Fenton Darien: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
Fenton Darien: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
[Volume:655;Page:4464] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I have been working with the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) from the very beginning: from its introduction in 2007 under a Labour Government through its first reading and through the select committee process and the various submissions that were made over quite a long period of time. I think the only other person in the Chamber who has been through that process is David Bennett who was also on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee last year and now chairs it very well in the new Parliament. 
I think it is important to acknowledge that although the Minister of Transport has done some good work on the bill it came from a Labour Government initiative. It was the Hon Harry Duynhoven who put this bill through bless him. At the time the bill was introduced to the Labour caucus and we discussed it it was reasonably controversial. We were quite cautious about this bill even though we recognise that there is a problem and a gap in the law if you like on drug-driving. There is also evidence that drug-driving causes considerable concern and damage to innocent citizens. 
I am very pleased that the Government has agreed to adopt and adapt Trevor Mallard’s amendments. We had a lot of debate in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about those two particular issues. I am also confident that we now have a bill that deals with the very very difficult issue of identifying drug-impaired drivers through a walk-the-line test on the side of the road followed by a blood test. The issue that the previous speaker Nathan Guy raised about levels in the blood and so on do not apply under this bill. This is a transport measure; it is not a drug enforcement measure. The main purpose of the bill is to get off the road those drivers who have drugs in their system and who can be a hazard cause accidents and hurt other people in doing so. 
The bill is very substantive. I think that most debate will be about the first part which covers drug impairment but I also note that a significant Part 17 is being inserted into the Land Transport Act by clause 18. It concerns the register that contains information about vehicles. That issue has also caused some debate and a lot of submissions were made on it during the time this bill was before the select committee. 
What I had not understood until I started to look at this issue was that personal information held in the motor vehicles register was able to be accessed by everybody. People can go in and get one’s name and address. It is one of the few registers whereby people can do that. They can get the names and addresses of all persons and organisations registered as the owner of a motor vehicle. The information is available over the counter at post shops and other registration agencies and there have been no safeguards on the use of this personal information. The system has become open to abuse. We have seen an increase in the number of road rage incidents recently. In the aftermath of those incidents angry motorists have used the register to trace a person and then harassed that person. There have been other issues. For example an angry spouse who has separated from his or her partner has sought to track down his or her partner afterwards by following his or her car taking note of the number plate and then getting the address associated with it. There have been incidents of professional car thieves targeting high-value vehicles and using the register to find out where the car is kept. 
The select committee heard a number of complaints from people and heard from a number of submitters about their own personal experiences around this issue. Because we require citizens to provide this information—they do not have any choice about it—the Government has a particular responsibility to protect their privacy and to make sure that that information cannot be used for nefarious purposes. This bill does address that concern although there are some differences with some of the approaches which has more to do with the use of that information for marketing purposes. The second part of the complaint we received about the register was that people—