Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Transport: I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

The aim of this bill is to establish a new roadside, random oral fluid testing regime to deter people from driving after consuming impairing drugs, and at this second reading debate, I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the work of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for their work on the bill. I also want to extend thanks on behalf of the Minister of Transport to members of the Independent Expert Panel on Drug Driving for their considerable expertise in developing the advice for this bill. Of course, this is also the moment to thank all of those who came along to the committee and submitted their views on the bill.

Our Government is committed to improving road safety outcomes on New Zealand roads, and improving safety and saving lives is at the heart of this bill. Over the last five years, it’s disturbing that the number of deceased drivers found with drugs in their blood is at unacceptable levels. A driver who’s consumed drugs not only puts themselves at risk but, of course, they also put the lives of other road users in peril.

In 2019, 110 people were killed in crashes where a driver was found to have drugs in their system. That represents, shockingly, nearly a third of all road deaths.

I think one of the interesting things about this bill and the strong support there is for this reform here in Parliament but also across the country is that even at a time when there is growing public support for a more liberal and enlightened approach to dealing with the harm that drugs do in our society, and there’s growing support for an approach that is less punitive and that takes a health-based approach, at the same time there is an appetite for a tougher, less forgiving approach to people who put the lives of others at risk on the roads by consuming drugs before they drive. It might seem a paradox, but, actually, it’s not, because both approaches are about minimising harm and reducing the risk to people’s lives.

I want to focus, in my brief comments, on the amendments contained in the bill as reported back to the Parliament. The changes include setting criminal limits and blood infringement thresholds for 25 impairing drugs, and that has been informed by the advice of the expert panel on drug driving that I mentioned earlier.

Secondly, we are ensuring that drivers do not receive an infringement defence when they have only low levels of a drug in their blood that are unlikely to be impairing. We are amending the bill so that criminal limits and infringement thresholds can be set and amended by Order in Council in the future so that we can respond to changing drug use patterns and new information about drug impairment.

A new medical defence pathway for drivers who have consumed a prescription drug in line with advice from their medical professional—this would provide drivers with access to this defence for oral fluid test results without requiring them to take a blood test—and we’re adding some more requirements around the approval of oral fluid testing devices to ensure that this process is robust and transparent. Finally, we are ensuring that the new criminal limits and blood infringement thresholds are incorporated appropriately into existing drug-driving offences in the Land Transport Act.

This bill is a key part of the Government’s Road to Zero action plan for improved road safety outcomes. It’s a massive programme of change in our transport policy. It covers everything from an overhaul and modernisation of the entire regulatory system through to this bill, and the investment of a great deal of money in the redesigning and re-engineering of our transport infrastructure to save lives.

This bill aims to reduce road trauma by improving the approach to detecting and deterring the high-risk behaviour with drug-impaired driving. Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 24 has added criminal limits and blood infringement thresholds for 25 drugs, as recommended by the independent expert panel, and I’m pleased to report that amendments in the SOP have addressed many of the concerns raised by submitters and those of the Attorney-General. So, again, let me thank those who made a submission on the bill who have improved it and all the work that was done at the select committee—thank you for all that contribution to the democratic process.

Our Government is committed to improving road safety outcomes. Too many people die and are seriously injured on our roads each year. The level of trauma being sustained by the people of New Zealand is completely unacceptable. We can do better. This bill is an important step in taking us there. I commend the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill to this House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill in the second reading. And can I also firstly acknowledge the Minister . his opening comments and also the members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and the chair, Greg O’Connor—he chairs that committee. He has been a serving police officer and also a president of the New Zealand Police Association, which made a very compelling and strong submission to the committee as well.

The committee had several issues that we really pored over and discussed; some of them worried us—some of the issues that were raised by the Attorney-General and the Regulations Review Committee. And I think that the committee members, led by the chair, did a thorough job of making sure that we went over it and tried to return this bill in the best possible shape it could be to continue to get support from the entire House.

I have to say that I feel very strongly that it has taken us too long to get the bill here. I think, with the Minister’s opening comments, I reflect on the fact that we lose eight Kiwis every month due to people driving under the influence of drugs on our roads. And so it just highlights for us the importance of actually the passage of this bill, to get it through, and to allow the police time to operationalise it, because there’s actually going to be a lot of work to train staff to actually be able to operationalise this and make sure that it’s actually effective on our streets to keep our communities and our road users safe.

I do just want to go over a little bit of the history of the bill. Alastair Scott actually brought a bill to this House in 2018—a very similar bill—around implementing roadside drug testing. Unfortunately, it was voted down and there were several more efforts to get the bill introduced that failed. I don’t know whether or not we got caught up in the fact that there was a referendum that was coming towards the country rapidly around the legalisation of cannabis and there were concerns around, depending on the result of that referendum, how it was going to impact and have effect on the drug-driving amendment bill. In my view, we should have separated those two things out. We should have stayed solely focused on the drug-driving legislation and allowed the referendum and the people to have that say as a separate matter. If we needed to make amendments or changes to that legislation, then we could have done that.

I do want to make a special mention of Matthew Dow and his family, who have worked extensively with Nick Smith on this issue. Just to give you a bit of history, Matthew Dow was a young Nelsonian. He was killed on the Appleby highway on the last day of 2017. He was driving home from Kaiteriteri to Nelson to meet his family for New Year’s celebrations. A reckless, drug-impaired driver under the influence of a cocktail of drugs, who had had multiple police reports already that day for his erratic driving, crossed the centre line of State Highway 60 and smashed head-on into Matthew. Ambulance drivers described it as the most horrific scene that they had attended, and some of them had served up to 30 years—he didn’t stand a chance. He is just one of hundreds, unfortunately, that are killed due to the actions of drivers under the influence of drugs. His family, Karen and Peter Dow, organised a petition two years ago to try and get the Government to move. Finally for Karen and Peter, and in Matthew’s memory, we are moving forward and I am proud to be here tonight taking the first call for National on this bill.

We heard several submissions. One of the submissions that was compelling was from the New Zealand Automobile Association (AA). Their submission basically made the following points: the bill strikes the right balance to enable meaningful enforcement action against drivers who are drug-impaired while having safeguards in place to ensure individual rights and freedoms are protected. We felt very strongly too that those had to be in place, and there was a lot of debate around transitioning through the oral test through to the option of actually having a blood test. And we debated it quite a lot around the fact of should the person pay for that blood test if they elected to have it. We felt that if they had a blood test and it came back and it was negative, then there should be no cost associated; if it was positive, then actually they should pick up the cost of that.

The AA supports the provision in the bill requiring either two positive oral fluid tests or a positive blood test to trigger enforcement penalties. They also support the two-tier approach for infringements for likely lower-level impairment and criminal offences for likely higher-level impairment. They said we need to be sending a much stronger message to drivers that if they are drug impaired, they risk being tested and caught. According to a University of Waikato study, 60 percent of drivers thought they were likely to be caught for drunk driving, where only 26 percent thought the same for drug driving. So 60 percent of drivers thought there was a high chance of being caught for drunk-driving, which actually is a very good deterrent in itself, whereas only 26 percent of people thought that they’d be picked up or caught for drug-driving. A Waka Kotahi review on drug-impaired driving noted that effective deterrence requires highly visible general deterrence components.

Roadside oral fluid drug testing will be a crucial factor here. We talked a lot about roadside testing, and there were very valid concerns raised by committee members around concerns of different groups being targeted with random roadside drug testing. We did talk about that a lot. My own personal feeling was that having been involved, having served in the police myself, and having been part of a random roadside breath test, it is quite simply that it’s random—it’s whoever pulls into that checkpoint will actually be tested. There was no specific targeting or singling out any group. It was quite simply a matter of whoever came through that roadside testing. Actually, I have say I’m very pleased to say that in my own electorate the police are still proactive and active and out there stopping motorists coming through checkpoints. I’ve been stopped twice myself and I expected on both of those occasions to be tested, which I was. And it’s very simple now with quite simply talking into the device that the police have, stating your name and address, and they can very quickly tell whether or not there’s alcohol detected on your breath.

We hope that the drug-side testing will transition and become good enough that it’ll cause very little disruption in a motorist or a person’s business, but it is going to take time, because it is obviously going to be a new regime in New Zealand. Police will need significant extra resources to deliver the testing programme—that is without a doubt. We had assistant commissioner Bruce O’Brien there advising the committee. He was very, very good and succinct in his advice to the committee, but he did make it clear that it was going to be a big programme that was going to require time to train the police and to operationalise this.

We had a submission from Fulton Hogan. Fulton Hogan employs more than 7,800 people across New Zealand, Australia, and the Pacific. They maintain roads for 26 local authorities and one third of the State highway network. Their vehicles travel 100 million kilometres a year. Fulton Hogan use temporary traffic management to protect staff and the public within worksites. Controls assume largely compliant and predictable road use. Unpredictable behaviour, whether impairment or otherwise, is a serious threat to road workers and to the public, and contractors cannot control unpredictable driving behaviour. Impaired drivers need to be prevented from driving to enable contractors to maintain and improve transport network safety. So they were very, very, very clear in their support for this bill.

We had a couple of submitters that submitted to the committee, and they were obviously users of cannabis products and various drugs. They tried to convince us that this made them better operators of vehicles, but we asked them for any scientific evidence to be able to back that up, and they couldn’t provide that. But in their own minds, they think that when they’ve had a couple of joints, they were better drivers and they were safer on the roads. And I think that that highlighted for us just why it was so important to have this regime in place, because there are people that genuinely take drugs, consume drugs, and feel emboldened, and feel that they’re actually safer operating a vehicle—and they were bold enough to come in front of the committee and actually make submissions like that.

Look, I’m only half way through the comments that I wanted to get through tonight, but there will be further chances to speak to the bill. But I am very happy to be standing tonight in support of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. It should have been here earlier; it’s here now. Let’s get this bill through Parliament and passed as quickly as we can. Thank you.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d just like to reiterate the words of the previous speaker that it is nice to have a piece of legislation that comes before a select committee where there is a determination to do one thing: to make it a good piece of legislation. Certainly, that was the case with this piece of legislation, ably assisted, I might say, by the expert panel. We had Dr Helen Poulsen come. One of the issues—and again, it was touched on by the previous speaker—was it’s very easy for a piece of legislation like this to become mixed with one’s views on cannabis and other drugs, the legality and otherwise, and so it’s very important to make sure that this is a clinical bill, evidence-led, and that any legislation we pass through here is about one thing: making our roads safer. Making our roads safer means it must be about impairment, in the same way that drink-driving is about not just intoxication; it’s about whether someone should be safe to drive.

The reassurance we got was from the expert panel, from Dr Poulsen, in things like the degree of science they were able to bring to us. I’ll just quote one of the findings: “When cannabis is inhaled, maximum blood THC concentrations occur within minutes of dosing and reach the maximum while a cannabis cigarette is still being smoked.” I won’t read the whole thing. This is the sort of evidence they were able to bring to us, because, again and again, Mr Mitchell has talked about those who have come before us who believe that cannabis should somehow be exempted or that it doesn’t make any difference. It’s also very important to remember that within this, the substances, the six most prevalent impairing drugs which will be able to be tested for are THC, obviously; methamphetamine; benzodiazepines; MDMA, better known as ecstasy; opiates; and cocaine. Of course, these—and I know it’s quite interesting. In police, the surveillance squads who follow drivers are ones who have a lot of expertise in this area, because they know pretty much what those they are trying to surveil—what sort of drug they are likely to be on by the degree of impairment. Again, it’s important to remember this is about degree of impairment.

So we did hear some very good submissions from the Police Association, the Medical Association, the Road Transport Forum, just to name a few. There were those, again, whose submissions may have just become mixed up with their politics or their belief around drugs, and there’s certainly a move around the world and in New Zealand to talk about dealing with drugs as a health issue, but there is no more health issue than those who are in the trauma wards of our hospitals who see, week after week—in fact, the statistics show a third of those who die on our roads who have been drivers in accidents have some sort of drug in their body. A third. Think about that.

So just to go to the technicalities of this, the testing devices will be designed. They are oral testing devices, relatively easy to ensure that the drugs that are to be detected are to be detected. I think one thing I will leave you with and leave those listening behind with is an absolute assurance that this is science-based and that the politics that will inevitably surround anything to do with drug-driving, and particularly anything to do with cannabis—you can rest assured that the legislation in the form it is in, the testing devices in the form they are in, are guaranteed to ensure that this is a safe, scientific approach. Therefore, I have no hesitation in commending this to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to join with the Minister and colleagues who have already spoken on this bill—the first two of whom were on the select committee—in commending this bill and in thanking, firstly, the members of the select committee, the officials, and also those who submitted on it. I wasn’t on the select committee and others will be able to speak with more authority about that experience. But I want to take the House back a little back further to the genesis of this and provide a perspective on why we’re here and why we’re here now and not earlier.

In early 2009, when I was a very fresh, new member of Parliament, I was a member of what was known then as the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and the first bill that brought the roadside impairment test regime in was being considered by that committee. One of the senior members on that committee, the Hon Trevor Mallard, on the day that New Zealand Police came in to demonstrate the roadside impairment test and how it would be carried out, decided that the newest member of the committee should actually embark on that test. So in the middle of the select committee room 4, in front of the media and a number of officials, I actually walked the line, touched my toes, turned around, did all of the things that needed to be done on a roadside impairment test and found that it was actually pretty difficult to pass even when one was not impaired by any substance.

Tim van de Molen: Did you pass?

I did pass, you’ll be pleased to know, Mr van de Molen, and we went on a discussion about why this was all necessary, because there were emerging technologies at that time which showed—saliva testing. We knew that the illicit ingestion of substances was illegal, but we wanted to make this very much a road safety issue, not a criminal issue. What we heard at that time was that the saliva-testing regime—the measurement of the degree of impairment at that time, that was 13 years ago, was not as specific, sensitive, and there wasn’t a sufficient correlation between the degree of, say, THC in one’s system and the level of impairment. One could smoke a joint the night before, wake up relatively clear-eyed, but still have that in the system. That contrasts with blood alcohol and breath alcohol, where there is a high correlation between the amount of alcohol in the system and the level of impairment. And that was our difficulty.

Now, fast forward to 2013 and 2014, and I was the Associate Minister of Transport with responsibility for road safety. In that period, there was a tremendous tragedy on the State Highway 1 near Foxton, where a truck driver, not noticing roadworks had stopped a number of cars up ahead, rammed into the back of a line of cars. Those cars concertinaed and one of them burst into flames, killing a mother and son. It was a tragedy. And the driver was taken to Palmerston North Hospital where a blood test was taken that showed THC was in his system but, because he had not embarked on the roadside impairment test that we had passed the bill for, he was not able to be charged with drug-driving causing death. Indeed, he was being charged with careless driving causing death and, understandably, that caused a tremendous amount of anger. I had to go on, I think it was, the Sunday show profiling that and defend the process, which was pretty hard, I have to say. A very probing interviewer said to me, “Look, it’s really clear. He had THC in his system. That probably caused the accident.” And all I could say was, “Yes, but probably wasn’t the burden of proof.”

At that time, there was also quite a good advance in the technology. I was in the UK as police Minister a year or so later, meeting the UK Minister, and they’d just introduced the saliva testing regime. I think from memory, because cost was an issue, it was about 20 quid—£20—a test, so it was relatively inexpensive. I raised the question of the correlation between the level of THC or cocaine, or whatever it was, and impairment, and he basically said, “We don’t care.” They did have a per se threshold, by the way, and if that was set too low or too high the risk that a person takes when they take illicit substances and they get behind the wheel of a car is theirs. I’m really pleased to note that I think we are approaching that regime at the same time as the science and the technology has advanced even further. So I went back and I asked officials. I asked Police, Transport about whether or not this was a regime whose time had come. The officials actually were still very cautious—and I have to defend the Hon Julie Anne Genter against the criticism that she had when she first became associate transport Minister because actually all Ministers can do is act on the advice of the officials and that was certainly the advice we had. So I am pleased that we are here doing this. The technology has advanced and, yes, there might be an argument that says we could have moved a little quicker but we are here and that’s the right thing to do.

I also want to join with my colleague Mark Mitchell in acknowledging, firstly, Nick Smith, who advocated for the family of the late Matthew Dow but also the hundreds of families around the country who have been traumatised by road collisions caused by drugged drivers. I cannot imagine what that must be like and I’m confident that as a consequence of this legislation we will be giving police more powers to prevent that tragedy and that carnage. I think it’s appropriate actually that the second and third speakers in this bill are both former police officers. Neither of them talked about it in detail but I know both of them have attended incidents and seen things that no one should have to endure. It’s difficult for our first responders also to deal with those things, and all we can do to reduce that harm I think we should. I am really pleased we’re here and I look forward to this improving safety on our roads.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, and good evening to everyone. I will take a short call this evening to talk on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. I’m a part of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, led by Greg O’Connor, and I acknowledge also my colleague Mark Mitchell—and the generosity of the North Shore—for the work that we do do in that particular select committee, because it does require a level of attention from all sides of the House to ensure that we get these particular bills right, and right moving forward. There have been some challenges in leading up to where we are this evening in this second reading.

I go back to the survey of the Drug Foundation back in 2009, and at that time that survey told us that almost a quarter, 25 percent, of people that were surveyed had got behind the wheel and driven under the influence of, at that particular time, cannabis, the drug of choice. Then we fast-forward, sort of, 12-odd years to 2021, and now we’ve got a mix of drugs across Aotearoa New Zealand that a number of people, communities, and, in particular, young people are accessing. I guess in this particular bill what I am happy with is that we’ve started to broaden the drugs that we are testing for, the drugs including, of course, cannabis and THC, methamphetamine—rife across our communities—MDMA, ecstasy, opiates, and cocaine. You know, that’s a real reality check to all of us in what is available and out there.

This bill in particular makes steps towards keeping both drivers but also family members and people in our communities safe. We’ve got to take action. It has taken a while, as the Opposition has said, but under this Government, I’m happy that we’ve proceeded forward, we’ve got the bill right, and that we’re testing where we need to. So, without further ado, I’d like to commend this bill to the House. Tēnā koe.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I just want to start by acknowledging that a lot of effort went into the design and drafting of this legislation to ensure that it could meet both the concerns that have been raised about the potential impact that impairing substances were having on our deaths and serious injuries on our roads, and the fact that there’s actually quite a bit of uncertainty still with the tests as they are, and about their ability to establish impairment alone. So a lot of work has gone into this legislation as it’s proposed to ensure that there would be minimisation of false positives and to ensure that there is as good a relationship as can be established between a given saliva level and impairment. Of course, there’s no ability through the saliva tests alone for anyone to get a criminal conviction. This was really important because the saliva tests cannot provide the evidential standard that would be needed to give someone a criminal conviction for driving impaired.

Now, I just want to, especially, acknowledge all the pain and suffering of those families who have lost people due to any sort of car crash or vehicle crash and acknowledge that it is particularly painful in those cases, like in the case of Matthew Shepherd [Matthew Dow], when the driver was known to be under the influence of impairing substances and a repeat offender. But those tragedies alone are not a reason to rush to a particular legislative solution unless we have enough evidence that the legislative solution is actually going to be a solution and is actually going to reduce impaired driving. In the case of Matthew Shepherd [Matthew Dow]—and I did meet his family—this legislation would not have made any difference in that case, because that driver had already been reported to the police, was already driving erratically, and the police already had tools in place to do a compulsory impairment test. So it wasn’t the lack of random roadside drug testing that that led to that; it was insufficient police on the roads and insufficient response to the complaints that were being made.

So while it’s an incredibly emotional issue, we have to be really focused on the evidence. I have to say it was a privilege for me, having been somewhat involved in the drafting of the original legislation, to be able to sit on the select committee and hear the submissions. One thing that I’m slightly surprised about that we haven’t heard tonight is the number of submissions from health professionals and scientific experts that made it very clear that there’s extreme difficulty to reliably establish an equivalent blood level of a substance with an oral fluid test result, and that neither of these can actually be correlated with impairment. It’s much more difficult than in the case of alcohol, and it’s particularly difficult with some substances.

Yes, there’s no doubt that there were a couple of unreliable submissions that you would always get in front of the select committee of, you know, people who maybe haven’t brought a lot of research and evidence to their submission. But there was a huge number of very well researched, evidence-based submissions from Wellington Regional Public Health, the New Zealand Medical Association, the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, and even the independent expert panel itself made it very clear there is no simple relationship between the dose of a drug and the resulting impairment of driving. The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners states that “the testing framework proposed is not supported by reliable scientific evidence of correlation between presence of substance and impairment.”

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists was concerned that a harm-minimisation approach is not implemented by this bill, as well as noting that—and I quote—“The presence of drugs in a person’s oral fluid or blood does not directly relate to impairment. … We call for greater research in understanding the link between substance misuse and a person’s impairment.” The New Zealand Medical Association echoes this, stating, “the science to support roadside oral fluid testing is not quite sufficiently advanced, although it is rapidly evolving. Key concerns include the inability of oral fluid testing to detect impairment, the absence of well-defined threshold levels and impairment limits for many drugs, and the potential for the Bill to exacerbate inequalities for Māori in the criminal justice system.”

So when we look at the submissions that were presented, an overwhelming number from people who presented actual research and have a professional health background, raised these very significant concerns, despite the best efforts to design a regime which would give us certainty of being able to test for a proxy for impairment. And that really is the ultimate goal, right? If we want a safe road network, if we want safe drivers, I completely understand that we need some tool to try and deter impaired driving and to detect impaired driving and to do so in a way that will enable us to actually get those impaired drivers off the road. The Green Party’s completely supportive of that.

What we are very, very happy with is that the best efforts have been made to design this bill to minimise risk, but we do feel that some additional improvements could be made to reflect the weight of submissions that suggest that, actually, there is not enough evidence to give these powers and to put such weight in saliva testing and blood testing.

So we believe that following the submissions to the select committee, there are two improvements that can be made to the bill, and we will be moving these in the committee stage, and we are very open to support from other parties. One of these is to really instantiate a robust independent review several years after the implementation of the bill. The other one is really just to reflect the fact that we cannot know before implementing this legislation that it will be effective at its stated objective. It is important that we take an empirical approach to this.

So if it turns out that this regime is not effective at reducing impaired driving, that it hasn’t had the desired consequences, and that it is resulting in unfair targeting of certain populations, it will be incredibly important that there is some requirement or impetus for the Government of the day to respond to that evidence and to change the law and potentially to say, “Sorry it didn’t work. We’re going to have to take a different approach. We might have to go back to more resource for compulsory impairment testing or we might have to do more research into alternatives to saliva tests.”, which I have no doubt sound really easy and effective, and the Police Association came and told us that was definitely what they wanted, but we want the test that is out there and applied to drivers to actually detect impaired driving and to discourage it.

So the Green Party will be voting for this at second reading. We will be moving several amendments that we think are entirely reasonable amendments that will help address some of the uncertainty. Given the scale of the problem with impaired driving in New Zealand, we are open to testing this regime, but we believe that there simply is not the evidence beforehand to prove that it will achieve the outcomes we want and that we can minimise the risk of harm to those vulnerable populations. So the Green Party will be looking to improve the bill, with just two very minor amendments that will help improve and give confidence to New Zealanders that we are going to take an empirical approach, that we are not going to be swayed by emotive stories and then impose something that doesn’t actually achieve the objective.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a really difficult issue, because the science and the technology doesn’t quite match up with our aspiration. I have three teenage boys. The eldest has his driver’s licence and, like a lot of young people, has an active social life. I hope and trust that he makes the right decisions every time he gets behind the wheel, but I don’t have control over him and I don’t have control over what other people do on the road when I’m driving. So it’s important that we have a means of deterring people from getting behind the wheel and driving while impaired. That includes not just illegal substances but also prescription medications or medications that may be misused.

When I’ve looked at the submissions—and the Green Party and the ACT Party did come to a differing view on the bill—we have reservations because at this point in time it’s not possible to create a link between an oral fluid test, a blood test, and impairment for certain types of drugs. It’s because drugs that have been illegal for such a long time, like psychoactive drugs, have not been assessed with sufficient academic rigour for their impairment for us to be able to make that very important causal link between somebody driving or operating a motor vehicle—or it could be a piece of plant and equipment on the road—having a positive result with an oral fluid test, having a positive detectable result with a blood test and a level of impairment that would cause concern, because, as with alcohol testing, it’s well understood that there is a limit for a reason. And we accept that a person of a certain body mass or even one or more genders might have a different response to alcohol. So while you might pass a test, actually depending on your fatigue, whether you’re dehydrated, what your emotional state is, your response to alcohol might be much more severe than actually what the test result at the roadside evaluation tells you.

Many people have claimed that they can beat the test, they can drink more than what is recommended, whether it’s one drink per hour, and their bodies can cope with it. But many other people will tell you that that limit doesn’t apply to them. They can’t drink at all because they feel funny and uncomfortable getting behind the wheel. So if we’re thinking about what’s the purpose of the legislation—to deter people from driving while impaired, to reduce the harm that people who are driving while under the influence of drugs cause through motor vehicle accidents, through injuries and, worst case, through fatalities and harming others—then what are we going to do to solve that problem? And we do have some reservations that the proposed purpose of this bill and the functions that are set out in it actually don’t line up.

However, the ACT Party will be supporting the bill at this reading with reservations, and they’re reservations that we’ve outlined in the report back, in our differing view that we share with the Green Party, that the very medical professionals who we trust to make judgments about health and wellbeing—medical health, psychological psychiatric health—have raised significant concerns about that relationship between impairment, testing, and criminalising people for failing a test without actually being able to confirm whether they’re impaired.

So we do have concerns about that and we believe that there needs to be a tension, a stress imposed on officials who would be administering this bill down the track to gather the data, to actually demonstrate, if possible, a causal link between the oral fluid test result and impairment. Now, this research is going on around the world and states like Victoria, South Australia in Australia have struggled to align those two sets of data. But just because a task is difficult doesn’t mean we should shy away from it.

In fact, New Zealand companies like Rako, for example, have developed a wonderfully effective and efficient saliva test for COVID-19, which, despite the reservations of this Government—which recently reports that they’ve conducted only 15 tests with this wonderful Rako saliva test that the US military and various other organisations are using. In fact, New Zealand, of all places, probably has the technological capability to develop oral saliva testing for impairment. So let’s trust those scientists, but we do need to collect the data. It does need to be reported back.

There is a concern that officials who are given a regulatory licence will simply run away with it, promise the Earth to their Minister and to the public, but very, very rarely return with the evidence that the legislation that they’ve asked for is working, and to actually ask for tweaks. Because nobody who’s asked for something, promised that it would work—those people very rarely have the courage to come back and ask for it to be fixed afterwards. That’s why we need to get it right this time.

So what we’re proposing is that the legislation is amended and we’ll be working on Supplementary Order Papers with the Green Party to have the legislation amended at the committee stage. We need to apply an acid test to the bureaucracy. We need to make sure they understand that we’ve given them a licence but that it’s not enduring and that within five years this legislation should expire unless they can demonstrate it’s actually working.

💬 Barbara Kuriger: We apply that to everything.

We should, as our colleague, the member Barbara Kuriger, suggests apply this acid test to all Government legislation, but it is particularly appropriate for this one. So on that note, again, ACT will support the bill at this reading and we look forward to continuing to engage with the Government and other parties to make it better legislation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Mālō ‘aupito, Madam Speaker, and I rise to take a very, very quick call on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill tonight. I also want to thank the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, the chair Greg O’Connor, our officials, the expert panel, and the submitters for some great improvements to the bill, but also some really robust discussions while we were at it.

This Government is committed to ensuring we improve the road safety outcomes on the road, and that’s what this bill does. Someone who consumes drugs and decides to drive not only risks their own life but risks the lives of other people on the road, as well. This will introduce a compulsory random roadside oral fluid testing regime or scheme for the police to stop motorists and carry out that oral fluid testing, similar to the approach of the drink-driving enforcement. This bill adds safeguards to protect against those false positives. As a member earlier said, it avoids the passive exposure or low-level residue amounts being picked up and acknowledges people taking medicines in line with their prescriptions. Ultimately, this bill is about improving our road safety, and for that reason I commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on and support this bill tonight, and acknowledging, in doing so, the contribution of former member Alastair Scott and also Nick Smith, who had some very passionate views in this area, having been through some experiences with parents who had lost a son in particular, and probably others. In speaking to this bill tonight, I’d also like to mention the Porteous family and others from Taranaki who went through an awful experience a few years ago where there were seven people killed in one accident and they were part of four innocent parties in one car, and they had actually been killed by someone under the influence of drugs driving a vehicle. That driver was killed, two members of the driver’s family were killed, and there was only one person in that car that survived. There are some very sad tragedies that happen. So our thoughts are with everyone who’s lost family members in tragic circumstances, and particularly around the context of why we’re supporting this bill tonight.

Beyond that, I’m just a little amused at what I’ve seen since I’ve been in the House tonight. It’s not very often that I watch the Green Party and the ACT Party collaborating on something, so that’s just been a little bit interesting. But what’s really bemusing for me is that in December 2019, the then Associate Minister of Transport, Julie Anne Genter, said, “I intend to introduce a bill to the Parliament early next year to enable oral fluid drug testing to begin in 2021.” Well, here we are in 2021, and the bill was supposed to have been passed by now. We’re up to the second reading, so at least that is some progress, but, you know, what’s even worse is that when presented with advice, Julie Anne Genter claimed random roadside saliva testing was “too intrusive” and “extremely expensive” and rejected the officials’ proposal.

This is something that often we see with members of the Green Party, who live in a world that tends to be rather idealistic, and then when the science is applied to the ideas that they come up with and they’re given some science and they’re given some official advice, at the end of the day they turn round and go, “Well, that wasn’t such a good idea, because something we were proposing that we thought was a good idea might actually backfire on us, so we decide it’s not such a good idea any more.” So I’m not sure how confused Julie Anne Genter is over all of this. I know we do have to be careful with regulations and we do have to be careful with what we’re proposing and we do have to know that the drug testing is doing the right thing, but science will do that. And we’re hearing in the House tonight that there are ways and means around that—doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be cautious, but it doesn’t mean that you can completely do an about turn when you don’t like the advice that you’ve been given because it backfires on your good intentions in the first place. So I have to wonder, in proposing this legislation in the first place, how much homework that Minister did at the time, because she should’ve taken that advice and decided what was the right course of action for her as a Minister before she actually got up and proposed it.

But having said that, we are pleased now that it’s back in the House. It is good to be standing here and supporting the bill. National believes we should’ve just got straight on and changed the law as soon as the advice was given. We do note that this Government has chosen to delay it, but, nevertheless, we’re here now. We’re supporting it, and we’ll work our way through the next stages of the bill, because in the end, too many families are losing loved ones. We have regimes for driving under the influence of alcohol, and this is the next step in the process. We all know that drugs can be a pretty serious scourge on our world anyway, let alone somebody getting behind the wheel of a vehicle and driving a car. So it’s a pleasure to support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I join the rest of the House in supporting the sentiment and the intention behind this bill. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it’s certainly—to see the eagerness to have this passed tonight; I commend this bill to the House.

The National Party is really pleased to continue our support of this bill as well, and we think it’s an incredibly important piece of legislation, and we commend this bill to the House too.

I can only join my colleagues and, actually, first of all congratulate the House for actually, at this point, all being in consensus on this. I actually just perhaps want to take the time to have just one particular thing that I’d like to talk about, and that is the saliva testing itself. Now, Mr Woodhouse talked earlier about how this had been earlier floated in a time when the science around saliva testing was not very sound. I was thrilled to see that it had improved, because I actually worked on a lot of drug-testing cases in the employment arena, and at that point there was a real difference between the testing that was available with regard to urine testing and the saliva-testing process, and one is much less invasive than the other.

The saliva testing has improved markedly, but it also does something quite special in this area. It will focus on the recent use of the drug. There is a little bit of confusion around this. This piece of legislation is about recent use, and by talking about recent use, what we’re actually doing is focusing on changing our culture out there so that our drug users in the community get the message: do not drive when you have been taking drugs of any kind. That is true too of alcohol. It is something that I would like to draw a line across, because these are all drugs and they have all been harming our society, and they are not appropriate when driving. So the saliva testing is a real step forward, and for that reason, I think we have a sound piece of legislation here. I commend this bill to the House.