Gosche Mark: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
Gosche Mark: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
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Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 It is good to be able to take part in this debate knowing there is widespread support for the measures in this Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). I know there will be some debate around what is being labelled the drug-driving situation but I think that for a long time—as the Minister and the Hon Maurice Williamson both pointed out—there have been concerns about drug-driving and the threat that implies for ordinary New Zealanders driving themselves or their families. 
For a long long time there has been a search for suitable measures. We looked at examples overseas and we know that the Australians have tried some other measures that are not allowed for or contemplated in this bill because they were found not to be satisfactory. I suppose to a degree it is going back to a fairly old-fashioned method that many older New Zealanders might be aware of: the impairment test. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Walk the line. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: There will be the walk-the-line test and as the Minister said it will not be done in the middle of the motorway. It will have to be done in an appropriate place although the select committee will have to look at that because there are some questions about the appropriateness of these tests. We also know that the police will be giving a significant number of their officers special training to do this and that is important too. 
There will be questions around the level of penalty. As I understand it penalties are aligned with the penalties for drink-driving and so they should be. There will also be questions about whether there should be double jeopardy. My understanding also is that the penalties contemplated here are very severe. They are actually more severe than the illegal drugs penalties that other legislation deals with. I think that will answer quite sufficiently any calls for double jeopardy to be imposed. It will also send a clear signal to drivers who contemplate the idea of drinking or drug-taking and then driving because the penalties that exist in the law already are as we know pretty severe. 
We want to give our law enforcement agency the police the ability to take drivers off the road and prosecute them if they are impaired. This law will give those officers the ability to say to such drivers that as they have failed the test they will have to have a blood test so they can guarantee their rights under the law basically to prove they have drugs in their system. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: What about someone who has been both drinking and taking drugs? 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Obviously that will be something for the officers to detect. They have the existing ability under the law to do the evidential breath-tests and the like so I guess that will come down to the discretion of the officers who are doing it. Each way they will get the same sort of penalty. That is the important thing—to get those drivers off the road and hit them with a penalty that is either for drink-driving or for drug-driving. 
The other aspects of the bill are also very important. They deal with the privacy issues about which many concerns have been raised publicly. I watched the 
 Fair Go 
 programme fairly recently—within the last week or two—that highlighted the ease with which a person could claim to be the owner of a vehicle and change the registration of that vehicle into his or her own name. Obviously that can be done because of the ease of access to the information. 
As Maurice Williamson and the Minister have also pointed out I do not think anybody contemplated the huge amount of downloads that would enable people to send out junk mail. I must drive the wrong sort of vehicle because I do not get the same sort of mail that Maurice Williamson gets. I am probably thought of as being too poor so those who send it do not bother sending me all the things he has been inundated with. But I know it is of huge annoyance to people up and down the country to have junk mail of that sort visited upon them. So if this bill in any way helps that situation then I think we will be doing a lot of New Zealanders a big favour. 
Obviously there are more serious problems in terms of the criminal element who have been able to go to the post shop and get the information for a couple of dollars figure out where a particular vehicle is kept and then steal it. There have also clearly been difficulties where other people in road-rage situations have been able to access information. I think the register has also been used in domestic violence situations. People have tracked down partners very simply by having access to the register. Of course that is something we would all want to cut out in terms of the abuse of the system. 
I am also interested to look at some of the smaller aspects of the legislation. No doubt we will hear all about them at the select committee. These deal with questions about what is a moped and what is not a moped and highly important issues like that. Also there is the use of supplementary plates for people who have dogboxes on the backs of their vehicles or bike racks. I am hopeful that we will spend all of 30 seconds dealing with those issues as long as the bill has been drafted correctly. 
Hon Annette King 
: A moped for Maurice. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: And a dogbox for David Bennett I would imagine. 
The more important aspects are in terms of making sure that our police are able to enforce the law for those who take illegal drugs and then drive putting others at risk. A way that obviously gives balance to the situation as the Minister said is to ensure that people are not picked up erroneously and accused. So the specially trained police with the impairment test and the following blood test I think should satisfy those who want to make it clear in the law that we do not nab people just for the wrong reasons. 
As I said and as the Minister has pointed out in terms of access to the register there are legitimate reasons why people should have access to registration details. It is most important that people who want to buy a vehicle are able to know that the person who is selling a vehicle over the Internet or privately through the newspaper is actually the registered owner and is entitled to sell that vehicle. So it is a simple act of ringing up giving the details and getting a yes or no answer over the phone and the 0800 number that Land Transport New Zealand runs is a very efficient service. That is important. All the other things that one would want to be able to check without the need to identify the name of the owner are still very accessible such as whether any money is owing on the vehicle and those types of things. So this bill does not interfere in any way with the current situation in that respect. 
As the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I know this bill will be coming our way very shortly. We look forward to the public having their input on those two major issues: drugs and driving and access to the motor vehicle registry. No doubt we will get some submissions on the other less important issues but they are in there for a reason. As the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee is a very efficient select committee we hope we can get this legislation back as quickly as possible so that we do arm the police of New Zealand with the tools they need to enforce the road safety legislation. 
As the Minister said in her speech we want to make sure that we can get the numbers of road deaths and hospitalisations down. We have a very good target of 300 road deaths and 4500 hospitalisations per year by 2010. This bill will go some way to help in our strategy to achieve those targets. I commend the bill to the House and I look forward to the select committee process that will follow.