Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4)

I rise to take a short call on this clause of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). This bill has been put forward by the Minister, Steven Joyce, and I will quickly get a copy—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: If you want someone else to take a call, I will.

Could you take a call?

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Yes, sure.

Thank you.

I think the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) is now getting pretty much universal support within the Committee. The progress of the bill was started under Labour. There was a long select committee process, and I think the bill was considerably improved as a result of that process. Because of the industrial relations position that I held, I sat on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and focused on the first part of the bill, the bit that relates to drug-driving. I think we made considerable progress in that area in the select committee. There were a couple of outstanding issues, but I am pleased to report to the Committee that those issues have been resolved as a result of discussions between the Minister, Steven Joyce, the new Associate Minister, Nathan Guy, and the chairperson of the select committee, David Bennett. I will outline very briefly for the Committee the effect of those changes.

The first change is that when people are blood tested and found to have class A drugs in their bloodstream when they have been injured—when they are in a surgery, or when they are in hospital—that evidence will be able to be used against them in a land transport case, just as it is when people are over the alcohol limit, but not in a misuse of drugs case. The second suggestion is that it be made very clear in the law that just because someone has failed a breath test, that does not mean that he or she should be then forgiven or not proceeded with regarding drug testing. The legislation is very explicit that people will be able to be tested for both alcohol and drugs. So if, for example, a police officer, in administering a breath test, comes to the point where someone is a marginal failure, but the person’s eyes are all over the place, he or she has trouble walking, and is slurring words very heavily—much more than would be indicated by the level of alcohol on the person’s breath—then the police officer will be able to proceed to a drug impairment test. If the person fails that test, then the blood will be tested for drugs.

I thank the Minister for his focus on this matter in the last 24 hours, and I am sure that as a result of that focus the amendments that he has drafted will more adequately take care of the policy intention than those that I was able to have drafted without being able to give direction directly to parliamentary counsel. I also acknowledge my sparring partner, Tau Henare, for the work that he did in the select committee to ensure that Government members focused on these issues. I think that without him, the officials might have had their way.

Before I take the next call, I draw to members’ attention that we are on clause 3A, “Short Title and commencement”. I recognise that—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s a pretty broad debate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Well, it can be. I let the member have a wide-ranging speech because the Committee is getting itself into the debate, but I remind members that we are on clause 3A.

I seek the leave of the House to have a broad-ranging debate here, on the understanding that we will not mess around on the later clauses.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Is the member seeking leave to have the bill taken as a single question?

No, I do not think we want to do that, because there are two quite different parts to the bill.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): OK. Well, without seeking leave the Chair will give a degree of grace and favour.

Mr Chairperson, thank you very much for allowing the Committee to have a broad debate on a very important bill, the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). The bill will toughen up the legislation with regard to those who decide to pop a whole lot of pills or to inject a drug into their arm and then go driving behind the wheel. It is important that we protect the other motorists on the roads.

There has been a lot of discussion on this issue. Unfortunately, I was not part of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that heard the evidence, but just today I have had a thorough briefing from the officials, who, I believe, have done some sterling work on this bill. There has been some cross-party discussion on some of the Supplementary Order Papers that we will get to in the debate this afternoon. This Parliament needs to send a very strong message across the whole of New Zealand that driving while drugged up is not appropriate, nor is driving under the influence of alcohol.

This is an important bill. It is heading in the right direction. The Supplementary Order Papers on the Table are wide ranging. I acknowledge in particular the work that the Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, has done in his Supplementary Order Paper 10, which will, I think, encompass a lot of what the Hon Trevor Mallard—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s got the same policy intent.

It does have the same policy intent, and that is important. I acknowledge the discussions that had gone on before we got to the Committee stage today.

I know there will possibly be some discussion and debate on the classes of drugs: whether the bill covers class A, class B, or class C, and whether the drug can be picked up relatively easily when a blood sample is taken. I know from listening to the officials today that heroin does not last very long in the blood, and that LSD cannot be picked up from a blood sample but from a urine sample only, I understand. I am sure the focus this afternoon will be on class A drugs, which are the serious ones. They are picked up in schedule 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The other important thing we need to be aware of is that from time to time when a person is hospitalised, the general practitioner or the surgeon may administer a drug caught in the schedule; the example there would be morphine.

This bill is heading in the right direction. I think it has broad support across a lot of the Committee this afternoon. I look forward to hearing the debate. I acknowledge the work of the Minister, the Hon Steven Joyce, and the officials.

I have been working with the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) from the very beginning: from its introduction in 2007 under a Labour Government, through its first reading, and through the select committee process and the various submissions that were made over quite a long period of time. I think the only other person in the Chamber who has been through that process is David Bennett, who was also on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee last year, and now chairs it very well in the new Parliament.

I think it is important to acknowledge that although the Minister of Transport has done some good work on the bill, it came from a Labour Government initiative. It was the Hon Harry Duynhoven who put this bill through, bless him. At the time the bill was introduced to the Labour caucus and we discussed it, it was reasonably controversial. We were quite cautious about this bill, even though we recognise that there is a problem and a gap in the law, if you like, on drug-driving. There is also evidence that drug-driving causes considerable concern and damage to innocent citizens.

I am very pleased that the Government has agreed to adopt and adapt Trevor Mallard’s amendments. We had a lot of debate in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about those two particular issues. I am also confident that we now have a bill that deals with the very, very difficult issue of identifying drug-impaired drivers through a walk-the-line test on the side of the road, followed by a blood test. The issue that the previous speaker, Nathan Guy, raised about levels in the blood, and so on, do not apply under this bill. This is a transport measure; it is not a drug enforcement measure. The main purpose of the bill is to get off the road those drivers who have drugs in their system, and who can be a hazard, cause accidents, and hurt other people in doing so.

The bill is very substantive. I think that most debate will be about the first part, which covers drug impairment, but I also note that a significant Part 17 is being inserted into the Land Transport Act by clause 18. It concerns the register that contains information about vehicles. That issue has also caused some debate, and a lot of submissions were made on it during the time this bill was before the select committee.

What I had not understood until I started to look at this issue was that personal information held in the motor vehicles register was able to be accessed by everybody. People can go in and get one’s name and address. It is one of the few registers whereby people can do that. They can get the names and addresses of all persons and organisations registered as the owner of a motor vehicle. The information is available over the counter at post shops and other registration agencies, and there have been no safeguards on the use of this personal information. The system has become open to abuse. We have seen an increase in the number of road rage incidents recently. In the aftermath of those incidents, angry motorists have used the register to trace a person and then harassed that person. There have been other issues. For example, an angry spouse who has separated from his or her partner has sought to track down his or her partner afterwards by following his or her car, taking note of the number plate, and then getting the address associated with it. There have been incidents of professional car thieves targeting high-value vehicles, and using the register to find out where the car is kept.

The select committee heard a number of complaints from people and heard from a number of submitters about their own personal experiences around this issue. Because we require citizens to provide this information—they do not have any choice about it—the Government has a particular responsibility to protect their privacy, and to make sure that that information cannot be used for nefarious purposes. This bill does address that concern, although there are some differences with some of the approaches, which has more to do with the use of that information for marketing purposes. The second part of the complaint we received about the register was that people—

I thank the Minister of Transport and members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. A number of members of the committee are here today. As the previous speaker, Darien Fenton, noted, the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) has been carried over from the previous Parliament. Both parties have worked hard to find a constructive solution for the issue that we are dealing with.

I think the first thing to take into account when we look at this legislation is that it is only a starting point. Throughout the passage of the bill, and throughout the debate in the select committee, many valid points were raised about taking the bill further, making it watertight to cover every situation that may arise in the future, and making our testing processes more technologically advanced than they are at the moment. That is all fine and well to do, but the reality is that we had to come back to the starting point, which is the legislation in front of us today. It may not be the most mature legislation, in the sense that it has not been fine-tuned over many years of work through the parliamentary system, but it is an extremely good starting point that the Minister in the chair, the Hon Steven Joyce, can be very proud of. He can see it delivered at a point in time when other Parliaments have failed in the past to do so.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: He did so much of the work on it!

A member over there from the Labour Party, Mr Mallard, is laughing at this point, but I think we need to give him due credit for the constructive way in which he worked within the select committee. His parliamentary experience was invaluable in the way that he approached the legislation and looked through it. I thank Trevor Mallard for that; it was most appreciated. On our side of the committee also, not only did members like Tau Henare show their experience, but also our newer members really got into this issue and enjoyed it.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: I’m a new member.

Oh, he is not a new member; he is a widely experienced member.

When we look at the bill, we see that it has two angles. The first is the drug testing. Basically, that provision goes back to the good old days when there was an impairment test to see whether people could walk in a straight line, and if they could not do that, then they went for a blood test. The difficulty with going to a blood test straight away is the expense of those blood tests, so the impairment test is there to weed out people from the others who may potentially be in a state where they need to be tested. It is an opportunity to cut it down so that the group with which we will have the greatest proportion of success goes through those more expensive blood tests.

The second part of the bill deals with the motor vehicles register, and some issues there look at what we are dealing with with regard to registration issues. There has been a lot of talk in the past about information on the register that people thought was private and unavailable for public use being made available in the public arena and, especially, commercialised. Provisions deal with that issue in the bill, as well. Then there are some minor provisions that had been put in a separate bill earlier, around some of the tidying-up we needed to do around time frames in the land transport area. Drug testing is the heart of the issue that the public will be interested in, and it is probably the heart of any amendments that will be made through this Committee stage. Those amendments relate to particular issues in that area and provide some clarity to the situation. However, many of those amendments also relate to things that this legislation already covers, though probably not in as specific a way as the amendments will make them do. To have that happen will provide some unity within Parliament and also some direction through the legislation so that people know explicitly what it intends to achieve and what some of its goals and limits are.

The drug-testing requirement gained public prominence recently—a few months ago, in fact. The Government had committed to making sure that we provided a solution to this issue in reasonable time. I think the first thing we have to acknowledge in that respect is that this Government has kept its word and delivered the legislation in that reasonable time. This legislation will be in force by the end of the year and it will give an opportunity for the enforcement mechanism, our police, to be able to deal with this issue.

I am happy to take a call on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). Although I have not been part of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, which helped to develop the bill, the issue it addresses is really close to my heart. I have absolutely no time for those who drink or take drugs and drive. I come from a beautiful part of the country, and we have many talents and skills up in the far north. However, one of the problems that we have is the availability and accessibility of drugs. I do not want to cast a shadow over the far north, but that is one of our problems.

As a school principal I saw the effect of the availability and accessibility of drugs firsthand. In fact, one time I asked the youth aid officer of the local police, with whom I had a really good working relationship, to do a raid on a house from which I suspected a child brought drugs to school. Whereas most people in New Zealand would have in their lounge a bowl for peanuts, potato chips, or snacks of some sort, in 14 places around the lounge of that house the people there had cannabis. While the family was watching TV they would just roll up a joint and smoke it; it just became a normal part of the kids’ lives. To quote another example, in the late 1990s when I shifted to Kaitāia, instead of the player of the day in the local league competition that was running at the time getting a meat pack or petrol vouchers, the player got an ounce of dak. That is disgraceful. That shows how prevalent and normalised the use of drugs has become in some parts of the country.

To bring this speech back to drug-driving, if it is normalised behaviour in sports clubs to take drugs after sports, then that combined with alcohol means that people are drinking and taking drugs. The booze bus turns up regularly to Kaitāia, and the reason it does so is that it regularly catches people. I support that. Even though we are talking about people whom I have played sports with, and people whom I know in the community, I agree that there need to be measures to make sure these people do not continue with this sort of behaviour. As the same youth aid officer I have already mentioned said to me, the only way to change people’s behaviour sometimes is to severely inconvenience them, and the inconvenience of having to get out of a car and walk a line is something I agree with. To take blood samples, and to check to see whether people have drugs in their system are measures I totally agree with, and I congratulate the members who have developed this bill.

There is one area where I do not think the bill goes far enough. We are talking here about dealing with class A, B, or C drugs, but there is also another class of drugs that we should not take lightly, and that is recreational drugs. I struggle to see how we can possibly call drugs “recreational”, because we do not have recreational assault, or recreational murder. I think we should also be testing for recreational drugs, whatever they may be, because to me it is wrong for drugs of any sort to be combined with alcohol and taken by people who are going to parties or coming back from sports events. I have a 14-year old daughter who has started to learn to drive, and it concerns me that when she gets a licence and she does not have her father sitting next to her telling her what to do, she will be going out on her own. She will be on the road with people who may have drugs and alcohol in their systems. So I support these steps that we are taking to make sure that people whose actions are clouded by the presence of drugs in their system will be taken off the roads, so that my daughters, my son, and my other family members will be safer on the road.

Clause 3A agreed to.

Part 1 Amendments to principal Act