Franks Stephen: Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Franks Stephen: Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:607;Page:4590] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 The schedule contains the machinery with which the police will impound vehicles. The form that the police officer will hand to the driver of the car will state among other things: “…you operated that vehicle in a race or in an unnecessary exhibition of speed or acceleration on a road in contravention of section 22A(1)…”. The person getting that notice will not have a clue what section 22A states. He or she will not have the faintest idea that it gives them some defence. The person getting that notice will think the police officer is saying “I seize your vehicle because I think that you accelerated unnecessarily fast.” How often is there any room for a debate about that? From the Green perspective anyone not on a bicycle is probably going unnecessarily fast or accelerating unnecessarily; any one who is driving an 8-cylinder car instead of a 4-cylinder car is probably using unnecessary force and power. 
What this does is put the police in the same position that they have been put in by being told to go out and get quotas of tickets all over the country. Instead of building their relationship with a vital section of the public—namely the most spirited young offenders; the sort of young people who are going somewhere whose hobby when they are young is to drive and work on powerful cars and who work hard—those young people will be getting a message from the police that says: “We want your car because you accelerated unnecessarily.” What we have here is legislation that is pure camouflage. In fact if those young people go to a lawyer they will find that the police cannot arrest them for that. 
There is a tear-jerking set of pleas about people going home and getting notices of deaths or injuries. Will the next thing that Labour attacks be people who go climbing or skydiving or people who smoke? It has already attacked the smokers. There are many many activities that are strictly unnecessary and it is quite within people’s individual rights to choose to do them. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Running commentaries are out of order. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: The justification for giving a notice under Part 2 should have been very straightforward: “You are endangering other people who have not consented to run that risk.” 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Please do not bring the Chair into the debate. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: The notice should have stated and I quote: “You are breaking the law driver.” The notice uses the form “you”; I have no option but to use that terminology. It should have stated: “You have broken the law. You have put others at risk.” But it should not be directed to people who have simply chosen to risk themselves because that is a right that every New Zealander with any spirit should be trying to protect. 
This is pitiful law. This is slogan law. It puts the police into a position in which the result can only be that another group is against them. This law is absolutely typical of the meaningless law that Labour promotes instead of dealing with law and order. This schedule should be amending the penalties for giving the fingers to a court order. This bill says that Labour regards the Attorney-General as a wally. This schedule allows seizure that the Labour Attorney-General has correctly said is utterly inappropriate and unjustified. What it does could easily have been done by enhancing the powers to enforce ordinary court orders to make sure that the police are tackling the people they are too scared of. How many really menacing folk will have their cars seized under this legislation? It will be the same as the people with menacing dogs; this Government will pass a law against dogs that really hits only the inoffensive—the people who volunteer to submit to the law. The really gross offenders—the people whom this Government sucks up to and curries favour with—will thumb their noses at this law in the same way that those people do who just do not bother to pay their fines under this Government. There are $457 million of fines owing.