Peachey Allan: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
Peachey Allan: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
[Volume:655;Page:4470] 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 I appreciate the opportunity to speak on Part 1 of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). I thank Mr Mallard for his request that we stop killing him with kindness. I have to say that I found it very very hard to break the habits of a lifetime and speak well of him in the second reading debate. I found that my emails and text messages when I left the Chamber were full of questions like “What has happened to you?” “Have you gone mad?” and “Are you weakening?”. But I need to say that Mr Mallard made a major contribution on this part of the discussions at the select committee. It was a very challenging aspect of the bill. 
The committee was superbly served by its officials and by the police. I think many of us on the committee watched in bemused wonderment and with a great degree of confidence the police demonstration as to how the impairment test will be applied on the roadside. A two-part process is outlined. Firstly there is the establishing of impairment and secondly where necessary there is a quite expensive follow-up blood test. 
I concur with what Mr Davis said when he spoke on the title of the bill. He was a very very fine school principal working in a challenging community and setting standards. There are two ways in which we will finally lick this drug business. The first is having community-minded citizens standing up and being counted. In my book  
What’s Up with Our Schools?  
I talk about the need for respected figures in communities like school principals to stand up and confront the filth that is drug use and drug dealing. Secondly we need the backing of the law. 
I think all New Zealanders will welcome the passage of Part 1 and the statement it makes that this country is no longer prepared to go light on or to tolerate drug use particularly when it comes to driving motor vehicles. This bill is one more step in the process of ridding our communities of the scourge of drugs. I had no doubt at all during my 16 years as a school principal in two communities that people were driving the streets while drug impaired and preying on youngsters. If this part of the bill gets those people off the streets and if it takes away their ability to drive their vehicles with impunity then a lot of good will have been done for New Zealand and New Zealanders—in particular for New Zealand youngsters. 
I am looking forward to this bill being passed and to the police getting out there on the streets and having another instrument in their armoury in the fight against drugs drug peddling and drug use. The committee thought long and hard about how far the bill could go and how tight its measures could be but everybody was motivated by one thing: the desire to make a start and get it as right as we possibly could. I think the committee aided so well by officials and the police has taken some big steps in that direction. I compliment each of the members of the committee on their diligence and thoughtfulness and on the way that the committee was able to work across parties for the common good of New Zealand. At the end of the day New Zealanders will welcome this law. They will cooperate with it. They will accept the minor inconvenience that is involved in being stopped on the side of the road because they want the issue of drug-driving to be addressed.