Roy Heather: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Roy Heather: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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Hon HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 It gives me pleasure to stand and speak on Part 1 of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. 
In large part the ACT Party supports the bill and agrees with most of its initiatives. Most of the initiatives make a good deal of sense particularly the provisions on education for young drivers. I take on board the points the Minister of Transport made when he took a call just before the Green member Gareth Hughes to talk about the initiatives he has put in place on education for young drivers. 
The Green member made a very pertinent point when he said that problem identification is very important. That is absolutely correct because unless you are able to identify the problem accurately there is no way you can get the solution right—except the odd time by good luck. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member. It is for use of the word “you”. The member keeps bringing the Chair into the debate—twice. 
Hon HEATHER ROY 
: My apologies Mr Chair. 
One cannot get the solutions right if one has not identified the problem correctly. 
The Minister spoke about two particular initiatives in Part 1 that are relevant for the ACT Party because we will be having a split vote on Part 1. Two initiatives in particular concern two of our members—that is me and Sir Roger Douglas—first the initiative in clause 12 about raising the minimum age for driver licensing from 15 to 16; and second the initiative in clause 23 to lower the blood-alcohol limit for the under-20s to virtually nothing apart from a general fudge factor. Those two issues are important. We support in principle the reasoning the Minister gave for putting in place the package around young drivers but not those two particular details because I am not sure that the problem definition has been well identified and looked at as a whole. 
Why are we different from Australia in our road deaths rate? My understanding is that it is not just the younger drivers who are affected but everybody across the board. Three things seem to me to be very important when we look at why we have difficulty on our roads. I call them the three “E”s. The first is education the second is enforcement of the laws we already have in place and the third is engineering—the state of our roads. Many other countries have those three “E”s—for want of better terminology—better sorted that we have in New Zealand. 
Of late in the past decade the engineering of our roads has improved significantly. I know that the Minister has worked long and hard in that regard to improve the state of our roads. For many years we had roads that really were substandard. The camber was wrong and we had tight corners. We had difficulty largely because of our engineering. It has been improving but we still have some way to go yet. I applaud the Minister on his initiatives. In the ACT Party’s view he is doing absolutely the right thing in focusing on that part of the infrastructure for the nation. 
Education has also improved. I look back on when I got my driver’s licence. As many other members will remember getting one’s driver’s licence was about hopping in the car and having a spin around the corner or around the block with the local policeman. That is certainly how I got my licence. It gave one an enormous amount of confidence but did not necessarily make one a very good driver. Education is hugely important and although the ACT Party is rarely in favour of compulsion I am in favour—because I have seen it with my own children—of putting in place defensive driving courses. I think they significantly improve drivers’ skill and awareness and improve outcomes. I am all in favour of that sort of initiative. The education component of the bill is hugely important. 
The third thing is enforcement. We already have pretty sound laws in place. They are let down by the lack of enforcement. If there is one thing we should do it is focus hugely on enforcing the current laws we have before we change what is in place and put in new things. It seems to me that it would be better to concentrate our efforts on improving the enforcement of many of the things we already have—whether that be blood-alcohol levels or some of the initiatives for young drivers. Those sorts of things need to be focused on—engineering education and enforcement.