Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) Link to this

I move, That the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill be now read a second time. This bill, along with the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill, builds on existing legislation to enhance the powers of the police and the courts to tackle illegal street racing and associated antisocial behaviour.

It is important to acknowledge the incident that prompted this bill: the January evening on which a lone Christchurch police officer was ambushed by over 300 illegal street racers and shot at with an air rifle. I thank the members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and, in particular, the chair of the committee, David Bennett, for returning this bill to the House in good time. The committee has made a sound recommendation that failure to stop for an enforcement officer should qualify for discretionary confiscation under section 128 of the Sentencing Act 2002. That recommendation has been adopted as part of the bill. The select committee has made a number of other recommendations that add clarity to the bill.

I also thank the ACT Party, the Māori Party, and United Future for indicating their support for this legislation. I understand that Labour has indicated that it will support the bill for the second reading but is reserving its position for the next stage, but I thank them anyway. I believe that this demonstrates that we have achieved the right balance in terms of this level of support—of cracking down on persistent illegal street racers without unnecessarily penalising the wider population.

I thank all those members of the public who took the time to make submissions on this bill. The majority of submitters supported the bill, stating that their sleep and lives were continually disrupted by the noise and social disorder created by illegal street racing. In particular, the submitters whom we heard from in Christchurch spoke of how their quality of life has been severely affected by the noise and mayhem caused by illegal street racing. Some were visibly shell-shocked from the relentless noise.

This bill, along with its companion bill, will provide the courts and police with powers to specifically target individuals who have no sense of community and no consideration for other people. Penalties will be directed at those individuals in order to deliver the message loud and clear: “Three illegal street racing offences within 4 years will mean that your car is up for confiscation and destruction.” In addition, the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill will increase driver’s licence demerit points for offences regularly committed by illegal street racers. These two bills will have the combined effect of systematically penalising recidivist illegal street racers to the point where the offender either has no driver’s licence or has no car.

Under the current law a vehicle owned by an offender can be confiscated if the offender commits an illegal street racing offence. If the offender commits a second offence within 4 years the court must confiscate the vehicle, unless that would cause extreme hardship to the offender or undue hardship to someone else. This bill adds a third stage to the current law, allowing the court to order that a vehicle be confiscated and destroyed for a third illegal street racing offence within 4 years. If the court does not order that the vehicle be destroyed, it must still confiscate the vehicle, unless that would cause extreme hardship.

The bill provides that the court will be able to confiscate and destroy vehicles owned by third parties, referred to as “substitute for the offender” in the bill, in cases of repeat offending. However, unlike situations where the offender owns the vehicle, the decision to confiscate is always discretionary with third-party vehicles. There is no mandatory confiscation. I believe that this strikes a fair balance between targeting illegal street racers and warning those people who may, unwittingly, facilitate this behaviour. Of course that was not dealt with in the previous bill from the previous Labour Government. A snapshot of confiscation data under the current law indicates that approximately half of all offences where vehicle confiscation was available to the courts, were committed by offenders in a car licensed to someone else.

This bill is firm but fair: the vehicles of repeat illegal street racing offenders will be confiscated and potentially destroyed after three offences. However, vehicles that do not belong to the offender will be dealt with at the discretion of the court, to ensure that third parties are not being unfairly punished for another person’s offending. However, the fact that the courts can confiscate vehicles owned by someone else provides a disincentive for parents, relatives, and friends to lend their car to any individual who participates in illegal street racing.

Under the confiscation destruction order a vehicle will be confiscated and sold to a vehicle wrecker or scrapyard. It will be a condition of the sale that the purchaser remove any saleable parts and destroy the remainder of the vehicle. This is to ensure that vehicle destruction is not an outright waste of property, especially if the vehicle has incurred outstanding fines. Once a vehicle is confiscated and destroyed, the proceeds of sale are applied to the following order of priorities: first, to pay the costs of the sale, which includes all costs incurred in seizing the motor vehicle—towing and storing it, including any prior impoundment costs. Secondly, they are applied to pay any amount owed pursuant to a security interest. Thirdly, they are applied to pay any fines or reparational court costs owed by the offender, and any surplus to the offender or substitute as if it was a substitute’s vehicle. Destruction of a vehicle is designed to be a last-resort option to punish the most serious repeat offenders, and act as a deterrent to illegal street racers.

This bill also strengthens existing provisions in the Summary Proceedings Act to seize a motor vehicle in order for unpaid fines to be collected. If fines remain unpaid after the vehicle has been seized, then the vehicle can be sold at public auction or in any other manner directed by a District Court judge. The proceeds of the sale are applied in the same order of priority as for confiscation and destruction.

As I have said previously, I acknowledge the efforts of the previous Government to address this problem. The Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Act 2003 introduced specific new offences for illegal street racing. This legislation builds upon the earlier street racing legislation, but goes a lot further in penalising individuals who persist in breaking the law. In particular, it closes the loopholes in the existing legislation that have enabled illegal street racers to circumvent the law. We know that illegal street racers frequently avoid vehicle confiscation penalties for breaking the law by exhibiting such practices as switching vehicles with each other, registering their vehicle to another person, and selling their vehicle to a friend for a nominal fee before a court appearance.

Illegal street racers will no longer be able to commit an offence in another person’s car and avoid vehicle confiscation penalties. Illegal street racers will no longer be able to keep their offending from vehicle finance companies. In the past, finance companies have been unaware of illegal street racing offences committed in cars that they have an interest in. This bill includes anyone who has an interest in a vehicle under the definition of “substitute”. This will mean a finance company would receive a written caution if the vehicle that has money owing on it is used to commit an illegal street racing offence. Illegal street racers will no longer be able to sell their vehicle before a court appearance. The Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill provides that the police can issue a sales prohibition notice to anyone charged with an offence that is punishable with vehicle confiscation. Penalty for disregarding this is a fine of $2,000. The Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill also provides for sham transactions by third parties to be set aside.

In addition to these loopholes being closed, measures have been taken by Police National Headquarters to ensure that the operational response to illegal street racing is national and consistent, that police are fully utilising existing legislation, and that there is a clear measurement of illegal street racing activity in each police district. I am satisfied that these operational changes will work in tandem with the new legislation to effectively clamp down on illegal street racing in New Zealand.

Illegal street racing is not a new phenomenon in New Zealand. All towns and cities have tolerated the odd hoon over the years. However, in the past 5 to 6 years the problem has escalated, and the statistics reflect that. High-powered cars, easy access to finance, and younger drivers have created a lethal combination on our roads. Since January this year, police have issued more than 1,800 offence notices for illegal street racing incidents. A culture of dangerous driving has evolved, which puts young lives at risk and has little regard for the lives of others. It is a culture that has pushed some communities to the very edge of their tolerance limit. This bill, alongside the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Bill, responds to the demands of New Zealanders and closes the loopholes. It gives a suite of comprehensive powers to police, the courts, and local authorities to tackle this problem. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) Link to this

I say from the outset that I will do what Minister Judith Collins does not very often do to those in front of her: I will commend her for her efforts in this regard. I support the Minister’s efforts in closing a number of loopholes that were not anticipated either by myself or by the police back when we passed the legislation. Specifically, as the Minister says, there is the loophole regarding the ability to, if you will, penetrate the third parties and go after their vehicles, and there is the tightening of the hardship provisions.

I do not believe that anybody disagrees with the impact of this behaviour. No one disagrees with that. Labour members will not stand in the way of this bill, but we say to the Minister, who read the Ministry of Justice notes very succinctly, that in putting forward the bill her rhetoric does not meet her action. I will explain why. The Minister said before we had this bill that every boy racer’s car will get closer to the crusher. She told everybody in New Zealand that people who engage in this behaviour will have their cars crushed. That is what she said. She ratcheted it up, she jumped up and down, she stomped her feet, and then we got through to the detail of this bill.

Although we will not stand in the way of the bill, we do not support the car crushing, because its theory is defeated by the Minister’s own words. She said as recently as a couple of weeks ago on Radio New Zealand National that, far from every boy racer’s car heading for the crusher, she anticipates that as few as 10 cars will be crushed per year. That is what she said: 10 cars per year. That proves—

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this

When we are speaking on the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill I think it is important that we have a sense of reality about what happens on the streets and what the law and what this Parliament can actually do. It is a bit sad when we see the Labour Opposition not wanting to be supportive of this legislation. It knows that its attempts in the past have not worked—it has said that. It said that it could not solve the problem, and now when we put a solution up, it will not accept it. It will not fully back it. Labour members go out there and try to find an alternative so they can say that that is the way it should be done. The Labour Opposition had a chance to do it the way it should have been done, and it did not do it. It did not go out there and make confiscation mandatory, as the last member who spoke, Clayton Cosgrove, said. He had a member’s bill on the subject that this legislation covers. Why did he not do it then? It appears that now it is all right for him to say that that is how it works and that is how it should be, but the reality is he knows that is not the case. He knows that this is the best solution on the table.

When we look at the kind of mandatory solution that Labour is talking about, we have to ask where we see that in our law. Where do we see mandatory penalties being proposed? We do not see them. We see penalties that go up to a maximum. The reason is that we have a disincentive basis in our law. In law, we basically know what the full sanction can be, and the actual penalty leads up that sanction. For example, if a person is convicted of an offence, does that mean that he or she will always get, for example, the 10-year sentence that might be the maximum sanction as the penalty in that case? No.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this

First of all, I make it very, very clear that Labour will support the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill, but with amendments. My colleague Clayton Cosgrove has proposed those amendments, and we will be interested in the Government’s response to them.

Once again, I acknowledge the submitters who came along to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to make submissions on this bill, along with the companion bill that we debated earlier tonight, the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill. For me, because I do not live in Christchurch, it was a revelation to hear what some people are going through in Christchurch as they suffer the effects of illegal street racing, and the noise and behaviour that goes with it. Quite frankly, many of them were at the end of their tether. We are enormously sympathetic to them; we cannot help but be. Anyone who has had his or her sleep disturbed by anything, including noise, will be sympathetic. It does one harm not to get a good night’s sleep because one is constantly being disturbed. Of course that does damage to people’s well-being. But it worries me a little that I think the hopes of those who came along and submitted to the select committee have been raised enormously. We are back to saying that there is a silver bullet that will fix this problem. There is not. There needs to be a range of things, and I do not think that this or the previous bill go anywhere near to dealing with the problem.

Labour wants to work with the Government to support measures that will crack down on the issue of illegal street racing. I acknowledge all of the members in the House who come from the Canterbury region, and the Christchurch region in particular, who I know have had meeting after meeting with people. In fact, I think my colleague Mr Burns lives in one of the streets or near one of the streets that is affected. So I acknowledge what a huge issue it is for those members and, I think, to a much lesser degree, for other parts of the country.

We are really concerned that the hopes of those submitters that we will find a solution have been raised, and this bill does not do it. It has missed the mark. That is why we are proposing an amendment to the bill to toughen it up a bit. We think that the bill as proposed is window dressing. There has been a whole lot of hot talk and tough talk, talking up the issue of car crushing and so on. However, as I said, there are some things that we can do to the bill. I really am looking forward to the Government’s response to our amendment. We will not stand in the way of the bill; we made that clear in the select committee. It goes part of the way towards closing a loophole, but we want to see how determined the Government is to toughen this bill up and see it work more effectively by seeing its support for our amendments.

As previous speakers have talked about in debate on this bill and previous bills, the Labour Government has already passed a law to deal with boy racers. It is interesting to reflect that that law is tougher than any law in Australia. I have just been to Australia and, obviously, I took notice of the transport issues around me because of my transport safety role and my role on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I asked what the Australians had done about this issue and I had it confirmed that the Labour Government passed a law that was tougher than anything in that country.

Under the current law the court may confiscate a vehicle on a first offence. It is mandatory to confiscate the vehicle on a second offence within 4 years, but that has rarely happened. I think the focus of the work of the select committee and, perhaps, the Government should have been on why the courts are so hesitant to confiscate, rather than just moving to crushing. The courts and people have to get through many obstacles in order for cars to be crushed, to the point where the Minister has admitted that it will be only about 10 cars every year. That seems pretty ineffective to me. In 2006 there were 9,600 offences in which mandatory confiscation applied under the current laws, and over 50,000 in which discretionary confiscation applied. But only 1,062 confiscation orders were granted, which puts the current rate of confiscation at less than 2 percent. So that seems to indicate a real problem we should have been addressing rather than trying to talk up the idea of crushing.

I am not sure what makes the National Government think its bills will make the courts use the powers of confiscation, which are already available to them, any more than they already do, and when we get to the Committee stage I will be interested in seeking an answer to that question. If the courts are not using the current confiscation powers, what makes the Government think they will use the new destruction powers, particularly when they are not mandatory?

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Green) Link to this

New Zealanders who have the misfortune to live in some parts of some of our cities, and in particular in some parts of Christchurch, are fed up with the noise, intimidation, and associated criminal activity that goes along with boy racers. The Green Party acknowledges the size of this problem and how desperate people can feel when, night after night, they cannot get a decent night’s sleep because of what is going on in the street outside. The submissions made very clear how some people are suffering as a result of the behaviour of these people.

But the Greens are not supporting the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill, because we have a history of not supporting window dressing. This bill will not solve the problem. It is actually nothing more than an expensive ideological branding exercise. The bill is unnecessary because the police and the courts already have the powers they need to deal with dangerous driving and associated behaviours, and the nuisance and intimidating effect that they have on our communities. Judges already have the power to confiscate cars after the first offence, and they must do so after two offences within 4 years. This bill actually goes backwards on that count.

The fact is that, as successive Governments have found, it is easy just to pass another law. It is much harder to give the police the resources they need to enforce the law that is already there. In fact, if the money that this bill will cost were put in to greater enforcement of the powers that are already there, I believe we would see a much greater decrease in this activity than the decrease we would see under this legislation. After all, the Minister herself has said that nine or 10 cars a year will be destroyed. I wonder whether the people in those streets in Christchurch will be able to notice any difference in the decibel level if there are nine or 10 fewer cars than there were previously. I suspect that they probably will not.

It also raises the wider issue that confiscation and destruction are being used for cars that are noisy, but not for cars that are used to maim and kill people. Why is it that we are giving a higher priority to noise and nuisance—awful as they are—than we are to behaviour that is actually killing and maiming people in large numbers? Just this year, and these are today’s figures from the library, 314 people have died on our roads as a result of road crashes. But instead of focusing on those kinds of transport issues, we are looking at ways of dealing with nuisance. Surely there is a hierarchy here; both are important, but we do not put nearly enough effort into preventing deaths and injuries on our roads.

This will not be a cheap bill to administer. The operating costs for the courts alone are estimated to be $470,000 a year, going up to about $1.5 million in the second year and out-years. The theory is that fines may compensate for this, but we have a lot of illegal street racers now who already owe money to the Crown. The fines are not paid. Successive fines are not paid. The fines cannot be collected if those people do not have money. If their cars are destroyed, they will be even less likely to pay. It seems to me very unlikely that there will be enough money collected through fines to compensate for the greater cost of putting this law into practice. If we put that $1.5 million a year extra that it will cost the courts into enforcing the law we have against boy racers now, I predict that we could reduce the nuisance even further.

The bill will also, of course, turn Government agencies into used-car dealers. I wonder whether those agencies do not have better things to do with their time than disposing of cars that are confiscated but not crushed. We support the intention to do something about this serious nuisance that is causing citizens a lot of distress, but this is not the right way to do it. It will be ineffective and the Green Party will not support window dressing.

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) Link to this

I am very pleased to rise and speak to the second reading of the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill. This bill, along with its companion bill, the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill, is designed to tackle illegal street racing. The bill will give the courts the power to order the confiscation and destruction of vehicles driven by persistent street racers, as well as wider powers to enforce the collection of unpaid fines and reparation.

We know that illegal street racers frequently avoid being penalised for breaking the law. They do this by switching vehicles with one another or registering their vehicles to another person. They can sell their vehicles to friends for a nominal fee before a court appearance. But illegal street racers will no longer be able to commit an offence in another person’s car and avoid being penalised.

The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee received and considered 58 submissions on the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill. Thirty submissions were heard at its hearings, which included hearings in Christchurch. We heard from ordinary citizens. The public are simply fed up with hoons running riot and with cars doing skids, churning up grass verges, and scattering rubbish. It is not just about dangerous driving and putting the public at risk; it is also about what these hoons leave in their wake—rubbish such as soggy beer cartons, broken bottles, and flattened cans that litter pavements and roads, and spray-painted start and finish lines on the roads. It is also about property damage. Fences are destroyed and grass areas are ripped up.

These idiots have gone on far too long and have got away with it. Well, they will not get away with it any more under this legislation. I commend this bill to the House.

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise again to acknowledge the seriousness of the issue. In speaking on the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill, I indicated that as a member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I had got the message loud and clear from the people who submitted to us about the real scourge that this issue is and the impact it has on people’s lives. When we met with submitters in Christchurch, we had some very strong submissions indeed about people who were suffering from sleep deprivation, people who were not able to use parts of their houses at certain times of the week, and people whose businesses were affected by street racing and so-called boy racers. We absolutely accept the seriousness of the issue.

I thank all of the 58 people who submitted on the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill. As various members from the other side of the House have indicated, the submitters clearly articulated their concerns and their desire to see something done. But I have to say that they did not fully and wholeheartedly endorse the legislation as drafted. I do not think that many of the submitters saw the issue, for example, of car crushing as being the real issue here. When it was all distilled down, people outlined three key issues. The issue of noise was the overwhelming one. They wanted something to be done about noise, and various ways of addressing that were talked about and discussed during the select committee process, such as limiting decibel levels, various things regarding modified exhaust pipes, and so on.

As my colleagues have said, we will be supporting this bill but we will seek to put forward amendments on it. The bill accompanies the one we discussed earlier tonight, the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill. The purpose of the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill, as outlined, is to strengthen the power of the courts to order vehicle confiscation, to empower the courts to order the destruction of motor vehicles used by persistent illegal street racers, and to strengthen the provisions to seize motor vehicles in order to enforce the collection of unpaid fines and reparation. This bill amends three Acts. It is an omnibus bill that amends the Sentencing Act, the Summary Proceedings Act, and the Privacy Act.

We have always said we will support any measures to crack down on the issue of illegal street racing, but we believe that this bill has missed the mark. As I said, we will be proposing an amendment, and I think that my colleague Clayton Cosgrove has articulated perfectly well what needs to change there. We hope that members on the other side of the House were listening to what Mr Cosgrove had to say and will be willing to put their money where their mouths are. They talked tough on this issue, and we are saying this bill is actually weaker than the existing legislation. We think that that is a problem. Our proposal will be to toughen up the bill so that it becomes something more than window dressing.

We are not opposing this bill; in fact, as I said, we support it, because it has dealt with one particularly important loophole. I will come back to that issue, but I say the “substitute for the offender” provisions set out in this bill are positive. They are a step forward and they add to what is already in place in the law to deal with boy racers passed by Labour while it was in Government. That law is certainly tougher than anything in, for example, Australia. The Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Act provides that the courts may confiscate a vehicle on a first offence and that it is mandatory to confiscate a vehicle on a second offence within 4 years. But that rarely happens. One of the things that were not adequately discussed by the select committee was why the courts are so hesitant to confiscate those cars and why that legislation has not been working as it should have. Darien Fenton has already mentioned that effectively the current rate of confiscation sits at somewhat less than 2 percent.

Clearly, a very strong provision is not being effectively used by the courts. We did not get to think about why this bill would make the courts use the powers available to them—the powers that they have or, indeed, that the Government is proposing. If the courts are not prepared to use the current confiscation powers, what does National think will make them use the new destruction powers?

Again, I say the focus should be on toughening up the current law so that vehicles are confiscated on a second offence, as the law always intended. Frankly, it makes very little difference to an offender whether the car is confiscated or crushed; either way, the offender loses the car for good. That is the point, really. There has been a lot of tough talk, but we do not think that this measure really goes there, at all. As Mr Cosgrove said earlier, the Minister has already admitted that maybe 10 cars a year will be crushed under this legislation. I do not think that that is going to deal with the very important issues I raised before about the road safety implications, the noise implications, or the antisocial behaviour implications of boy racers.

I will put that to one side for a minute, to give a bit more detail on the issue of the “substitute for the offender” provisions. We do support those provisions and we think they are very good. That does close a loophole that is currently there. Essentially, the bill will provide for a vehicle belonging to a third party to be dealt with. The vehicle’s owner will be served with a written caution, unless, of course, the court is satisfied that the vehicle was stolen or converted, that the person in fact did not own or have an interest in the vehicle at the material time, that the person was a creditor and had no other relationship with the offender, or that the vehicle was hired. There are provisions in the bill to make sure that an owner is warned, as an offender is, of the implications of any further infringement. We support very strongly this closing of a loophole.

I will come back to the key issues I have raised. I listened very carefully to the submissions, and very strong they were. The noise issue really was the key one. The police already have tools in their tool box to deal with the question of noise. They include the Land Transport Rule: Vehicle Equipment 2004 and the Land Transport (Road User) Rule 2004. I have looked at the use of those rules and found that it varies markedly around the country. I think that is a question of policing, which is an important one that I will talk a little more about.

In terms of the road safety issues, again I say the best way to deal with those, both the safety issues for the drivers and occupants of the vehicles concerned and for other road users, is with adequate policing. The other area that was raised was that of antisocial behaviour. The police were quite clear, when we talked about that with them, that one of the key contributors to the problems around the antisocial behaviour of the boy-racer grouping was alcohol, so we are pleased that the Law Commission report deals with that and raises some suggestions in that regard. We think that the Government should look very, very carefully at whether we need to toughen up on issues like drinking in vehicles by people other than the driver.

Finally, I will go on to talk about policing, because policing is the key to dealing with all of the issues I have just raised. In fact, what really goes to the heart of dealing with this problem is providing adequate policing. In our report on this bill, we said that “Labour members are concerned that proposed cuts to Police resources will impact negatively on the ability to effectively deal with the problems arising from illegal street racing.” We believe that that is absolutely true.

We were given very good evidence of policing that works, and using the rules that I have mentioned is one example of that. We received a lot of evidence around Operation Sniper, which is an initiative in Counties-Manukau Police District that has made a real difference to illegal street racing. Basically, it was about a concentrated focus on it. Operation Sniper looked at the collection and coordination of intelligence on what people were doing, having appropriate staff training, using education campaigns in high schools, making sure that the by-laws already in place were being enforced, using overt and covert police tactics, working with partner agencies like the councils, working with local business owners and residents, and really addressing the problem in a holistic way. That has made a significant difference; the drop in the number of cases is high. Across the House somebody argued earlier that we cannot translate that to other areas. I dispute that most strongly. I believe that this issue is about providing adequate policing.

NICKY WAGNER (National) Link to this

I am very pleased, and indeed relieved, to support the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill. All I can say is that it is about time.

BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) Link to this

I am very pleased to speak in the second reading of the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill. I acknowledge the opening comments from the Minister, who at least had the grace to say that this bill builds on the past legislation of the previous Labour Government. That was unlike the previous speaker, Nicky Wagner, who suggested that she was not able to get any traction on this issue, at all. It is foolish for her or for any member of this House to believe that this legislation is going to be some kind of magic bullet solution. It will build—and Labour is supporting this bill to build—on some of the past actions, but we will probably continue to have issues, especially because this bill in its current form is not tough enough to deal with some of the issues that are presented by the boy-racer problem, certainly in electorates like mine of Christchurch Central.

I have to ask the previous speaker where the action is on the noise issue—action that was promised time after time after time. People in Christchurch who turned out to endless public meetings were told that we need to reduce the noise to 90 decibels. There were parliamentary petitions, and a private member’s bill, but there is nothing in this bill on that issue; there is not a squeak on the issue, at all. What we have, instead, is a bill that proposes to take 10 cars a year off the roads and crush them. As has been indicated by my colleague Clayton Cosgrove, on a given evening in the Christchurch Central electorate there can be 400 to 500 cars going around and around the four avenues. This bill proposes three warnings and maybe, just maybe, that a driver might lose his or her car. Labour will be proposing an amendment in the Committee stage to deal with that issue.

I need to acknowledge that my electorate has the unenviable reputation of being the boy-racer capital of the country. Every weekend we see random and reckless activity, with much impact on the quality of life of inner-city residents, my constituents. I say to the House that we cannot overestimate what it is like to be somebody living within the four avenues or thereabouts of Christchurch central and having to listen to that incessant noise. People have told me they have had to vacate their homes and leave them empty, simply to escape the noise and the accompanying intimidation. Earlier this year I visited the residents of Edgeware Road, which is well outside the four avenues area, who were being intimidated by a group of boy racers doing burnouts as they did their circuit around the four avenues. I personally was kept awake many nights through the summer before last, and I was living hundreds of metres away from Fitzgerald Avenue. It is not just the cars that are making the noise. There is the incessant shouting, and also the people who park up and drink in the lay-bys. One of the resulting issues is the broken glass, which was a huge problem on mornings when I made my way on foot to the nearby gym. I would often have to pick my way through the glass that was left during the previous weekend. Cyclists in inner-city Christchurch know they face never-ending problems with punctures, because of the glass left by the boy-racer problem.

So I say, with all due respect to Jeanette Fitzsimons, that we need to attempt to close some of the loopholes in the legislation introduced by Clayton Cosgrove. The Minister has acknowledged that this bill builds on the past measures from the previous Labour Government. She acknowledges, and so do I, that the police are doing their best, with 1,800 offence notices issued in the year to date. But, obviously, if 1,800 offence notices have been issued, we have issues that we need to address.

We have to acknowledge that this bill is full of rhetoric, in respect of what it intends to do. Taking 10 cars a year off the road will simply not do the business. We will inevitably have a photo opportunity with the first few cars that are taken off the road, and with the Minister right on the spot, glowing and grinning for the cameras—

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) Link to this

If there was an example of the confusion that Opposition members have around the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill, that speech was it. How sad it is that it came from Brendon Burns, the member for the electorate that has the greatest problem. Members opposite say they will support the bill, then they say they do not support it. They think it will work, then they do not think it will work. That is about as confused as anyone can get.

I say congratulations to the Minister of Police, because I recall that in January following a terrible incident the young men interviewed were absolutely dismissive. They just said to bring it on, as we could not touch them. Well, the Minister is bringing it on. She is introducing legislation that, by the previous Minister’s own admission, closes loopholes and will make stronger legislation. For that reason there will be a much stronger deterrent effect.

I support the bill and I look forward to discussing in the Committee of the whole House some of the details that members opposite have raised, because I think they warrant a response. Otherwise, I support this bill.