Hughes Darren: Alcohol Reform Bill — First Reading 
Hughes Darren: Alcohol Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15269] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the first reading of the Alcohol Reform Bill. As my colleagues have said Labour approaches this legislation disappointed that what appears to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make some changes has not been taken up to the full extent that it could have been. But we will vote for the first reading of this bill because there are aspects of the legislation that we are in support of and there are other elements where we would like to use the select committee process to advance our view with regard to different aspects of the legislation. 
At the outset before I touch on the one particular topic I would like to raise in the House this afternoon I say that I agree with some of the earlier speakers particularly Heather Roy who made the point that legislation alone will not make the changes that we need. I totally agree with that. I think attitude change in our society is equally as important as the law changes that Parliament can pass. If we believe that we can just pass law and that people will pore over our  
Hansard 
 details read the statute book and make their decisions on that basis alone then I think we are deluding ourselves. We need a two-pronged approach of attitude change and leadership in the community but simply relying on that will not do it; we do need to make sure that our laws are robust. 
In that respect the Law Commission report which was set up by the previous Labour Government and was reported under this Government—and Simon Power has taken that work through to the legislation that we are debating today—provided not only that once-in-a-generation opportunity that I spoke of but also a lot of political cover for the Government of the day. I do not pretend that these are easy issues for a Government to grapple with as people do not necessarily line up along philosophical lines on these kinds of topics. But there was an opportunity for the Government to make the best use of the political will that exists in Parliament to make some of those changes. I think it is worth making that point. 
This reform bill contains 10 different parts which amend many different laws. The aspect I want to speak about today is something that is not in the bill but could have been. I believe it is a huge and damning oversight on the part of the Government that it has not taken up the recommendation that was in the Law Commission report and also that it has not been able to take up the political will that was there. I believe that in the first reading of this reform bill there should have been provisions that lowered the blood-alcohol concentration level for adults from 0.08 to 0.05. I believe if that provision had been included in this reform bill which touches on many pieces of legislation then the Government would have found on a conscience vote that the overwhelming majority of the House would support it. 
The Law Commission report on which this legislation is based has made that clear and indeed the Minister of Transport himself when this issue was being debated as part of Safer Journeys the road safety strategy said that he thought the current limits were ridiculous only for him to not follow through when the decision had to be made to include it either in this legislation or in alternative legislation that is currently before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. 
It is an idea whose time has come. Over 300 studies have shown the effect of alcohol on drivers and it is a terrible terrible effect indeed. In our country roughly one-third of our annual road toll is made up of deaths caused by alcohol. Many many thousands of drivers are injured over the course of a decade as a result of alcohol. I also note in passing that drug-driving is a factor in a number of these accidents as well. 
New Zealand now stands as one of the countries in the Western World that has the highest tolerance of alcohol allowed in the blood whilst still giving drivers the ability to drive on our roads. I think that is absolutely terrible. Indeed we know from those studies that by reducing the drink-driving limit we could make a real impact on our road toll straight away. 
There is no doubt that there is public support. Two-thirds of people who participated in a  
One News 
 poll believed that the alcohol limit should be lowered to 0.05 and 76 percent of people who responded to a  
Herald on Sunday  
campaign nominated a drink-driving limit of effectively 0.05. Even the Minister of Transport in his own Safer Journeys document suggested that 85 percent of people had a genuine desire to see the alcohol limit come down. 
We are left with arguments against this measure which I do not find compelling at all. The first argument I hear from the Government for not including that measure in this legislation is that Labour never did it. What a previous Government did or did not do cannot be the basis of public policy in New Zealand. There are many reasons why Governments do not do things. Sometimes it is simply the passage of time. Sometimes it is simply an idea whose time has come and I believe this is one of those. 
Labour’s decision to support the lowering of the alcohol limit is based on two key points. Firstly the Labour Government’s road safety vision was written in 2000—10 years ago. It ran out this year and this Government has picked it up with Safer Journeys for the next 10 years to put out what its vision is. In 2000 the blood-alcohol level was not the big road safety issue. In 2000 members will recall speed was often the thing Governments were looking at. I believe that now 10 years on there is a desire in the community to see the blood-alcohol concentration limit lowered. 
The other point worth noting is that the Law Commission was tasked with going away and looking at everything. I agree with what other speakers have said. Too often in this debate we have chosen one topic and said that if everyone voted a certain way on that one topic then every disaster and every mischief in the world would go away. Sure enough everyone feels good at the time and lots of back-patting goes on but we are still in the same situation. The Law Commission’s once-in-a-generation opportunity through Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s work gave us the chance to look at things afresh and that was one of the recommendations that came back to the Minister. But it has not found its way for us to progress it any further. 
It cannot be an argument that the Labour Government did not do this because we could then stand here and say that the National Government that had 9 years before us did not do it. National could shoot back and say that the 6 years of the Labour Government in the 1980s did not do it. That is not the way to conduct a proper and sensible debate. We need to talk about tomorrow not yesterday. We have offered our political support to the Government for this measure. 
The second argument the Government puts up for not lowering the limit to 0.05 is that not enough data exists. This is not a strong argument at all. The Government’s own discussion document which was launched here in Parliament with great fanfare and was signed off makes the point that there have been 300 studies over 50 years. We could cut and slice the data any way we like. It is clear that our roads are safer for our families our children and all the people in our community when the blood-alcohol concentration is lower than 0.08. 
The third argument that comes up—and to be fair it is not used by the Government but by other people—is that the problem is not drivers who drive with a blood-alcohol concentration of between 0.05 and 0.08; the problem is the drivers who are well and truly over the limit. On the face of it that argument is worthy of investigation. A study done in Canberra showed that by lowering the limit from 0.08 to 0.05 as every state and territory in Australia has done the overall consumption of alcohol amongst drivers fell. In fact in terms of those very extreme drink-driving cases where people were at 0.15 and 0.2 which are phenomenal levels of alcohol there was a rapid decrease of over one-third in the first instance and nearly 60 percent in the second instance when those limits fell. Under the 0.05 limit not only do we get drivers who are drinking at a much lower level but those who keep on drinking and get to 0.08 and cannot make the decision to stop drinking do not get to the much higher levels which often cause devastation on the roads. I am sure the Minister of Transport would be aware of those 300 studies. 
Those are the three arguments often put up by the Government that have led it to take the decision not to include the lowering of the blood-alcohol concentration limit in this Alcohol Reform Bill which amends many pieces of legislation. 
The freedom argument was raised by the ACT Party. ACT members talked about the freedom of people to choose to drink and then drive. Freedom is a very important principle in a democracy and I believe people should be free to use our roads safely knowing that the decisions and actions of others will not wipe them out or cause devastation. I think the ACT members were putting up a serious argument. Freedom involves good decision-making and it involves good judgment and I believe that at a 0.08 blood-alcohol concentration where people are legally intoxicated they cannot be expected to be in a position to exercise the good judgment that that freedom requires. I hope they will consider that argument. 
The political will is there for this to happen the public support is there and all the research is available. It is a real shame that the Government has wimped out on this particular issue. The Government has decided on the political judgment of the Minister of Transport not to do it. I could not describe it any better than Tom Scott in his cartoon in this morning’s  
Dominion Post 
. He portrays Steven Joyce saying: “If there is any proof linking alcohol intake to the road toll rest easy NZ … I will find it.”