Beaumont Carol: Sentencing (Vehicle Confiscation) Amendment Bill Summary Proceedings (Vehicle Seizure) Amendment Bill Privacy Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Beaumont Carol: Sentencing (Vehicle Confiscation) Amendment Bill Summary Proceedings (Vehicle Seizure) Amendment Bill Privacy Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 20 October 2009. Volume:658;Page:7272. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I will start by saying that I thought that was a very thoughtful contribution by Michael Woodhouse. I actually agree with most of it if not all of it. He much more realistically captured the status of the three bills that were divided from the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill whose third reading we are debating unlike the Minister Judith Collins who was flagging them as a solution to the boy-racer problem. Michael Woodhouse has correctly indicated that elements of these bills will be useful steps along the way but there are many areas that still require further work. I intend to cover those issues as well. 
I have stood in the House on several occasions to speak on the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill and its companion bill the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill to acknowledge those people who brought their stories to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I want to do that again. We were all profoundly affected by the presentations of those people who have to deal with this problem in their day-to-day lives particularly in the submissions made in Christchurch. I cannot express more strongly that I sympathise with those people for the impact that it has on their lives. 
I also think that there were very thoughtful submissions from a number of agencies trying to grapple with the problem. There are genuine car enthusiasts. There are a whole lot of associated issues around things like freedom of association. There are issues about balancing of rights. But the bottom line as everybody on that select committee recognised is that there is a need to address this issue and tackle the problem of those who are making other people’s lives a misery. Whether it is affecting them in terms of sleep deprivation their feeling of security and ability to go about their business damage to their property by people breaking glass or their business they are all significant impacts. There were 58 submissions on the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill and I particularly thank those people and the officials who worked with us in providing advice throughout the process. 
I will focus on a couple of scene-setting matters. I talked quite a bit about noise in the debate on those two bills and I will briefly mention that again but one of the other areas I flagged was the issue of road safety. I note that in the 4 years between 2004 and 2008 illegal street racing was implicated in 49 fatal crashes 160 serious injury crashes and 376 minor injury crashes and in 2008 there were 2431 convictions for illegal street racing. It is a significant problem and at its most extreme it is causing loss of life. It is not a trivial matter at all. 
The Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill particularly looked at strengthening powers of the court to order confiscation but it went on to include the destruction of motor vehicles and that is where we have got into all the hype about “Crusher Collins” and all of that sort of carry-on. That is where I think we have gone off-track on this legislation. The bits around strengthening confiscation and dealing with loopholes like the third party provisions are really useful additions to the statute that we already have on the statute book. They will assist the police and others in making sure that we deal with this issue. The issue of destruction of motor vehicles is actually just a red herring. I think it has been beefed up by members opposite as really getting tough. Labour has supported these bills. We have tried to amend the legislation to toughen up the confiscation provisions because getting those cars off the road—the confiscation of those cars—is as serious as destruction. Our view is that the courts are not very likely to go down the destruction track. A lot of the submitters thought that the destruction provision was just ridiculous and that it was not where we should be focusing our attention. The bill also strengthens provisions around the enforcement of the collection of unpaid fines and reparation. Again I say that we strongly support that. There are too many people who have been able to use loopholes to get out of taking responsibility for their actions in that regard. 
We have said all the way through that we will support measures to crack down on illegal street racing. It is an issue that Labour has consistently engaged with and has tried to deal with over a number of years. In the course of this debate we put up a proposition to toughen the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill. Unfortunately despite our requests of the Government to support that amendment it was not taken up. Essentially Supplementary Order Paper 73 aimed to reinstate the original intention of the Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Act 2003 whereby after two street racing offences within 4 years an offender’s vehicle must be permanently confiscated. It sought to apply that same provision to the substitute for the offender. Mr Cosgrove talked about it in detail so I will not go into that Supplementary Order Paper but it maintained the safeguards and appeal rights that were in the bill. Basically we wanted to ensure that the bill was toughened up with regard to confiscation on a second offence. We have said all the way through that we do not agree with crushing cars. It is a waste and we think it a distraction from the real issues. We put up that amendment but unfortunately it was not accepted by the Government. 
The other thing I would like talk about in some detail is the provision around a substitute for the offender. As I mentioned we are strongly supportive of this provision. It closes a loophole where those who are engaged in illegal street racing have effectively transferred ownership backwards and forwards between themselves their parents their friends or whatever. This seeks to address what has been identified as a real problem and we support it. A provision to be added to the Sentencing Act by clause 5 of the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill basically means that a person can become a substitute for the offender. There are protections so that for example the court cannot order confiscation of a vehicle owned by a substitute if the substitute could not have reasonably known that the offender would commit an offence or if the substitute took all reasonable steps to prevent the commissioning of an offence. That is important. It is important that we do not get so Draconian that we take away people’s rights. There was consideration around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in that regard. It was vetted by Crown Law and it found that this provision was consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That was particularly so because there are no criminal penalties associated with this provision. I think that the substitute for the offender provision was an important change and it is one we are strongly supportive of. 
The other area I want to go back to is where I started around the real issues here. Throughout this debate I have consistently said that noise is a real issue. I concur with what Michael Woodhouse said in relation to the issue of noise. The other issues are road safety and antisocial behaviour. When we boiled down the implications of what people were saying to us those were the things that were impacting on their lives. Those are the things that we need to be addressing if we are serious about dealing with the issue of illegal street racing. 
In our report on this bill we Labour members raised our concern that cuts to police resources will impact negatively on the ability to effectively deal with the problems arising from illegal street racing. The police’s role in this is absolutely crucial not only in an enforcement sense but also in a community safety and community policing sense. Mr Woodhouse talked about some of the people who might for the purposes of this debate be characterised as the good boy-racers or the people who like to use their vehicles in certain ways and show off in their vehicles and everything else in a way that is not disadvantaging anybody else. Community policing is really important in having those relationships and in trying to foster a voice for those people. We talked to some of those people in Christchurch to make sure that police responses take account of information that those people will be hearing about some of the people we might characterise as the bad boy racers. Again I say that police resourcing is important in terms of both enforcement and the community policing side of things. We are worried about the current budget cuts including the loss of police vehicles and the implications that that will have on effective policing.