Flavell Te Ururoa: Sentencing (Vehicle Confiscation) Amendment Bill Summary Proceedings (Vehicle Seizure) Amendment Bill Privacy Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Sentencing (Vehicle Confiscation) Amendment Bill Summary Proceedings (Vehicle Seizure) Amendment Bill Privacy Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 20 October 2009. Volume:658;Page:7276. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker kia ora tatou i tenei ata. Before I start my speech I say that I have sympathy for Mr Locke’s comments in respect of wasting of cars especially if someone is struggling to get one. I understand where he is coming from. But if the general intent is to make a point around this whole issue of not boy racers per se but certainly the issues of safety then the Maori Party is compelled to go with this legislation. Albeit hearing that I would not mind some of those cars—drop off a muffler here or there or a few of the add-ons just to make the look more impressive as some might say. But be that as it may that is another issue. 
Hon John Carter 
: You’d be too scared to drive it! 
TE URUROA FLAVELL 
: No I would have a go. Today as we have heard the legislation has been divided and there are three bills before the House right now in the third reading stage. It is a remarkable coincidence that these three bills feature the impact of boy-racer traffic offending and that they are in fact in front of the House at this time when accident compensation is very much on the national agenda. As stated in earlier stages the Maori Party is well aware that Maori are overrepresented in nearly every injury statistic but particularly from car accidents. In a study published by the Ngai Tahu Maori health research centre and the injury prevention research unit at the University of Otago a key finding was that youth was an important risk factor with two-thirds of Maori casualties aged between 15 and 34 years of age. 
The study “Motor vehicle traffic crashes involving Maori” published in the  
New 
Zealand Medical Journal 
 points out that the majority of crashes involving Maori have occurred on two-way sealed roads that were either in a city or on the outskirts of a city. So enter the boy-racer phenomenon. 
These bills accompany the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill and make three significant amendments to the current law. The bills amend the Sentencing Act the Summary Proceedings Act and the Privacy Act in order to reduce boy-racer traffic offending. The legislation in particular strengthens the powers of the courts to order the confiscation of cars and to give them the powers to order the destruction of cars used by persistent street racing offenders. It strengthens provisions to seize cars in order to enforce protection of unpaid fines and reparation. I can understand some of the reactions that have been highlighted about this course of legislation which are that it appears overly heavy. But a number of circumstances convince me of the importance of this legislation. 
The first is that the court must not order the destruction of a vehicle if it will result in extreme hardship to the offender or undue hardship to any other person and that might be the little out that Mr Locke was looking for. But more important I bring us back to the importance of road-traffic crashes as a health issue for young Maori males. Professor Mason Durie has commented that the effect of injury to rangatahi—young people—is accentuated by the loss of the benefits that can flow from competent healthy skilled whanau members. In real terms this is the loss of the whanau asset—the promise of a future generation if one wants to put it that way. 
More than any other issue examining the phenomenon of boy racing reminds us of the vital need to develop strategies for prevention of road traffic injuries amongst Maori. We must allocate priority to rehabilitation and support services for Maori injured as a result of motor vehicle crashes. This is where the craze for fast racing and souped-up cars takes on a far more serious dimension. We are not talking about a bit of harmless fun and the boys out having a bit of a good time. We are talking about events that in the end result in death or long-term disability resulting from injuries. We are talking about the traumatic loss suffered by whanau when individuals suffer the consequences of road crashes. We are thinking about the real cost of care imposed on carers and whanau. 
The research I cited earlier showed that head injuries were incurred by around 35 percent of Maori casualties admitted to hospital followed by fractures of the lower limb the neck and the trunk. I was interested in the views of the YouthLaw Tino Rangatiratanga Taitamariki group which was that the bills together represent a regime of significantly more deterrence penalties and enforcement provisions particularly in respect of illegal street racing and that the boy-racer subculture is the primary target of enforcement. 
Another interesting submission was the one from the Candor Trust Campaign Against Drugs on Roads. Its position was that New Zealand road toll statistics tell us that noise is the key boy-racer issue and not road traffic for the most part. Noise is an issue but that issue does not kill people and there is the difference. 
I come back to the problem we face as a Parliament. There are public safety issues including the death and injury of young people that definitely need to be addressed. We in the Maori Party are particularly concerned about the significant burden to the health of young Maori created by death and injury due to motor vehicle crashes. We admit that our support for this bill is in the total and absolute hope that anything we can do to prevent illegal street racing will help to maintain public health and safety. 
We also acknowledge there are many issues left unanswered. There are many concerns and questions left unresolved. For instance we know that alongside being young and male a high proportion some 70 percent of Maori casualties were from areas with high levels of deprivation—that is decile 7 to 10. Such a finding highlights the need to further explore the association between the social and economic determinants of health in relation to injury and motor vehicle traffic crashes. Is it to do with the condition of the car the quality of life the health or the educational circumstances of the driver? These are some of the key questions we need to consider. 
The police reports describe a particular profile of a boy-racer. Typically boy racers are male aged between 16 and 28 years of age and employed in the middle class. They lack criminal histories but have usually racked up some fines for driving offences. If we have such specific demographic details one wonders whether we should in fact be targeting the driver and not the car—again to take up Mr Locke’s point. 
Then there is the fact of the activities associated with the boy-racer subculture. Again boy racers are typically associated with firstly alcohol consumption; secondly with stunt driving including burnouts doughnuts and drag racing; thirdly they are usually associated with wilful and unconscious damage of public and private property; and fourthly they are associated with networks brought together by word of mouth cellphones and car horns as alluded to by my ACT colleague. Is the combined impact of each of those deeds in fact the worse evil? That again is a question we should pose. Rather should we be putting our energy into a comprehensive campaign on road safety and targeting all of our energy into addressing the drivers who are happy not to wear seatbelts but to speed to drink and drive and to take risks? Or maybe we are targeting things too late. Perhaps we should instead be promoting best practice from the moment our babies are in car seats. These are the questions that I hope having been through the debate we might address in the future should as Mr Cosgrove alluded to this legislation come back to bite us in the bum later on. 
My colleague Rahui Katene MP for Te Tai Tonga has talked to me about the submission from Te Puawaitanga ki Otautahi Trust. In its petition to the Safer Journeys 2020 strategy it focused its efforts on the current use of child restraints. According to the trust’s sources approximately 16 tamariki per year die as a result of motor vehicle accidents and another 275 are hospitalised. Even after extensive campaigns to address those issues one or two cars out of 10 still have tamariki travelling unsecured and only one in five have car seats that are fitted properly. 
I have taken us on a rather rapid gallop across the whole range of the issues strategies and interventions in the broader area of road safety because I believe we need to be innovative as we look into this issue and across all areas of public health and safety concerns if we really want to look at better outcomes in terms of public safety. Ultimately I guess the real success of the legislation we are voting for today will be in the immediate outcomes we can measure in mortality statistics and hospitalisation statistics and in rehabilitation data. But it is in the interests of health and well-being and the well-being of our whanau in particular that we of the Maori Party will be voting in support of this bill in its third reading today.