Land Transport Amendment Bill

It is superb to see the Land Transport Amendment Bill back in the Chamber. It does not seem like an awfully long time since we were debating the first reading, so I want to congratulate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on an expedient approach to this piece of legislation. I see the chair of select committee, David Bennett, is in the Chamber this afternoon. I want to congratulate Mr Bennett and his team on the select committee on making sure that the passage of this legislation was not held up at the select committee.

I was not a member of the select committee. I am speaking, I guess, because I actually had a bill that did something very similar to this legislation drawn from the ballot. It is nice to know that it is possible to have some influence over legislation from Opposition. There are not many opportunities in the New Zealand Parliament for Opposition members to get legislation through the House. It has happened to me twice now where I have had a bill drawn from the ballot and automatically—instantly—the Government suddenly took an interest in that issue and introduced legislation of its own.

I have to say, given how quickly this legislation has moved through its first reading, through the select committee, through its second reading, and now into the Committee stage, that it boggles my mind as to why it took so long to introduce the legislation in the first place, because Labour actually had a member’s bill in the ballot for close to 2 years before the Government finally acted. It acted only when that bill came out of the ballot. That is despite the fact that the evidence, both internationally and domestically, was incredibly strong that reducing the drink-drive limit from 0.08 grams to 0.05 grams would have a marked impact on our road toll.

Although the Government has finally relented to the overwhelming evidence and it has finally realised that actually the public is on side with this as well—I mean, it is not often that you get such a perfect alignment of both the evidence and public opinion—I think the Government is underselling this. In fact, Gerry Brownlee, the Minister in charge of this bill, basically said that he does not think it is going to make all that much difference. But he has not looked at the wider issues around the cultural impact of reducing the drink-drive limit. I think we are actually already seeing this. I have to say that from experience people are already much more aware of what is an appropriate amount of alcohol to consume before you get behind the wheel. I think a lot of people have probably adjusted downwards the amount of alcohol that they would consume before they get behind the wheel because of the debate that has gone on around this issue and because of television programmes like, I think, both Seven Sharp and Campbell Live, which both ran little experiments. They were not the most scientific experiments I have ever seen, but they demonstrated just how much alcohol someone could consume and still legally get behind the wheel at the current limit of 0.08 grams.

So that debate in itself I think has already made our roads safer. But what, of course, everybody has been desperately waiting for is the legislation to actually pass. It amazes me, given the pace with which the bill is now moving through the House, that National took so long to see fit to actually get on with this, and then it was only because the Opposition was actually in a position where it was going to get legislation of its own through, because, of course, there was a majority. I had secured a majority of support for our member’s bill. It would have passed its first reading and it would have been able to progress through the House just as quickly as this one. The only difference is that it was an Opposition bill and the Government could not possibly have the Opposition get legislation through, especially when it was so obvious that the Government had been sitting on its hands for so long.

Having said all that, of course we are very, very pleased to see that this legislation is now making good progress. What the bill does, of course, is address the problem of legal drunken driving, because that is what we have got right now. It is legal to be drunk—under any medical definition of intoxication—and still be behind the wheel. That is how high our alcohol limit is right now. So it removes that ability to be drunk behind the wheel legally, and it brings us in line with the vast majority of Western nations around the world. This is not something new. We have actually dragged the chain on this one for far too long, and all we are really doing is bringing ourselves, as a nation, in line with international best practice.

There was some debate—and this is where Labour’s bill and the Government bill did differ—and that was about whether being between 0.05 and 0.08 grams should be a criminal offence. Under Labour’s bill, we simply planned to reduce the limit and make it a criminal offence to be over 0.05 grams just as it is right now to be over 0.08 grams. The Government has introduced a system whereby being between the new limit and the old limit is essentially an infringement offence carrying a fee of $200 and 50 demerit points. I would be interested to hear from members who do sit on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee what the evidence was that they heard around that, because I have not seen strong evidence one way or the other, to be honest with you. I am open to hearing whether there is strong evidence one way or the other as to whether it would be better for it to be a criminal offence to be over 0.05 grams or whether it is better to have an infringement offence between 0.05 and 0.08.

I can see what the Government is trying to achieve here. It is a method of ensuring that more people do not end up in the courts—although, to be perfectly honest with you, I think people are smart, and they will adjust to the new limit. You will not see more people in the courts, because they will understand what the new law is and will change their behaviour accordingly. But that is what the Government is trying to achieve. I guess, given that the Government will have a majority for its view and the way it has drafted this legislation, that this is the way it is going to go through, and we will have to see whether it has a significant impact on drink-driving and whether it has a significant impact on the road toll or not.

This is something that I think we ought to review after a period of time, in order to see whether the original intention of having it as just one limit with a criminal offence of being over 0.05 grams would be more effective. There are different regimes around the world and that is why I would be interested actually to hear what the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee heard. Did it hear about the different regimes around the world, the different approaches, and how impactful each of those has been? I think that would be useful information for the Committee as we consider this legislation. But overall we do support this legislation, because it is very, very similar to what we were trying to achieve.

The Government has also sought to deal with another very, very tricky situation that I know a National Party member attempted to deal with through a member’s bill, and that is the issue of what happens if someone refuses to give blood. I have to say that reading through the legislation as it has now been drafted it still looks like a very tricky and challenging issue. I think this legislation looks as messy as the member’s bill did. Again, I would be interested to hear what the official advice was on how impactful the changes around that are going to be, because there certainly are issues with the presumption of innocence. There are issues with the circumstances under which someone might not be able to give blood, and it appears that there are some exemptions built into the legislation as it has come back from the select committee that could prove to be very difficult to enforce in real terms. As we start this Committee stage, those are the issues that I would be interested in hearing from other members about, interested in exploring, but it is fair to say that in general Labour absolutely supports this legislation because it is something that should have been done years ago, and if the Government had had its wits about it, it would have tackled this issue a long time ago.

I would like to pick up on a couple of the points made by Iain Lees-Galloway and on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee’s deliberation on a couple of pertinent points that I think he is right to highlight. Firstly, in terms of the 0.05 to 0.08 and whether that should be a criminal offence or an offence essentially punishable with an infringement notice, there were some interesting reports provided to the committee.

One point that particularly stuck in my mind was from someone who had had a number of drink-driving convictions. What was quite apparent from him and from his understanding of friends and colleagues is that the general perception out there is that the penalty in itself was far less of a determiner for whether or not they made a decision to drink and drive; it was actually the likelihood of being caught and the fact that there would be a swift and certain consequence to that particular activity. So his strong view was that lowering the limit to 0.05 in actual fact sent a message and put a very big question mark very quickly in the mind of the person who would drink and then go on to drive that if they did, there was far more likely to be a consequence.

I think the important thing to note there, from someone who had committed a number of offences—and the penalties for drink-driving are certainly not insignificant, certainly for repeat drink-driving—is his view that as soon as that limit came down, it changed the game altogether, because it was not a question of “Can I have a few and get away with it?”. It basically sent a message that drinking at all would likely result in a consequence and that the risks outweighed the reward in that sense.

I think it was also important to note that the police raised a very good point around the amount of time that officers are required to be tied up dealing with an instance of excess breath-alcohol that may go on to be one of excess blood-alcohol, and what have you. The process itself can be anything from half an hour to a number of hours, depending on whether the police officers are in a rural situation and how far through the process they actually go—through to a full arrest or the like.

So the ability for the police to be out on the road obviously gives them a greater deterrent impact. What was clear from the conversations with police and other submitters during the passage of the submissions to the bill was that the police are much more effective not when they are sitting in a booze bus but when they are actually out on the street providing a visual deterrent. Having an infringement notice component to the legislation between 0.05 and 0.08 actually speeds up the process significantly.

What was also clear is that it is not the fact that someone may get some hefty fine or even imprisonment that was the great determiner; swiftness, certainty, and the likelihood that there would be a consequence were far more of a determiner about the behaviours and activities. Actually, if we look across other areas of criminal offending, that is common across many other facets, not just with drink-driving. The challenge, of course, that you are dealing with when you are talking about alcohol is that you are talking about a mind-altering substance. So as soon as someone takes it, the very first part of their function, if you like, that is altered is their ability to make judgments. So one thing that is certain is that this legislation provides an opportunity to say “Before you even start drinking, be aware that even a couple of beers or a couple of wines could put you in a position where there could very likely be a consequence.” Having a greater number of police being able to be out on the street, by virtue of the fact that they can turn over the notices much quicker, adds to that.

Just very quickly, in terms of the point that the member made about the presumption of innocence around blood, what came through very clearly, and certainly in other jurisdictions, was that when the consequence of the behaviour was insignificant in terms of it being a criminal offence or a fine, it outweighed the need for there to be an exceptionally high standard of evidentiary proof required at that point. I am happy to leave it there.

New Zealand First supports tougher measures to curb the worst cases of drink-driving, but the Land Transport Amendment Bill is badly targeted and is aimed at the drink-drivers who do the least harm. The bill would lower the allowable breath-alcohol content from 400 micrograms to 250 micrograms and would reduce the current blood-alcohol limit from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams. Disobeying these new limits is to be addressed only in the form of infringement notices, on the grounds that they are in the less serious range of offending. That really is the issue here, because the people in this range, between the existing threshold and the new one proposed in this bill, are not the people who cause most of the deaths and injuries on New Zealand roads. So targeting these people is not likely to have the desired effect of reducing the death and injury rate on our roads to any great extent.

The lower infringement limits, as proposed in this bill, may, in fact, have an unintended perverse effect, because there will be some people who will convince themselves that drinking to between an estimated blood-alcohol range of 50 milligrams to 80 milligrams, or between 250 micrograms to 400 micrograms per litre of breath, when driving is an acceptable risk because it is only an infringement offence for which a small fine and a few demerit points are incurred if caught.

Although there is evidence and research that shows there is driver impairment between the proposed limits and the existing limits, there is very little convincing evidence that most people are likely to harm themselves or others if they do so. Therefore, it is clear to us in New Zealand First that New Zealand’s existing alcohol limits in relation to driving are unlikely to be too high, and lowering them would be unlikely to be effective. That is also the position taken by the UK Government, I understand, and its drink-driving regime works well, probably because its penalties are higher. We in New Zealand First believe that a better long-term effect could be achieved, firstly, by increasing penalties for offending against the existing alcohol limits of 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood and 400 micrograms per litre of breath. That is why we have adopted this policy.

Secondly, we want people to clearly understand that the policy of being caught is actually a probability, by having more police on the road and more random breath tests. In that respect I would have to completely disagree with the previous speaker, Mike Sabin, who felt that there were sufficient police on the road and that sufficient was being done as far as breath testing was concerned. We in New Zealand First do not believe that that is the case and, therefore, people still think that they can get away with it. The new proposed penalties do not reflect the seriousness of the offence. The proposed breath-alcohol limit will not be a criminal offence incurring the full force of the law but would instead provide for only a small fine of $200 and 50 demerit points, and between 50 and 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, it is $500 and 50 demerit points. Demerit points may eventually lead to a loss of licence, but that is something in the future for most people and does not have much of an immediate effect, and the fines at that level are clearly derisory and are definitely not an adequate deterrent.

The public actually does want stronger action and leadership on drink-driving than this Government is apparently prepared to take. New Zealand First wants penalties to reflect public opinion. Looking at the Land Transport Act, I see that for a first conviction, the penalty is up to only 3 months’ imprisonment or a $4,500 fine. We think that it should be up to at least 6 months’ imprisonment or a fine not exceeding $6,000 for a first conviction. That is the scale of penalty that we think would actually make a difference. So the public does want to see a tougher set of actions taken, but this bill does not fit that prescription.

In the end what we really need, of course, is a change in the drinking culture towards having a more sensible culture in terms of drinking habits, especially among young people. To that effect, New Zealand First has recently also proposed a policy that says, especially to young people, that if people are found so drunk in a public place or while trespassing on private property that they are likely to be a danger to themselves or to others, then they are committing an offence and would suffer a significant fine or period of imprisonment. That is the sort of provision that we in New Zealand First think will help change the drink culture—and, therefore, the drink-driving culture—in New Zealand. This bill is not enough. It is wimpy. It is weak. For a Government that says that it is going to get tough on crime, this bill goes totally in the other direction and is not what the public would see as being anywhere near adequate as a measure to try to reduce the road toll from drink-driving in New Zealand.

The penalties must reinforce and underpin the fact that drink-driving is a serious offence. It must never be seen to be something that you can do and then just get a small fine or a few demerit points for it. That is going to have the wrong effect in people’s minds. So for that reason, above all, New Zealand First opposes this bill. It is wimpy, it is weak, it is soft on law and order, and it is not where New Zealand First wants to go.

To summarise, New Zealand First will vote against the bill because we want to see better detection of drink-driving, with more police on the road and more breath testing being carried out, so that people will know that their chances of getting away with it are too slim to try it. That is what would be effective. And we want to target the offenders who do real harm. Those are the people who drink at a rate of over 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood. We want those people to suffer much tougher penalties so that it will be a genuine deterrent. We will be voting against this bill.

I am very pleased to take a call in the Committee stage of the Land Transport Amendment Bill. As I said in the second reading, this bill has been a long time coming. It might not be perfect. It might not be perfect and it might not be as tough as New Zealand First would like, but, actually, it is progress. It is progress because we have been waiting and we have been agitating—and so have the public—since 2009 for this change to happen.

I want to start my contribution to the Committee stage by congratulating the members of the Labour Party, Darren Hughes and Iain Lees-Galloway, who put forward this bill way back in 2009 and were calling for this change not only as a member’s bill. It was drawn by the ballot in Iain Lees-Galloway’s name, but we were calling for this change in many a land transport bill that came before this Parliament. We put forward amendment after amendment and the Government voted them down.

I also want to congratulate the New Zealand public, because in the end it is the New Zealand public who have put the pressure on the Government to do something about this issue. Indeed, they have been saying this as well since around 2010, when the Herald on Sunday ran a campaign asking the New Zealand public whether they believed that the blood-alcohol content should be reduced. There was overwhelming support in the Herald on Sunday campaign and in the polls that followed. It ran a campaign during that time to get New Zealanders to pledge to drink two drinks as a maximum, and it was a very successful campaign. So I agree with my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway.

As I came into the Chamber I heard him talking about cultural change, and I think that that campaign and Labour’s work over many, many years has actually contributed to a point where the public now accept that the current blood-alcohol limits are, quite frankly, ridiculous. Actually, the public have been saying for some time now that we should be doing what many other countries do. Surely, we would want to be saving the, what is it, three lives a year that have been lost because of this—three lives a year since 2009—

💬 Carol Beaumont: Not to mention the injuries.

—not to mention the injuries and the terrible costs. So although I accept that some members in this Parliament do not think this bill is tough enough and that we should be tougher on this issue, I am just at the point now where, because it has taken so long to get to the point where we can pass a bill that will have some sanctions with the lower adult legal alcohol limits so that people will drink less than the current limits, I am really pleased to see this change in Parliament, after many, many years of having all of the various experts advising that this was a measure that New Zealand could take easily enough. We should have done it a long time ago.

In 2010 the Government kicked it for touch. It said: “Oh, we don’t have New Zealand studies on this issue.”, even though there was a truckload of information from overseas. There are many international studies about the benefits of lowering the blood-alcohol content to 0.05. But, anyway, we had the Government—I have to say, I hate to say it—kicking it for touch. I will not say what I was going to say, but the Government kicked it for touch because it did not want to take on this issue publicly, even though the New Zealand public were calling for it. So we waited, from 2010 to 2014—4 years of people dying; at least three people a year dying because of the Government’s failure to implement this bill.

Of course, the other thing about this bill that is very interesting, if you go back in history a wee bit, is that I remember Steven Joyce drinking very enthusiastically—how much did he drink?

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Three-quarters of a bottle.

He drank three-quarters of a bottle. He said: “Quite frankly, this is a no-brainer. We should fix this.” He said that. Then we had TV programmes showing people drinking 12 beers to reach the 0.08 level—12 beers—and currently they are entitled to get into a car.

As I said, we are just at the point where, although the bill may not be perfect and we might like to have some other debate around the penalty system, and we would have liked quite a lot more time to deal with some of the amendments that came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, we just want to see this bill implemented. That is why I said in my second reading speech that we are here to cooperate with getting this through because it is a step forward and it has taken long enough.

There are a number of amendments to Part 1 that caused quite a lot of discussion in the select committee, which, as my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said, I think will cause problems in the future. These are around giving a blood specimen. Clause 6 had introduced a change. It was a presumption that a driver had refused to permit a blood specimen to be taken if blood had been required on a previous occasion but he or she was medically or physically unable to provide it. That was a presumption that the driver had refused to give a blood specimen. Indeed we did deal in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee with this very issue in another member’s bill in the name of Scott Simpson. It is a very, very difficult issue. However, there have been some amendments to clause 6.

We had a lot of debate also about clause 7, which is about paying the costs of the blood test. Even if you have a blood test and are found not to be over the limit, you still have to pay the cost of the blood test. The next tricky part of it will be recovering the cost of the blood test from those who do not pay it. So we are going to have Baycorp knocking on the doors of a few people, trying to recover $700 because they have not paid their bill for having a blood test. We had a lot of advice around this and there were warnings about the legal issues that will arise from this. We predict that this will become problematic and that in the next Parliament you will see another Government—it will not be the current one—coming back and having to amend this bill. Perhaps that is not a bad thing really, because it will give us the opportunity to have another look at this bill and see whether it is working.

I support the idea of perhaps having a review after a certain period of time and seeing whether there are other things we could do. We all know that things like the alcohol-free limit for under-20s—zero alcohol for under-20s—has been very successful. Again, that is about changing the culture so that people do not get in a car and think: “Oh well. I’ve only had nine glasses of wine, so I’m not over the limit yet.”, even though they are dangerous and are dangerous on our roads. I think it will lead to a lot more responsible driving on the roads. In fact, over time I think this will lead us to the point in the future where we are able to introduce a zero alcohol limit when driving on our roads.

We all know how long culture change takes. I am old enough to remember when seatbelts were introduced. What an uproar there was about that, at the time. People thought that was nanny State and it could not happen and why did they need a seatbelt and it was just appalling. But the fact of the matter is that that measure ended up saving lives, and still does to this day. I think this bill, over time, will change the culture in a way that we have gradually seen with drink-driving over recent years.

I think there are some issues, as I said, in Part 1 that we are going to have to have another look at. It is disappointing that we are having to get this bill through at the last minute, but, as I said, we support the bill. It would be good if we could have done it way back in 2009 when it was first mooted by Labour.

Just to follow on from Darien Fenton, it has to be noted, I think, that the Land Transport Amendment Bill is squeaking through in the last gasp of this parliamentary term. It has been sitting around in this House—going back to the issues being on the Table of this House—since 2009. Although we support this bill, we regret that it has taken so long to progress. If we are going to speak plainly about this, I think we have to acknowledge that the root of the problem, which has held the bill up for so long, is Steven Joyce’s unwillingness to risk being perceived as nanny State. That is basically what it is. In Steven Joyce’s own words, it is the optics. He was so concerned about any public perception that this bill would be perceived as nanny State, as too much of an intrusion on people’s rights to drink and drive, that he was willing to ignore official advice that this bill, these provisions, would save, on average, 3.4 lives per year—3.4 fatalities.

That is the advice. That is the social cost—the injuries and fatalities caused by people who have been driving over or within the legal blood-alcohol limit, from 80 to 50 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, for drivers over 20. That is the social cost. There were 61 fatalities, 244 serious injuries, and 761 minor injuries every year, caused by drivers at fault who had been drinking. The social cost of these injuries and fatalities is $446 million. The provisions in this bill alone would save, according to the projections that have been made, 3.4 lives on average, 64 injury-causing crashes, and save $200 million in social costs over the 10 years. That is the cost. That is the cost of delaying this legislation at least 4 years. We find that regrettable.

I note that there is another echo of the same dynamic at work with the proposal that was made by Ministry of Transport officials about 3 years ago to make marine lifejackets mandatory for recreational boaties, after a string of appalling drownings, including a whole family on Manukau Harbour about 3 years ago. The transport Minister told the officials to withdraw that material, that advice, and those recommendations to make lifejackets mandatory for recreational boaties and remove them from the paper that went to Cabinet. That advice included the view that making lifejackets mandatory would save 10 to 12 lives a year.

We support this bill. It is long overdue. As previous speakers have said, this will simply bring us up to speed with other jurisdictions that we often compare ourselves with. I want to come to the point that a couple of other speakers have referred to, and that is the decision made by the Government to basically make it a civil offence instead of a criminal offence. Mike Sabin, in his comments, seemed to be making the argument that making the blood-alcohol infringements that fall between the 80 and 50 milligrams a civil offence would somehow provide greater certainty and speed of consequence, and that it would therefore act as a deterrent. It does not seem like a very compelling argument to me that someone drinking in a bar and contemplating driving home after a few drinks is going to think that because it is a civil offence and not a criminal offence it is acting as more of a deterrent. I do not find that argument very convincing. I did not serve on the select committee, so if the Minister in the chair or others who served on the committee who heard the evidence would like to explain further, I would certainly be keen to hear that explanation.

I think that one of the other interesting clauses in the bill is clause 13, which deals with the power of an enforcement officer to immobilise a vehicle in certain circumstances. I thought that was worth pointing out. Currently an enforcement officer may immobilise a vehicle, or basically forbid the person to drive, if the result of an evidential breath test indicates that they are over the 400 micrograms. This bill essentially broadens that out and says that there only has to be an evidential breath test that is positive and the officer has the right to either forbid them to drive or to immobilise the vehicle. I will leave it there. We support this bill but we regret that it has taken so long to get to this stage.

I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question that the question be now put.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I just wonder whether you could perhaps give the Green Party the opportunity to check and make sure its votes are accurate. This is a closure motion. This is not the substantive vote.

I thank you for that. I am sure that the Green Party understands where we are at.