Land Transport Amendment Bill

I move, That the Land Transport Amendment Bill be now read a second time. First, I thank the House for being prepared to accept that this bill will be debated under urgency and will proceed through all its remaining stages forthwith. I do appreciate that. I also thank the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for its work on this bill and for reporting it back to the House speedily. The committee had an unusually short time in which to examine the bill, and it has done an admirable job. I note that the committee is recommending a number of amendments, most of which I fully support. I am, however, proposing a further amendment, to make an adjustment to the conditions under which an application for passenger endorsement reinstatement can be made.

This bill will allow some passenger service drivers with criminal convictions—which, under changes to the Land Transport Act that were passed by this House last year and that came into force in January this year, prohibited them from holding a passenger endorsement—to apply to the Director of Land Transport to have their endorsements reinstated. This bill will also allow some individuals with convictions for those types of offences to apply for a new passenger endorsement.

It has previously been noted in the House how difficult it is to strike the right balance on this issue. We all agree that many of those who had their passenger endorsements removed by the legislation this bill amends are unlikely to pose a risk to the travelling public, and that they should be given the opportunity to have their cases considered by the director. Indeed, a number of them have featured in the media, and most people have had considerable sympathy for their position. However, the committee—rightly, in my view—considered that those convicted of more serious offences should remain excluded. It is the matter of where that balance is drawn that is the challenge.

The committee is therefore recommending that the reinstatement avenue be widened, but that in addition to those currently able to apply for a passenger endorsement reinstatement, an application can be made only when, if the conviction was for a sexual offence, the offence was either sexual connection or an indecent act with a young person under 16, or indecent assault, and when the individual was not sent to prison for that offence. Furthermore, the committee also recommends that a similar limitation be placed on future new P endorsement applications for those who are not currently in the industry. That would exclude new applications from anyone with a specified serious offence, including a violent offence, except those convicted under either sections 134 or 135 of the Crimes Act, and who was not sent to prison.

I support the intent of the committee’s amendments in that regard, and the bill as amended would allow almost all of the affected individuals who have come forward on this issue to apply for reinstatement. However, in regard particularly to limits on applications for P endorsement reinstatement, I do have some concerns. The bill as reported back would prevent from applying for reinstatement some individuals who have convictions for offences that are probably at the minor end of the scale. In particular, some of those individuals were in prison for offences, under sections 134 or 135 of the Crimes Act, that attracted very small custodial sentences many years ago—as far back as the 1960s—and they are unlikely to pose an undue risk to public safety and security. One person who has come to my attention was in prison for 1 month and has led what one might call an exemplary life since. In my view, such individuals should at least be given the opportunity to apply to the director to have their cases for reinstatement examined, and I have tabled amendments to allow for that.

The select committee is recommending a small number of other amendments that tighten the criteria for considering reinstatement and new P endorsement applications. These changes specify that the Director of Land Transport must be satisfied that a person with a qualifying conviction will not be a threat to public safety or security before reinstating, or even allowing, an application for a P endorsement. That elevates the threat to public safety and security to being the primary consideration in the director’s decision, rather than one of the criteria the director has to consider in making the decision. Those changes also add to the criteria the fact that the director must consider the nature and circumstance of the specified offences for which the individual has a conviction or convictions. That would allow the director to more closely examine individual circumstances, rather than rely solely on proxies such as the sentence imposed. I support those amendments.

I doubt whether there is any one in this House who has not done something in his or her youth that today, if it could be expunged or if the clock could be turned back, he or she would rather not have done. I am sure many people know friends, colleagues and acquaintances who have done things that, with the wonderful wisdom of hindsight, that friend, colleague, or acquaintance would rather not have done. Many people who have served various sentences for various offences are now good citizens, and I think we have a duty in this House to look at the circumstances of the people whose livelihoods we have, in some cases, dramatically affected.

Once again, I thank the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for its work on this bill and for considering this bill in a very rapid fashion. The bill has been dealt with quickly by the select committee, which had some difficult balancing issues to consider. The bill fixes a clear problem with land transport legislation that I am sure very few in the House would have appreciated at the time the Minister introduced the bill in 2004. Certainly, when the bill was passed in 2005, I doubt that many members had any idea of the number of people who would be affected. The bill fixes the clear problems with land transport legislation, and will ensure that those people with relatively minor convictions will be able, if cleared by the director, to return to work.

I commend the bill to the House and I hope it receives serious consideration and debate. I trust that the goodwill expressed by so many members from various parties, who brought their cases to me at the end of December and early in January this year, and right through January and since, will mean that they will vote on a principled position and not simply on a political whim. I hope the House will consider this legislation thoroughly over the next several hours and will make the right decisions.

I thank the Minister for a careful and thorough exposition of the issues in the report back. I think it would be conceded that the select committee has had difficulty getting the balance of this issue right, and there is no doubt that what the select committee has returned to Parliament is a good deal better than what the Government sent to the select committee. At the time the bill was introduced last month, I indicated that the bill as introduced was far too wide and needed substantial narrowing down. That process has occurred.

However, National will be recording a vote against the report back and I want to make it very clear why National members are doing so. We fully understand the situation of taxi drivers and bus drivers who have had their licences suspended. To make it clear what that category is, these are people already in the business and as a consequence of the mistakes that the select committee made last year—and I have to take a certain level of responsibility for that—there were a number, which turned out to be in the hundreds, 230 people, who had their licences suspended. Clearly that had to be fixed. The proper way to fix that is broadly what the select committee has done. The balance in the select committee report for that group is right. I will briefly go through that for further elucidation.

Persons convicted of murder cannot apply for reinstatement of licence.

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: I’m not suggesting that.

I realise that, I am just explaining a point. The second group—serious sexual offenders—also cannot reapply. That was the intent of the select committee last year, and to that extent that was right. The third group in that category of sexual offenders was the persons covered by sections 134 and 135. That is where I believe the select committee got it wrong. We did not analyse properly the range of offences covered under “sexual offences of 7 years or more” and we made an error there and included those two offences. That is the area where the vast majority of the 230 who had their licences suspended come into. Certainly, speaking for the National Party, that was National’s intent. It may not have been New Zealand First’s intent, but it certainly was National’s intent. The select committee has got that part right and if it was only that, National would be voting for the report back.

The second part, and the cause of why National is voting against the report back, is that we believe for persons who do not hold a licence, and indeed have never held a P endorsement—taxi driver or bus driver—there should be a hard and fast rule. In common with other parties, we say no murderers, no serious violent offenders, and indeed National members would say no sexual offenders of any category should be allowed, and in that sense we differ from New Zealand First. I acknowledge that. We differ from the Government and I acknowledge that, as well. That is the reason why we are recording a vote against. We think that there are essentially two separate rules.

We have to fix the problem of existing taxi and bus drivers who were inadvertently caught in legislation that had an error in it. We do not believe, however, that the same rule should apply for people going forward. Frankly, people who have never held a licence should be subject to a stricter rule. That is the distinction we make, which the select committee does not make in its report. The select committee’s report treats the two groups as the same. In the select committee—as members of the select committee well know—National members were careful to point out our concerns around that and the reasons why we were not able to support the report within the select committee itself and why we are now voting against it.

We acknowledge that we have to fix up a problem. We want to be part of the solution. The majority of the bill as reported back from the select committee actually does fix that problem, and I acknowledge that. I might go so far as to say I acknowledge that the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, the Hon Mark Gosche, notwithstanding his speech last night, chaired the select committee very well indeed and made sure that the issues were properly canvassed this time. I think it would be fair to say that the members of the select committee were at pains to make sure we did not make yet another error, that we did not compound last year’s error with a fresh range of errors.

💬 Peter Brown: You’re making another one.

I want to turn to the point that Mr Brown has made by interjection. He said that we are making another error. I say to Mr Brown that in this instance, however, we are making a deliberative decision in possession of the facts. I know Mr Brown does not agree with the decision, but I suggest that that is a different issue. The problem last year is that we made the error because we did not understand the facts properly. I suppose I have to concede that that issue was touched upon by Mr Brown—I guess I have to concede that point, and I did note it in the select committee report last year. I say to Mr Brown that that is a fair point.

But in this particular instance we fully understand the situation, and we wish to draw a very particular distinction. I have already gone through the law and what our vote is, so why do we do that? There is a reason why we do so: we believe that, for the future, passengers—particularly young women and girls in taxis, late at night—should have an absolute guarantee that no person who has had a murder conviction, a sexual conviction, or a serious violent conviction can have a licence. By that I mean they will not even be able to apply for a licence. Those persons, of course, can get other jobs. They can get other jobs even in the driving industry. So it is very clear why we are doing that: we want an absolute assurance that those people cannot have a licence. But we recognise that there is an issue of the 230 people from the past that we need to fix, so we support the part of the bill that deals with that particular issue.

I begin by thanking all the members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, who tried to grapple with this problem in a very short space of time. We attempted to come to a consensus, and the report back is as close as we could get to a consensus. But perhaps the process was not perfect, and that is why we have an opportunity this afternoon and this evening, in the Committee stage, to look at what the committee has reported back after a couple of weeks’ work, and to see whether the Committee of the whole House can improve upon the bill.

We attempted obviously to remove some of the unintended consequences of the legislation that was passed last year. In particular, we looked at the cases of people who had been convicted of an offence many, many years ago—predominantly an offence whereby they may have had sex with a person under the age of 16. We read about those cases in the media, and I think they touched the hearts of everybody in the House. The people in those cases may have had sex with their girlfriends at the age of 16 and their girlfriends may have been 15. Those cases have been rehearsed through the media, so Parliament wanted to try to fix the problem. In doing so, the select committee has come back with a fairly narrow opportunity for people in that category to seek from the Director of Land Transport the ability to apply for a P endorsement.

The select committee unanimously added some more words to the bill, so that it would be made quite clear to the director that the public interest in the safety of people was paramount. We also want to send that signal to the judges, who may, at some stage in the future—although we hope not—have a case where the director’s decision is appealed. It is clear that in the past the director may have turned down people for a P endorsement, and then the courts may have overturned his or her decision. I state quite clearly in this debate that the entire committee’s desire is to make sure that the people who will take this legislation and make it work—the Director of Land Transport, and any judge of the High Court who may adjudicate—get the clear message that if a person wants to get a P endorsement, we must be absolutely sure that public safety is not put at risk. I believe that every member of the select committee and the House would agree with that statement.

It is difficult to get the balance right in these circumstances. It is not a black or white issue. We tried to grapple with the length of sentence or the type of sentence that a person who had committed an offence under section 134 or 135 of the Crimes Act may have received, because that gave us some idea of his or her age when the offence occurred. The committee indicated that if a person had not had a period of imprisonment, it was because that person was likely to have been young when the offence was committed. The House, in its debate on the Supplementary Order Papers that are on the Table, will have to grapple with that issue because the committee did not, in a short space of time, come to a unanimous view. But I hope that Parliament will be able to do so in the time that this debate will take. It is quite a difficult question to grapple with, but I am sure it is one that by the end of the debate we will have got right, once and for all. We need to look at the Supplementary Order Papers, which will take into account people who may have had some short period of imprisonment. I look forward to hearing the debate on that issue, because we did debate it in the select committee for some time, but, as I said, we did not reach a unanimous conclusion. The main point that has to be made is that the overall intention of the bill is to protect the public, particularly those who use taxis or buses. To write the law in terms of restricting people from driving can be somewhat difficult, as has been proven by this exercise.

I would like to raise another issue that earlier speakers have not commented on yet. This is the question of whether those who had lost their licences as a result of the passing of the legislation and its coming into force in January this year, should be given any compensation or should have their jobs reinstated. The committee looked at that issue with a degree of sympathy but felt unable to recommend those measures, for good reason—there would be people in quite different circumstances who may have been self-employed, versus people who may have been employed. So we are taking the word of the employers in that circumstance. They have assured us, through the officials, that they will treat generously employees who may end up getting their licences reinstated. We have recorded that information in the commentary on the bill as reported back, and I wanted to make sure that it is also put on the record of the House in this debate.

We have, in a very short space of time, tried to undo a wrong, but I remind members that although Dr Mapp said a mistake was made by the select committee last time, it did not actually put the appeal procedures into the law—the Committee of the whole House did so, by way of a Supplementary Order Paper. It is a little unfair of Dr Mapp to blame himself and others who were on the committee at that time for something that the Committee of the whole House put in, by way of a Supplementary Order Paper. By the way, just to remind people, every single member of the House last time voted for that bill. But I agree with Dr Mapp, to a degree, that we did so without the proper facts. It was not that we ignored the facts; the facts were not there to ignore. That is one of the things that I hope the officials who run the taxi and bus licensing system will take note of. It is not good enough to not know who is driving the buses and taxis in this country, which is what we were confronted with at that time.

When we asked how many people might be affected by this law we could not be told, which makes us somewhat worried. If officials have done proper police checks to get a fit and proper person test done, we might expect that it would be recorded somewhere that we had allowed so many people who have this offence to drive and so many people with that offence to drive. That clearly was not the case. So if nothing else comes out of this exercise in a positive sense, other than undoing some wrong, perhaps we will also get some decent record-keeping of who gets to drive taxis and buses in this country and the nature of their backgrounds. So I remind members that there is still a very stiff process to be gone through for those who have lost their licence as a result of the law change. It is not an automatic right; it is a right for those people to come in and ask the director whether they meet the criteria for the director to look at their case again.

The last thing that I would comment on—and with which we do disagree with the National Party—is, if we are to allow existing drivers who have been convicted of an offence under sections 134 or 135 to drive again, what is the logic of not allowing a P endorsement to a new person who might have committed that offence at the same time—30 years ago—but who has never applied to be a taxi driver? That is where logic disappears and prejudice takes over. I had thought we might be above doing that. However, I hope that in the course of the debate we will be able to change the National Party’s mind on that one. The logic is quite clear: if it is OK for a person who held a P endorsement prior to January who committed an offence 30 years ago to have his licence reinstated, why is the situation not the same for a guy who might have done exactly the same thing 30 years ago and now wants to apply for a P endorsement? It is logical that if one is safe to drive, then so should be the other. I rest my case.

Debate interrupted.