Faafoi Kris: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Faafoi Kris: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson for the opportunity to speak on the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Before I get to the substance of the bill I will take this opportunity as others have to congratulate Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson on his elevation to the post. I know he has vast experience in the House and I am sure he will be a fair-minded Assistant Speaker. 
As many members on this side of the House have said Labour supports the thrust of this bill and many of the measures in it. But there are a number of bones of contention that we have highlighted tonight. As my colleague David Shearer said previously the move not to take any action on lowering the blood-alcohol level is a lost opportunity. It is a lost opportunity to take real action on a matter that has real public support. As David Shearer also mentioned it is a real lost opportunity to save every year the lives of about 25 or 30 Kiwis on the roads. 
There was an opportunity to have cross-party support to lower the blood-alcohol level from 0.08 to 0.05 and I believe that this House should have taken it. It was a lost opportunity to do what is right. We have the ability to save the lives of many Kiwis who are out on the roads now driving innocently down the road when someone who has had too much to drink gets behind the wheel and takes lives. We have the ability to save 25 to 30 of those lives but we are seeing a lost opportunity. 
The Minister of Transport had the opportunity to get cross-party support through a member’s bill that Labour put forward. The Minister himself has already let the cat out of the bag and said he supports lowering the legal blood-alcohol limit from 0.08 to 0.05. He supports lowering the blood-alcohol limit. He said himself that it was just ridiculous that he could drink three-quarters of a bottle of wine and still be able to drive. The fact that the Government and the Minister did not have the courage of their convictions to do what is right and put some substantial changes in the bill to lower the blood-alcohol limit is a lost opportunity. 
Instead what has the Government done? It has made a commitment to carry out 2 more years of research to see whether there is a massive effect from drivers who are found with a blood-alcohol limit between 0.08 and 0.05. We do not need any more research. Over the last 50 years we have had 300 studies to find out the impact of drink-driving around these levels. They quite categorically say that lowering the blood-alcohol limit is the thing to do to make sure we can save lives. The lost opportunity—and the Government knows it—is that right now we could be taking concrete action against those who go out there get behind the wheel and cause grief. 
We know what Steven Joyce wants to do because he know the optics are right. A  
One News 
 poll from Television New Zealand stated that 67 percent of Kiwis want a lowered blood-alcohol rate. Public opinion is there and the Minister knows it. Let me have a look at what the media has had to say about this issue: “a UMR Research survey … found 70 per cent of respondents supported lowering the limit to 50mg”. That was in the  
New Zealand 
Herald  
on 19 May last year. The  
New Zealand 
Herald  
is not a fan of the Labour Party at the moment but it is still talking sense around lowering the blood-alcohol limit. 
An article in the  
Otago Daily Times 
 of 9 April 2010 
states: “A Research NZ poll of 500 people has found 63% support lowering the adult blood-alcohol limit from 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood to 50mg. Previous surveys have seen a 50-50 split.” There has been a mood change over the years and the mood change has been that Kiwis want to see action on lowering the blood-alcohol limit. The  
Otago Daily Times  
continues: “The poll also found 84% in favour of a zero blood-alcohol limit for drivers under 20.” 
Journalists in the Bay of Plenty took positive action just to test the real impact of drinking and driving. They took it upon themselves to have a few drinks and then see where they tested and how they felt when they were at the limit. On 28 August the front page article in the  
Bay of Plenty Times 
 said that four Bay of Plenty journalists had failed a breath test only after consuming eight bottles of beer or five glasses of wine. One of the female reporters was rolling drunk on wine and amazingly she still blew under the limit. Importantly they all felt they should not be driving despite registering below the legal limit. They were journalists taking it upon themselves to be guinea pigs to test where they were on the scale of whether they were OK to be behind the wheel. They were—although one was rolling drunk and the other three knew they would not be safe behind the wheel. Again in the  
Otago Daily Times 
 on 9 April Otago University public health physician and epidemiologist Jennie Connor said that drivers with a blood-alcohol level of 80mg were almost four times more likely to have a fatal crash than those with a reading of 50mg. 
Why are we not taking action? There is support on this side of the House to make sure we can take action. The Government would absolutely and utterly have the mandate of this Parliament to make sure we could take some real action. In an earlier stage of this debate the Minister said there was a need for public support. That support is already out there as I mentioned and as shown in the earlier public opinion polls such as that from my former colleagues at  
One News 
 which showed 67 percent in favour of lowering the blood-alcohol rate. 
It is wrong that we are heading down the one-way street against the tide of public opinion. People want the blood-alcohol level to be lowered. As I said before there have been 300 studies over the last 50 years. We do not need to wait another 2 years. The members on the other side of the House can cry across at us “You did nothing over 9 years.” Well those guys are there now and have the Treasury benches. 
Dr Jackie Blue 
: We’re doing stuff. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: You are not doing what is needed. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member cannot bring the Speaker into the debate. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: I apologise Mr Assistant Speaker. The Government is not doing what is needed and what is publicly supported in terms of lowering the blood-alcohol limit. At a Transport and Industrial Relations Committee hearing a number of submitters were urging the Government to take action. As Gareth Hughes mentioned earlier on in this debate there was a submission by Professor Doug Sellman. I will take a moment to have a look at what he said. He said it was “an appalling decision by Government to deliberately delay the lowering of the adult level for drink driving from 0.08 to at least 0.05. Decisions like this make me feel ashamed to be a New Zealander. It makes me feel part of an increasingly backward little nation of plodders and plonkers having previously been a world leader in progressive social change towards a safer and healthier human society.”  
Paul Quinn 
: That’s OK; let him wander off to Australia. Cheerio Doug. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: Paul Quinn can sit on the other side of the House taking pot shots but we are talking about people’s lives here. If he thinks it is funny that we are not taking action against lowering the blood-alcohol limit then let the record show that. Professor Sellman went on: “Lives are going to be unnecessarily lost and severe maiming injuries suffered to innocent New Zealanders that could be prevented over the next two years while research that even the researchers are not calling for is undertaken. The cost to the country has been predicted to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”  
In this case although Labour supports the thrust of the bill the Minister has the judgment wrong on this one. The public opinion is that we should take real action because too many New Zealanders—even young New Zealanders—have lost their lives on the road. The Minister has this wrong and he knows it. He himself has said that it is just ridiculous that someone like him can drink three-quarters of a bottle of wine and still be able to get behind the wheel. The judgment call is wrong. The judgment could have been made to reach across to this side of the House to take some affirmative action to make sure we can save lives but that judgment was not made.