Land Transport Amendment Bill

I move, That the Land Transport Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I further nominate that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee considers the bill. The bill aims to address the harms and social cost caused by drunk drivers in New Zealand. Each year drunk drivers are responsible for an average of 61 deaths and 244 serious injuries, with a social cost amounting to almost $450 million. The bill will amend the Land Transport Act 1998. The Land Transport Act provides for a range of functions relating to land transport, including specifying the adult drink-driving limits.

The main purpose of the Land Transport Amendment Bill is to reduce the legal drink-driving limits. The adult breath-alcohol limit will be reduced from 400 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath to 250 micrograms per litre of breath. The blood-alcohol limit will reduce from 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood to 50 milligrams. The bill will also put in place infringement offences for They would be able to rebut that or challenge that presumption in court.

In closing, the changes proposed by this bill demonstrate the Government’s determination to improve road safety for all New Zealanders by reducing drink-driving. I acknowledge that there is great interest from all sides of the House in this bill. I commend it to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and I know that there are others who will have a great deal of interest in providing very significant input to what eventually will become a bill the House can pass. Thank you.

Labour supports the Land Transport Amendment Bill and we do look forward to the consideration of it at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We anticipate that there will be significant public interest in this legislation, not just from people who are interested specifically in road safety but also from people who have an interest in public health and the impact of alcohol and other substances on the health and well-being of New Zealanders. In fact, there was some discussion at the Health Committee about whether we ought to ask for this bill to be considered at the Health Committee. That was a suggestion made by Kevin Hague because of the wider health implications of this legislation. I am sure that will be a significant aspect of the conversation that will be had at the select committee.

We support this legislation because alcohol is one of the leading contributors to death on our roads, if not the leading contributor to death on our roads. So far this year 231 people have died on New Zealand roads. If the statistics that have been gathered in recent years are borne out when there is close examination of those numbers, then around 80 of those people will have been killed where the accident is attributable to alcohol and/or other intoxicating substances. Over the years, although we have been successful in reducing the overall road toll—with one unfortunate blip last year, but generally the trend is heading downwards—what we have not been able to do is reduce the impact of alcohol and substance use on the road toll. In fact, back in 2008, 33.1 percent of all road deaths were attributable to alcohol and/or drugs. Last year, in 2012, 33.8 percent were attributable to alcohol and/or drugs. In the intervening years the percentage has gone up and it has gone down, but it has generally sat around the mid-30s. Slightly above a third of all accidents are caused by alcohol and/or drugs.

It is for that reason, I think, that the police came to Parliament and said that the single most impactful thing that Parliament could do to reduce the road toll would be to reduce the drink-driving limit. It has been clear for a number of years that that is the course of action that Parliament needs to take. Unfortunately, however, the Government has sat on this bill for far too long. It was back in 2009 that Steven Joyce, as the transport Minister at the time, actually looked like he was about to act. It looked like Cabinet was very, very close to introducing legislation that would do exactly what this legislation does, but for some reason Steven Joyce and the National Cabinet decided not to act. It may have been something to do with polling or it may have been something to do with the fact that they wanted to push the issue past the last election. We cannot really be sure what it was that caused them to fail to act, but what we do know is this: it certainly was not public opinion. Public opinion has been behind this measure for a number of years now. And it certainly was not the evidence, because the evidence gathered overseas, where other jurisdictions are years ahead of New Zealand, is that lowering the drink-driving limit has a tangible and fast impact on the road toll. So public opinion supported this measure and the data supported it, yet for some reason the National Government did not support it. And, frankly, we can only speculate about why that was.

This legislation does something a little bit different from what the Labour Party has been proposing for a number of years. Back in 2009 when Steven Joyce failed to act, our then transport spokesperson, Darren Hughes, introduced a member’s bill to the ballot that would have taken the action that the Government failed to take. That member’s bill was eventually passed to me in my roles as transport spokesperson and associate health spokesperson, and I was lucky enough to have it drawn from the ballot. I also attempted to have the Alcohol Reform Bill amended, as another mechanism to make this change. The Government voted against that at the time, but once the member’s bill drafted by the Labour Party was pulled from the ballot, then all of a sudden the measure became a priority. The reason for that, of course, is that it had parliamentary support. The public were behind it, the data supported it, and then Parliament was going to act with or without the National Party—with or without the Government. It is nice to be able to have an influence over the Government from the Opposition benches. I am pleased to say that knowing that Parliament was going to act with or without it inspired the National Government, after 4 long years of considering this topic, to finally do the right thing.

But this bill is different from what the Labour Party originally suggested. It introduces fines and demerit points for being over 0.05 but under 0.08. We will support that notion going to the select committee. We want to hear what the evidence tells us. We know that jurisdictions overseas have taken both approaches, either simply reducing the limit and making it a criminal offence to be over 0.05 or having a series of fines and demerit points as a way of deterring people from becoming intoxicated and then getting behind the wheel. We want to see what the evidence says around that, but I want people to understand that driving over 0.05 is not a minor thing. It should not be a minor offence regardless of whether it ends up being an infringement offence or a criminal offence. Driving at 0.05 or more increases the risk of being involved in a fatal accident by 5.8 times over someone who is driving at zero, with no alcohol—a risk 5.8 times greater if you are driving at 0.05. If you are driving at 0.08, then there is a 16.5 times increased risk of being involved in a fatal accident. What is more, that not only increases your likelihood of being involved in an accident but increases the severity of the accident as well. Twelve percent of minor injury crashes are attributable to alcohol, 21 percent of serious injury crashes are attributable to alcohol, and, as I said before, 34 percent of accidents where somebody is killed are attributable to alcohol. So alcohol not only increases the likelihood that an accident will occur but increases the likelihood that that accident will be more severe and will result in serious injury or death.

This is not a minor topic, and it should not have been an issue on which the Government preferred to put some sort of political expediency ahead of doing the right thing back in 2009, when it had the data. New Zealand has been slow to act on this issue. Just 16 countries, including New Zealand, still have a 0.08 limit. The vast majority—39 countries—have a 0.05 limit. A significant number of countries actually have a lower limit than that. New Zealand is out of step. We are behind, and it is a tragedy that we have taken 4 years more than we needed to in order to pass this legislation.

Three hundred and thirty-six people died on our roads in 2008; 121 of those were attributable to alcohol. The numbers of deaths attributable to alcohol were 140 in 2009, 144 in 2010, 87 in 2011, and 104 in 2012. Those numbers could have been reduced if the Government had been prepared to act, and that is the great tragedy. But we do support these moves. We do want to have the debate about the differences of opinion between the two different approaches that the Government and the Opposition have been proposing. We look forward to the passage of this bill through the House, and we look forward to this change being made by the middle of next year at the latest, because this is something that New Zealand desperately needs.

I call the honourable member David Bennett.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): You are welcome.

It is a pleasure. Just speaking in regard to the Land Transport Amendment Bill, it is a very good bill, brought to the House by the Minister of Transport. It is something that, as that last speaker, Iain Lees-Galloway, and the Minister said, has been a long time coming. There is a public opinion, I believe, that it will be supported amongst the community. I think that the time is now right for this bill, and it is ready.

💬 Sue Moroney: It’s too late.

The Opposition over there—we have Miss Moroney chirping in. Labour had 9 years in Government. They were high road toll years, and Labour did nothing about that. It did nothing. It is all right for its members to say those things now, but when they had the chance, they did not act. We are acting. We have got the research. We are putting this bill up and we have acted in a very consistent way.

💬 The Safer Journeys: discussion document was the first step in that. It looked at roads to make sure that the roading quality was up to standard, and it looked at some of the rules around driver education and driving. At that time we brought in the zero blood-alcohol rate for young people, so young people have a zero limit for alcohol when driving. That was the first step, and that was an important, crucial step in this process.

This bill is the next step, where we are looking at the rate between 0.05 and 0.08 blood-alcohol concentration. That is something that we need to do at this time. When we look at the question that Labour Party members have asked, they have used figures of the total road deaths that may be alcohol attributed. It is important to look at the numbers that are in that range. The numbers we have are that there are about five fatalities and 62 serious injuries that result from that range. Any death on our roads is one too many, but it is a small proportion of the 80 or 120 or 140 deaths that the Labour Party has attributed to alcohol. You must remember that when we take this bill into account.

It is not so much that this bill will stop deaths on our roads due to alcohol, but it is another step in sending the right signal to our drivers. It is about sending the signal that if a person drinks and drives, they are not only putting their lives at risk but they are putting other people’s lives at risk, and they will get caught. They will have to deal with the consequences of getting caught.

One of the questions will be around whether we have a fines system or a demerit system, or whether you lose your licence if you are in that blood-alcohol range. This is a bill that takes a very balanced approach and brings in that infringement fine and demerit point approach for that range. It is a transition for New Zealanders, it is an understanding of what it takes to drive on the roads, and it is part of the education process. New Zealanders have basically got the message, but there are some who have not got that message. They drink large quantities of alcohol and drive and cause very difficult situations for our emergency services and for many people involved in those crashes.

There is a possibility that you could go, as the Labour Party is talking about, to totally losing your licence if you are over that limit. That is a possibility. However, when we look at those limits—and I am sure this will come out in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—those balances between zero and 0.08 blood-alcohol concentration are very difficult to actually quantify scientifically and personally with different people and their ability to absorb alcohol, and all those other things. There is a set range.

This bill takes into account the different aspects of the ability of people to drive and also to accommodate what alcohol may be in their system. But it sends a very clear message that any alcohol is putting you, as a driver, in danger of incurring an infringement with the police, and that is the message that we want to send to people—that they should not drink and drive. We have done that with young people. This is the process whereby we are doing that with the adult population. This is a good bill. It is on the right track and in the right frame. The select committee will, I am sure, have a good look at it to make sure that we get it through the House as well as possible. Thank you.

I am pleased to take a call in the first reading of the Land Transport Amendment Bill. The bill lowers the adult legal alcohol limits from 400 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath to 250 micrograms, and from 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood to 50 milligrams. I am really pleased that the Government has finally taken its lead from the Labour Party, which has been agitating and pushing for this change since 2009, as we heard from our colleague Iain Lees-Galloway. It is a real shame, actually, that the Government did not take the chance in 2009. It did have other chances, which I will talk about in a moment. In 2009 and in every year since then—4 years—people have been unnecessarily injured or killed because the Government did not have the courage to take this step at the time.

In 2010 there was a bill that came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, following on from the Cabinet consideration of this issue, and that was the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. That was the bill that the previous speaker, David Bennett, was talking about, where we introduced zero tolerance for drivers under 20, introduced interlocks for people with alcohol convictions, and so on. The Government also had the chance then to deal with this issue. It was a feature of the submissions on that bill, which were very noticeable. When going back and having a look at the submissions, we see it was one of the biggest issues. There were about six issues that were highlighted during the submissions on the bill, but one of the biggest issues was from people submitting to the select committee that the Government should take the chance to deal with this issue of lowering the blood-alcohol content. Apart from submissions from a range of individuals, and very respectable ones as well, we had submissions from the Drug Foundation, the Cycling Advocates Network, Alcohol Healthwatch, the Drink Driving Interventions Trust, the National Addiction Centre, and the Herald on Sunday. I remember that one very clearly.

The Herald on Sunday ran a campaign on this and it started, I believe, with Darren Hughes’ member’s bill, which Iain Lees-Galloway eventually took over. It started with that. It supported that bill, and ran a campaign to get New Zealanders to pledge to drink two drinks as a maximum, which was a very successful campaign. That is when we first started to get the feedback from the public that this was something they supported. In fact, there was overwhelming support from the public. As I say, the Herald on Sunday did a very good job back in 2010, so we are talking 3 years ago. Of course, the Alcohol Advisory Council also recommended lowering the blood-alcohol concentration. Rural Women New Zealand and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation talked about not only the safety issues but the health issues, and also how important it was to try to take the opportunity to minimise harm, injury, and death at that time.

What happened during that process? The Government, despite many, many strong submissions, decided that it needed to have more information. Even though there had been many studies—and at that stage, in 2010, there had been many studies; there were international studies and others—showing the benefits of lowering the adult blood-alcohol content to 0.05, the Government kicked for touch by saying there was a lack of New Zealand - specific research in the area. I do not know what spooked the Government. I do not know what spooked the Minister of Transport Steven Joyce, as he was then, and Cabinet when they first discussed this in 2009. I do not know what spooked them in 2010, but there was a cop-out. The Government had the opportunity to fix this issue then, and not only that but we have had a member’s bill for many years now on this issue.

During the Committee stage of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, Labour put up an amendment that would have reduced the blood-alcohol limit. So there was yet another chance for the Government to take up this issue, and Labour tried very hard to help the Government save face on this. But guess what happened? In 2010 the Government voted against that amendment, and it has consistently refused to support members’ bills from members on this side of the House that would have addressed this problem some time ago. Instead, the Government went into this long-winded process of needing to gather evidence. Even going back before that, as I said, the Minister was acknowledging, under Safer Journeys in 2009, that the public wanted change. Everybody knew then, and they know now, that reducing the blood-alcohol content makes a difference. I remember the Minister Steven Joyce saying at the time when he introduced restrictions on cellphone use that this was a no-brainer. I would have thought this was a no-brainer as well in 2009, in 2010, in 2011, and on and on. But what we have had instead is a no-brain response, until Gerry Brownlee came along and suddenly realised that this was an issue that was going to get some traction by Labour because a member’s bill had been drawn.

In fact, I remember very clearly that the then Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, tried it out for himself. He decided, as he was the transport Minister, to drink three-quarters of a bottle of wine and found he was still legally able to drive. He said that that was crazy, and it is crazy. We all know that. If anyone watched a TV3 programme recently—

💬 Sue Moroney: Campbell Live.

It was Campbell Live. You would have seen a larger guy drink 12 bottles of beer, which is a huge amount of alcohol. It is crazy. Steven Joyce said in 2010 that it was crazy, but what happened in between time—

💬 Sue Moroney: It would be good if they told us. It would be good to know.

It would be good to know that. He knew he was incompetent to drive, and he said that the existing settings for legal alcohol limits for drivers were just ridiculous. So here we have had a crazy, just ridiculous situation carry on for 4 years.

The current blood-alcohol limit that we have for adult drivers was set in 1978. It is very clear that society changed its views on drunk-driving and it became less acceptable for people to get into a car when they had had a few drinks. Just in the same way many, many years ago when we introduced seat belts, that was a bit of an outrage at the time but it is completely acceptable now and people are moving on to other safety measures as well, such as having restraints for older children in cars. Society does move on.

But since 1978, and particularly since 2009, so much research has consistently demonstrated the benefits associated with lowering the blood-alcohol concentration limits in saving lives and preventing serious injuries. We also know that many other countries have already done this. In Australia, in New South Wales, they achieved an 8 percent reduction in fatal crashes and a 7 percent reduction in crashes causing serious injury. Queensland achieved an 18 percent reduction in fatal crashes and a 14 percent reduction in serious crashes, and on it goes in Belgium and France. The statistics are there. New Zealand is no different. We knew that this was the case 4 years ago. Why did we need 3 years of research to tell us what everybody knows? This is sensible. It is a sensible measure. We have had the evidence. I am really happy that the Government has finally accepted what is obvious. I look forward very much as a member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to debating this bill.

It is a pleasure to take a call on this bill, the Land Transport Amendment Bill, which the Green Party will certainly be supporting. It is interesting that we have arrived today at a day when there seems to be a consensus across the House about the damage caused by a person with a blood-alcohol concentration of over 50 milligrams driving a motor vehicle. Other members have already talked about some of the parameters of the problem. Thirty percent of crashes are alcohol related and a higher proportion are serious crashes. The Law Commission, in its report, noted that drink-driving fatalities in this country were higher than in other countries. In 2009 there were 138 deaths arising from crashes where alcohol was a factor. New Zealand, as other speakers have noted, has one of the highest blood-alcohol concentration limits in the world, and the current limit has been in place since 1978. Others have mentioned the incredulity of those who test the amount of alcohol that is required to reach that 80 milligram limit. It is between six beers and nine beers for an average adult man and between four and six for the average adult woman over the course of 2 hours in order to reach that 80 milligram limit. I do not know about you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but certainly speaking for myself, if I had been drinking anything like that amount, I would not be safe to drive.

So what about the reform attempts in recent years? Other speakers have referred to those. We had the reduction of the limit recommended by the Law Commission. We then had the Ministry of Transport and its Safer Journeys document recommending a reduction from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams. Interestingly, a previous speaker, David Bennett, spoke about the necessity of reducing the blood-alcohol concentration limit for drivers under the age of 20 to zero as a step towards this goal. Although I commend that and commend that particular measure, I see no reason at all why this measure being introduced today could not have been introduced at the same time, as indeed had been recommended by both the Law Commission and the Ministry of Transport. There is nothing at all about reducing the blood-alcohol concentration limit for drivers under 20 that was necessary to set the stage for this change that we are now proposing and considering. Interestingly, this is another one of those cases where Parliament is lagging well behind public support and public opinion. When expressed as the number of drinks needed to get to the limit, just 2 percent of the public actually support the current blood-alcohol concentration limit—just 2 percent. There is extremely wide-based and strong support for making the change.

Other speakers have already talked about the opportunities to make this change that have been squandered, actually, since 2009. At the time we made the changes to the youth limit, we could have done it. In the Alcohol Reform Bill, which the House considered last time, we could have done it, and the Government chose not to. It is my belief that the Government is moving now to make this change only because Iain Lees-Galloway’s member’s bill was pulled out of the ballot and therefore the Government could no longer avoid the issue being debated on the floor of the House. That is why we are seeing a Government bill on the matter.

When we look at this bill, most of the framing of the drink-driving issue has been around the proposal to lower the limit, effectively extending the category of offending downwards from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams. There has not been much discussion in the public arena, or indeed in specialist circles, around the other aspect that the Government intends to do, which is effectively to introduce a new category of offending with much lower levels of penalty than the existing penalties in the current law. I think that is an interesting point because the argument for lower penalties, for less severe offending, of course, holds true. But even when we consider the current law, above 80 milligrams, there are not graduated penalties above that. There are penalties and it becomes a matter for the discretion of the judge and for the courts to determine what level of penalty is applied. So it is a very curious approach that the Government has taken to effectively introduce an entirely new and much less serious category.

The point of law is to achieve a variety of things. One is to directly protect people from risk of harm as a result of having dangerous drivers on the roads. A second point is to actually impact on the whole range of drink-driving behaviour and reduce the amount of alcohol that the whole range of people consume in relation to driving, bringing benefits right across that spectrum. Then the third benefit is to provide a very direct disincentive to those who might otherwise drink excessively and then drive motor vehicles. The question is whether the lower penalties that the Government intends for people who are consuming to a level that takes their blood-alcohol concentration to between 50 milligrams and 80 milligrams will be sufficient to achieve the disincentive effects that we want and those other benefits of the law change. I am going to be very interested to hear what submitters say to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, because I believe that those penalties will not be adequate to achieve the kind of gain that we want to see.

In the explanatory note of the bill, the Government says: “The analysis indicates that, conservatively, an average of 3.4 fatalities and 64 injuries per year could be saved and that the policy would have a positive net present value of $200 million over 10 years …”, etc., etc. The question for me is that I do not see how those numbers were derived, because, actually, with the lower level of penalties, the disincentives, the shapers of behaviour, that we use currently, above 80 milligrams, will not be the ones we use. So those numbers may, in fact, be an overly optimistic estimate based on the lower level of disincentive that the Government is intending with this bill.

The additional points I am going to be looking for in the submissions are, first of all, whether 50 milligrams is low enough. Why ought we to have any permitted level of blood-alcohol? Certainly, other countries—Sweden and Norway, for example—have, effectively, a zero limit. They have that because they recognise—and it is set out in Safer Journeys—that, actually, at any level of alcohol consumption, judgment and skill are impaired. People become worse drivers, and that means they are more likely to cause crashes, with all of the consequences of fatality and injury to themselves and to others. So why is there any limit at all? Is 50 milligrams low enough?

The other point is that there is another change that has not been discussed so far in this debate, which is that the Government is intending that someone who is found to have more than 50 milligrams but less than 80 milligrams will not be able to seek a blood test. They will get their infringement notice on the basis of the breath test alone. I am going to be very interested to see what submitters have to say to the select committee about that quite significant change. So, with those reservations, I again state that the Green Party will support this bill at its first reading. Thank you.

It is good to see that the Land Transport Amendment Bill is enjoying good support. It is a very important bill. Of course, there have been some comments about delay, as we generally expect when there is support of this nature. The reality is that there have been some significant reforms going on in this space over a number of years now—in the whole alcohol and drugs space. There has certainly been a lot of work and research looking at this particular nexus between the 0.05 and the 0.08 level as it relates to drivers on the road. One thing that we have been able to establish is that there is a relatively small group of people who fall into that category. With all legislation, whether or not it is for matters like this, it is about sending messages but achieving balance in doing so. There is always the risk that the sledgehammer is used to crack the walnut, and there is also the risk that if we do not send stern enough messages, we essentially empower or engage the community to disregard the dangers and the consequences of their actions in matters like this.

One thing that we know is that swiftness and certainty play a very significant role in deterrence. Ultimately, just because there is a limit—and the member Kevin Hague raised a very good point as to why the level should not be zero, as we have with youth—and because someone can drive with an element of alcohol, it does not mean it is a good idea, and it does not mean that they actually have to. It is still up to the individual to make a responsible call about whether it is appropriate in their view. That is where we come back to setting the messages and putting the levers in place to try to get that balance right. One thing is for sure, and that is that 86 percent of the population in New Zealand consumes alcohol, and there is a large number of people who have issues with it. But there are far greater numbers of people who actually do not, and we need to consider them in the mix when we are passing legislation and getting that balance right.

I am looking forward to the discussion on this bill. I think it will be an interesting piece of legislation to work on. I certainly encourage people to make submissions. Thank you.

New Zealand First will support the Land Transport Amendment Bill to go to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. Statistics show that drink-driving in New Zealand is still a very serious problem—61 deaths between 2009 and 2012, plus over 1,000 injuries, are far too many. The Minister of Transport, it seems, has been dragged kicking and screaming to take action on this, and this bill represents minimal action and far too late. It is too little to tackle a major cause behind a majority of road accident deaths and serious injuries, and of long-term emotional or psychological trauma to many more people and their families.

New Zealand First supports the overall thrust of the bill to lower the allowable alcohol content from 80 to 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood when driving, and to reduce the current breath-alcohol limit from 400 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath to 250 micrograms. In the bill, disobedience in respect of these new limits is to be addressed only in the form of infringement offences, on the grounds that they are in the less serious range of offending. The existing limits are therefore to be regarded in the more serious range and are criminal offences with much larger penalties. The lowering of these limits, however, is justified and necessary because there is much evidence and research already available to show enough driver impairment between the proposed limits and the existing limits to warrant this action.

The recent Campbell Live programme, though not a scientific study, was nevertheless a convincing demonstration of how our limits are far too high, and that most people drinking far less than these limits are in fact not capable of driving safely and are likely to harm themselves and others if they do so. The programme showed that although people with higher body mass may be able to drink and drive with close to an 80 milligram blood-alcohol limit without significant impairment, a large proportion of the population—those with less body mass and especially women, and more especially young people—cannot do so safely. Therefore it is clear to me that New Zealand’s alcohol limits in relation to driving are far too high, are out of touch with international best practice, and, indeed, are out of touch with public opinion.

The part of the Campbell Live demonstration, however, that impressed me most was the realisation that the main value of a significantly lower blood-alcohol limit is the fact that it is highly likely to mean that drinkers will start to make decisions much earlier in their drinking sessions about how much they will drink and whether they will drink and drive. Therefore they are likely to make much better decisions. Further, when people go to functions or out to socialise, they are much more likely to make alternative transport arrangements if they know that they will be drinking more than the two to four standard drinks that would take them over the new blood-alcohol limit as proposed in this bill.

The Government has announced that its proposed solution is that an infringement of the new rules prohibiting driving with a blood-alcohol limit of between 51 and 80 milligrams or with a breath-alcohol limit of between 251 and 400 micrograms will not be treated as a criminal offence, which would incur the full force of the law, as for driving with a blood-alcohol limit of over 80 milligrams or a breath-alcohol limit of over 400 micrograms. Instead, the legislation provides only for a small fine of $200 and 50 demerit points. Demerit points may lead to loss of licence to drive for a period, but the $200 fine is nothing more than derisory, and is clearly an inadequate deterrent. Demerit points are often easily disregarded, especially by the young, because they usually do not have an immediate effect. The $200 fine is simply not enough. These new penalties therefore do not reflect the seriousness of the offences; they undermine the seriousness of the offences. They smack of the proverbial slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket. Young people are especially likely to think that they might drink over the new limits without being too worried about the penalty—almost an invitation, in fact, to drink to the criminal limit. The new penalties are unlikely to have the desired result of getting people to make their drinking and driving decisions earlier in their drinking sessions. That should be a primary objective.

The Government has yet again showed the same weakness on alcohol issues as it showed recently with the so-called reforms for the sale of alcohol in New Zealand, which did not reduce the purchase age for alcohol, which took a wimpy approach to opening hours, and which took no action on issues such as those relating to alcopops. Clearly, the Government yielded then to the alcohol industry lobby on that legislation, and this bill, it seems to me, adopts a similar half-pie approach as far as penalties go.

It seems to me that on this important law and order issue the public of New Zealand actually do want stronger action and leadership than what this Government is apparently prepared to take. It is an issue that the public need to give us in this House some guidance on as to how far they want the new rules or legislation to go. For that reason, there needs to be a chance for the public to have their say, and we in New Zealand First want to hear those submissions at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We want to hear what the experts have to say, too, because there has been a lot of research and a lot of evidence gathered, and they can offer a lot. We want the new limits and penalties to reflect public opinion, but we also want the optimum degree of public consensus possible, because in the end what we really need is a culture change towards more sensible drinking habits, especially among young people, so that success in achieving road safety objectives will come more from improved attitudes and practices than from the fear of high penalties, but that does not mean that penalties should be soft. The penalties must reinforce and underpin the process for social change and better drinking habits along, of course, with continued education and promotional efforts.

New Zealand First will support this bill to go to the select committee especially so that submissions from the public can be heard for the reasons I outlined. However, New Zealand First is likely to be seeking higher penalties, also for the reasons that I have outlined, and we are interested in what the public have to say about that. We suspect that the Government’s limp-wristed approach on penalties will not be supported and that the public will show that they want stronger penalties to tackle such a serious problem. I hope that people will make submissions, that they will say what they feel about this, and that the experts will give us the benefit of their expertise as well, and, mostly, I hope that the Government will actually listen to all those people. If, as I suspect, increased penalties are what people want, I hope the Government will heed that and make the changes necessary. So I look forward to the select committee process for those reasons and New Zealand First will support the bill to that stage.

This bill, the Land Transport Amendment Bill, will make our roads safer, while still allowing people to socialise responsibly. We should pass this bill. Thank you.

It is my pleasure to take a call to discuss the Land Transport Amendment Bill, a piece of legislation that many others before me have talked about. The purpose of this bill is to lower the adult legal alcohol limits from 400 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath to 250 micrograms, and from 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood to 50 milligrams; and to enact the civil infringements of $200 fines and 50 demerit points that will be imposed on those who fall between the 50 and 80 milligram levels. I think it is important that we as a House can come to consensus and collective agreement around how it is that we as a society deal with those who choose to get behind the wheel of a car after they have been drinking to a level that makes them a danger not only to themselves but to others who use the road. I think that it is really important that we do not see this issue becoming highly politicised and that we can come to an agreement. So it is a pleasure to be part of a debate where parties are signalling their support for this bill to go to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to hear the submissions, and for finally doing something about lowering even further the number of deaths on our roads caused by alcohol.

As many speakers before me have outlined, this is a piece of legislation that has a long history. It has been a long time in the making. It has been brewing for a while, and my colleagues Iain Lees-Galloway and Darien Fenton pointed to Darren Hughes and his member’s bill that he brought to this House in 2009. It is an interesting history that this piece of legislation that we are standing here and debating today has.

I think the idea that we are debating—whether or not we are going to make a change as legislators in this country that will mean fewer deaths of New Zealanders—is really important. We have the power, with decisions we make in this House, that will mean that fewer New Zealanders will needlessly die on our roads. I think that is the important stuff that drives many of us in this House. Between 2006 and 2008, 30 people were killed in accidents where drivers were known to have a blood-alcohol content of between 0.05 and 0.08. We can treat this as a dry statistic of 30 people, or we can think about the 30 human beings, and the families of those 30 human beings, their friends, and all their networks who were needlessly mourning the loss of a loved one. This is really important stuff and it is important that we crack on with it, because, as others have noted, it has been a long time coming.

I think that it is really important that we go back and revise the blood-alcohol limits that were set in 1978. I remember growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in New Zealand and there being an entirely different attitude to drinking and driving in this country. The concern of many of the adults around me seemed to be whether or not they were going to be caught, not whether or not they posed a danger to themselves or to others who were using the roads. As a student in the 1990s, I was part of the SADD movement—Students Against Drunk Driving—where we signed contracts with our parents. There was a two-way contractual agreement that a parent or a new teenage driver would come and pick up family members if they had consumed too much alcohol. We have seen much societal change that has led to fewer deaths on our roads, but it is my belief that we need to revisit blood-alcohol limits that were concocted in the 1970s, when we did have an entirely different attitude to drink-driving.

In July 2010 Cabinet did make some decisions around what was going to happen with drink-driving, as many speakers have alluded to. There was a lowering of the youth drink-drive limit for drivers under 20 years of age—the blood-alcohol content was lowered. I think that the evidence did point to the fact that many of the deaths and injuries on our roads do happen amongst the lower-aged cohort of people. But there was a perplexing decision to maintain the current adult drink-drive limit at its 1978 level of 0.08 while we went and did some more research. I think that the then Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, had an attitude that is somewhat perplexing to me. In this House, in response to a question from Darren Hughes, the Minister Steven Joyce said: “before lowering the adult blood-alcohol limit the Government would want to ensure that the specific impact on the road toll of drivers with a blood-alcohol concentration of between 0.05 grams and 0.08 grams was known, and that the move had very broad support amongst the driving population of this country.” I am all for consultation, but when it comes to making decisions about where we need to set a safe limit for the amount of alcohol that people are allowed to drink before they get behind the wheel of a car, I think we need to rely on the science and the evidence, and perhaps not on how people feel.

We already had very well-established international evidence. We had well-established New Zealand evidence. We could have made this decision back then in 2010. New Zealand lagged behind the rest of the world, and I do not know whether Steven Joyce really did believe that there was something inherently different about New Zealanders and their physical make-up that meant that their level of blood-alcohol should be substantially different from those in Australia or those in other places that had made moves to lower the blood-alcohol limit.

It is somewhat perplexing that this is a Government that has run roughshod over the will of New Zealand during its 5 years in Government, but on this, the level of blood alcohol, it chooses to go out and see how people feel. It just does not make sense to me.

At the time in 2010, we on this side of the House, the Labour Opposition, offered cross-party support, because we do not believe that this is an issue that should become a political football. We believe that this is an important health issue for New Zealand—an important issue where we can literally save the lives of New Zealanders each year. We offered up that support. We also pointed to what international experts were saying about the New Zealand Government’s and Cabinet’s decision not to proceed with the lowering of the blood-alcohol limit. The UK drug and alcohol expert Professor David Nutt described National’s reluctance to make a decision on this as weak and making no sense. This was how the international expert community felt about how our Government was dealing with a really important issue.

We did not need to go back and do more research; we had research coming out of our ears. The Law Commission’s report on alcohol left no doubt that blood-alcohol limits needed to be lowered. There just simply was not a need to go back, but the Government did. The Government decided to go back, and now we have a report that shows that, indeed, if we had done this, we could have literally saved lives. I say that it is not before time that we see this legislation come before the House. It is a pity that we are not heading into the Christmas season—a period of time that is notorious for road accidents and for drink driving—of 2013 with these lowered levels with which we could literally be saving lives.

But I will not be churlish. It is good to see it going to the select committee. The public do now have a chance to make their views heard. Other members of this House have raised areas where people might want to have a say. They might want to raise questions about whether this is the right limit, as has been alluded to by earlier speakers. They might want to raise questions in their submissions about whether or not the sanctions that this legislation is imposing are appropriate and whether they are the right sanctions. Whatever way, I am very pleased to see this bill progressing through the House, and I really do urge people to have their voices heard in the select committee process and make it clear to this Government and give it a clear message that the time is right now, we cannot delay any further, and we need to get on with this. Thank you.

This bill, the Land Transport Amendment Bill, will lower the legal blood-alcohol limit. That will make our roads safer. I wholeheartedly support this bill.

Five minutes—Carol Beaumont.

It is very interesting to me that very brief calls are being taken on the other side of the House on something that is a very serious matter and something that, in my time in this House, has been traversed on many occasions. Like my colleagues, I stand to support the Land Transport Amendment Bill. It is about time. It is about time we did something about lowering the legal adult alcohol limits.

This is something that is not, as I have said, new. I happened to look back at the Law Commission report Alcohol in our Lives: Curbing the Harm. I sat through many hours of submissions on the legislation that arose from that very important work done by the Law Commission, and I just thought it was worth reminding the House what the Law Commission said. It said: “Drink driving and transport policies—In our Issues Paper we suggested there was a strong case for the blood alcohol limits to be reduced from 80 to 50 mgs of alcohol per 100 mls of blood for all drivers, with zero tolerance for drivers under 20 years of age. We also said consideration should be given to the introduction of alcohol ignition locking devices for all convicted drink drivers. Although we did not seek submissions on these matters,”—and this is the important bit—“but encouraged them to be made directly to the Ministry of Transport as part of the Safer Journeys consultation, we received more than 1,240 transport-related submissions. These were forwarded to the Ministry of Transport for its consideration. Our view is unchanged: like the majority of the submitters, we believe blood alcohol limits must come down.” That was the Law Commission in 2010.

The fact of the matter is that there have been numerous opportunities to do what is being done now. My former colleague Darren Hughes, as others have mentioned, had a member’s bill to deal with this issue because the Government was not brave enough to deal with it at the time and kicked it to touch, instead of dealing with it as part of the alcohol law reform process and then the follow-on to Safer Journeys. Instead of being brave enough to deal with something that actually would have saved lives, as others have said we went for more research. In fact, I can recall listening to discussion in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about how we needed more research on this matter because our roads were different from those in the other countries we were talking about, so therefore we needed this research. We had submitter after submitter and evidence provided around what was done in other jurisdictions, why it was important to make this change, and how the level of impairment between 0.05 and 0.08 increased dramatically. All of that information was there, but no action was taken.

It is important that we have on record here the very real question of why it has taken the Government so long to introduce this bill and how many New Zealanders have died as a result of that inaction. That is a serious matter. Certainly, it is clear that most years, apparently, drink-driving is still the major cause of road accidents in New Zealand, with an average of 61 fatalities, 244 serious injuries, and 761 minor injuries caused by at-fault drivers who have been drinking. The social cost of those injuries and fatalities is $446 million—a huge sum in our country. But that, of course, is just the financial cost; the emotional cost to the individuals who are seriously injured and to the families of people who are killed or seriously injured is just phenomenal. It is a huge issue, and the fact that it has taken so long I do think is very, very serious.

We will be looking closely at the penalty regime that is put up in this Land Transport Amendment Bill. We are not convinced that the suggestions around a different regime for those who have blood-alcohol levels between 0.05 and 0.08 are right, but we will be carefully scrutinising submissions on that matter. Thank you.

Gareth Hughes—10 minutes.

💬 Gareth Hughes: Ten minutes? Five.

Sorry, 5 minutes. Testing.

Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support the Land Transport Amendment Bill 2013. I want to start off by just acknowledging the families and friends of victims of alcohol-induced road deaths on New Zealand streets and roads. For these people, this is not academic and this is not politics; this is about a loved one whom they have lost, so I want to acknowledge the heartbreak. We know there have been hundreds of whānau affected by alcohol on our roads, and what the Green Party wants to see is fewer Kiwis dying needlessly, because we have got rules in place to protect other drivers and other passengers on the road, to make better decisions, and to keep us safe on the roads.

We support this bill. We think it is a good step forward to see the blood-alcohol levels reducing through this legislation. Obviously, we can rehash all the old political debates of a few years ago, but what we did see was a tremendous missed opportunity 2 years ago, where a confluence of factors—official advice, the Law Commission, public campaigns by the media, public opinion polling—turned in the direction of lower blood-alcohol levels. This side of Parliament very clearly called for it. We did not take that opportunity, but it is good we are finally doing it now.

What we are seeing is some changes from that, such as the effectively zero blood-alcohol rate for under-20-year-olds and alcohol interlocks. They are some progressive steps, but we need to go further and align our entire blood-alcohol levels at that 0.05 level.

What this bill basically does is reduce from 400 micrograms to 250 micrograms and from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams the blood-alcohol breath and blood tests, respectively. We support that. We support the 0.05 blood-alcohol concentration, as it is called, because it is the World Health Organization recommendation. I understand that around 23 other OECD States have a similar regime. This is the norm internationally. When you look at the data—we have had the debate around whether the data is sufficient or not—we have seen 300 international reports calling for this, and this is something the Green Party has been calling for for a while.

What I would like to question, and we welcome the approach of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, are the official statistics that the New Zealand Transport Agency has put out around this that are contained in the legislation. It says we are going to see around 3.4 fewer fatalities a year and a net benefit of around $200 million a year. This is significantly lower than the agency was estimating only a few years ago, if I recall correctly, in the Safer Journeys document, which talked about fatality savings of 15 to 33 per annum from reducing from 0.08 to 0.05. So we will look at that in detail at the select committee.

We note that the benefit-cost ratio of this law is around 10:1—considerably higher than the motorways the Government is ramming through our Parliament. There we see independent reports saying that there is a benefit-cost ratio of 0.4 for the motorways. In other words, you are throwing 66c away for every dollar the Government is borrowing off the taxpayer to invest in them. I guess we would also like to make the point that when it comes to saving lives on the roads, sometimes think-big - style motorways that cost billions to borrow to build are not the best solution. There are cost-effective solutions we could be doing right now across Northland’s roads, Waikato’s roads, and the roads in the Coromandel if we were not spending so much money on some of these mega, white elephant projects—solutions such as better walking and cycling, median strips, and the like.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: That’s the way to get freight to the market, eh—cycling.

Cycling? We know that it is a lot safer to cycle, Mr Williamson, and the benefit-cost ratio there is in the order of 20-30:1, not the less than 0.5:1 that as we see for the Government’s motorways.

We would also like to question in the select committee the penalties. We note that these are extraordinarily low. The fine for breaching the new civil—not criminal—infringement period is $200 and 50 demerit points. That is quite a lot lower than the current civil penalty, so will it be a disincentive? We would also like to question why no evidential blood test is required, and also, given that the Attorney-General has called the bill inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, what the good rationale for it is. As it is presented, it is simply a cost-saving measure, which he rightly points out could actually cost more in the long term if we see more legal cases.

But, ultimately, what we need to get to the bottom of is our alcohol problem in this country: why Kiwis are even contemplating having a few drinks and driving unsafely. We need to have more alcohol treatment for the 30,000 people who are detained for alcohol offences while driving. Only 5 percent got alcohol treatment, according to the latest data I have seen, despite the $4 billion social cost. It is high time that New Zealand dealt with our cultural alcohol problems and that we support safer roads. Kia ora.

I will take just a short call on this bill, the Land Transport Amendment Bill, mainly in retort to a couple of the thoughts expressed. From the Green Party it does sound like the key around stopping drink-driving is to ban roads. Maybe that is a step forward. We hear from the Labour Party members that they had an epiphany around drink-driving one day, after 9 years in Government. And we hear from New Zealand First—

💬 Hon Annette King: That’s rubbish—total rubbish, and you know it.

Oh, yes, we have excited them. We have excited them now. We have livened them up.

We are pleased that this bill has the widespread support of the House. We are looking forward to working with David Bennett in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and in the House. Thank you.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.