Fenton Darien: Land Transport Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Land Transport Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19290. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour):I am very pleased to take a call in the Committee stage of the Land Transport Amendment Bill. As I said in the second reading this bill has been a long time coming. It might not be perfect. It might not be perfect and it might not be as tough as New Zealand First would like but actually it is progress. It is progress because we have been waiting and we have been agitating—and so have the public—since 2009 for this change to happen.I want to start my contribution to the Committee stage by congratulating the members of the Labour Party Darren Hughes and Iain Lees-Galloway who put forward this bill way back in 2009 and were calling for this change not only as a member’s bill. It was drawn by the ballot in Iain Lees-Galloway’s name but we were calling for this change in many a land transport bill that came before this Parliament. We put forward amendment after amendment and the Government voted them down.I also want to congratulate the New Zealand public because in the end it is the New Zealand public who have put the pressure on the Government to do something about this issue. Indeed they have been saying this as well since around 2010 when the Herald on Sunday ran a campaign asking the New Zealand public whether they believed that the blood-alcohol content should be reduced. There was overwhelming support in the Herald on Sunday campaign and in the polls that followed. It ran a campaign during that time to get New Zealanders to pledge to drink two drinks as a maximum and it was a very successful campaign. So I agree with my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway.As I came into the Chamber I heard him talking about cultural change and I think that that campaign and Labour’s work over many many years has actually contributed to a point where the public now accept that the current blood-alcohol limits are quite frankly ridiculous. Actually the public have been saying for some time now that we should be doing what many other countries do. Surely we would want to be saving the what is it three lives a year that have been lost because of this—three lives a year since 2009—Carol Beaumont: Not to mention the injuries.DARIEN FENTON: —not to mention the injuries and the terrible costs. So although I accept that some members in this Parliament do not think this bill is tough enough and that we should be tougher on this issue I am just at the point now where because it has taken so long to get to the point where we can pass a bill that will have some sanctions with the lower adult legal alcohol limits so that people will drink less than the current limits I am really pleased to see this change in Parliament after many many years of having all of the various experts advising that this was a measure that New Zealand could take easily enough. We should have done it a long time ago.In 2010 the Government kicked it for touch. It said: “Oh we don’t have New Zealand studies on this issue.” even though there was a truckload of information from overseas. There are many international studies about the benefits of lowering the blood-alcohol content to 0.05. But anyway we had the Government—I have to say I hate to say it—kicking it for touch. I will not say what I was going to say but the Government kicked it for touch because it did not want to take on this issue publicly even though the New Zealand public were calling for it. So we waited from 2010 to 2014—4 years of people dying; at least three people a year dying because of the Government’s failure to implement this bill.Of course the other thing about this bill that is very interesting if you go back in history a wee bit is that I remember Steven Joyce drinking very enthusiastically—how much did he drink?Iain Lees-Galloway: Three-quarters of a bottle.DARIEN FENTON: He drank three-quarters of a bottle. He said: “Quite frankly this is a no-brainer. We should fix this.” He said that. Then we had TV programmes showing people drinking 12 beers to reach the 0.08 level—12 beers—and currently they are entitled to get into a car.As I said we are just at the point where although the bill may not be perfect and we might like to have some other debate around the penalty system and we would have liked quite a lot more time to deal with some of the amendments that came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we just want to see this bill implemented. That is why I said in my second reading speech that we are here to cooperate with getting this through because it is a step forward and it has taken long enough.There are a number of amendments to Part 1 that caused quite a lot of discussion in the select committee which as my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said I think will cause problems in the future. These are around giving a blood specimen. Clause 6 had introduced a change. It was a presumption that a driver had refused to permit a blood specimen to be taken if blood had been required on a previous occasion but he or she was medically or physically unable to provide it. That was a presumption that the driver had refused to give a blood specimen. Indeed we did deal in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee with this very issue in another member’s bill in the name of Scott Simpson. It is a very very difficult issue. However there have been some amendments to clause 6.We had a lot of debate also about clause 7 which is about paying the costs of the blood test. Even if you have a blood test and are found not to be over the limit you still have to pay the cost of the blood test. The next tricky part of it will be recovering the cost of the blood test from those who do not pay it. So we are going to have Baycorp knocking on the doors of a few people trying to recover $700 because they have not paid their bill for having a blood test. We had a lot of advice around this and there were warnings about the legal issues that will arise from this. We predict that this will become problematic and that in the next Parliament you will see another Government—it will not be the current one—coming back and having to amend this bill. Perhaps that is not a bad thing really because it will give us the opportunity to have another look at this bill and see whether it is working.I support the idea of perhaps having a review after a certain period of time and seeing whether there are other things we could do. We all know that things like the alcohol-free limit for under-20s—zero alcohol for under-20s—has been very successful. Again that is about changing the culture so that people do not get in a car and think: “Oh well. I’ve only had nine glasses of wine so I’m not over the limit yet.” even though they are dangerous and are dangerous on our roads. I think it will lead to a lot more responsible driving on the roads. In fact over time I think this will lead us to the point in the future where we are able to introduce a zero alcohol limit when driving on our roads.We all know how long culture change takes. I am old enough to remember when seatbelts were introduced. What an uproar there was about that at the time. People thought that was nanny State and it could not happen and why did they need a seatbelt and it was just appalling. But the fact of the matter is that that measure ended up saving lives and still does to this day. I think this bill over time will change the culture in a way that we have gradually seen with drink-driving over recent years.I think there are some issues as I said in Part 1 that we are going to have to have another look at. It is disappointing that we are having to get this bill through at the last minute but as I said we support the bill. It would be good if we could have done it way back in 2009 when it was first mooted by Labour.