Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill

I move, That the Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill be now read a third time. Councils and other road-controlling authorities were always meant to have powers to set speed limit by-laws. This bill makes these requirements clear. This bill clarifies the power of local councils and other road-controlling authorities such as the New Zealand Transport Agency to set speed limit by-laws. In the interests of removing doubt and providing clarity, this bill validates all speed limit by-laws and confirms that they were made correctly under either the local government legislation or the land transport legislation. This also removes any concern about the validity of any enforcement action taken concerning speed limits. The bill will remove any ambiguity and amend the Land Transport Act 1998 so that there is a clear power for all road-controlling authorities to make a speed limit by-law under this Act.

The bill will make it clear for all road-controlling authorities, including territorial authorities, that in future speed limit by-laws will be made under the Land Transport Act 1998. We intend no change to the current need for councils to use the Local Government Act 2002 public consultation requirements. The Government will review those requirements in time, and if any change to that aspect is required, then that issue will be brought back to the House.

The Government sees a continuing role for road-controlling authorities, especially councils, in determining and setting speed limits. This bill confirms this, and also confirms councils’ responsibilities to continue making local decisions about speed limits, which includes consultation with their own communities. Swift action is required to ensure that there is no confusion over the validity of speed limits, and that road-controlling authorities such as councils were always meant to have clear powers to set speed limits. I commend the bill to the House.

If there was ever any evidence needed that the process of pushing legislation through under urgency is flawed, it was in that speech from the Minister Simon Bridges—and the limits of this rushed and truncated process. It does strike trepidation into the hearts of the members of this House.

Having said that, we on the Labour benches are supporting the passage of this bill, for the reason that is laid out, I think, very clearly, in the departmental disclosure statement, which explains that consultation on the issues and solutions to do with this bill have been restricted to central government officials, departments, and the New Zealand Transport Agency because of—and I suppose this is the essence of the justification for this validating legislation going through under urgency this afternoon—the potential public safety risks from motorists deliberately disregarding speed limits on the basis that they may be invalid, should the issue become widely known. If urgent parliamentary action is not taken on the matter, it could take months for a road-controlling authority to correct speed limit by-laws. This would be due to the need to advertise and consult on any new by-laws, using the Local Government Act 2002 consultative requirements.

So there you have it. The House is between a rock and a hard place. Because of confusion over the legislative authorities that the councils would use, going back a number of years now, to create the by-laws for the setting of speed limits, we have got ourselves into a real mess. It was only because the Kāpiti Coast District Council realised that its by-laws were invalid, because it had failed to follow the prescription—it had passed these by-laws under the Local Government Act 2002—and it had failed to observe the requirements in that Act that it should review by-laws after 5 years and subsequently after every 10 years. The Kāpiti Coast District Council realised that its by-laws were technically invalid—or just invalid, I should say—calling into question the validity of, I am sure, thousands of speeding infringements, and the officials—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. This debate is interrupted and I shall resume the Chair at 7.30 p.m.

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

Mr Assistant Speaker—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Where are all the National women?

There does seem to be a bit of a groundswell of members asking: “Where are the National women?”. Jacqui Dean has saved the day by joining us.

I just wanted to reiterate one of the things that is most interesting in the departmental disclosure statement that I began to touch on before the dinner break, and that is really the reason why in the House today we are supporting the passage of this bill in spite of the distaste that I think everybody shares for retrospective legislation, and in spite of the rushed, truncated process that we fear may lead to further errors being made that will require consequent future validating bills to come back to the House.

The nub of it is that there is a potential public safety risk from motorists deliberately disregarding speed limits on the basis that they may be invalid, in the event that this issue was to become publicly known about. That is why this bill has to be dealt with under urgency. If it was not, it could take months under the existing legislative powers for local authorities to pass new by-laws because of the need under the Local Government Act 2002 to consult and to advertise.

The final point I wanted to make in this debate is really to ask the Government members present for this debate whether or not they have given consideration—and I would welcome the Minister making a contribution to answer this, in this third reading debate—and whether or not the Minister has considered the communications to councils, because it is quite possible that somewhere around New Zealand some council may have a meeting tomorrow or in the next day or two, at which their officers could recommend after a 12-month process that the council formally adopt new by-laws providing for new speed limits in their area. But if it is following the process that many councils have been for the last few years, it could simply repeat the error that the Minister thinks that possibly up to 25 territorial local authorities have committed that has got them into this mess.

My understanding is that this bill will get its Royal assent, if not tonight, then tomorrow.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: Tonight.

Tonight? The bill will get Royal assent today. The fastest lawmaking in the West pretty much, all in one afternoon, and it will have the force of law before the clock strikes midnight, before the cock crows.

Unless the Minister has communicated with councils around the country in the last few hours, there is the possibility that some of them may compound the error. I would like to know whether or not the Minister has thought of that and whether or not this bill and its intent and its consequences have been communicated to councils around the country.

Just to wrap up, mistakes happen, and in this case mistakes compound upon mistakes because of a lack of clarity in the legislation over a considerable number of years. As many as 25 territorial local authorities have got themselves into a real mess. That may well have resulted in tens of thousands of traffic infringements being rendered invalid because those councils did not follow the prescribed processes in the Local Government Act that would have required them to review their by-laws. It is a very significant problem for public safety and for the safety of people on the streets in terms of the importance of speed limits on the roads. It really has potential reputational damage for our police, who are charged with the responsibility of implementing road safety and enforcing those speed limits. With some reluctance, Labour will be supporting this validating legislation.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak, and thank you for the very magnanimous support from members on the other side of the House for the Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill. Indeed, it is something that we need to take through the House in a timely and a speedy way, can I say, even though it is to do with speed limits, because, as the previous speaker, Phil Twyford, said, this is an aspect around safety, around certainty, and around the setting of by-laws by the regional councils or the road-controlling authorities.

We understand—in a few closing remarks—that in May 2015 the Kāpiti Coast District Council advised the New Zealand Police that its speed limit by-law appeared to have been inadvertently revoked in 2012 under the Local Government Act 2002. I am very sure that, as we have seen on the news tonight and will see in newspapers tomorrow, every district council in the country will have heard about this piece of legislation. I am sure that we are going to see some very strong attempts to not have this situation occur again. For the sake of timeliness, I am very happy now to stand and support this piece of legislation. Thank you.

I rise to speak on, already, the third reading of the Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill. I wish to again repeat Labour’s support for this legislation, even though it has been done in urgency. It is not often that we agree with the Government’s rushing legislation through, but in this instance we do believe that it is warranted. That is because if we boil this down to its core root, without all the technicalities involved this is about the health and safety of our community. Of course we would want to make sure that the rules and regulations that local authorities quite rightly put in around speed limits be adhered to, because the reason those speed limits are put in place at the beginning is to keep people safe in our community. I particularly want to ensure that the speed limits that local authorities put in place around schools, early childhood education facilities, and the places where our young children are prevalent are speed limits that people do adhere to.

We are here to fix up some potential technicalities. I guess my one criticism of this process and this bill would be that although we are doing it retrospectively and we are doing it with great haste, and as I have said there is a legitimate reason for that, it is a little odd that we have a bill that is drafted that says that, actually, there might not even be a problem, but just in case there is we are going to pass this legislation. I would rather be satisfied that there was a problem that needed fixing up. The way this bill is drafted—in fact, the purpose clause says that it is there just to “remove any doubt about the validity of speed limits”, rather than being quite assertive in saying that there is a problem, there is a loophole that needs to be fixed, and here is Parliament’s solution to it. None the less, Labour is pleased to support this bill.

It would be remiss of me not to take the opportunity, while debating legislation that keeps people safe on our roads going through in urgency, to point out the many other situations that we would really want this Government to urgently deal with that would improve road safety and the safety of our communities as well. The one that is very dear to my heart—gosh, people might be surprised that they may not have heard me speak on it for, oh, probably the best part of a month, I think—is establishing a commuter train service between Hamilton and Auckland.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of this debate.

Well, Mr Assistant Speaker—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No. It is not part of this debate.

The Government does not want to hear about it. But regarding keeping people safe on our road, there are other urgent matters that I believe our Government ought to attend to, and that commuter train service is just one of those.

There are, potentially, loopholes. We on this side of the House do not want people to get the impression that there is a technicality and that that makes it OK for them to speed in their communities. That clearly is not right. We want the rule of law to be observed. There may have been some situations where local bodies, local authorities, have found themselves in the situation where their by-laws may have inadvertently become—well, I would not say they are unlawful, but they might not stand up in a court of law if they were contested. When it comes to the safety of our community, we cannot be having that, and so Labour is here to support the transition of this bill.

We hope, though, that the Government has listened carefully to what we have said in the Committee stage. There was no select committee process for this bill, and so there was no ability to really influence the wording in the bill. My colleagues Phil Twyford and David Parker, amongst others, were at pains to point out some wording changes that they thought could have improved the bill, and it is disappointing that the Minister of Transport did not use his ministerial discretion to attend to those matters. I sincerely hope that we are not back here again any time soon to fix this legislation up again as a result of that inattention to detail.

So it is a bill that we would rather not be here spending time debating. It is, none the less, important that we get this right and that we do it swiftly. This is probably one of the better uses of urgency that I have seen in this term of this Government.

Bill read a third time.