Chadwick Steve: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Chadwick Steve: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18049] 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 I am taking a very short call on the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I was surprised to hear the Minister in the chair the Minister of Transport say this bill is just a land transport road safety amendment bill. That completely ignores some of the evidence that came out in the Law Commission report on blood-alcohol levels. I was surprised to hear that from a Minister who I know in his heart believes he should take stronger measures on the blood-alcohol limit and change it to a limit we have always supported from 0.08 grams to 0.05 grams of alcohol for every 100 millilitres of blood. The Minister in the chair knows that he should do this but he says that this bill is only a transport issue. If it were then in this bill we would be looking only at technical solutions for safety on the roads like barriers getting big trucks off the roads freeing up road space and other technical roading issues. But it is not. 
Labour initially supported this bill because we thought it built on our own approach to roading in the See You There—Safe As policy statement we put out. It was picked up very responsibly by National with the Safer Journeys policy. We hoped this would be an all-embracing bill but sadly we cannot support it in its entirety because the Minister is not lowering the blood-alcohol limit and he is increasing the minimum driver age from 15 to 16. I do not want to hear members opposite saying Labour members are irresponsible in supporting a driver’s licence coming in at 15 without adding that we are very very strong on having a learner-licensing period in that time and are supporting education initiatives for teaching young people how to be responsible drivers. I was appalled when a drive safely programme in one of the high schools in the Rotorua electorate where I used to be the electorate MP was cut. That programme was to teach young women drivers how to be safe when they were driving. Those sorts of initiatives defensive driving education which Labour supports have now been cut. We support those initiatives plus extending the learner-licensing period to 16 plus a zero-alcohol limit for young drivers. 
I was surprised to hear Jackie Blue who is reasonable and had her statistics bang on about young drivers. I live in a region where young people want to come into town and work at McDonald’s play sport on a Saturday or go to clubs and they have to travel up to an hour to get there to partake in what I see as normal healthy young participation in community life. Will their parents now have to bring them into town? Labour saw it as only fundamentally correct to continue to support a minimum driving age of 15 for a licence with a restricted learner-licensing period until 16 for those rural kids to be able to live a normal life and participate in normal healthy activities that young city kids can undertake. 
Labour sees this as a very important issue. We support the zero limit for repeat drink-drivers. We support the zero limit for drivers under 20. We support the initiative to have alcohol interlocks for repeat offenders. There is a lot in this bill that Labour supports. I think it is a pity the Minister did not do the brave thing MPs are elected to do and that is to make policy to protect the public good. There was an ideal opportunity in this bill and the Minister did not do the right thing or the responsible thing to lower the blood-alcohol level. The Minister knows it and I think it is an absolute cop-out when the Prime Minister has a Minister of Science and Innovation sitting beside him to advise him on what is the right thing to do and when the Law Commission stated emphatically in its wide-ranging report—it left no doubt in our mind—that alcohol limits must come down. That was in the Law Commission’s report. The Law Commission reports advise the Government of the day—