Coddington Deborah: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Coddington Deborah: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21356] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 I shall talk about two things that are of concern to me. One is Supplementary Order Paper 375 in the name of the Hon Pete Hodgson the Minister of Transport. I agree with the last speaker the Hon Maurice Williamson that the Supplementary Order Paper almost overturns all the good work we have done in terms of cleaning out the taxi industry. We actually agreed in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—the Labour members agreed to this too—that if one was out one was out. With this Supplementary Order Paper a person can apply to be reinstated by the Director of Land Transport if that person’s offence was committed more than 10 years ago and he or she has not reoffended in the 10 years leading up to the time of the application. 
Ten years is a very short time for those offences. We are dealing with a very high bar. The offences are crimes like murder or a sexual offence. 
Lianne Dalziel 
: Murder is not included. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: I am not talking about the Supplementary Order Paper at the moment. I am talking about the actual bill as it stands and what we agreed to. If a person’s licence has lapsed for 10 years as it reads here— 
Lianne Dalziel 
: You can’t include murder. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: I know that. The member should let me finish. The member should listen for a moment. Instead of getting so excited she should just settle down. In relation to the specified offences as Maurice Williamson said if it is a sexual offence and a person got only 3 years or 2 years in jail or did not even go to jail it is still a sexual offence. The passengers who hire a cab or who hire someone as a bus driver have the right to know that that person does not have a conviction for such an offence. I do not care whether it happened 15 or 20 years ago. As Maurice Williamson said people with such convictions should go and drive a bulldozer but they should not drive something where they come into contact with passengers. 
So we will not be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 375. It is actually the wrong way round. What we discussed in the select committee was that if someone with a conviction thought he or she was a fit able and proper person to be a taxi-driver but had had his or her P-class licence application turned down that person could go to the High Court for a review of that decision. This Supplementary Order Paper has turned that on its head. Instead of the burden of proof being on the applicant—the would-be driver—that person can now go to the High Court if the director turns down his or her application to be reinstated. That is not the way that we discussed it in the select committee. The provision is far too easy. We should look at the past record of the director of the then Land Transport Safety Authority. By that I mean that when I asked the former Minister of Transport Paul Swain in 2003 how many of the then current taxi drivers had convictions for sex offences I was advised by the Land Transport Safety Authority that it did not maintain a database of all taxi-drivers with criminal convictions nor had it done so in the past. What sort of a gatekeeper is that? Now we are turning the measure back on its head with the amendment to insert new section 29B on Supplementary Order Paper 375 which basically will almost take us back to the days when the authority had no clue about what was happening. 
 The other good point Maurice Williamson made was that Part 2 and the schedules make up the rest of the bill. However small parties like ACT get 10 minutes if lucky and 5 minutes if unlucky to debate this major legislation. 
I note especially new Part 6C “Offences relating to chain of responsibility”. It provides that a passenger can be held criminally liable or responsible in terms of the driver breaking the law if the passenger knew or suspected the law was being broken. I have already mentioned a court case due to come before the court in August involving a motorcade. I think five people have been charged. Two police officers who were passengers are accused of being parties to the offence. It is very difficult to understand why two police officers who were passengers are being prosecuted because it is suspected they knew the law was being broken yet the Prime Minister who heads up the highest court in the land did not know that.