Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill

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

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): 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 third time.

I’m very pleased to present the bill in its third reading to the House this evening. It’s an important piece of legislation. I reflect on the fact that it was last week that the Government formally put out the public engagement campaign around the Road to Zero campaign, which is our piece of work, working with partners across the country to bring down New Zealand’s road toll, to stop hundreds of deaths and thousands of serious injuries occurring every year in our land transport system. That was a really important piece of work that was commenced in the last term of Government. It is about not just accepting the current road toll that we have for some time. One of the recommendations of the Road to Zero programme that was established in the last term of Government was the establishment of drug-driving legislation. So it has been a long piece of work.

I looked back on some of the dates in preparation for the debate this evening. It was back in February 2019, so three years ago from around about now, that the initial consultation document on drug-driving was released, and then July 2020 that the legislation was read for the first time, having been introduced by the Hon Julie Anne Genter. So this is an important piece of work, but it is one that we have worked through carefully and really turned over the issues to make sure that we establish a regime that is fair, that is justified, that will be durable, and that, most importantly, will be up to the task and will keep Kiwis safe on our roads.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee who have overseen the select committee process for this piece of legislation. It hasn’t been a simple piece of law. They’ve done a really good job, I think, of supporting the legislative passage and improving the legislation as it’s gone through.

I also want to particularly thank the members of the Independent Expert Panel on Drug Driving who contributed their considerable experience and expertise to the development of this bill and to making sure that we have robust, defensible, and fair thresholds for both infringement and criminal offences that are included in this bill. That panel was chaired by Dr Helen Poulsen and included some of New Zealand’s leading experts in toxicology, pharmacology, and biochemistry. As we covered in some detail in earlier stages of the debate in the House and in the committee, I think that members of the House can have great confidence that the information that has been provided by that expert panel ensures that this is a robust and fair piece of legislation. I’d also like to thank submitters who engaged in this process, and my predecessors—the Hon Phil Twyford, the Hon Julie Anne Genter, and the Hon Stuart Nash—who have all had a role in developing the legislation and bringing it through to the House.

As I said previously, the goal of Road to Zero is to stop that sort of almost casual acceptance that the road toll is a necessary payment that we make for driving on New Zealand’s roads. Last year, 320 Kiwis lost their lives on our roads; about 320 the year before that; and so on and so on; and thousands of people seriously injured. Drug-driving is a big and a growing part of that carnage on our roads. In 2020, of the people who lost their lives on our roads, 101 people did have drugs within their system. That is a very, very large proportion and it is a proportion that continues to grow in real numbers and as a percentage year on year. So it is very clear based on the evidence that taking action on this issue will help us to save lives and have a safer land transport system.

It is important to note within this bill that the oral fluid testing regime that we are setting up is only a road safety tool. The tool can’t be used for detecting illicit substances and used outside of the context of people who are driving their vehicles. I think that’s an important assurance to provide. A positive oral fluid test cannot be used as evidence of the use of a controlled drug, and a prosecution for an offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act. A positive oral fluid test would not be sufficient to justify the search of a vehicle for the purposes of any other drug-related offences. This is purely about reducing the harm that is caused by drug-drivers on our roads.

The legislation establishes infringement offences for 25 drugs. It is important to note that these are both legal and illegal substances. So the focus here is really focused on the harm that may be caused by substances, no matter what the type of that substance. It is possible for someone consuming a legal substance to be impaired in the same way that someone who has consumed an illegal substance can be impaired. Again, I think this is just an important point to convey: this isn’t about focusing on any particular substance or any particular demographic; it is focusing in on any of those substances that may cause people to be harmed in our system.

Broadly speaking, the bill establishes a new random roadside oral fluid testing regime to deter drivers. The way it works is by providing officers with the power to administer that oral fluid test. A person who is asked by an officer to complete that test will do so and they will then be asked to complete it a second time if the first test shows that drugs may have been used by the person who was driving. This is about building as much robustness into the result as possible. It is important to note that a person who tests positive after two oral tests is only liable for an infringement offence, not a criminal offence. At that point in the process, under the legislation, the person themselves may elect to go down the route of receiving a determinative blood test, and it is only in the event that that blood test produces a positive result that the person may face a criminal penalty if they exceed the criminal thresholds that are set out in the Act.

The thresholds are different. The infringement thresholds, as advised by the independent expert panel, are a proxy for recent use, and the criminal thresholds are a proxy for a level of impairment. The expert panel set that after extensively working through the international literature on this issue, international examples, and the best and most up-to-date scientific advice from within New Zealand. So to be very clear: the threshold for criminal offending, which may only occur after the person has elected to go down the route of a blood test, is a higher threshold for people to reach.

We also recognise the added road safety risk of driving after combining drugs or drugs and alcohol. The regime does include stricter infringement combination offences and combination criminal offences when a driver has consumed more than one substance.

We do understand that people who consume drugs can, very often, benefit from a health intervention. As a result, there will be compulsory referrals for assessment to drug education or rehabilitation programmes for all third and subsequent criminal offences. In discussion with my colleagues and police, I am also assured that police will be adopting an approach of trying to provide support and direction towards those services at lower levels within the system as their resources allow.

In terms of the setting of criminal limits, as I outlined, 25 substances will be covered. These will include the most prevalent illicit and prescription drugs used by New Zealand drivers, including THC, methamphetamine, MDMA, opioids, and cocaine. As I said before, this is a road safety tool, and it’s very important to note that. We’ve been very careful in the development of the legislation to make sure that that is the focus.

When the bill was originally considered by the Attorney-General in late 2020, his view at that point in time was that the bill did not pass a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. I’m very pleased to confirm to the House, as I have in earlier stages of the debate, that a lot of work subsequently went into the legislation, which came after the receipt of expert advice from the panel and engagement between Ministers, which means that those concerns of the Attorney-General earlier on in the process have been met. Significant changes to the bill were made, including introducing a medical defence pathway, inserting the limits advised by the expert panel into the bill, and making sure that the devices and the cut-off thresholds of the devices that will be procured by police will be gazetted so that the limits are very transparent and open to scrutiny.

So I have a great deal of confidence, and I want to convey this to the House, that while we’re dealing with complex issues within this bill, they have been thoroughly considered and I think we do have a robust and fair piece of legislation. And, of course, in the committee of the whole House stage, the Government did take the step of agreeing to a Supplementary Order Paper put forward by the Green Party and the ACT Party to set a review mechanism in place three years after the implementation of this piece of legislation. Once this bill has made its way through the House, we expect the regime to commence from 2023. I am confident that it will make New Zealand roads a safer place for Kiwi motorists, it will reduce deaths and serious injuries, and that is something that, I’m sure, we all support. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I rise on behalf of the National Party in support of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill, which is having its third reading today. I just want to start my comments by referring to where the Minister started, which was he was talking about the Road to Zero strategy, and he talked about how the genesis of this piece of legislation started with some consultation in 2019. Well, the reality is—and I think it’s important as we debate this legislation here at its final reading—that the genesis of this piece of legislation took place two years earlier when the incoming Government was advised of the need in 2017 of legislation to implement a roadside drug-testing regime in New Zealand. It was the Green Party Associate Minister Julie Anne Genter who said, “No thanks—no thanks. We don’t want to do that because it’s going to breach some people’s human rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.” She didn’t think about asking some more questions and trying to get some more information—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Point of order, Madam Speaker. That’s misrepresentation of the opposition that the Hon Julie Anne Genter had to this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. That is not a point of order. I call Simeon Brown.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. And so the incoming Minister was advised of a need of some legislation to introduce a random roadside drug-driving testing service in New Zealand by the police and that was rejected. That advice was rejected back in 2018 by the then Minister. But it’s the Labour Party who was in Government and they agreed with the Associate Minister of Transport—rather than working with the National Party, who would have supported them to bring legislation into Parliament to address this important issue.

I’ll tell you why this is an important issue—because the Minister of Transport talks about the need to reduce the death toll on our roads and to reduce the number of serious injuries, and we couldn’t agree more. The facts speak incredibly strongly to the need to act in this area: in 2014, there were 18 deaths on our roads where the person causing the death was impaired by drugs; by 2019, that had increased to 107—107. That’s over five times as many deaths being caused on our roads and all of that time the Government has said “No thanks.”, and then they said, “We’re going to put it out for consultation.” Then finally, at the very, very last hour of the last Government in the last Parliament, they introduced this piece of legislation to Parliament and here we are, two years later, about to give it a third reading. And thank goodness for that, because this legislation has been long overdue, and it’s something which is needed to actually address one of the biggest and one of the fastest-growing causes of deaths and serious injuries on our roads.

So I just want to acknowledge all of the parties who have been involved in bringing this bill to the House: the select committee, the submitters, and for the expert advice in bringing this bill to the position it is in now. Now the message is that we need to see it implemented and we need to make sure that our police have the resource so that they are able to actually act with the powers that are contained inside this piece of legislation. Because the reality is with the number of people who are suffering from serious injuries or deaths on our roads caused by drug-driving, this has to be one of the biggest priorities when it comes to trying to reduce the drug-driving.

We’ve got a Government which has got a strategy and the Minister has got a big red zero. But he’s taken four years—4½ years.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: That was his rating.

“That was his rating.” says the Hon Scott Simpson. That might be the number of metres of light rail he’s delivered as well. You could use that for a number of things. But the hard serious fact here is that this is something which should have been done far, far sooner. The reality is—what we know that this piece of legislation is going to do—it will be a deterrent. The reality is, at the moment, we know that with drink-driving, the police have a job, they’ve got the powers. That legislation was introduced back in 1993, and there was a subsequent reduction in the number of deaths and serious injuries where drunk-driving was the cause behind those accidents. So we know that this legislation is going to have an impact.

The next thing which needs to be done is the Government needs to make sure that the police have the resources to be able to do that. I have serious questions at the moment around how that resourcing is taking place in the road safety partnership area between the New Zealand Transport Agency and the police. Only last year, the police delivered only half of the required 3 million breath tests on our roads; 1.5 million were delivered against a target of 3 million. So the reality is there will be serious questions which need to be asked to make sure that they’re able to deliver on those targets and also on this piece of legislation to make sure that it is as an effective deterrent as it can be.

The reality is that this will have an impact, not just as a deterrent but in terms of the lives that it will save, the families who would otherwise have been impacted—but also just the very clear message that this Parliament sends to people who wish to go on the roads after taking drugs, that that is not OK. It is not OK to do that, and we’ve seen the television messages and we’ve seen the ads on TV, but there are now legislative powers for the police to be able to stop you, to be able to test you, and to be able to potentially even prosecute you for that offence—and to be able to make sure that those tests are done in an accurate way and that there is a fair process around that.

So the National Party supports this piece of legislation. Our hearts go out to the many hundreds of people who have been affected by drugged drivers. I know my former colleague the Hon Nick Smith, if he was here, would be referring to the young man, Matthew Dow, 23 years of age from Nelson, who was tragically killed by a drugged driver back in 2017. These are stories which are far too often heard throughout our country and it is so important that we get this legislation passed, we get it implemented, and we get that road toll down through this legislation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker, in several minutes you’ll be passing this piece of legislation on behalf of the House. I’d like you to listen for a cheer from downstairs where there are a large number of police officers who will be listening to this debate—I’ve just alerted them to it. Because I’ve been speaking with them over the last few days that they’ve been here, and they can’t wait for this piece of legislation. They’re very eager for it, like many police officers—

💬 Simeon Brown: Why have they had to wait?

—before them, including the time that I spent in the police myself.

One of the problems—that we’ve taken so long to get here. Let’s just leave the petty politics out of this, please, Mr Brown. This is an important piece of legislation. The reason we’ve taken so long to get here is because with drunk driving or alcohol-impaired driving, it’s relatively simple because alcohol is a legal substance, so we were always able to concentrate on the impairment. Whenever we discussed it, when the law was implemented, it was always about impairment. The problem with illicit substances, particularly cannabis, where much of the debate seemed to focus, was that it was always clouded—probably a bad pun—by the fact that it was seen as a way to track down or to investigate drug offences. So why this piece of legislation is very good is it ensures, as the Minister said before, that it actually isn’t going to be about drug enforcement; it’s going to be about road safety. That, again, is why we’ve taken, unfortunately, so long to get here.

I’ll just give you an example of how that may work: I’m aware of people who live in a Middle Eastern country where alcohol is illegal. If you are detected with any alcohol on your breath in that country you are arrested, not for any driving offence; you are arrested for having alcohol. That has been the fear here. That is why the legislation, as put together and well advised by our advisory committee—and I do have to, like the Minister, really praise the efforts of our Independent Expert Panel on Drug Driving. Because as we went into this process—and I was privileged enough to chair the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that did do this work—we were struggling a little bit with this whole concept of how we made sure we were actually policing impaired driving, and it got ourselves away from this whole unfortunate issue of just looking for cannabis smokers, which, again, a lot of our submitters tended to base their whole submission on.

So the expert panel, led so ably by Dr Helen Poulsen—a toxicologist—who actually did an excellent job, helped by Professor Shaw, Dr Sharon Kletchko, Andrew McGlashen, and Malcolm Tingle. These people were able to really assure us as a committee that when the amount of drug is detected, there is going to be a tolerance level—that what we’re going to be talking about here is an amount of the drug that we and those who are going to administer this will be able to go into the process with confidence, knowing it will detect an impairment level.

So the first two tests: anyone who fails those two tests will receive an infringement. Now, it will be that person’s choice whether they want to go on and take blood, and should the amount in the blood, or multiple substances be detected along with alcohol, then they will then enter a criminal regime where, obviously, the sanction will be much greater. So this is, again, a piece of legislation that those who are perhaps sitting at home, those who are a little bit worried that this is somehow just a way to go after dope smokers—many submitters brought up a fear that someone who had had a joint three weeks ago on a fishing trip to Taupō, that they would be detected in this, that perhaps someone who was sitting as a passive smoker in a car where others were smoking cannabis, that they would be detected.

Again, anyone who wants some reassurance, I would suggest that they actually get hold of this report by the independent expert panel—the report that gave us as a select committee the absolute confidence to recommend this bill to the House and all the provisions within it. Because anyone reading this report, with good science from not only around New Zealand but also around the world, will be able to satisfy themselves that this is about road safety, not about drug investigation.

So as the chairman of the committee I’m commending this bill. I can actually now give categorical assurance that for those who probably prevented this moment from arriving a lot earlier, that the science has advanced, that we can now rest assured that those who appear before courts or those who are fined for being impaired for drug driving, that the intended goal of road safety, which will come about by getting those people off the road, will, in fact, be reinforced by this piece of legislation. Therefore, I have absolutely no hesitation in commending this to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a delayed pleasure to be speaking in the third and final reading of this Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. I say it’s a delayed pleasure because this is a bill that should have been passed years ago, and for the chairman of the select committee to stand and proudly proclaim to the House that he’s been warning police officers around the precinct of Parliament, who have been doing such a good and noble job over recent weeks in this place, that they should be excited about this piece of legislation passing—the piece of legislation that, I might add, won’t actually be effective for another year or so yet. And in the fifth year of this Government’s regime, that they should now be passing this piece of legislation belatedly, slowly, behind time is an appalling indictment upon their record of road safety, their diligence towards road safety, and their lack of enthusiasm for actually doing something that is sensible, pragmatic, and in normal ways, you would say, progressive.

But my colleague Simeon Brown actually related some of the history of it, and I think it’s important in this third reading to go over that a little. There was an opportunity in this debating chamber to pass a piece of legislation that was brought to the House in a member’s bill by my former colleague Alastair Scott. Now, that piece of legislation was almost identical in form to this piece of legislation, but for petty, party-political reasons it was voted down by the then Labour - Greens - New Zealand First administration. And they voted it down knowing, knowing then, that the science was unequivocal in terms of providing absolute evidence that drug testing, saliva testing, random saliva drug testing of this sort lowered the fatalities on our roads. We know that to be true because, in jurisdictions like Australia and in the United Kingdom, legislation of this sort had been in place for years with very effective results.

What we also know is that when the Minister, who was then the Associate Minister, the Hon Julie Anne Genter—and she’s a member of the Green Party, who we, of course, know are dodgy on drugs and drugs issues. So she decided, by playing petty politics, to put the lives of New Zealanders at risk unnecessarily—unnecessarily—for years, and that is something that will be for her conscience for years to come. It’s very sad that there have been so many fatalities, so many deaths, in those subsequent years, and the Hon Julie Anne Genter will have to confront her own conscience on that matter, because she used strawman arguments for putting aside the legislation that was brought to the House by my former colleague Alastair Scott, a piece of legislation that could have gone to a select committee, could have been tidied up if there were issues that the then Government had. But, no; they decided to play petty politics. It was the chair of the select committee only a few minutes ago who was lecturing this House and saying, “Don’t play petty politics.” Well, pot, kettle, black, I think is the appropriate analogy. Pot, kettle, black.

So finally—finally—in the fifth year of this Government’s regime, we have an opportunity to pass this piece of legislation, and I guess we should be grateful for small mercies that better late than never is appropriate. The Minister told us, in his opening speech in this debate, that 320 lives were lost last year on our roads, and that’s simply an unacceptable level of pain, suffering, and death to be occurring in New Zealand. But I’m one of a generation that remembers when the road toll was significantly higher than that, when we had a completely different attitude and view about drink-driving, when it was socially acceptable to drive drunk. For some of us who were young drivers at a period of time in the late 1970s and early 1980s—frankly, it’s a miracle that some of us survived. Then insightful Governments—in fact, it was a bold move taken by a previous National Government that actually introduced random drink-driving, and that was at the time considered pretty radical. But it actually had a very, very good effect, and the same effect can be attributed to this piece of legislation when it comes in. But the fact that it’s going to be 2023 before it actually becomes effective—as my colleague the very hard-working member for North Shore, Simon Watts, says, it is unbelievable that it could be taking so long. That the Labour Government, backed and supported by the Greens, have been dragging their feet for so long on this important piece of legislation is incredibly sad for us all, and it’s an embarrassment not just for parliamentarians, but it’s an embarrassment for New Zealand when in other jurisdictions it’s been working so well.

So what we do know is that the Minister is right when he states the obvious—that this is a road safety tool—and that’s a good thing because we need as many road safety tools as we can get. But when we have a Government that is notoriously soft on crime, these are the sorts of prices that we pay for it, and it’s just a plain, simple fact that this Government has been dragging its feet on this issue. This is a Government that has been literally dragged kicking and screaming to this piece of legislation. They could have passed it years ago, with all the benefits that would have come from it.

But I want to pick up on a point that my colleague Simeon Brown made, because for this piece of legislation to be truly effective, it means that if police officers are going to have to make it work on a practical basis, the Government needs to ensure that they have the appropriate resources. What we know is that police morale is low and declining under a Government that doesn’t really support police in the way that our police force should be supported. I’m very concerned that they won’t have the adequate resources to do this.

As a pointer to a lack of adequate resources, what we know is that there are far fewer random drink-drive tests being conducted in the country at the moment. It used to be a very common occurrence that drivers around the roads of the beautiful Coromandel electorate would be stopped and would have to give their name and address into a little machine, and then they would be tested. Now, I’ve noticed, as just a local driver in my part of the country, how infrequent those random tests are occurring. My concern is that this legislation will, finally, be passed tonight, hopefully, and I’m sure it will be, and then it will be—well, it may not actually be passed tonight, because it depends how quickly some of the Government members wish to speak, and knowing their record on this, I doubt that they will want to speak for long.

So we will support this legislation. We have all the way through because it’s the kind of legislation that a pragmatic, sensible National Government would have introduced years ago, given the opportunity, and it tried to—it tried to. It tried to, with Alastair Scott’s piece of legislation. But, no, this is a Government who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it.

This is actually a piece of legislation that should have already been passed, and I’m recalling a situation when, early on in the COVID pandemic crisis, that was used as an excuse for not passing this legislation. Unbelievable—unbelievable. We have a Government that seems not to be able to do two things at once, and so they don’t seem to be able to prioritise things that are important, and it’s suited them, actually, to use in this case—shamefully, in my view—COVID as an excuse for not speeding up this piece of legislation. So that’s come as no particular surprise to us on this side of the House.

Look, we do support this legislation. It’s been too long coming, it’s too late, and it’s been too slow, but, finally, this soft-on-crime Government has finally seen fit to deliver this piece of legislation to Parliament, and I can’t wait for it to be implemented and effective on the roads and streets around New Zealand.

Tēnā koe te Māngai o te Whare, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be speaking on this third reading of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. I happened to be with the member for Ōhāriu, Greg O’Connor, and talking to the good men and women of the New Zealand Police service outside, and there was some discussion about reallocation of police resourcing. I wasn’t sure, but a quick Google between Greg O’Connor, the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and myself did find that actually when the other side were in, they had to look at shifting 111 road policing staff positions to other tasks. So they are concerned about this, we’re concerned on this side, and it makes me wonder—

💬 Hon Member: Fake news, Paul, fake news.

—whether, sometimes you hear—it’s fake news! Well, well, well. Look, let’s focus on this bill, because we’re about saving lives, and that’s what we’re doing in terms of improving road safety outcomes in Aotearoa New Zealand. Look, this is, as has been said, long overdue. Let’s get on with it. What we have seen—and I know in my electorate there certainly are concerns about what’s being done in this area, and I was looking back at the road toll 2019: 110 persons killed where the driver was found to have drugs in their system; 2020: 101. This is going to bring in a new oral fluid testing regime—we’ve talked about the setting of criminal limits, and the fact that the Minister said this is a road safety tool only, and explained that eloquently. I’m not going to talk too much more, I commend this bill to the House.

Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou o te Whare. Drug driving is a real and legitimate problem that has resulted in the unnecessary loss of lives. The question that we, as lawmakers, face tonight is if, on balance, we think that this law will prevent those deaths and that harm from occurring. The Greens, on balance, cannot in good conscience vote for this bill at its third reading, having thoroughly and constructively engaged, seeking changes at every single stage, knowing that, as drafted, it risks baking in—forever—methods that are currently scientifically not robust and that may perversely cause further harm to our communities.

Madam Speaker, if I told you that I could cure cancer with this one simple, cool trick, would you believe me? No, I believe the answer would be. You wouldn’t. You would believe the experts, you would believe the scientists, the regulators, who are responsible for ensuring that these treatments and medicines actually work before they’re allowed to be tested on real people. If the regional public health authority, the New Zealand Medical Association, the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists told you that this medicine didn’t reach scientific standards for rolling out, as they did on the methodologies prescribed in oral roadside drug testing in this bill, would we do it? No, we wouldn’t. We’d be kidding ourselves, and we’d be pretending that we didn’t see the evidence.

But, unfortunately, when it comes to particularly illicit drug policy, we tend to take a very different approach, as a Parliament over the decades; in our mainstream media reporting; and in the typically accepted, albeit slowly changing, social attitudes. That approach is often grounded in best intentions, and that does need to be acknowledged. We can see that drugs do and can cause harm. Some people have had profoundly harmful and sometimes deadly experiences. That, ultimately, makes this topic something really hard to debate, and an issue that can be very easily co-opted by those who are selling overly simplified solutions. When you are trying to distinguish between two critically important but two very different things—one, the reality that drugs, and that includes alcohol and prescription drugs, can cause harm; and, secondly, the question of how we actually, in reality, grounded in evidence, reduce that harm—there is a real tendency, particularly in the history of this Parliament, to miss that critical second question. That second question, however, is fundamental to making good policy, that does the things that we say that it will.

We have a ton of laws and policy that don’t do what they say they will. The Frankenstein Misuse of Drugs Act, my mortal enemy, is one of the best examples of that. Forty-seven years ago, this Parliament passed a law promising to try and eradicate illicit drugs from this country by criminally penalising the people who use and supply them. In fact, 47 years later, we have seen more illicit drugs on the black market. We’ve got far stronger illicit substances and far more of them. We’ve seen more drug users, more families, and communities harmed. We’ve had review after review, from the Law Commission in 2011 through to the mental health and addiction inquiry through to the safe and effective justice review, which have told us that that law is not only not working but is in fact causing more harm because it is so profoundly anti-evidence. And what’s happened as a result of all of those reviews? Well, nearly 50 years on and with immense collateral damage in its wake, that law remains on our statute books. There’s no real political consequences, it seems, for acting and talking contrary to evidence when it comes to the lives of people who use drugs—which, I might add, if we’re going to actually be honest about, is about 80 percent of New Zealanders who will use cannabis by the time that they are in their 20s.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Julie Anne Genter, who, in fact, the Minister did, as well as members of the Opposition, for her work in introducing this bill in a very unique three-party governance arrangement. It would have looked very differently, I think everybody in this House would agree, had it been a law drafted solely, and negotiated solely, by just the Labour and New Zealand First parties. The Greens are, of course, yet to hold our own parliamentary majority in Parliament, so we sometimes joke that perhaps our position and our role in Parliament is one of harm reduction. We do not have the numbers to outright prevent certain harm being caused. Those on the select committee, and members across this House, know full well that the Hon Julie Anne Genter worked tirelessly behind the scenes—even with the ACT Party, I might add, and the select committee report differing view—to try and improve this bill. And in constant conversation with the Minister and his officials—Minister Wood knew that we could not, in good conscience, support this bill at its third reading tonight without both of our Supplementary Order Papers in the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s name passing.

That is because, while a review is important—that is, of course, the Supplementary Order Paper that members in this House did enable to get through—a review alone with not fix bad law. We’ve seen that with the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, which continues to sit on our statute books, with all of its political inconvenience and accompanying harm and destruction, despite review, after review, after review saying that it is failing to live up to its promise. Our proposed sunset clause—voted down at the committee of the whole House stage on this bill—would have forced a future Government and a future Parliament to look at what might end up being a quite inconvenient truth: that this law might not live up to its promises; that it might be causing unintentional and perverse harms. We don’t know that yet because the science is not yet there. That future Parliament, had our proposed sunset clause got through, would have to proactively pass an amendment bill to keep a potentially otherwise ineffective piece of law alive, instead of conveniently ignoring it, as the current majority in our Parliament currently does with the likes of the Misuse of Drugs Act. If the law was in fact, as it may miraculously turn out, working, it would have offered a great opportunity to tighten things up with, I’m sure, not all too much political contention.

If we want to talk about sizeably and meaningfully reducing drug harm on our roads, then we need to talk about the swathes of evidence-based drug policy and reviews which are proven to reduce drug demand: educate people on the dangers of what they’re taking, or—God forbid—regulate what on earth they are getting access to in the first place. All of those reviews and all of that evidence is currently being ignored for the sake of political convenience.

We need to talk—particularly—about roadside alcohol testing resourcing. That’s because alcohol still remains in fact the most harmful drug in our society but also on our roads. In 2020 more drivers were involved in a crash causing death having alcohol alone in their blood than drugs alone or even both alcohol and drugs. We are currently carrying out significantly fewer roadside alcohol breath tests than we were 10 years ago. We only did 1.5 million roadside tests for alcohol in 2020 to the 2021 period, despite aiming for 2 million. Ten years ago, in 2013, we did 3 million tests.

Roadside drug testing is also currently very limited in the number of drugs that it can detect. Synthetic cannabinoids are not likely to be covered, nor is GHB, which we know potentially impairs somebody’s ability to drive. We also know from the Australian experience that while substances may register in somebody’s system, that person may not in fact be impaired. So too, over 200 medications prescribed in New Zealand come with warnings about potential for impairment, but nearly 65 percent of New Zealanders are unaware that it is illegal to drive under impairment by medication.

As Julie Anne Genter wrote in the select committee report, and I quote, “The Royal Australasian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists was concerned that a harm minimisation approach is not implemented by this bill, as well as noting, ‘The presence of drugs in a person’s oral fluids 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 impairments, the absence of well-defined threshold levels and impairment limits for many drugs, and the potential for the bill to exacerbate inequities for Māori in the criminal justice system…’”—from that select committee report.

The Green Party will tonight reject this bill. Without the requirement to repeal what may end up being harmful legislation, this law risks becoming yet another potential relic of politicians doing something which hurts the people we claim to want to help.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. ACT will support the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill at this third reading. The ACT Party, as the member for Auckland Central pointed out, shared many of the concerns that the Green Party had about the operation of this legislation. There was still a great deal of work to do to establish an evidence base that roadside testing, for both prescription and illicit substances, would actually be able to detect that drivers were impaired, and that a testing regime would deter drivers from driving while under the influence of drugs.

ACT supports the Government having taken responsibility for roadside testing. Employers have been testing drivers who work for them for decades. I’ve worked in the construction industry and, during my time in the industry, I was required to submit to regular testing while operating motor vehicles, and heavy plant and equipment, as were many of my staff.

So it’s a fine thing that the Government is now taking responsibility for establishing a similar testing regime on the public roads. ACT supports this bill because it’s a practical series of solutions. They’re not perfect solutions but they’re practical, and they will help achieve healthier communities in the long run.

ACT will support this bill despite the fact that we have reservations around the data and the evidence that is available now to determine whether the testing regime, the testing methods, whether they be oral or otherwise, are actually of a sufficient accuracy and repeatability, so that people who are stopped and tested as part of a routine exercise, one that we’re familiar with through what used to be commonplace drink driving stops—although they’ve become less common while the country’s police force are engaged in managed isolation and quarantine duties, stopping people from escaping from hotel rooms, rather than policing the nation’s highways. And we know that the police themselves feel very unhappy about that.

But despite the fact that there are still gaps in the evidence and the data, the ACT Party supports this because there was an amendment proposed by the Green Party, which ACT supported, and which the Government accepted, to include a review clause in this legislation. So that after three years the data and the evidence on roadside testing will be reviewed, and a report will be provided as to whether the legislation is working as intended, and what other operational measures have been identified to improve the working of the legislation. Because it is important, both for the safety of the public—for people learning to drive, for people who have been driving a long time, for people who drive for work—to know that drivers who get into a car to drive while impaired with prescription drugs or illicit drugs are deterred from doing so.

So this piece of legislation is part of the Government’s Road to Zero plan, as the Minister alluded to. It’s one small part of a much larger plan which we understand, having heard the Minister’s announcement last week, is part of a $1.2 billion scheme involving additional road policing and other measures to make the roads safer. This particular piece of the Road to Zero plan focuses on the human factor, on behaviour, on deterring people who might otherwise get behind the wheel while under the influence of illicit drugs or prescription medication. The aim of Road to Zero is to reduce the road toll by 40 percent over a 10-year period. That started in 2020. So that’s now 40 percent by 2030. Last year, 2021, 319 people lost their lives on the road, but the injury toll tells the real picture. The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) received 32,528 new claims for injuries on the road in 2021 alone, with a total cost of $568 million in claims to the taxpayer through the ACC account. So it’s important that every possible measure, having weighed the costs and looked at potential benefits, that every possible measure that stacks up from a benefit-cost ratio analysis is implemented.

That’s why the ACT Party, while supporting this bill, does take issue with other measures in the Road to Zero approach, such as simply applying blanket speed limit reductions across entire regions—as is proposed for Northland or on that vital link, the Napier-Taupō road, reduced to 80 kilometres an hour for its entire length—and not considering the social and economic costs on communities of a blanket approach, which fails to recognise actually the Government has another responsibility, and that is to recognise that humans do make mistakes. Drivers do make errors. That it’s not just about road policing, lowering speed limits and then enforcing them with the radar gun and severely increased penalties, which we know the Government is considering.

Actually, the Government has a responsibility to identify where it should be investing in roading infrastructure, in addition to legislation like this which is about improving driver behaviour. For example, road safety infrastructure such as guard rails and wire rope barriers have saved dozens and dozens of lives; people may well have been injured but they can still go home to their families. And yet, rather than investing in road safety infrastructure, rather than upgrading roads designed in the 1950s, two-lane roads with six-foot deep ditches either side, lined with trees and power poles practically in the carriage way, rather than making those investments, the Government’s chosen to invest in other transport priorities which actually don’t contribute to reducing the road toll and reducing injuries on the road at all, like a light rail project in Auckland or like a bike bridge in Auckland—both projects which are doomed never to be built by this Government.

These 1950s-designed roads we call State highways in other countries would be modern, multi-lane, and often grade separated four-lane highways. I’ll give you an example of Sweden, a country which has a much lower road toll than New Zealand: 5,000 kilometres of roads in Sweden, round about the same distance of State highways as New Zealand. Half of them, 2,500 kilometres is separated by median barriers. In New Zealand we’ve only managed to separate not even 500 kilometres.

That is why, in terms of Road to Zero objectives, this bill only goes a very small way. It will be very difficult for the Government to identify the benefits and reduced fatalities from this legislation. ACT will support it because it’s important that the Government puts its money where its mouth is and at least implements the same testing regime that employers and businesses have been undertaking with their workforces that use the road for decades. But it doesn’t go any way to solving the real problem with this country’s State highway infrastructure, with all of those design, engineering, and other issues with the State highway network which mean that when a person makes a mistake on the road, they are more likely to suffer serious injury or even death in New Zealand than they would be in a country we would normally compare ourselves favourably to, such as Sweden, which has made a real investment in road safety infrastructure.

💬 Hon Member: 50 percent taxes!

The former Minister of Police brings up the matter of “50 percent taxes”. He might not realise that New Zealanders on the top tax rate plus GST already pay over 50 percent in taxes; they pay road user charges and fuel excise duties and they’re still not getting safer roads—to the former Minister of Police over there.

That is why the ACT Party believes that, in addition to this legislation, it’s vitally important that adequate investments are made in prioritised road safety infrastructure including State highways. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Members, this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 9.55 p.m.