Hughes Darren: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hughes Darren: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 The Labour Party will support the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill this afternoon. There are many areas in the bill on which we find agreement and I will touch on some of those. I will also mention some of the areas where we do not believe the bill goes far enough. 
I was fascinated just on a procedural point that when the Minister of Transport began his speech he moved yet again another truncated referral motion to the select committee not only to change the select committee process but to allow the committee to meet at the same time as the House is meeting. Once again there was no explanation given by a Minister as to why that has happened. That is happening far too often and we will not support— 
Hon Steven Joyce 
: It was to get the legislation in place. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: The Minister was not good enough to tell the House that fact and indeed if he had spoken to the Opposition he might have found some support for that given that some of these measures could take place this summer if they were properly shepherded through. But time and time again bills come through like this. Indeed recently we were asked to believe that the Arts Council bill needed to have a truncated select committee process. An arrogance comes through from the Government and that is regrettable. 
This bill ought to have been one that the Minister could build enormous political support for because some of its measures do enjoy support across the House. But unfortunately like so many of the other things that Steven Joyce has done he has got the optics right—he has got all the marketing the buzzwords the presentation and the media releases right—but he has not got the actual grunt and the substance right at all. There is no better example of his failure of leadership than his failure in this bill to reduce the blood-alcohol limit for adults from 0.08 grams to 0.05 grams. He has not been able to get that through in this bill at all despite the overwhelming evidence—the 300 studies over 50 years that exist—that says the adult alcohol limit is just too high. The Minister knows that. Everyone knows that the Minister thinks that personally. Everyone watches him answering questions in the House week after week on this topic looking increasingly uncomfortable about the fact that he knows his policy position on it is completely wrong. 
The Minister said this bill brings into effect Safer Journeys. That is true and if we go to the Safer Journeys documents and read the response of the Ministry of Transport to submissions in the consultation process that it undertook we find that one of the reports that was issued in March this year was called  
Further Information on the Proposal to Lower the Adult Drink Drive Limit to BAC 
—blood-alcohol content— 
0.05.  
The document backs up the Minister’s personal opinion as to why that should happen. It makes the point that all the research exists already. Yet the Minister refuses to act. Why does he refuse to act? It is not because the arguments are not strong enough; we have been able to disprove that week after week in this House. There is an array of international research—and New Zealand data is used in that research—that shows there is an impairment for drivers whose blood-alcohol level is between 0.05 grams and 0.08 grams. That is beyond doubt. No Government speaker today will get up and say he or she does not believe drivers within that range are impaired. I challenge Government members to do so. If they are so concerned that research does not exist let any of them go on the record of the House and say drivers are just as safe at 0.08 grams as they are at 0.05 grams. I guarantee that none of them will do that. In their hearts they know that is not right. 
But the Minister said one of the reasons that he was concerned about reducing the limit was the need for public support for that. He was also very concerned in a poll-driven way that there be public support to increase the driving age. I think the blood-alcohol issue is one example of the situations in which Steven Joyce has advised his National Party political colleagues in the wrong way. We know he is an expert on polling and focus groups and he is a very principled man in terms of running on the basis of what focus groups and opinion polls think—that is how he makes many of his decisions. But he got this one clearly wrong. The One News Colmar Brunton poll 
showed that 67 percent of people wanted to see the blood-alcohol content lowered. This bill does not do that. 
When Steven Joyce was confronted with those figures—previously he has said the Government would need public support in order for legislation on that to go through—his only response was that support for it would need to be higher than 67 percent. He said on Newstalk ZB it would need to be 75 percent before he would support making a change to the legislation in that respect. Putting aside the fact that he is prepared to sit in a Government that received 45 percent of the vote—it was fine to form a Government on the basis of 45 percent of the vote—when it comes to a change in policy in this respect one needs to have a 75 percent majority. Steven Joyce has put that forward as a whole new argument. 
So this is now the big bold position in this bill: we will do 2 years of research we will empower committees to decide whether to lower the blood-alcohol limit and we will unleash an army of analysts across the crash statistics of New Zealanders drivers to see whether that should happen. This is the staunch leadership on road safety that members opposite are demonstrating! Those members get up and say they are proud of the Safer Journeys programme yet what happened? When it came to a tough decision they ran for the hills and appointed a committee to decide on that issue for them. In 2 years’ time beyond the next general election they are prepared to really show some leadership. So if it is an easy decision they are in for it boots and all with a glossy document. But if it is a tough decision they will do an opinion poll run a focus group and if they are still not sure after doing that they will kick the decision out for 2 years and let the analysts say what they think about the issue. 
I hear my friend the Hon Tau Henare on the other side of the House asking about what Labour did. Well I could spend the balance of my time talking about that because when Labour left office in 2008 we had the lowest road toll since 1959—20 years after that member was born. Twenty years after that member was born in 1959 we saw the lowest road toll ever. That just goes to show that we were taking measures on road safety. But we can park that up. I ask National members opposite this: is it an argument to do nothing because 9 years of a Labour Government did nothing and 9 years of a National Government before it did nothing and 6 years of a Labour Government before it did nothing and 9 years of a National Government before it did nothing? Are we really being told by members opposite that unless something has happened before—that is nothing happened yesterday—there is an excuse to do nothing tomorrow? We are talking about road deaths in our country every single year and we know that one-third of our road deaths are associated with drink and with drugs—and that is before we get into the issue of serious fatalities—yet the only political argument that members opposite can put up is to say “Oh well it didn’t happen during the time of the Labour Government.” 
But let us hang on a minute because two other measures in this bill those to raise the driving age to 16 and to have a zero blood-alcohol content tolerance for drivers under 20 are in legislation that is sitting before select committees right now and they were introduced by the previous Labour Government. So if the argument is all about what the previous Government did can members opposite tell me why they have included into this bill provisions that have already had a first reading in Parliament and are washed up in select committees? One of those committees is chaired by David Bennett so of course surprise surprise it has been stuck there for a while and has not been able to return to the floor of the House. When it comes to the principle of road safety we have measures included in the bill that are not strong enough because the Government lacks the political motivation to do them properly and we have measures included in the bill that were started by the previous Labour Government and which have been marooned in a select committee during the 2 years of this Government. 
Let us not hear the arguments from National members opposite that the only reason not to lower the blood-alcohol limit for adults is that the previous Labour Government did not do that. That cannot be their only answer. If their only other argument is that there is not enough research I tell them that 300 studies clearly show the effect that alcohol has on drivers. If members do not want to read the 300 reports that is fair enough; they can go to just this short little report of 22 pages which the Ministry of Transport prepared for Steven Joyce. It goes through and explains how in every state of Australia—do we remember the country that once upon a time we wanted to catch up with; do we remember that country—that has lowered the blood-alcohol limit to 0.05 grams there has been a drop in fatalities and a drop in serious crashes. When we are talking about human beings and alcohol it is impossible to imagine that the findings in Australia could be any different at all to those in New Zealand. The Government is putting up just the flimsiest of arguments in order not to act on these issues. 
We support the Government in lowering the blood-alcohol content to zero for young drivers. I would like to know why the Government is doing that when there is no New Zealand research on it. There is actually New Zealand research of course in the same way that there is research for adults. The Government is saying it will not move to lower the limit for adults because there is not enough research but it is happy to move to do that for young people. We support the Government in lowering the limit for young people—I stress that—but it is using these arguments fast and loose. These are political responses to matters that should be beyond politics. 
Road safety should not be a left-wing or a right-wing issue; it should be a parliamentary responsibility. I feel very disappointed that Steven Joyce is playing such a strong political game on this rather than working constructively across the House. I believe that if he put up a bill to lower the blood-alcohol limit to 0.05 grams nearly every single member of Parliament would support it. He would get over 110 votes for it. I have a bill in my own name that I know has the support of the majority of members of this House. 
David Bennett 
: Come on Darren it’s not about you. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: No it is about the drivers in this country I say to Mr Bennett. That is exactly what it is about—the drivers and the people of the country. That member who has never once spoken out against his own Government has never had the guts or the strength to get up and say he believes something other than what his Government is saying. For reasons unknown he plays the yes-man card but doing that will result in no reward for him. That man will never be a Minister so he should get on and support something decent.