Beaumont Carol: Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Beaumont Carol: Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:658;Page:7204] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 Let me join my colleagues in acknowledging the very real problem that so-called boy-racers create for our society. We do not underestimate that problem which is why we support the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill albeit with some concerns about particular points. I will address a couple of those points in a minute. Real efforts have been made to address the boy-racer issue and I particularly acknowledge Clayton Cosgrove’s work in that regard. Real efforts have been made to try to sort out the issue and I also accept that the Government is trying to deal with the problem further. My concern is that I am not sure whether some provisions in this bill are as improved and as straightforward as the Minister in the chair the Hon Steven Joyce has just said. I will talk about those shortly. 
But I also think the real issue that we are trying to address is that of noise. When we listened to the submitters to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on this legislation we heard that the things that really came through when it was all boiled down—and they were probably in this order of priority—were noise issues around antisocial behaviour and then issues around road safety. All of the things in this bill are if you like proxies for dealing with those particular problems. They do not actually address those problems themselves. 
The issue of cruising is a case in point. Part 1 talks about cruising and I will look at the definition of that term again. The definition of “cruising” in clause 4 refers to the act of “driving repeatedly in the same direction over the same section of a road in a manner that … draws attention to the power or sound of the engine of the motor vehicle’’ or that “creates a convoy that … impedes traffic flow”. The issue is to do with the phrase “repeatedly in the same direction over the same section of a road” which was the change made at the select committee. The Minister said it is one of the improvements to the bill. That is fine but potentially driving backwards and forwards over the same stretch of road raises just as much concern about cruising if the issue is about the sound of the motor vehicle. Many submitters also raised genuine concerns about lawful activities being captured by the definition. Maybe the activity of parking a car is a bridge too far and maybe the Minister is right about that but other lawful types of activities could potentially be captured. For example somebody could be taking part in some sort of legitimate convoy as might happen during an election campaign. Convoys of vehicles go around in that instance. So-called car enthusiasts might go around in their hot rods and they quite often like to draw attention to the power or the sound of their vehicles. 
I am a bit concerned when the Minister says we will know a vehicle is cruising when we see it. I am not sure whether that is good law. I am not sure whether we should make it a discretionary thing whereby the police can say a nice 50-year-old man in his flash hot rod is not cruising but a 20-year-old in his or her souped-up car—whatever young people drive; a Nissan or whatever it may be—is cruising. So I do worry about the definition of “cruising” and I think there are a number of areas we need to look at. The first of those as I have already said is the issue of why driving repeatedly in the same direction is covered but driving backwards and forwards is not similarly deemed to be cruising. I think that is still an issue. The other issue is the question of legitimate activities. We do not want to have definitions that effectively enable boy racers—I use that term advisedly to include girl racers and everybody else; we know whom we are talking about as the Minister says—to thumb their nose at the police because the definition allows a great deal of legal debate about what we are trying to capture here. 
A significant number of submitters raised their concerns about the definition of “cruising”. One of the problems was around the committee process itself. These issues were raised and we had a very good process around the hearing of submissions. I think everybody would agree with that. One could not help but be moved by some of the submissions we heard and the problems with regard to boy racers became very apparent. But I think the select committee got into a bit of trouble with the really rushed process in the consideration and deliberation phases. These sorts of issues were flagged but finding solutions to them was done in a very rushed manner. Officials were put under a great deal of pressure to produce answers to questions like the ones I have just raised about the definition and the issue of whether legitimate activities might be captured. The officials were put under a great deal of pressure to come back to us and give us their advice. In respect of the drafting we were under real time pressures. We were receiving the documentation in very short order indeed. I do worry that the definition of “cruising” will come back to bite us if you like and I really think it is a shame that we did not spend a great deal more time on getting that particular bit right. 
The way that the “cruising” definition will be put into place will be by the use of by-laws so Part 1 of the bill provides for road-controlling authorities to make by-laws. Those by-laws will include ones to specify areas of roading on which cruising can be controlled restricted or prohibited or ones to specify the amount of time that must elapse between the successive times a vehicle can be driven along a section of road before it would not be regarded as repeatedly using the same section of road. I think that is quite an interesting point. One wonders what the science is behind that measure. Will the interval be 1 minute 5 minutes 10 minutes or 15 minutes? The question is really about noise. If the cruising occurs in the middle of the night regardless of whether it occurs at 5-minute intervals 10-minute intervals 15-minute intervals or 20-minute intervals arguably it is still equally disruptive. Again I say I do not think we really got our heads around some of these issues. 
The issue of by-laws is interesting. The thing I found fascinating was the number of submissions made by local authorities who did not want to be given the right to make by-laws. Here we were putting up legislation and most of the local authorities that submitted on the bill said they did not want to have the right to make by-laws and they thought it was a matter of providing nationally consistent legislation. 
I will talk a great deal more about the issue of by-laws and give members a flavour of some of the submissions on the issue of making by-laws. For example the Waimakariri District Council said there may well be difficulties with the definition of “cruising” and particularly with the use of the word “repeatedly”—that relates to the question I raised about the amount of time—with what we mean by “the same section of a road” and with what we mean by “draws attention”. The submitters raised at least three areas of concern around the definition. Mr Parker from the Christchurch City Council said the bylaw-making provisions will be ineffective. In fact the Christchurch City Council opposed their introduction. As an alternative it suggested having either national legislation that applies to certain roads or legislation that councils can opt into. The council also felt that the definition of “cruising” may well be ambiguous. We made a change to the definition after the submission period but I do not think it captured all of those concerns. Dunedin City Council was concerned that legitimate activities—it used the examples of car rallies and Christmas parades—should not be captured in the definition of “cruising”. The Waitakere City Council thought that the by-law approach may not be effective and could lead to displacement for boy racers. It thought like one of the other councils that there needed to be a change to the existing legislation. 
I bet that members would be really interested to know what Local Government New Zealand thought about the legislation. It said by-laws will be costly to establish and there is no requirement for councils to implement such by-laws.