Twyford Phil: Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5134. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū):Labour is supporting the Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill at this first reading. I think there is nobody in this House who likes the idea of voting for retrospective legislation. It is undesirable but in this case we believe that this is a necessary bill and we will talk about some of the reasons why that is the case.The Minister has given us a bit of a thumbnail sketch of how this situation arose. The basic facts I think are these. Under Local Government Act 2002 councils were given the powers to set local speed limits in built-up areas and outside schools and so on and along with that power councils were required to review those by-laws. I think if my memory serves me correctly the by-laws must be reviewed after 5 years and then every 10 years thereafter. What has happened in this case is that the Kāpiti Coast District Council discovered in May this year that its speed limit by-law had been inadvertently revoked in 2012. That has obviously led to quite a bit of scurrying around by officials looking at how this happened and it appears we are advised that there is a significant number of other councils who may find themselves in a similar situation. The upshot of all this is that it seems that there are tens of thousands—I do not think it is known exactly how many but there could be tens of thousands—of speeding infringements that are technically invalid because of the failure of an unknown number of councils to follow the prescribed rules set down in the Local Government Act 2002. So that puts the Government in a very tricky position and there are a whole lot of consequences that have to be considered as a result of that.Our view is that although retrospective legislation is undesirable mistakes do happen and this is a pretty good example of mistakes happening on a fairly large scale. We believe that for reasons of public safety for reasons of public confidence in our road safety system of which speed limits are obviously an essential part and for fiscal and other practical reasons it is important that these mistakes are put right and that the laws and the speed limits that everybody has assumed have been in place over these years and all of the infringements that were issued under these laws are not overturned. That I believe would be untenable. It would be untenable for the communities that are protected by our road safety system and by speed limits. It would be untenable I think for the thousands of New Zealanders who committed speeding infringements that they and everybody else assumed were valid.So let us talk a little bit more about some of the detail. The background to this is that there is the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2003 otherwise known as the speed limits rule. It basically sets a default 100-kilometre-an-hour speed limit for all roads unless this has been reduced by the relevant authority like a council. Then under that local councils all around the country have the power to set local speed limits and I think that that is as it should be. It is an entirely appropriate thing for local communities to have that power. But the Local Government Act 2002 does require that the by-laws setting those speed limits are reviewed—first after 5 years and then every 10 years after that.What the solution that this bill brings to the House does is it sets out to validate speed limits that have been created since 2004 regardless of whether they were promulgated under potentially invalid by-laws. I repeat: as far as I have been advised it is unclear about the possible scale of this problem. I think we know with certainty that the Kāpiti Coast District Council has put its hand up and said that that is the case but there may well be potentially quite a large number of others. It also validates enforcement actions that have been carried out in relation to those by-laws since 2004.What the bill does is it removes any ambiguity or it attempts to clarify the powers in the Land Transport Act 1998 for road-controlling authorities like the councils to make a speed limit by-law and then it clarifies the procedural requirements for those authorities around that power to make by-laws. My understanding of the bill—I have not had a chance to go through the bill in detail yet—is that although it leaves those powers and those responsibilities with the councils it removes the requirement to review them every 5 years and 10 years which is the thing that has got councils into this mess in the first place.What is the case for urgency? Why should this legislation be pushed through all stages this afternoon? Let me just touch on those. There is clearly a risk to road safety to the safety of communities throughout the country if there is any kind of confusion or perception that the speed limits that everyone has thought are in place are suddenly thought to not apply or are unenforceable. Where the New Zealand Police has enforced invalid speed limits over the last few years that obviously sets off a whole chain of consequences: demerit points fines other sanctions licences lost and so on. If this bill was not passed with urgency the people who experienced those sanctions could then argue that they have unlawfully suffered the consequences. I think that it would create a situation of real confusion including significant financial risk to the Government if all of those infringements and the penalties that followed from them were called into question not to mention the possibility of individuals seeking compensation for loss of employment disqualification or even in some cases imprisonment.The fourth point that I would raise is that it would put our police force which is out there every day on the roads around New Zealand trying to keep the roads safe protecting people and enforcing the speed limits in a very very invidious position. It would undermine confidence in the police but also in the entire road safety system.I want to make the point that although again I think none of us feels great about passing retrospective legislation the Legislation Advisory Committee has noted that retrospective legislation can be justified in some circumstances. It quotes for example bills to “validate matters that were generally understood and intended to be lawful but were in fact unlawful as a result of a technical error;” or secondly to “address a matter that is essential to public safety;”. I think it is fair to say that this bill ticks both the boxes in the guidelines that are set out by the Legislation Advisory Committee.I am going to leave it there. We are going to have more time to discuss the bill including during the Committee stage when we will be able to hopefully tease out more detail about this bill. Thank you.