being less of a drain on the health sector.

Some other really significant groups came to the select committee, such as the Drink Driving Intervention Trust. Professor Doug Sellman from the National Addiction Centre was extremely interesting. He strongly recommended that we lower the blood-alcohol limit. He said that the current blood-alcohol limit amounts to legalised drink-driving. I think the Minister of Transport himself was very surprised when he found out that he could drink three-quarters of a bottle of wine and still get behind the wheel and drive legally—[Interruption]—and still run the Cabinet agenda; that is right. Professor Sellman went on to say that there is enough international evidence to show that lowering the blood-alcohol limit has positive effects on lowering the incidence of drink-driving—not just saving lives and stopping injuries, but actually changing behaviour. That is one of the key measures the Government should be taking.

The Herald on Sunday ran a campaign on lowering the blood-alcohol limit and some people signed up to it. I am not sure whether members of the Government were brave enough to put their names to it, but I know some of them agree with what the Herald on Sunday said. It held a nationwide campaign to get New Zealanders to pledge to two drinks, max. It also said that there is enough evidence to show that we would get real, positive results from changing the blood-alcohol content.

The Alcohol Advisory Council also recommended lowering the blood-alcohol limit. It talked about changing the drinking culture of New Zealand. The problem with the drinking culture, in relation to our roads, is that if people can drink three-quarters of a bottle of wine, like the Minister did, and be legally smashed but then get into a car and drive, why would they change their behaviour? They think that is OK. They measure the number of glasses of wine they can have or the beers they can have. They say that as long as they have not had three-quarters of a bottle of wine they are OK. They do not think about how that impairs their driving, they do not think about the impact that it has on their ability to drive safely, and they do not think about the impact it has on other drivers as well.

Members of Rural Women New Zealand were very interesting as well. I would have thought they are a good group and good friends of the Government, but they said that the Government should be lowering the blood-alcohol limit across the board, and most of their members actually support zero tolerance. We are not suggesting that; we are simply saying that we should use the international research that is available to us. Why does this Government not take a brave step that will save between 15 and 33 lives every year? We do not need to wait for 2 years for New Zealand - specific research. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation represents nurses and knows about the impacts of alcohol and drink-driving. It has said that judgment about the ability to drive safely is severely compromised at 0.08 grams. It also suggested a nationwide education programme. In addition to lowering the blood-alcohol concentration, a nationwide education programme should ensure better understanding of alcohol-related harm and the associated costs of this harm, because, as I have said, it is not just about people dying, other road users being at risk, and people being injured; it is the cost to the health system and to people’s lives. Losing someone in an instant on the roads has an enormous impact on people’s lives. If they are badly injured, of course, there is an ongoing cost both to the families and to our health system.

So there were many submissions in support of lowering the blood-alcohol concentration, and a number of polls and trials have been conducted throughout the country. A number of employees at media organisations, including those from the Herald on Sunday, ran tests to see how much they could drink and still be legally below the limit. They found it quite frightening that they were able to get behind the wheel and drive their cars on the road.

As my colleague Shane Jones has said, we support quite a number of the features in Part 1. We support the zero limit for repeat drink-drivers, because that addresses the issue of drink-driving. We also support the zero limit for drivers under 20 years of age. The provision relating to alcohol interlock devices is a good thing; we really support that. We support doubling the minimum sentence time for drugged or reckless driving that causes death. People have to start taking this seriously. But, unfortunately, they will not take it seriously until this Government takes the brave step that it needs to, supports the amendment that I have put forward, and gets on and lowers the blood-alcohol limit, instead of mucking around for another 2 years looking for New Zealand - specific research. It should not muck around with that; it should get on with it. Let us fix it up. Otherwise, we think the Government has copped out on this. It is a cop-out. It has done some good things in this bill. There are some things that we disagree with, but the Government could make it better by agreeing to lower the blood-alcohol concentration.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) Link to this

I will make a couple of points if I can at this stage. I appreciate the support that the Opposition has given to a number of the measures in this bill, but I am a bit concerned at the double standard it now appears to be taking with regard to young drivers versus the blood-alcohol level. Firstly, if we look at the evidence and at what this bill is trying to achieve—I think it will make very strong inroads—we will see that the biggest problems on our roads sadly are our young drivers, where we have a very tragic situation. We have a 60 percent worse fatality rate in this country than in Australia. It is a shocking statistic that we all need to take some responsibility for. High-risk drivers are, sadly, again dominated by people who are not just under or just over the legal blood-alcohol limit, but are actually well over the blood-alcohol limit.

I take the point that the Hon Shane Jones was making, to a point, when he told the Committee of the terrible story of the person who was blind drunk in Northland. We all have those stories. The point is that that person was obviously well over the current legal limit. In terms of the youngsters whom the Hon Shane Jones referred to, I agree with him entirely, which is why we have proposed a nil alcohol limit for young drivers. We have imposed that limit not because we want to punish young drivers, but because we all know, partly from our distant memories and partly from our own children in our lives, that teenagers are not that good on making decisions about when to drink and when to drive. We have had a number of tragic cases in this country where the least drunk teenager has been picked to drive home with, sadly, horrible consequences. We have only a 0.03 grams limit now for young people. A nil limit for young people—having it as an infringement penalty between 0.0 and 0.03 grams, and taking into account the tolerance for mouthwash and all those things—sends a very straightforward message to the under 20s and tells them that if they have a drink, they should not drive. That is the deal and we are making it very straightforward and very black and white, because we are all conscious that we are 10-foot high and bulletproof when we are young.

The contradiction in the Opposition’s position is that on the one hand it says the polls state that everybody says we should lower the adult blood-alcohol limit, despite the fact that there is no evidence of the actual harm caused by drivers with a blood-alcohol concentration between 0.05 and 0.08 grams in this country; there is no evidence. On the other hand, the Opposition says that it is not necessarily in favour of raising the driving age by a year, which is actually a more popular initiative in this country—if we are going to be populist—right through rural and urban areas than the call to reduce the blood-alcohol concentration from 0.08 to 0.05 grams. So that is a bit of a contradiction in terms, particularly when we know the evidence of the difficulties for young drivers. Sadly, we know that we have a 60 percent worse fatality rate in this country than the rates in other countries.

People have raised the issue of mobility of young drivers, and I completely understand that. But I ask why it is so different to give a 14-year-old a drive to the sports game, but suddenly it is not possible to do that for a 15-year-old. I do not buy that. I think that someone can take a young person to events, until they reach the driving age. That is not the excuse.

The question we have to ask ourselves is: what is an appropriate age at which young people can drive? There is a chart, which we have shown to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, in answer to Darien Fenton’s concerns, and it has also been shown to all the members who have shown an interest. This chart shows quite clearly that the younger someone is, with the same level of experience, the higher his or her accident rate will be. That is the reality. In fact, there are many people who think the driving age in this country should be another year older again than what we have proposed in the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

We have to consider that very, very carefully, because there is another chart, which we have shown the select committee, and it is in the high-risk drivers report. It is a very sad chart that shows the number of passengers in vehicles who die at the hand of their young driver friends, when their driver friends are out on their restricted licence or learner licence, late at night, in places like the Bay of Plenty, Waikato, Auckland, or out the back of Hawke’s Bay. There are young kids out there, making bad driving decisions and, unfortunately, taking the lives of other kids with them. We have to make the call that we need a young driver package—it is not just one measure—that says that driving involves more responsibility than they think. We need to take that step, so the Government has put together a young driver package that is about a zero permissible breath - blood-alcohol concentration for under-20-year-olds, changes the minimum age for driver licensing to make it the same as in Australia, toughens up the restricted licence provisions so that young drivers are encouraged to have 120 hours training, and also looks at things like vehicle power restrictions, which we will have a report on later this year. We are saying that here is a whole package because we do not want to have a fatality rate for our young people on the roads that is 60 percent worse than that in Australia. We do not want that.

I will raise one other matter, in terms of the adult blood-alcohol limit. It was addressed at the time that the UK was also looking into lowering its limit from 0.08 grams to 0.05 grams. The UK is an interesting place. It has half the road fatality rate as New Zealand, when using the same population basis. It has one of the lowest rates in the world, but it has a 0.08 grams blood-alcohol level. The UK looked at lowering its blood-alcohol limit too and said that maybe it should be dropped to 0.05 grams because a lot of countries have that limit, but it said no. It has made a decision now. The decision is that it is high-risk drivers who are the problem, and that it is high-risk drivers that they will focus on in the UK. We have made the same decision in this country, because the evidence is clear. If we look at the two areas, high-risk drivers and young drivers who have not already been classified as high-risk drivers, together they comprise 53 percent of at-fault drivers in fatal crashes. More than half the at-fault drivers in fatal crashes are either high-risk drivers or young drivers. By high-risk drivers we mean people who are well over the blood-alcohol limit, people who have had alcohol licence problems before, and all those sorts of people. They actually have an alcohol problem, which turns up the roads. That is the problem we are dealing with. It is an alcohol problem that, unfortunately, turns up on our roads.

The other initiative that this bill allows for is alcohol interlocks. That is a big step forward for this Parliament: the ability to provide a technological solution that in many cases will separate the drinker from his or her driving. We have to try to do that. Unfortunately, we cannot have someone in every driveway saying “You can go on the road” or “You cannot go on the road”. The road is a very democratic place; everybody has access to it. What we can say is that when someone is the sort of person who cannot make responsible decisions once he or she has had a couple of drinks, then having an alcohol interlock in place will make that decision for him or her. As Darien Fenton has pointed out, we will also have a nil alcohol limit for repeat drink-drivers.

I think this is a cohesive package. I ask the Committee to keep a real focus on young drivers; on the fatality rate that is 60 percent worse compared with that in Australia, which I think is very sad for this country; and also on the real issues with adult drink-driving, which are at the serious end of the spectrum. Once this bill has passed, we will collect the actual data over the next 2 years on the harm caused by drivers who have a blood-alcohol level of between 0.05 grams and 0.08 grams, and then we will settle what has been an emotional and long-running debate in this country about whether moving the blood-alcohol limit from 0.08 grams to 0.05 grams will actually make the difference to the road toll that its advocates say it will.

I will say a final word on those advocates. I understand the Labour Party’s view is that sometimes to achieve social change the rules in other areas have to be changed, because it likes to do a little bit of social engineering, but I think we are talking about transport here. This issue is actually about transport, and what it is safe to do on the road. To all those groups like Alcohol Healthwatch, Alcohol Advisory Council, and the rest, who want to use the road as a means to achieve wider societal change, I say good on them, but this is actually a transport issue that we need to deal with, and we need to deal with it on that basis. We do not punish people just in the hope that if we really come down hard on them, then we will change the alcohol culture in this country. If we want to change the alcohol culture in this country, that is fine, but many people who are quite happy and law abiding will have a few drinks at home and not drive anywhere, and those people will not respond well to the suggestion that this is all about social engineering. Thank you.

GARETH HUGHES (Green) Link to this

Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. I rise to take a call on Part 1 of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I look forward to taking a few calls on this bill. I acknowledge the contribution we have just heard from the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Transport. In general, I agree with what he has said about road safety. We have a problem in New Zealand and we need to do something about it. It has been a longstanding problem. We have improved somewhat over the last several decades, but we still need to do more.

I agree with large chunks of this bill. When it comes to changes to the powers of parking wardens, to alcohol interlocks, and to procedural rules for the New Zealand Transport Agency, I think that stuff is all great. Clearly, the big issue the bill addresses is alcohol, and when looking at the issue of alcohol this bill cannot be taken in isolation. We have a national cultural drinking problem. It is not just a problem of alcohol on the roads; New Zealand has a wider cultural problem.

Unfortunately, this bill is not doing the single most effective thing that could be done to deal with alcohol on the road. Likewise, with the Alcohol Reform Bill we are simply targeting young drinkers with changes to the legal drinking age. We are not looking at the broader cultural problems. We are not addressing the massive amounts of alcohol advertising we have, changes to hours, or ready-to-drinks; we are simply looking at youth stereotyping.

Likewise, with the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill the focus is on young drivers. I acknowledge the work that Miss Fenton has done with her amendments, but the Green Party will not be voting for them.

As the former youngest member of Parliament—I acknowledge Jami-Lee Ross, who was just here—I wanted to oppose this bill. Getting my licence at 15 years old was an important part of my journey to adult life, as I know it is for lots of young people. Because of the terrible state of our public transport in many our provincial and rural towns, young people do not have options. We in this Committee may be surprised, but many 15-year-olds provide income to their whānau. They are out working hard, and they need to get to work somehow.

This was a challenge for me and my caucus to discuss, but we looked at the evidence and I think it is pretty compelling. Australia has a 60 percent lower accident rate for the same age bracket. We support the raising of the minimum driving age to 16 years old. We support further initiatives when it comes to driver training. I note that in Germany it costs around €2,000 to €4,000, I understand, to get a driver’s licence. Although I do not advocate for that in this Chamber, I think we should strengthen driver training.

Clearly, the main thing we need to do for young people between the ages of 15 and 16, who will not be able to drive, is to give them better public transport. Unfortunately, that is not happening under this Government.

The Greens support the lowering of the blood-alcohol limit for under-20-year-olds, but we think this should be done only in conjunction with the general lowering of the blood-alcohol limit for adults. There are two issues here. There is the transition: someone who is almost 20 can have only 0.03 grams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, yet a day later, on their birthday, they can go all the way up to 0.08 grams, which is totally outside the bounds of the OECD average. New Zealand is an international outlier when it comes to this limit. There will be transition problems, and I acknowledge that.

There is also an issue of consistency: the blood-alcohol limit for young people should be the same as the limit for adults. We are sending the wrong message. We are sending young drivers the message that we do not trust them with alcohol when, in fact, the problem is a broader cultural problem. It is the same with the Alcohol Reform Bill. Ninety-two percent of our problem drinkers in New Zealand are over the age of 30. We cannot stereotype young drivers. We acknowledge that there is work to be done here; enough will be said about the 0.05 limit today.

I challenge a couple of the comments made by the Minister. He said there is not enough evidence. I understand that 300 international reports show this evidence. The experts, and the people who produce Safer Journeys, were pretty compelling in their argument that we could save between 15 and 33 lives. I do not believe that the New Zealand Transport Agency plucked those numbers out of thin air. There is an evidential basis for lowering the blood-alcohol limit. We are simply moving into line. Lowering the limit is not going out on a limb; it is simply moving into the OECD average. It is simply listening to the World Health Organization, which is the expert.

The proposal to lower the blood-alcohol limit is clearly popular. We have had a public consciousness shift over the last couple of decades when it comes to the drinking level. We are missing the opportunity to lower the blood-alcohol limit. The bill is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We have the public behind us, we have the evidence behind us, and we have the desire. I do not know why the Minister did not advocate in his Cabinet for lowering the blood-alcohol limit. I thought the Minister was going to advocate for lowering the blood-alcohol limit after the work he did in the media around his wine consumption and driving. What happened in Cabinet? I would love for the Minister to take a call.

Hon HEATHER ROY (ACT) Link to this

It gives me pleasure to stand and speak on Part 1 of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

In large part, the ACT Party supports the bill and agrees with most of its initiatives. Most of the initiatives make a good deal of sense, particularly the provisions on education for young drivers. I take on board the points the Minister of Transport made when he took a call just before the Green member Gareth Hughes to talk about the initiatives he has put in place on education for young drivers.

The Green member made a very pertinent point when he said that problem identification is very important. That is absolutely correct, because unless you are able to identify the problem accurately, there is no way you can get the solution right—except the odd time by good luck.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) Link to this

Thank you very much, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to speak on the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I will start by saying that although Labour supports the bill, we have already made it clear that there are a number of areas where we think it lacks teeth. Make no mistake; we will support the bill. We support measures such as the zero limit for repeat drink-drivers. That is a no-brainer. We support having a zero limit for drivers under 20, as the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Transport, pointed out, to send a strong signal to those younger drivers to not drink at all if they are planning to get behind the wheel. We also support the interlocks. Using technology to make sure we can crack down on repeat drink-drivers is another good measure in the bill, as is making sure we get tougher on recidivist drink-drivers by doubling the minimum prison time for drunk and drugged reckless driving causing death.

As I mentioned earlier, a number of my colleagues have already mentioned a couple of areas where we think the bill comes short of the mark. The obvious issue we have put attention on in the Committee today is the failure of the Government to recognise that there is a large amount of public support for reducing the blood-alcohol content level from 0.08 to 0.05.

The Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill is an appropriate title for this bill. I went looking for a measure that would take strong action to lower the blood-alcohol level from 0.08 to 0.05. It was not in the road safety measures or in the other provisions, and we believe that it should have been, especially at a time when the Minister had the opportunity for cross-party support late last year with the member’s bill that Darren Hughes put forward. We would have got broad cross-party support to make sure we could take real measures to reduce the number of alcohol-related deaths on our roads. That was a lost opportunity. What did we get? We got another 2-year study to look at the effect on drivers who are found to have a blood-alcohol level of between 0.08 and 0.05. As Gareth Hughes mentioned before, studies over a number of decades plainly show that if we send a signal to the public that we will not tolerate that level of alcohol in drivers’ systems, then the number of deaths on our roads will reduce. What do we have? We have 2 more years of stalling.

Before I hear a barrage of heckling that Labour did not do anything in the 9 years it was in Government, I say that we are in the here and now. We have the opportunity to look forward. We had an opportunity for cross-party support. We have a bill before us that we support, as I said, but we also have a lost opportunity to take real action on the roads. Unfortunately, instead of taking pragmatic action, we have politics. From a Minister who cares about optics, we have no action.

The issue is really about what happens on our roads, and the Minister has already talked about his own personal experience. He said that it is just ridiculous that he can drink three-quarters of a bottle of wine and still be able to legally get out there on the road. Most New Zealanders think that, too. It is a shame the Minister does not have the courage of his personal convictions—

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) Link to this

One of the prerogatives of the Minister, of course, is that he gets to take a call whenever he wants, and when he did he probably stole about 95 percent of the things that I wanted to say on the two most important aspects of Part 1 of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. But I will persevere, nevertheless, because I think there is plenty more to say about it, and I am very happy to flesh out—

DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) Link to this

I take a little bit of exception to what the member Michael Woodhouse was just talking about. Last week Sir Peter Gluckman came out with a very good report about basing legislation and policies on evidence. Evidence has been used in a rather ad hoc way in Parliament today.

Let me look, for example, at the road age—the driving age. Our road death rate per 100,000 in 2005 was 9.9, which was slightly above the OECD average of 9.5. We all agree in this House—there is no disagreement—that we need to improve our road death rate. But if we look at the US as well as the OECD, we see that all those countries have a higher driving age, yet in the US the road death rate is 14—about five deaths higher per 100,000 than here in New Zealand—Poland’s rate is 14, Belgium’s is 10, Portugal’s 11, and Spain’s 10. If we go down the list of OECD countries we find that those countries, even though they have a driving age that is higher than New Zealand’s, have a greater rate of road deaths. We can selectively look at the UK and Australia and say that their road death rates are lower than New Zealand’s so we must be failing in some way. But I tell Mr Woodhouse that if he goes across to Australia and drives around there, he will find that the roads are different. They are quite different from New Zealand’s roads. The weather conditions are very different. Some of the driving conditions are very, very different. New Zealand has much more difficult driving conditions than Australia. I can tell members what else is different in Australia. It has a blood-alcohol limit of 0.05 grams, rather than 0.08 grams. Australians have been smart enough to bring down the limit. I think statistics and evidence are being used rather selectively in this debate.

I come to one other point. I think we all are talking about the same things. We all want the same things from this legislation. We support the Minister’s zero limit for repeat drink-drivers and zero limit for drivers under 20. I think it is logical. We support the alcohol interlocks for repeat offenders, and the doubling of the minimum prison time for drunk, drugged, or reckless driving causing death. We all agree with those, so, in that list, why cannot we also agree on a reduction from 0.08 grams to 0.05?

I say to Mr Woodhouse that the answer is not in the evidence but in the way the debate has been carried out in this House. What happened was the Prime Minister asked the Ministry of Transport for an opinion on whether people would be over the legal limit after one glass of wine. He was so concerned about what he thought the answer was that he decided we would not do that. It was all about polls; it was not about evidence, at all. When Darren Hughes put up his member’s bill Mr Key was willing to have a conscience vote on it, but he got rolled by his caucus—that is, Steven Joyce, who would have looked rather stupid, having stood up in this House and said he did not want a conscience vote and did not agree with having one. Like Gareth Hughes I would have liked to be a member of that National caucus so that I could have found out what went on when the Prime Minister did the about-face on the conscience vote and agreed to a party vote.

Here is a front-page article from the Bay of Plenty Times. It details how four Bay of Plenty Times journalists each failed a breath test but only after consuming eight bottles of beer or five glasses of wine. One of their female reporters was rolling drunk on wine, and, amazingly, she blew under the limit. Importantly, all four thought they should not drive.

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) Link to this

I really appreciate the opportunity to speak on the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I am in the interesting position of having been on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee when it was considering this legislation and, more recently, on the Justice and Electoral Committee when it has been dealing with the Alcohol Reform Bill. So I have been dealing with a lot of people submitting on questions around alcohol harm and drink-driving for quite some time now. That has meant I feel very, very strongly in support of the amendment that my colleague Darien Fenton has put up about reducing the blood-alcohol limit while driving. I want to go through the reasons for that, because I find it unbelievable that in this day and age, in light of all the evidence and practice in other countries, all of the submissions, and all of the views of the public, the Government is putting its head in the sand on this issue.

In fact, I heard the Minister of Transport say earlier that this issue is not about social engineering; it is a transport matter. Well, actually, driving drunk is most certainly a transport matter. Driving drunk means people die. It means people get injured. Families lose family members, and friends lose their friends. So this is a very serious matter, and this bill is a huge opportunity. The reason it is a huge opportunity is that, unlike many other pieces of law reform where the Government has to show leadership, in this particular case the public are ahead of the Government on this matter. So it is not even a matter of having to show leadership and cop a few criticisms out there, or many criticisms; the public want to see this change. I have heard thousands of submissions now. We heard 90 hours of oral submissions on the Alcohol Reform Bill, and just about everybody raised the issue of dropping the blood-alcohol level. Those people were told that the issue was out of scope for that bill, but it was being dealt with elsewhere, in the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

The reality is that it is not being dealt with here. In fact, this bill is the most pitiful response that one could possibly imagine. We are to do 2 years of research. How many people will die in that time? How many people will be injured in that time? It is an absolute disgrace. I say again it is unbelievable that the Government is not taking this opportunity when, in fact, the evidence is there and the public is willing to see the change. I feel confident that, in their heart of hearts, many National members opposite actually agree with dropping the blood-alcohol level to 0.05 grams. I bet members that is the case; I would put money on it. I urge those members to stand up, say something, and do the right thing, because this matter is critically important.

We had many submissions, both on the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and, currently, on the Alcohol Reform Bill, about why people feel that blood-alcohol levels should be dropped. There has also been the anecdotal kind of evidence and the rather public evidence created by journalists. I heard about one example of that when we were hearing submissions in Dunedin. It was a Christchurch Press stunt, if you like. The Christchurch Press journalists did it off-road; they did it on a racetrack. They got four young people driving, then they gave them alcohol and got them driving again. They watched and evidenced what happened and what changed in their driving. By the time those four people went over 0.08 grams they were absolutely unable to drive safely, and they were aware of that. In fact, they made that comment themselves.

I think we need to be really serious about this issue. Lowering the blood-alcohol level will save lives, and it will prevent somewhere between 320 and 686 injuries every year.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this

Today we are discussing the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. First of all, I want to acknowledge that we are fortunate to have a Minister of Transport who has a desire to progress road safety in New Zealand and who is making a difference to the roads of New Zealand not only by building good roads but also by establishing effective rules and regulations around how we use those roads.

For a decade a Minister in this Parliament has not taken the opportunity to put some decent rules in place that make some difference. Labour members come to this Chamber here tonight and spout on about how we should be doing this, that, and the other thing, but when they had their chance, they never did it. What they are saying does not ring true, because if we look at the fundamental policies of this legislation, we will understand why this legislation is framed in the way that it is.

The fundamental policy of this legislation is to look at at-risk drivers and then look at the youth who are part of that at-risk group. If we look at at-risk drivers in respect of alcohol, we see that they are well above the blood-alcohol level of 0.08. Those are the real at-risk drivers because they put other drivers on our roads at risk, and that is what the Minister talked about in relation to the British experience. The focus was on the real danger, not on the political expediency that Labour is trying to promote here today.

Young drivers are a big part of this policy as well. If members look at what we are doing, they will see that it is a two-pronged approach. We are looking at the driving age and we are talking about how we can make young people safer on the roads. I congratulate the Green Party, a party that promotes itself on supporting young people. It has seen that it is in the best interests of young people to have the minimum licensing age raised from 15 to 16, and the implementation of new rules on the drink-driving limit of young people as encapsulated in the legislation.

This legislation has two parts to save young people on the roads. The first relates to the minimum licensing age. Moving the minimum licensing age from 15 to 16 gives young people a chance to survive on our roads. Second, reducing the alcohol limit for young people to zero will save more young lives on New Zealand roads, and that is the important part of this legislation. This will lead to saving young people’s lives on our roads in New Zealand, and we should be very, very mindful of that.

Opposition members have talked about the Australian approach. They say that Australia dropped the blood-alcohol limit to 0.05. But we should look at the driving age there. People would not even be driving at 16 in Australia. In its graduated system, people are probably 17½ or 18 before they actually drive. So to have that approach, we have to look at the other tests done in Australia and compare apples with apples; we should not compare one part with another without taking into account the fullness of its system, as one of the previous Labour speakers had done.

This legislation is good legislation. It is there for road safety purposes. It is practical legislation that enables us to look at what other options there may be in the future. But it is legislation that will work. It is legislation that will make a big difference in saving our young people’s lives on the roads, and it also looks at those high-risk drivers that we need to be taking into account in the future. This is good legislation. It is for road safety. It will save lives, and I congratulate the Minister as it passes through the House. Thank you.

LOUISA WALL (Labour) Link to this

Kia ora, Mr Chairperson. Tēnā koutou katoa. It is my privilege to follow my colleagues and to speak on Part 1 of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I obviously have not been here to listen to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee hearings, but, to begin, I state my support for initiatives that make the journeys of all New Zealanders on our roads safer.

GARETH HUGHES (Green) Link to this

Kia ora. I acknowledge the debate we have had in the Committee on this important bill, the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. We have talked about the good: the alcohol interlocks and the common-sense changes. We have talked about the missing: the change to 0.5 in the blood-alcohol level.

Missing from this debate, and missing from the Safer Journeys document, is the single most effective thing we could do to reduce the road toll in New Zealand: take cars off the road. It is simply to give motorists an alternative—a real alternative—to driving. I am talking about better buses, better trains, walking, and safer cycling. With petrol at $2.19 a litre at the moment, which is the most expensive it has been in New Zealand’s history, I asked the Minister of Finance what the plan was. I asked whether the Government was even planning to start planning to reduce our dependency on oil. I got a no. The Minister said that Kiwis are smart, they have alternatives, and they will respond to those market signals and find the alternatives.

I ask the Minister of Transport what Safer Journeys did, and what his Government is doing, to give Kiwi motorists realistic alternatives. I am seeing regional railways potentially closing across the country. I am seeing the railway station closing in Wellington. I am seeing $10.7 billion spent—

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) Link to this

I will rise and take just a short call; there are a couple of things I omitted to do earlier. One was to thank and acknowledge the Hon Peter Dunne, who has had a bill on raising the driving age in this House for a couple of years now. He, of course, has indicated his support for these measures. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the majority of the ACT Party members. Surprisingly, I found myself on the same side as the Greens, at least until Mr Hughes gave his second speech, and then things sort of diverted once again.

I thought I would raise an issue of consistency for the Labour Opposition. On Thursday, 15 April 2010 the Labour leader told the New Zealand Press Association that his party’s 43 MPs would back the law change to lift the driving age from 15 to 16. That is quite interesting. What we are seeing today is possibly a bit of a revolt against the leader’s direction in that regard.

SUE MORONEY (Labour) Link to this

It is my pleasure to take a call in the Committee stage of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill on Part 1. As some of my colleagues have mentioned previously, drink-driving is a really big issue in the Waikato, where I come from, and in particular in Hamilton.

I know that the local Government members have been trying to confuse the issue by telling people who are concerned about the lack of leadership from the Government on reducing the legal blood-alcohol limit for drink-driving that it is not an issue for the Alcohol Reform Bill, that it is a Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill issue, and that we will deal with it in that bill. Mr Bennett is shaking his head, but I have been at a meeting where Mr Macindoe said exactly that to submitters who wanted to submit on the issue of reducing the legal blood-alcohol limit in the consideration of the Alcohol Reform Bill. They were told by the Government MPs that the Alcohol Reform Bill was the wrong bill. Those MPs tried to look sympathetic about it and as if they agreed with the audience. They said people would get their chance when the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill came forward.

Of course, now that that bill is before us, where are those Hamilton MPs on the issue of reducing the legal blood-alcohol limit? They are not pushing for that measure to be included in the bill. Nanaia Mahuta and I are the only Hamilton-based MPs who are pushing for a lowering of the blood-alcohol limit—

Hon TAU HENARE (National) Link to this

I like it when the Hon Shane Jones is in the Chamber, because he brings some interesting questions to the debate. Time and time again he says that the bill in front of us—the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill—is Labour policy. He said three or four times that it is Labour policy. I do not know whether he says it just to put people off or whether he seriously believes it. But if he seriously believes it, then why do we not already have this measure? When Labour was in Government not so long ago, why did it not implement any of this, or is it a case of saying to Parliament and to the New Zealand public: “Oh, well, because they’re doing it, we want it too and we want to say it’s our policy.”?

The fact of the matter is that the people made a choice 3 years ago, and that choice was to get some infrastructure going, to get some benefit out of our own country, to look after the lives of young people and not to kick them around, to make sure that we put in place some things that will help—

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) Link to this

If there were ever an advertisement for reducing to a zero-alcohol intake, that speech was it from the Hon Tau Henare.

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) Link to this

I am very pleased to speak in the Committee stage of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, particularly on Part 1. This bill is all about improving road safety in New Zealand, and it really complements the Safer Journeys policy, which the Minister of Transport brought out earlier in the parliamentary term. It outlined the Government’s policy to 2020. It is a very impressive document and an excellent policy, and I think the Minister has shown great leadership. Basically, he is implementing that policy.

This legislation, and Part 1 in particular, targets the two key types of drivers who are a problem for our roads: young drivers and at-risk drivers. I will give members the statistics on why young drivers are an issue and are overrepresented in the statistics. Young people aged between 15 and 24, which is the definition of a “youth”, make up below 14 percent of our population. They represent 16 percent of all licensed drivers. Yet in 2008 they were involved in about 37 percent of all fatal crashes—37 percent of all fatal crashes—and 38 percent of all serious injury crashes. If that does not paint a picture, nothing else will. Young drivers are a real problem on our roads.

Of course, there are also at-risk drivers. These are drivers who drink while driving, or drink despite having committed previous offences and do not adhere to the rules. Neither of those groups is particularly new; we have known about them for some time. Though we have known about them, little progress has been made, so this bill is long overdue. The Minister mentioned a shocking statistic: we have a 60 percent worse fatality rate among our young drivers than does Australia. That means we are seriously behind Australia and we need to address that statistic immediately.

The other thing is that 72 percent of all alcohol-related crashes resulting in death—there is a recent study from which data has been produced—were associated with high-risk drivers. They are those with a previous drink-driving conviction, or a first-time offender who is 50 percent over the limit.

Really, Part 1 covers strategies to address those types of at-risk drivers. Those strategies include increasing the minimum driving age to 16, and I am absolutely supportive of that provision. I find it astonishing that the Labour Opposition wanted to retain the age of 15. Quite frankly, when I learnt to drive some 30-odd years ago the roads were not as dangerous as they are now. There were about 1 million vehicles on the road; now there are over 3 million, and the cars are considerably more powerful. Quite frankly, to be a driver on our roads we need our wits about us, and that extra year of maturity can help.

During the consultation phase of the Safer Journeys documentation there was absolutely widespread support for increasing the age to 16. This is not a populist move; this is a move to help save lives, particularly the lives of our young drivers, who need more common sense. That extra year will give them that. I make no apology for that.

The other measure is the zero blood-alcohol limit for those under 20. There are many other measures, such as alcohol interlocks, which bring technology solutions into this legislation. Importantly, the alcohol interlocks are not paid for by the State; they have to be paid for by the person who volunteers or wishes to use alcohol interlocks. There is no cost to the State for that measure.

Obviously for drink-driving offenders there is a zero blood-alcohol limit. It is not acceptable for them to drink then drive, and it is not negotiable. Drink-driving offenders cannot drive at all with alcohol in their system. Of course, strengthening the penalties for causing death is another measure.

I take the opportunity to talk about our alcohol culture. We have a problem with youth drinking and binge drinking. I know that the Alcohol Reform Bill, which is currently under consideration, will go some way to addressing that problem.

I take the opportunity to digress a little and talk about FebFast. When FebFast finished, the Christchurch earthquake had occurred and it was not really the time to congratulate members who had taken part. FebFast was an initiative whereby people elected not to drink alcohol for the month of February, and the money raised went to youth drink-driving prevention programmes.

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) Link to this

I am taking a very short call on the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I was surprised to hear the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Transport, say this bill is just a land transport road safety amendment bill. That completely ignores some of the evidence that came out in the Law Commission report on blood-alcohol levels. I was surprised to hear that from a Minister who I know in his heart believes he should take stronger measures on the blood-alcohol limit and change it to a limit we have always supported, from 0.08 grams to 0.05 grams of alcohol for every 100 millilitres of blood. The Minister in the chair knows that he should do this, but he says that this bill is only a transport issue. If it were, then in this bill we would be looking only at technical solutions for safety on the roads, like barriers, getting big trucks off the roads, freeing up road space, and other technical roading issues. But it is not.

Labour initially supported this bill because we thought it built on our own approach to roading in the See You There—Safe As policy statement we put out. It was picked up, very responsibly, by National with the Safer Journeys policy. We hoped this would be an all-embracing bill, but, sadly, we cannot support it in its entirety because the Minister is not lowering the blood-alcohol limit, and he is increasing the minimum driver age from 15 to 16. I do not want to hear members opposite saying Labour members are irresponsible in supporting a driver’s licence coming in at 15, without adding that we are very, very strong on having a learner-licensing period in that time, and are supporting education initiatives for teaching young people how to be responsible drivers. I was appalled when a drive safely programme in one of the high schools in the Rotorua electorate, where I used to be the electorate MP, was cut. That programme was to teach young women drivers how to be safe when they were driving. Those sorts of initiatives, defensive driving education, which Labour supports, have now been cut. We support those initiatives, plus extending the learner-licensing period to 16, plus a zero-alcohol limit for young drivers.

I was surprised to hear Jackie Blue, who is reasonable and had her statistics, bang on about young drivers. I live in a region where young people want to come into town and work at McDonald’s, play sport on a Saturday, or go to clubs and they have to travel up to an hour to get there to partake in what I see as normal healthy young participation in community life. Will their parents now have to bring them into town? Labour saw it as only fundamentally correct to continue to support a minimum driving age of 15 for a licence, with a restricted learner-licensing period until 16, for those rural kids to be able to live a normal life and participate in normal healthy activities that young city kids can undertake.

Labour sees this as a very important issue. We support the zero limit for repeat drink-drivers. We support the zero limit for drivers under 20. We support the initiative to have alcohol interlocks for repeat offenders. There is a lot in this bill that Labour supports. I think it is a pity the Minister did not do the brave thing MPs are elected to do, and that is to make policy to protect the public good. There was an ideal opportunity in this bill, and the Minister did not do the right thing or the responsible thing to lower the blood-alcohol level. The Minister knows it, and I think it is an absolute cop-out, when the Prime Minister has a Minister of Science and Innovation sitting beside him to advise him on what is the right thing to do, and when the Law Commission stated emphatically in its wide-ranging report—it left no doubt in our mind—that alcohol limits must come down. That was in the Law Commission’s report. The Law Commission reports advise the Government of the day—

JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) Link to this

I move, That the question be now put.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this

Just following on from the last speaker, I tell the Committee that the Green Party also supports much better access to good driving programmes. In some ways, the younger people we are talking about here have more recent training, have to study the road code, etc., to get their licence, have a learner-driver period, and are able to develop skills at a young age, compared with people who are a bit older, like many of us here—me in particular. I got my driver’s licence 44 years ago, and on no occasion in those 44 years have I been required to do any additional driving course, to do a defensive driving course, to look at the road code, or to do any tests—absolutely nothing.

We have provisions in Part 1—for instance, in clause 52, “Compulsory attendance at driving improvement course or dangerous goods course”, whereby the court may order compulsory driving tests, and things like that. It is good that those provisions are in the bill, because if people have committed offences, then they clearly are not up to it, in terms of safe driving. Sure, they should be put through a course, but what about the rest of the community? There should be courses available and encouragement for people to attend them. As the last speaker, Steve Chadwick, said, the Government is cutting back on funding for courses—in this case, for younger people. But there should be more financial provision for driving courses for the whole community, and encouragement for people to attend them. At the moment these courses apply only to those at a very young age, when getting their licence, or to those at an older age whose sight might be going a bit, and they can take a test, as a lot of older people do. But in the many decades in between there is no requirement to do anything, or any encouragement to do anything, and I think that is pretty bad.

There is a provision in this part about heavy traffic, which states there can be a restriction on having heavy traffic on certain roads. Well, it is also good that that provision is there, but what is the Government doing, and what has it done over the last little while? It has extended the allowable weights for trucks so that we have bigger trucks and longer trucks on roads. That provision has come in from the Government’s decisions. A very unsafe environment has been created, where the longer and heavier the trucks are, the more danger there is on the road. Obviously the longer the truck is, the more difficult it is to overtake it, and more cars will be taking the risk of overtaking a long truck and occasionally being caught up in a head-on collision, with people dying, which is what happens too frequently on our roads. No matter which braking system heavy trucks have on them, the heavier a truck is, the more difficult it will be to stop it. It will take that bit longer to stop it, which creates more dangers. Often I have noticed, unfortunately, that one of the problems we have on our roads is that people drive too close, including truck drivers. I often see trucks driving a very short distance behind much smaller cars, and I think: “Oh, God, what happens if that car in front stops very suddenly?”, which now and again happens. The heavier our trucks are, the more we get into that problem of accidents.

With those few comments, I say that I really support having much more resource devoted to making driving courses available to members of the community. Hopefully the courses will be free to give them that encouragement.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) Link to this

It is a pleasure to take my first call in this debate on Part 1. To me, what we are looking at here, particularly in terms of the clauses relating to the blood-alcohol limit, is a triangle of intuition, evidence, and polling. On the first one, we know that the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Transport, had the right intuition. He said it. He said that it was “just ridiculous” and that he was surprised to find that after he drank three-quarters of a bottle of wine, legally he could still get behind the wheel. The Minister’s first intuition was right. He is very worried, though—and we know this from other issues—about the optics of the situation, and that is where we come to the next thing: the evidence. He went looking and he asked what evidence there was. Interestingly, in the regulatory impact statement for this bill, we have some notion of the evidence from the Ministry of Transport. It went through the things that the Government could do: lower the adult drink-driving limit from a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 to 0.05 grams, lower the youth drink-driving limit from a blood-alcohol content of 0.03 to zero, and introduce infringement penalties for the proposed excess blood-alcohol offences. Then the ministry expected that these actions are estimated to save between 17 and 35 lives and to prevent between 363 and 729 injuries each year. That is the social cost of not making changes.

That evidence was provided by the Minister’s own advisers in the Ministry of Transport. But I know that the Minister is a man who has a bit of the accountant in him. He has a bit of the accountant in him, so he knows about the cost of everything and the value of nothing. We can talk to him about the costs, because the Ministry of Transport’s advice went on to state that “This equates to an annual social cost saving of between $127.5 million and $254.5 million” as at June 2009.

Not only do we have the evidence of the social cost of not making these changes—of what the Minister has not put forward in front of the Committee—but also we have the economic cost. That is the evidence. The intuition was there, the evidence was there, but Mr Joyce has not gone ahead with that and we have to ask why that is. Well, perhaps we can tell why from a recent newspaper story about what the Prime Minister was worried about. It was about the Prime Minister being concerned about whether one glass of wine could put a person over the limit. In reply he was told that “the public would react badly to a cut in the drink-drive limit—even though research and polls show most drivers are keen to see the limit reduced.”, and that is where it all went wrong. That is where it all went wrong for the Minister.

The intuition was there, the evidence was there, but his boss started to get nervous about the polling. If we know one thing, it is that this Minister worries about the polling. The focus groups were done. I am sure that they were pulled in. Mr Joyce would have been there. He would have been there on the other side of the one-way glass, looking in on the focus group, and getting nervous that his intuition was not there; he was not going to back it. The evidence was telling him that he had to do it for the good of New Zealand—he had to lower that blood-alcohol limit—but he would not do it because the polling was not going to stand up, because his boss started to get nervous.

This is a situation, I say to Mr Joyce, when it is time to stand up and do the right thing. It is time to do the right thing that is based on evidence, that will save lives, that will save money in the economy, and that will save money for the health system. That is just plain good for New Zealand. But Mr Joyce still has an opportunity. We have an amendment in Darien Fenton’s name on the Table that will make the change that the Minister’s officials have told him is the right thing to do. They told him that he will achieve the objectives of the Safer Journeys strategy if he goes ahead and makes this change.

Mr Joyce has stood up in this Chamber and he has played a bit of politics. He asked why Labour has not made this change. Around this Chamber I believe there is a consensus that this is the right thing to do.

SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) Link to this

I move, That the question be now put.

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Junior Whip—Labour) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I do not want to question your acceptance of the closure motion, but Part 1 is an enormous part in the bill and we had several members still standing to take a call. Part 2 is very small—