Baldock Larry: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Baldock Larry: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
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LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 I would like to take a call to address the Minister of Transport’s amendment on his Supplementary Order Paper to Part 5 of the schedule. It deals with the problem of people who operate a vehicle that creates excessive noise. I welcome the Minister’s cooperation on this and thank him for it. The amendment proposes to add 10 demerit points to that offence. 
Before I became a member of Parliament I was a member of the city council in Tauranga. At the time we had a particular problem in one of our best tourism areas along the main beach where there is a lot of high-rise apartment-style accommodation. For many years we have suffered the problem of young people coming to town in their cars and thinking it is fun to go round and round in a circle making a noise. Sometimes this happens at 2 in the morning making life miserable for both residents and visitors. In fact I quite frequently see in the newspaper letters to the editor from people who had come for a nice relaxing holiday but have gone away very disappointed. They write to the newspaper that they will never come back because their sleep was destroyed because of this nuisance. 
Early on in my term in Parliament United Future saw the opportunity to give assistance to pass the boy racer legislation so that the police have more powers to deal with this issue particularly where the drivers are doing doughnuts and other dangerous things. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Has it made a difference? 
LARRY BALDOCK 
: It has made a difference in regard to that activity but it has not addressed the issue of those who simply want to make a nuisance of themselves. People can do that regardless of whether they have a modified muffler on their car. They can use just a standard car and simply rev the engine at 2 o’clock in the morning and they will wake people up. They can use their car stereo and be a nuisance. When I spoke to police in the area about what suggestions they might have to deal with it they said they wanted to be able to take the keys off the drivers right there on the spot so that they could immobilise the vehicle for the evening—the drivers could come back the next day and get the keys—and that would be the end of the problem for that night. That would soon send a message to those causing the disturbance that it will not be tolerated. 
Unfortunately it seems that step is a little bit too draconian in some people’s minds so we have arrived at the compromise of putting on demerit points. I think that is a reasonable compromise. We will have to monitor how it goes over the next year but at least it is better than simply issuing tickets to those young people because they seem to take no regard of them at all. In fact some of them have a glovebox full of tickets. They do not pay them or else they go home and somebody else digs deep into his or her pocket and pays for those tickets which I cannot really understand. The effect is that those young people have disregard for the law. I hope this amendment to add 10 demerit points will send a very clear signal to those young people. We love young people. We think that stage of life is a great time. Sometimes young people do crazy things and sometimes they do not have regard for other people around them. We do not want to be too severe but we do want to send a message that that sort of behaviour will not be tolerated. 
Not only is it affecting the residents of the area; it is also hurting the economy because great investments have been made in providing facilities for visitors. We value tourism in New Zealand and we have increasing numbers of tourists every year. It is not a problem just in the Mount Maunganui and Tauranga area; other very popular tourism sites around the country are at risk from that kind of behaviour. I am sure that visitors from overseas go away wondering why on earth we tolerate that behaviour. So I welcome this amendment. Hopefully with the addition of 10 demerit points if people are caught once twice or three times they will realise they are very close to having their licence taken off them and they will find some other useful activity in which to engage in the wee hours of the morning particularly at the weekends which is when this kind of activity occurs. 
Of course the problem will be addressed only if the police are adequately resourced so that they can go out at night and catch those engaging in this activity. We certainly hope that as this new law comes into force the police will take the initiative to undertake some campaigns during weekends so that the message is sent very clearly early on in the piece to young people that they cannot continue that activity and drive everybody nuts. I hope the people of Tauranga and Mount Maunganui will finally get some relief and be able to have a good night’s sleep. One of the most important things we can have in life is a good night’s sleep and I hope that will be the case.