Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Bill

I have listened to this debate very carefully, and I thought, when I came to the House this afternoon, there would be a very strong collective will to pass this legislation through the House. I am appalled—I have to use that word—at some of the comments I am hearing from parties I never thought I would hear them from. I have to say that it is nothing less than appalling that we have bleeding heart, lounge bar liberals who would rather stand behind boy racers who destroy families and people’s quality of life.

I use the example of West Melton in my electorate. Mr Mark referred to it before, but I have been petitioned by people in that area in their droves. They are not just concerned about people engaged in racing on the roads; they are desperately concerned about the noise and the damage to their property, and they are asking why they cannot have something done about it. They are also saying that if Parliament does nothing, they will take the law into their own hands and do something about it. That is an appalling set of circumstances, an appalling set of events where people who are otherwise law-abiding citizens have been driven to a point of desperation and are saying: “If you don’t, we will.” They say they know they will be breaking the law, but that we leave them with no choice.

I for one am prepared to do something about that, and I am desperately concerned that the ACT members are not. I will be interested to see Ken Shirley get on his feet, to see whether the views of some of the ACT members who have spoken are representative of what the deputy leader of ACT actually says to us.

Impoundment is the provision that I want to go to; it is the heart of the debate. My view is that unless we are prepared to take the vehicles off the road, this legislation will not have any teeth. Here is another appalling circumstance that I encountered in my home town of Christchurch. A boy racer with a known record of engaging in illegal street racing activities was coming down a main thoroughfare in Christchurch at 170-180 kilometres an hour, and he ran into a young Chinese girl who was out here visiting. Not only was she killed, as one would expect when someone is hit by a car at that speed, but her body was unrecognisable.

💬 Ron Mark: Ripped apart.

She was ripped apart, as Mr Mark says. Can members imagine the phone call that the people in Christchurch who were fostering that child at the time had to make to her parents in China? From the way it was reported in the Christchurch Press, they had to tell the parents they thought their daughter was dead. They had to say they could not be absolutely certain, because the police could not recognise the body.

That did not have to happen. If this law had been enacted some time ago, that person’s car would have been off the road. It is an appalling indictment on this House that we could not have done that, and could not have done it more quickly, and it is an appalling indictment on the ACT party. I am not surprised at the Greens, but it is an indictment on the ACT party members that they are now prepared to stand up and say that they would rather support people who engage in that type of activity, and that they are not concerned about the victims. I never thought I would hear it coming from that party.

Despite the general view, boy racers are mainly from middle-income New Zealand families. They have vehicles that are valued, conservatively, from $15,000 up to $60,000—in fact, I think someone even mentioned an example of a car worth $80,000. The only way to hurt these people is to take their pride and joy, and their pride and joy is the vehicle. They are not 15, 16, or 17-year-olds, and they are not just male. Twenty-five percent are female, and they are aged in their mid-20s to their 30s. They know better. They know they are baiting the police. They know they are disturbing members of the public. They know they are damaging property. They know that what they are doing is inciting trouble, and it is incumbent on members of this House to stand up and say we will deal to them.

To carry on from that, although this bill will not stop sad and tragic accidents such as the one Brian Connell has described, it will act as a deterrent. I am absolutely gobsmacked that some of my colleagues from the ACT party are not supporting this bill, because so often during the elections, when I was out there on the hustings, I could look to the ACT candidate or spokesperson there to be a staunch person behind the zero tolerance approach.

💬 Martin Gallagher: Remember the Hamilton meetings.

I did not go up to Hamilton for the meetings. The point I want to make is that not only will this bill, this part, and these clauses give the police the tools to enforce these laws and to prosecute people who behave in this manner, but I am adamant that the law itself will act as a deterrent.

There are numerous facets to law enforcement. Law enforcement is what we have to do when we are dealing with those who do not want to follow society’s standards and norms. We also deal with punitive measures, with rehabilitation, and with information in terms of informing the public of what is good, what is right, what is wrong, and what is illegal. But there is an element in every piece of legislation such as this that is there to deter young people and, in this case, elderly gentlemen who own soft-top cars and who might for a moment decide to go and burn out their tyres somewhere. It is there to deter. If this bill does one thing, I will be happy; if it deters these people from performing these acts on our highways, on our back streets, and in our suburbs, then even if not one person is prosecuted under this law from here on, it will have done its job and I will be very happy. I will be very pleased about that. If the deterrent that is posed in this legislation is such that all these people join car clubs and attend Sunday afternoon burnouts at the Ruapuna racetrack, I will be happy. This bill will have done its job.

But for those who just cannot learn, those people whom we continually read about who boast on nationwide television—when they get that wonderful platform, thanks to Holmes—that they have racked up $20,000 worth of fines and it is a big joke, this law will now give the police the weapon they need to hit them where it hurts, by taking their prized possession away from them. Some of us would rather crush it. The member who introduced the bill had a good suggestion—that the car be sold. That would go some way towards resourcing the police. Unfortunately, we know that would not happen. Unfortunately, we know that the money would go into the consolidated account and probably be wasted on some beneficiary scheme somewhere.

The points that members have made are valid. Youth crime is out of control. But that is not a reason not to pass this bill. Police are under-resourced. They have a shortage of manpower, of personnel, they have a shortage of finance, and they have a shortage of legislation. Well, this legislation is one more step that will address at least one of those shortages. Yes, I do not agree with the placing of priorities. I heard comments the other day about the highway patrol being out there picking up the pieces. Well, excuse me, but I know of more front-line bobbies—who are not in the highway patrol—attending road accidents and picking up the pieces than highway patrol people. That is a concern to me, because it tells me that the priorities might well be focused on revenue gathering as opposed to enforcing traffic laws and dealing with the traffic-engineering problems that the old Ministry of Transport cops used to deal with. But that is another issue.

This bill aims to deal with a problem that has been with us for 15 or 20 years. I go back to the days when I hotted up my Mark III Zephyr, put big wheels on it, lowered it, bored out the pistons to 3 litres, put in oversized valves, and got that thing doing 120 miles an hour; I guess I have to accept that the problem has been around a very long time. But there are bigger dangers now, and the consequences today have got to the stage where the public has said: “Enough! We have zero tolerance for this now.” That is what this bill is here to deal with, and that is why we support it.

I accept all the arguments that have been put up about youth crime and the flaky Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act, which I would take a chainsaw to tomorrow. I accept all the arguments about young people who attend family group conference after family group conference, but let us face it: many of those people have been breaking the law in this manner on our roads. They have not been deterred. This bill and the provisions laid out in Part 2 will deter them. I will come back to the part that deals with petrol and oil.

I always listen to Ron Mark carefully, because I believe he is quite sincere. I think he is correct when he says that people are fed up and saying that enough is enough in this area, and that something needs to be done. However, that has never been enough of a reason for producing bad law that does not do what it says it does.

Let me quickly draw Mr Mark’s attention to the statement about what this bill does. It says that it is designed to combat the problem of unauthorised street racing, wheel spinning, and other stunts. In fact, it could have simply stated “to outlaw”, but it does not. It states: “aimed at combating”. That should have been the signal that the drafter did not think it was going to do very much.

When we look at Part 2 we see that the actions that are to be penalised are simply those that are not authorised by law. If we look at subsection (4) of the operative section, in clause 5, it states that in each case the operation of a vehicle is authorised if the speed is “within the applicable speed limit or speed limits”, and the vehicle operator does not break some other law. So, in other words, it will be perfectly permissible to continue wheelspinning away from the lights as long as one does not do it at over 50 kilometres an hour. People can wheelspin all the way to 50 kilometres an hour, or all the way to 100 kilometres an hour on the open road, and they can do a doughnut, if it does not endanger others, if it is not careless driving, and if it does not break one of the other existing laws.

I say that that is sensible. I say that those are proper constraints on this new law. They make this new law tolerable. But what they do say is that most of the rhetoric in this Chamber this afternoon is just that. This bill is just camouflage. This does not allow that public aversion to be reflected. What we in ACT say is that if we really want to change behaviour, we have to start right at the basis and ask why our law is treated with contempt generally.

The second element that ACT is concerned about is an issue of high principle. Punishment is for the courts. In our system of British justice that we inherited, punishment is for the courts. It is for the State to enforce by bringing people before the courts to get punished. The reason we are opposed to this law is that it is an extension of a very bad principle that turns police officers into commissars. The big difference between States like the Soviet Union, which had a very low crime problem because the State was all powerful, and States that inherit the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition is that in the latter it is judges who impose punishments. The fact that punishment is now so completely useless—because this Government will not bother to uphold the orders of the judges—is the thing that the Law and Order Committee should have been looking at. The select committee should have been asking itself why young people can scoff at the courts. As my colleague Deborah Coddington says, $19,000 in traffic fines gets written off—or $9,000—and the guy is in the courts 2 weeks later, giving the finger to the law. That is what should have been looked at.

This power to confiscate, in the hands of the police, is a punishment power. This is the Government that would not even put punishment into the Sentencing Act. It would not even allow the Parole Board to take into account punishment as one of the factors for keeping someone in prison. This Government is just writing slogans, and they are intended to mean nothing. There is nothing in this law that outlaws wheelspinning, street racing, drag racing, or any of those other stunts, as long as the person stays within the existing law. In other words, this law was intended to do nothing. ACT stands for quality in law. We do not think there is anything to be achieved by this bill. Who remembers “Take the bikes off the bikies.”? Mr Cosgrove’s great guru—his early idol—made one of his slogans “Take the bikes off the bikies.” Has it happened? Have the bikies lost their bikes? No, because it was law that was badly conceived in principle, and, quite correctly, sensible police do not set out to antagonise the public by using powers that might tempt them into overuse.

It is a rare occasion when I stand and support National Party colleagues, but I have to say I agree with them. It is interesting and astounding that the ACT party, which says it is the party of zero tolerance, is opposing this bill. Its deputy leader—at Katikati, I think Mr Brown said, and before the election, of course—said that ACT supported the bill. Mr Shirley said: “ACT supports the introduction of the bill. We welcome tougher measures to deal with illegal street racing. Indeed, this bill is in keeping with ACT’s campaign for zero tolerance on crime.” That is what he said on 14 May, and we had an election a month or so later. For the life of me I cannot work out who ACT is trying to appeal to now. Even its rich mates, whom it does support, have written to me and other members of this House saying that they have had an utter gutsful of this problem.

Mr Franks talks about the police being commissars. What an utter insult to the men and women who protect that member and his fat-cat mates! What an insult to the law-abiding Kiwis around this country! I say to Mr Franks that one cannot be tough on crime and campaign for zero tolerance, then drop a bucket on the boys in blue. He cannot have it both ways. I am looking forward to the next election when I can ram the words of Mr Franks and Ms Coddington back down where they came from—down their throats.

Ms Coddington spoke about how discriminatory this bill was. She spoke about some victims. The only victims she did not speak about—no one in that party has spoken about them—are the people who have been killed by this activity. Mr Mark made the point that what this bill is trying to do in essence, and what I believe it will do—it will not be a panacea, as I have said—is provide an ambulance at the top of the cliff. It will provide a deterrent so that we will not have another death like the one we had on Saturday of a young Thai fellow, and, possibly, his mates in the car. This bill will deter that behaviour.

Yet, of course, these people from ACT parade around the country saying they are tough on crime. Every party in this Parliament, apart from the Greens—who do not believe that common sense is trendy—and apart from ACT, supports this bill. The police around the country, man and woman, side by side, support the bill. The overwhelming majority—the vast majority—of Kiwis around the country support the bill. Even some of the ACT fat cats support the bill. Yet Mr Franks and Ms Coddington get up and oppose it. Work that one out! I do not know. I say to Ms Coddington that maybe she wants to have a register of boy racers! Maybe Alister Taylor could publish the register. Maybe this time, after he has published it and people have paid for it, he might actually deliver the register to them.

I say to the ACT people that they should take an example from most of the members in this Chamber—United Future, New Zealand First, the National Party, and others—who have treated this bill with a high degree of seriousness. On the weekend we saw a vast number of examples of lawlessness—of bottles being thrown through police car windows, of, tragically, another death, and of utter lawlessness. I think this bill goes a long way to knock those problems on the head. Ms Coddington says that the bill will not work. Well, look at New South Wales; it has worked in New South Wales. Queensland, which has this problem, is begging for the New South Wales legislation, as are the Australian Capital Territory and other states.

I will be the first person, as I said in another speech, to stand up for law-abiding people. I think that 80 percent of the boy racer types are law abiding. With this deterrent they will join clubs and act lawfully. But there is a hard core of people who, even if we gave them the facilities—the 10 percent who are nutters—would get their jollies from having the police chase them around, like some sort of Dukes of Hazzard movie. They know that the current deterrent that the police have is an infringement notice and it is not working.

I will say one other thing to Ms Coddington. She and others talk about a lack of police resources. Well, here is an eye-opener for her. I went to New South Wales and talked to the police there, and asked: “Look, what if we threw another 1,000 police at the boy racer problem?”. The police said that with the current laws we have it would not work, and that all that we would get is another 5,000 or 6,000 infringement notices. They said that what we needed was a real deterrent.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

I make one final point to Ms Coddington and the ACT mob, who talk about the police lacking resources. The New South Wales police told me that if we have a decent deterrent, we can pull police out of this duty, and they can fight real crime. The problem at the moment is, even if we threw 1,000 extra police at the problem, we would get only 5,000 more infringement notices, which would do nothing. If we have a better deterrent, we can release the boys and girls in blue from this duty, and they can go out and protect our homes and our livelihoods.

Debate interrupted.