Roy Eric: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Roy Eric: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:3831] 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 I feel inspired by my two colleagues Mr Williamson and Mr Carter. I must say some things about the Local Government Law Reform Bill as well. After days and days spent fighting the evils of certain elements of this legislation I have to say this part is worse than the one on dog chipping. This is seriously bad for all sorts of reasons and my colleagues have outlined some of them. There has been concern about the mechanism of providing the option of collecting fines to others than the police and I will give members a couple of examples. The select committee received submissions about this. Someone said they had 3 years of fines they had actually been doing this and they needed to revalidate backwards in case someone came along and wanted their fine back. So they have been involved ultra vires in the collection of money. What is this about? In places like Auckland where— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Lucky there’s someone listening tonight. 
ERIC ROY 
: Lucky Auckland where everybody wants to be in their cars has bus lanes and people can drive on a bus lane. They are not supposed to but what is done with them if they do? The local authority says it wants to have the right to impose fines. It wants to have the responsibility for it. There may be a car lane that requires a car to have passengers before it can be used. If someone drives in that lane alone or with a blow-up dummy in the car— 
Darren Hughes 
: What? 
ERIC ROY 
: That would be for the purposes of looking as if there is a passenger I say to Mr Hughes. In that case an offence would be committed. [ 
Interruption 
] I ask members to settle down. The question is not whether there should be specific-purpose lanes; it is who gets to police those who offend. Let me state again that there is an issue of concern about this being a “click the ticket” provision. Section (3A) inserted by clause 71 provides that the local authority can go to the Minister and say that not only is it policing but it deserves the right to retain a portion of the fine. We say that is the thin end of the wedge and we have some significant concerns about it. National in its minority report sets out quite clearly that we think this is inappropriate. We think the people who should do the policing are the police and that neither local authorities nor Transit New Zealand should become enforcement agencies. We make that point quite clear. 
Another issue I wish to raise here that makes it a little more acceptable is that the provisions in Part 8 are locked in only until 30 June 2009 because there is to be a review of the Transport Act 1962. So that review should enable us to look at the whole issue. Nevertheless the principle that we stand on is that it should be only the police who do the enforcing. The points that the Hon Maurice Williamson made about private roads and a whole lot of other arrangements are not where we want to be going. The issue is quite clear. It is a matter of principle and there is an opportunity for people who are given enforcement jobs outside of the police to overstep the mark. There are no monitoring provisions outlined— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: What about those private security firms doing the minding for the police now? 
ERIC ROY 
: Exactly. There are no provisions in this bill that say if they break the laws we will do X. There is no audit process; there is nothing. This is a hugely dangerous provision and we will certainly be voting against it.