Williamson Maurice: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:3827] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I am delighted to be able to take a call on Part 8 which is only four clauses—clauses 69 70 71 and 72. Basically in my view this part takes us back to yesteryear to a time—as those in this Chamber who were around then will recall—that was one of the worst possible times for traffic enforcement on our roads. 
We had a department of traffic officers which was part of the Ministry of Transport. That was bad enough. Fortunately when it merged with the police we got a better standard of behaviour and traffic officers began trying to work cooperatively and collaboratively with motorists. I am delighted that that is what we got. But we also had a number of local authorities with their own traffic enforcement units. I know that Darren Hughes would not have been around in those days but if he had I would have loved to take him— 
Mark Blumsky 
: He wouldn’t have been born. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: He would not have been born at that stage but I would have loved to take him to see some of the local authority traffic enforcement units and show him how they operated. We had a number in Auckland. Mount Albert had one and Tamaki had one. It was quite clear that the public’s perception was that those units ended up being just little Gestapo-type units that were heavily focused on revenue raising were not too fussed about anything to do with road safety and pinged anybody and everybody whenever they could. I know of a mayor in Auckland who got pinged for doing about 5 kilometres over the speed limit by one of these “Flash Harries” driving up behind him hauling him over and pinging him when just about everybody drove at that speed on that road. 
One of the best things that happened because of the local government reform by Dr Michael Bassett a Labour Minister—and I give him credit for what he did—in 1989 when he forced a whole lot of amalgamations was that he actually got rid of what I think was a scourge. Eric Roy from Invercargill might remember there was an Invercargill traffic enforcement unit. Fortunately I never drove around Invercargill enough back in those days to know— 
Eric Roy 
: It was awful. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: There we go. The experience at the exact other end of the country at the bottom of the South Island was exactly what we experienced in Auckland. 
Now the definition of an enforcement authority—either the police or in some cases Land Transport New Zealand which used to be the Land Transport Safety Authority—is being repealed and the ability to issue infringement offence notices in this case relating to the use of special vehicle lanes is being given to employees of local authorities or Transit or a public road controlling authority. It is being given to a whole range of people—what I would call basically Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all. I do not actually think there are too many local authorities out there right now that if they were given some powers of enforcement and the ability to issue infringement notices would want to go back to those bad old days. 
John Carter 
: It’s the last thing they would want. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I do not think any of them would want to but I signal caution to this Committee that the moment we start enabling that to be the case we will get slippage. Eventually some little empire builder within one of the little operations will decide that hey it would not be too bad if they could— 
John Carter 
: What the local authority? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I know that John Carter is surprised to hear there could be some empire building going on within local government. I know that it has not happened to date. It certainly did not happen in Wellington City when Mayor Blumsky was in charge—that is for sure. In fact if anything the place was— 
John Carter 
: Not in the Hokianga county it didn’t. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I do not know where Hokianga county was so I cannot comment on that. 
John Carter 
: Neither did I. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Neither did the member—OK. But all I want to say is that the reason for the National Party’s opposition to this provision is that it is really not needed. If there are breaches of all sorts of things—such as a car with just one person in it driving down a special transit lane for vehicles with heavy occupancy of say three people and blocking up the lane or a car using a bus-only lane and causing trouble—there very clearly is a proper authority to enforce those laws just like there is an authority to enforce speed limits and to take dangerous cars and drink-drivers off the road and it is called the New Zealand Police. 
We heard the Minister of Police who also happens to be the Minister of Transport waxing lyrical in the House today about the 1000 new front-line police officers. There was no question about it. In fact she was berating any member who questioned whether we would get that huge increase in the number of front-line enforcement officers. If it is the case that there will be this huge ramping up of the numbers of front-line officers to go out and do enforcement duties—and I presume the Minister is to be taken at her word—then does it not make far more sense to task those people who are trained and who have the respect of the New Zealand public to do this work? Despite some slip-ups by a few bad policemen from time to time—and we have all heard a few examples—I still think that in the main the police are well respected in this country. I certainly believe they are much higher up the pecking order than politicians or secondhand-car salesmen in terms of the public’s respect for them. 
John Carter 
: Not as much as they were. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: That is true. My colleague John Carter makes an interesting interjection. The public’s respect for them is not quite as much as it used to be. I think the police need to be ever-vigilant and on guard. But let me tell members that any slippage we might witness in police standards ethics behaviours and so on will be multiplied tenfold if every man and his dog can run an enforcement agency and issue infringement notices. 
A gleeful look will come across the eyes of some local authorities—revenue revenue revenue! They cannot pull back on the rates lever because they just cannot get any more blood out of some stones. For example some elderly people who live in Bucklands Beach in my electorate now pay rates of $5000 per annum for a small cottage—what used to be a beach house. Members who can remember back as far as I can will recall that Bucklands Beach was a holiday location for people who lived in Auckland. It was a long drive out to Bucklands Beach. Actually since road congestion has got as bad as it is now it takes as long to get to Bucklands Beach as it used to back when there were no roads. We often set out in the afternoon in the hope that we will make it there. But these people who have lived in a little crib for some time are paying unbelievable rates. Now of course we will have local authorities saying: “Well we pretty much can’t squeeze much harder on the rates lever. How about we start a fantastic little revenue job here with infringement notices being given out left right and centre for all sorts of things?”. 
I admit there are some limits to Part 8 but I say to the Minister of Local Government that I am always nervous about thin ends of wedges. What will happen the moment we give local authorities as we do here—public road controlling authorities—this power? The Labour Government keeps saying that it is looking forward to one day having private participation in our roading. So are we but it does not look like it is going to happen. What about a private roading authority? What will happen if we do what Tony Blair’s Government has done in the UK? It let Macquarie Bank go ahead and build the M6 toll road in Birmingham. It is completely privately owned and privately built. If we are to let public road controlling authorities have an enforcement role on public roading why do we not say in this legislation that if a road is built by a private company with its own money it will have the right to enforce standards in road safety lane controls and management? 
The reason of course is that we would never allow that. Even the National Party—even me from the right-wing end of the National Party—would not allow a private company to have an infringement enforcement— 
[Interruption] 
 Oh yes I am. I am a good old right-wing Tory. Even I would not want private companies having their own little police force out there running around and issuing infringement notices. So private road controlling authorities are not included in this part. Public road controlling authorities are but they should not be. 
Transit’s behaviour in recent years has been nothing short of disgusting in a whole range of areas. Road control is the one thing I would not task Transit with right now based on its inability to do even its core function which is to build roads. Its inability to do even its core function of building roads is so legendary now that I would not want Transit to become an infringement-issuing police force in its own right. 
National is very very opposed to Part 8. I am going to get very confused later because I think National will support the bill but without doubt we will be voting against Part 8. 
Mark Blumsky 
: It will be on the basis of  
Hansard. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: All right; it will be on the basis of  
Hansard 
. Well at least we will have on record so that the good motorists out there the public of New Zealand will know that while National has any fire in its belly at all on this matter it does not want to see anybody other than the New Zealand Police have control of this issue.