Shearer David: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Shearer David: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18039] 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I take a little bit of exception to what the member Michael Woodhouse was just talking about. Last week Sir Peter Gluckman came out with a very good report about basing legislation and policies on evidence. Evidence has been used in a rather ad hoc way in Parliament today. 
Let me look for example at the road age—the driving age. Our road death rate per 100000 in 2005 was 9.9 which was slightly above the OECD average of 9.5. We all agree in this House—there is no disagreement—that we need to improve our road death rate. But if we look at the US as well as the OECD we see that all those countries have a higher driving age yet in the US the road death rate is 14—about five deaths higher per 100000 than here in New Zealand—Poland’s rate is 14 Belgium’s is 10 Portugal’s 11 and Spain’s 10. If we go down the list of OECD countries we find that those countries even though they have a driving age that is higher than New Zealand’s have a greater rate of road deaths. We can selectively look at the UK and Australia and say that their road death rates are lower than New Zealand’s so we must be failing in some way. But I tell Mr Woodhouse that if he goes across to Australia and drives around there he will find that the roads are different. They are quite different from New Zealand’s roads. The weather conditions are very different. Some of the driving conditions are very very different. New Zealand has much more difficult driving conditions than Australia. I can tell members what else is different in Australia. It has a blood-alcohol limit of 0.05 grams rather than 0.08 grams. Australians have been smart enough to bring down the limit. I think statistics and evidence are being used rather selectively in this debate. 
I come to one other point. I think we all are talking about the same things. We all want the same things from this legislation. We support the Minister’s zero limit for repeat drink-drivers and zero limit for drivers under 20. I think it is logical. We support the alcohol interlocks for repeat offenders and the doubling of the minimum prison time for drunk drugged or reckless driving causing death. We all agree with those so in that list why cannot we also agree on a reduction from 0.08 grams to 0.05? 
I say to Mr Woodhouse that the answer is not in the evidence but in the way the debate has been carried out in this House. What happened was the Prime Minister asked the Ministry of Transport for an opinion on whether people would be over the legal limit after one glass of wine. He was so concerned about what he thought the answer was that he decided we would not do that. It was all about polls; it was not about evidence at all. When Darren Hughes put up his member’s bill Mr Key was willing to have a conscience vote on it but he got rolled by his caucus—that is Steven Joyce who would have looked rather stupid having stood up in this House and said he did not want a conscience vote and did not agree with having one. Like Gareth Hughes I would have liked to be a member of that National caucus so that I could have found out what went on when the Prime Minister did the about-face on the conscience vote and agreed to a party vote. 
Here is a front-page article from the  
Bay of Plenty Times 
. It details how four  
Bay of Plenty Times 
 journalists each failed a breath test but only after consuming eight bottles of beer or five glasses of wine. One of their female reporters was rolling drunk on wine and amazingly she blew under the limit. Importantly all four thought they should not drive.