Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well this is a bill that seeks to toughen up the consequences for fleeing drivers which we support. But of course I have an image of a fleeing driver in my head panicked careering down the road looking left and right over their shoulders wondering what's going on. We've just had that demonstrated by this Government and underlined how it is a metaphor for this Government itself because they couldn't find a Minister to introduce the actual bill. For five minutes we stand here in the House we've got the second reading starting there's no Minister here to deliver the speech. They can't find the speech notes. They're rattling through the folders trying to find the notes. They come up with an earlier version of it—somebody delivers that—and it's just an example of a Government that is confused and lost. Of course it was Kiri Allan who introduced this bill for its first reading a couple of months or so ago. And she of course on the record has been arrested we understand 500 metres away from her car.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! The member will come back to this bill.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well she was the one who introduced this bill and then we have I think Ginny Andersen is now responsible for the bill as Minister of Justice lampooned up and down the country as Minister of both catch and release—both Minister of Police and Minister of Justice. And so we now have this bill and look there are two parts to this bill. One part of it is in relation to firming up the consequences for fleeing drivers. Now we support that—we support the bill on that part of it. Not only does it bring in tougher consequences for people who flee in a car after a crash or ram raid or whatever secondly it introduces tougher consequences for people who own the car and don't give information about who was driving the car when it was involved in such an incident. And so we support that. We supported it being rushed through the House on that basis because it's an important issue. Of course it's only one element and it will make some difference and that's why it's supported. The broader context of the Government's justice policies are more concerning because ultimately if you're number one and only clearly expressed priority for the justice system is to reduce the prison population irrespective of what's going on to our community then that will lead to a lowering of law and order and it will lead to the mess that we're seeing on our streets and in our communities. So this bill will go so far but if the Government was really serious about bringing back real consequences for serious crime and if it was serious about having an answer to the countless shopkeepers and retailers that we speak to every day who say There are no consequences—we see no consequences for the young people who are doing this." And in the context of fleeing drivers the most obvious change that took place three or four years ago under this Government through the Police Commissioner was the decision never to chase—never to chase. Surprisingly enough there's been a massive increase in the number of fleeing drivers since that. And so the police have undertaken to review that and I think they should and they should leave some doubt in the mind of fleeing drivers and that has to be part of it. So you've got to have a broader sense of understanding of what's the overall message from the Government about crime. And as I say at the moment it's a very mixed one. It's a confused one. It's saying that our only priority is to reduce the prison population irrespective of what's going on. And if you've got a 33 percent increase in violent crime if you've got 100 percent increase in retail crime and if you've got a 550 percent increase in ram raids then I struggle to understand why the target still is on reducing the prison population irrespective of what's happening. So this bill will help in that regard but it won't solve all the problems in the absence of a real firm policy around consequences for crime. But I want to talk about the second element of this bill which is bringing in the regime for pointtopoint cameras. We are opposed to this part of the bill. We don't support this part of the bill and when it comes to the committee of the whole House we will oppose this part of the bill on two grounds.The first ground is that there is no argument for ramming such a change through under a rushed process because this bill has been pushed through on a shortened period so there hasn't actually been a lengthy and full select committee process. It was truncated down to rush it through and we think this area around bringing in a new regime for point-to-point cameras for speeding tickets should have wider examination. And fundamentally we don't support it because ultimately when you look at the causes of a severe injury and death on our roads speeding accounts for less than 10 percent of the people involved and yet that's the only thing the Government focuses on. They haven't focused on dealing with drunk drivers and drug-drivers. There's been a great reduction in the number of police checkpoints for drunk drivers. They've fluffed around and haven't made any progress on the drugdrivers which are one of the greatest causes of death and injury on our roads. They haven't done much around seatbelts and they certainly haven't done much on improving the quality of the roads because you know this will forever be known as the "pothole Government" given the shambles that the roads are at the moment. All they do is they focus on slowing us down and I suppose I just want people to think about the consequences. What happens if there was a point-to-point camera in one of the many streets in our city right now where they have insisted that we drive around at 30 kilometres an hour which most people—and I live in Auckland and I drive along streets and I of course stick to the speed limit. I'm very careful to do that but I'm the only person in the whole place who does because everybody else is shooting past. Nobody can drive at 30 kilometres an hour in a modern car and feel like they're not going insane. And so if we were to have this point-to-point camera down a 1-kilometre stretch of a 30-kilometre-an-hour road in the middle of Auckland that would be I think an outrageous thing that would drive people crazy.And that I don't think should be the point of Government policy. I think the point of Government policy should be to make people's lives easier to actually help them get around and do what they want to do. Not to drive them nuts by making them crawl around at 30 kilometres an hour and then if you put a point-to-point camera which means that you have to literally crawl along all the way down the road at 30 kilometre an hour in a modern safe car—cars have never been safer never been better designed to help people avoid crashes then that is a strange thing to do and we don't support it.In fact we think the Government would be far better focused on transport policy; on (a) fixing the roads so that there are not dangerous potholes everywhere (b) investing in good quality modern safe roads such as the Waikato Expressway which the National Government started and this Government finally finished only a year or so ago and the beautiful road going north of Auckland which was lampooned and mocked by Labour politicians as the "holiday highway" but which they opened with great fanfare only a few months ago after six years of work started under National and a third example being the Transmission Gully road—again mocked and lampooned by this Government but now opened and one of the most beautiful roads.So building safe modern roads is the most useful thing you can do for safety. And then secondly dealing with the real causes such as drunk driving drug-driving—we still haven't made much progress on drug-driving they've fluffed around and still haven't got it sorted there—and actually have some checkpoints and actually deal with things like you know focusing on seatbelts. And those are the sorts of things that would make a real difference rather than the point-to-point cameras. So in conclusion we have a Government that's in a bit of a shambles. They can't find a Minister to deliver a speech. They can't find the speech notes. They don't know what they're doing. And when they finally get around to bringing in a bill it's a bill that on one part we support—and overall we support—because we do see the need to have firmer consequences for fleeing drivers we just wish that there was a broader more coherent justice policy that had firmer consequences for crime right across the board rather than the mixed messages that we are getting from this Government. And secondly when it comes to point-to-point speed cameras in the context of a Government determined to make us crawl around at 30 kilometres an hour we don't think that's a very sensible thing to do and we don't support that element of the bill. Thank you very much."