Coddington Deborah: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Coddington Deborah: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21351] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 I want to address Part 1 “Preliminary provision” and as I have said ACT supports the bill. Part 1 deals with the bill’s purpose. I want to address an interesting issue that arises. Clause 3(2)(h) states one of the purposes of this bill is: “ensuring that a person whose conduct contributes to an operator’s or driver’s failure to comply with his or her duties under this Act is held accountable for that conduct;”. That deals with the chain of responsibility in terms of breaching the law. Later on we will be looking at Part 2 in which clause 33A inserts new Part 6C into the Land Transport Act. Part 6C follows on from the offences relating mainly to logbooks truck-drivers etc. It was brought in because the people involved with this legislation believed that truck-drivers cannot be held to be solely responsible for breaching the law and that their employers were urging them to work longer hours not to take enough rest time or indeed to break the speed limit. Part 6C includes new section 79T which deals with someone who commits an offence being subject “to a fine not exceeding $25000 who by act or omission directly or indirectly causes or requires a driver to—” break the speed limit. 
What we will actually see in August will be very interesting. Will this legislation apply to cases that come to court where the speed limit has been broken and drivers have been urged to do so because they were for instance hurrying to get to a rugby match—or hurrying to get the passenger in the back of the car who was working on papers to a rugby match when that passenger actually came out later and said she would rather be reading a book anyway? Well we all know whom I am talking about. I am talking about the Prime Minister. Of course the Prime Minister will not appear as a witness in that court case. 
Phil Heatley 
: Why isn’t she? 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: Exactly—why is she not appearing? Why is the Prime Minister not appearing as a witness in that court case? With that new section being inserted and with the purpose of this bill being to bring into the legislation the chain of responsibility it raises the question of whether the law applies to everybody who knowingly or unknowingly causes someone to break the speed limit. Will that law apply to everyone or is a Prime Minister—or indeed a member of Parliament if that should come up—above the law? I think that is a very important matter to address in the debate at this Committee stage. 
As far as I am concerned I believe we did not have to have that measure in the bill because I believe that people are responsible for their own actions and should be held accountable for them. They cannot say that someone else made them break the law. Human beings have the power of free will. Unlike animals they can think for themselves. They do have choices. People cannot speed fill out their logbooks incorrectly or drive when they have already been driving too long and should have taken a rest and then say that their employers made them do it. They cannot speed and say that someone else made them do it. But if we are to hold passengers accountable under the law for causing someone to break the speed limit—and we have heard that the Prime Minister did urge the drivers on in that speeding cavalcade to break the law and to as my colleague Stephen Franks said “speed through the countryside scattering peasants by the wayside like some dictator in a Third World country”—and if we are to bring this sort of legislation into this Parliament then we have to make sure that when people are reportedly subject to that legislation and have done things that the public believe could bring them under this provision justice is not only done but is seen to be done. 
I think that that is a very interesting issue which should be looked at in the debate at this Committee stage.