Robertson Grant: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Robertson Grant: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18060] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I will speak on Part 2 and the schedules of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I will pick up where I left off in Part 1 because the same matters that I was discussing at that point are dealt with in the schedules. I was discussing exactly what stopped the Minister of Transport from going with his gut on the bill and from going with his intuition that lowering the blood-alcohol limit was the right thing to do. This issue is dealt with in the schedules in terms of the zero alcohol limit. There was an opportunity to lower the blood-alcohol limit. Not only was the intuition there for the Minister to lower the limit but also the evidence was there. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Read the evidence. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Mr Henare is not very familiar with evidence. It is a difficult concept for him to grasp. It is what happens when people study things look at the situation in other countries and then come up with the evidence. The evidence certainly supports lowering the blood-alcohol limit. The question then is how we ended up in a situation where the Minister is not following through on what he wanted to do. The answer is that Mr Key clearly got nervous. Mr Key got nervous and decided he could not go ahead with it. He could not go ahead with backing the gut reaction of his Minister. That is incredibly disappointing. 
Labour will support Part 2 because there are things in this bill that are good. There is a recognition that we need to do more to protect New Zealanders from those people who drink and drive and to stop people from drinking and driving. That is important. Very few members of the House have not been affected in some way or other by people who have been drink-driving. We need to do more. The opportunity was on the Table for the Minister. Darien Fenton’s amendments to Part 1 were on the Table to do something about drink-driving and the Minister bottled. He just could not do it. He could not go ahead with it. We saw in an article in the  
Herald on Sunday 
 on 2 January of this year that when John Key got involved he got nervous. That is the problem with what has happened with this bill. There was a lack of courage and commitment to follow through on what the Minister knows is right what Mr Henare knows is right and what Mr Bridges knows is right. The right thing to do was here on the Table and it was not picked up. 
Over and over again we have seen from the Minister a transition from somebody who had a gut feeling that he was doing the right thing. His own experience told him that it was ridiculous—that was his word—that he could drink as much as he did and still be within the limit. His intuition was right and the evidence backed his intuition but he bottled it at the end because John Key got nervous. John Key’s office was writing directly to officials in the Ministry of Transport bypassing the Minister to see whether they were concerned about whether someone who had had one glass of wine could go over the limit. It was an issue that John Key was personally concerned about. That is what his adviser was telling the Ministry of Transport. In the end officials were put in a position even though the regulatory impact statement stated that lowering the blood-alcohol limit could improve New Zealand improve social outcomes and improve economic outcomes that the recommendation was bottled when the Prime Minister came on the scene. That is incredibly disappointing because the zero alcohol limits and the things coming in in the schedules will do good things. I tell Mr Henare that we are not the loony left; he is voting for the bill. He might fit one of those words but he does not fit the other. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: That was funny. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Thank you. The bill is something that everybody in the House can support but it is an opportunity lost. People right around New Zealand are looking for politicians to take a leadership role on the issue and this is an opportunity. They are looking for politicians who look at the evidence internationally and in New Zealand and say the evidence is there—and people actually want the limit to be lowered. For reasons that go against the intuition of the Minister the Government is going against the evidence on the Table. But because the Prime Minister got nervous and got spooked suddenly we do not have support for it. 
The worry that we on this side of the Committee have is that we have missed the opportunity now. I believe that everybody in the Committee wanted to lower the blood-alcohol limit. The opportunity has gone. Although we have a bill that will do some good things and therefore we can support it it misses out on the very very real possibility of making a major change that would improve the lives of all New Zealanders. I am sad that has happened.