O'Rourke Denis: Land Transport Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Land Transport Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15141. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First will support the Land Transport Amendment Bill to go to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. Statistics show that drink-driving in New Zealand is still a very serious problem—61 deaths between 2009 and 2012 plus over 1000 injuries are far too many. The Minister of Transport it seems has been dragged kicking and screaming to take action on thisand this bill represents minimal action and far too late. It is too little to tackle a major cause behind a majority of road accident deaths and serious injuries and of long-term emotional or psychological trauma to many more people and their families.New Zealand First supports the overall thrust of the bill to lower the allowable alcohol content from 80 to 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood when driving and to reduce the current breath-alcohol limit from 400 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath to 250 micrograms. In the bill disobedience in respect of these new limits is to be addressed only in the form of infringement offences on the grounds that they are in the less serious range of offending. The existing limits are therefore to be regarded in the more serious range and are criminal offences with much larger penalties. The lowering of these limits however is justified and necessary because there is much evidence and research already available to show enough driver impairment between the proposed limits and the existing limits to warrant this action.The recentCampbell Liveprogramme though not a scientific study was nevertheless a convincing demonstration of how our limits are far too high and that most people drinking far less than these limits are in fact not capable of driving safely and are likely to harm themselves and others if they do so. The programme showed that although people with higher body mass may be able to drink and drive with close to an 80 milligram blood-alcohol limit without significant impairment a large proportion of the population—those with less body mass and especially women and more especially young people—cannot do so safely. Therefore it is clear to me that New Zealand’s alcohol limits in relation to driving are far too high are out of touch with international best practice and indeed are out of touch with public opinion.The part of theCampbell Live demonstration however that impressed me most was the realisation that the main value of a significantly lower blood-alcohol limit is the fact that it is highly likely to mean that drinkers will start to make decisions much earlier in their drinking sessions about how much they will drink and whether they will drink and drive. Therefore they are likely to make much better decisions. Further when people go to functions or out to socialise they are much more likely to make alternative transport arrangements if they know that they will be drinking more than the two to four standard drinks that would take them over the new blood-alcohol limit as proposed in this bill.The Government has announced that its proposed solution is that an infringement of the new rules prohibiting driving with a blood-alcohol limit of between 51 and 80 milligrams or with a breath-alcohol limit of between 251 and 400 micrograms will not be treated as a criminal offence which would incur the full force of the law as for driving with a blood-alcohol limit of over 80 milligrams or a breath-alcohol limit of over 400 micrograms. Instead the legislation provides only for a small fine of $200 and 50 demerit points. Demerit points may lead to loss of licence to drive for a period but the $200 fine is nothing more than derisory and is clearly an inadequate deterrent. Demerit points are often easily disregarded especially by the young because they usually do not have an immediate effect. The $200 fine is simply not enough. These new penalties therefore do not reflect the seriousness of the offences; they undermine the seriousness of the offences. They smack of the proverbial slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket. Young people are especially likely to think that they might drink over the new limits without being too worried about the penalty—almost an invitation in fact to drink to the criminal limit. The new penalties are unlikely to have the desired result of getting people to make their drinking and driving decisions earlier in their drinking sessions. That should be a primary objective.The Government has yet again showed the same weakness on alcohol issues as it showed recently with the so-called reforms for the sale of alcohol in New Zealand which did not reduce the purchase age for alcohol which took a wimpy approach toopening hours and which took no action on issues such as those relating to alcopops. Clearly the Government yielded then to the alcohol industry lobby on that legislation and this bill it seems to me adopts a similar half-pie approach as far as penalties go.It seems to me that on this important law and order issue the public of New Zealand actually do want stronger action and leadership than what this Government is apparently prepared to take. It is an issue that the public need to give us in this House some guidance on as to how far they want the new rules or legislation to go. For that reason there needs to be a chance for the public to have their say and we in New Zealand First want to hear those submissions at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We want to hear what the experts have to say too because there has been a lot of research and a lot of evidence gathered and they can offer a lot. We want the new limits and penalties to reflect public opinion but we also want the optimum degree of public consensus possible because in the end what we really need is a culture change towards more sensible drinking habits especially among young people so that success in achieving road safety objectives will come more from improved attitudes and practices than from the fear of high penalties but that does not mean that penalties should be soft. The penalties must reinforce and underpin the process for social change and better drinking habits along of course with continued education and promotional efforts.New Zealand First will support this bill to go to the select committee especially so that submissions from the public can be heard for the reasons I outlined. However New Zealand First is likely to be seeking higher penalties also for the reasons that I have outlined and we are interested in what the public have to say about that. We suspect that the Government’s limp-wristed approach on penalties will not be supported and that the public will show that they want stronger penalties to tackle such a serious problem. I hope that people will make submissions that they will say what they feel about this and that the experts will give us the benefit of their expertise as well and mostly I hope that the Government will actually listen to all those people. If as I suspect increased penalties are what people want I hope the Government will heed that and make the changes necessary. So I look forward to the select committee process for those reasons and New Zealand First will support the bill to that stage.