Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is a delayed pleasure to be speaking in the third and final reading of this Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. I say it's a delayed pleasure because this is a bill that should have been passed years ago and for the chairman of the select committee to stand and proudly proclaim to the House that he's been warning police officers around the precinct of Parliament who have been doing such a good and noble job over recent weeks in this place that they should be excited about this piece of legislation passing—the piece of legislation that I might add won't actually be effective for another year or so yet. And in the fifth year of this Government's regime that they should now be passing this piece of legislation belatedly slowly behind time is an appalling indictment upon their record of road safety their diligence towards road safety and their lack of enthusiasm for actually doing something that is sensible pragmatic and in normal ways you would say progressive.But my colleague Simeon Brown actually related some of the history of it and I think it's important in this third reading to go over that a little. There was an opportunity in this debating chamber to pass a piece of legislation that was brought to the House in a member's bill by my former colleague Alastair Scott. Now that piece of legislation was almost identical in form to this piece of legislation but for petty party-political reasons it was voted down by the then Labour - Greens - New Zealand First administration. And they voted it down knowing knowing then that the science was unequivocal in terms of providing absolute evidence that drug testing saliva testing random saliva drug testing of this sort lowered the fatalities on our roads. We know that to be true because in jurisdictions like Australia and in the United Kingdom legislation of this sort had been in place for years with very effective results.What we also know is that when the Minister who was then the Associate Minister the Hon Julie Anne Genter—and she's a member of the Green Party who we of course know are dodgy on drugs and drugs issues. So she decided by playing petty politics to put the lives of New Zealanders at risk unnecessarily—unnecessarily—for years and that is something that will be for her conscience for years to come. It's very sad that there have been so many fatalities so many deaths in those subsequent years and the Hon Julie Anne Genter will have to confront her own conscience on that matter because she used strawman arguments for putting aside the legislation that was brought to the House by my former colleague Alastair Scott a piece of legislation that could have gone to a select committee could have been tidied up if there were issues that the then Government had. But no; they decided to play petty politics. It was the chair of the select committee only a few minutes ago who was lecturing this House and saying Don't play petty politics." Well pot kettle black I think is the appropriate analogy. Pot kettle black. So finally—finally—in the fifth year of this Government's regime we have an opportunity to pass this piece of legislation and I guess we should be grateful for small mercies that better late than never is appropriate. The Minister told us in his opening speech in this debate that 320 lives were lost last year on our roads and that's simply an unacceptable level of pain suffering and death to be occurring in New Zealand. But I'm one of a generation that remembers when the road toll was significantly higher than that when we had a completely different attitude and view about drink-driving when it was socially acceptable to drive drunk. For some of us who were young drivers at a period of time in the late 1970s and early 1980s—frankly it's a miracle that some of us survived. Then insightful Governments—in fact it was a bold move taken by a previous National Government that actually introduced random drink-driving and that was at the time considered pretty radical. But it actually had a very very good effect and the same effect can be attributed to this piece of legislation when it comes in. But the fact that it's going to be 2023 before it actually becomes effective—as my colleague the very hard-working member for North Shore Simon Watts says it is unbelievable that it could be taking so long. That the Labour Government backed and supported by the Greens have been dragging their feet for so long on this important piece of legislation is incredibly sad for us all and it's an embarrassment not just for parliamentarians but it's an embarrassment for New Zealand when in other jurisdictions it's been working so well. So what we do know is that the Minister is right when he states the obvious—that this is a road safety tool—and that's a good thing because we need as many road safety tools as we can get. But when we have a Government that is notoriously soft on crime these are the sorts of prices that we pay for it and it's just a plain simple fact that this Government has been dragging its feet on this issue. This is a Government that has been literally dragged kicking and screaming to this piece of legislation. They could have passed it years ago with all the benefits that would have come from it. But I want to pick up on a point that my colleague Simeon Brown made because for this piece of legislation to be truly effective it means that if police officers are going to have to make it work on a practical basis the Government needs to ensure that they have the appropriate resources. What we know is that police morale is low and declining under a Government that doesn't really support police in the way that our police force should be supported. I'm very concerned that they won't have the adequate resources to do this. As a pointer to a lack of adequate resources what we know is that there are far fewer random drink-drive tests being conducted in the country at the moment. It used to be a very common occurrence that drivers around the roads of the beautiful Coromandel electorate would be stopped and would have to give their name and address into a little machine and then they would be tested. Now I've noticed as just a local driver in my part of the country how infrequent those random tests are occurring. My concern is that this legislation will finally be passed tonight hopefully and I'm sure it will be and then it will be—well it may not actually be passed tonight because it depends how quickly some of the Government members wish to speak and knowing their record on this I doubt that they will want to speak for long. So we will support this legislation. We have all the way through because it's the kind of legislation that a pragmatic sensible National Government would have introduced years ago given the opportunity and it tried to—it tried to. It tried to with Alastair Scott's piece of legislation. But no this is a Government who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it. This is actually a piece of legislation that should have already been passed and I'm recalling a situation when early on in the COVID pandemic crisis that was used as an excuse for not passing this legislation. Unbelievable—unbelievable. We have a Government that seems not to be able to do two things at once and so they don't seem to be able to prioritise things that are important and it's suited them actually to use in this case—shamefully in my view—COVID as an excuse for not speeding up this piece of legislation. So that's come as no particular surprise to us on this side of the House. Look we do support this legislation. It's been too long coming it's too late and it's been too slow but finally this soft-on-crime Government has finally seen fit to deliver this piece of legislation to Parliament and I can't wait for it to be implemented and effective on the roads and streets around New Zealand."