Lees-Galloway Iain: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:672;Page:18429] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 It is a great pleasure for me to rise and speak in support—for the most part—of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. As Opposition members are wont to do we have focused on the areas of the bill we disagree with and where we disagree with the Government. But it is important to reinforce the point that Labour endorses the overwhelming majority of this bill and endorses the intention of this bill to improve road safety to lower the number of lives lost every year and to lower the injury rate on the roads in New Zealand. To that end we support most of the measures in the bill. 
We support measures like the zero limit for repeat drink-drivers. It is important that people who are caught drinking and driving receive the message when they are in court on that first offence that they should not have done it in the first place that when they are allowed to drive again and get their licence back there is an expectation that they will not do it again and that if they are caught doing it again then the penalties will be much much harsher. That I think will help to provide the kind of incentive to keep people from becoming drink-drivers or worse repeat drink-drivers. 
I would like to point out though that the point at which someone is caught drinking and driving is an excellent opportunity to get them assessed and to decide whether they could benefit from some form of alcohol treatment. It may prove that they have an alcohol addiction. It may prove that they are exhibiting behaviours that will indicate they are likely to become a repeat drink-driver regardless of the penalties. That is an excellent opportunity for the health system to step up and provide the kind of treatment that could actually prevent that drink-driving behaviour showing itself and that could prevent possible accidents injuries and deaths from that behaviour further down the track. 
Unfortunately at the moment our health system is not very responsive; we do not have the capacity in our health system to respond in that kind of way. There is a significant waiting list for those who self-identify or are referred by whatever means. However people are identified as having a drug or alcohol problem there is a significant waiting list for getting them into treatment. Often we find that by the time that treatment becomes available particularly for those who are self-identified as being at risk motivation is perhaps not there any more and they do not engage in that treatment in the way they might have had the treatment been available on the spot. So it would be great to see going hand in hand with this legislation improved funding and improved support for the health system to be able to respond to drink-drivers who are discovered as a result of their being caught to have a drinking problem. 
Labour also supports the zero limit for drivers under 20. People under 20 are learning to drive learning to become better drivers and learning how to be part of the traffic system. That often has its issues and that is why we see so many accidents and issues amongst those drivers who are learning. But of course many of them at that age are also learning to drink and the two absolutely should not mix. We know amongst adults that the two should not mix and these are the two things that should not go together for young people learning to drive and learning how to drink responsibly. So we absolutely support the zero limit for under 20 drivers. 
We also support the introduction of alcohol interlocks for repeat offenders. Going back to what I was saying about harsher penalties I repeat that if someone is silly enough to be a repeat offender or has not had the support to deal with an alcohol addiction then some consequences are going to have to come with that and I suppose the giving up of some liberties is going to have to come with that. The ability to drive without that interlock does not seem like a great liberty to have to give up and this will ensure that drivers have not imbibed too much alcohol before they get behind the wheel. 
There is much in this bill that Labour is supportive of including doubling the minimum prison time for drunk drugged or reckless driving causing death. I know that that will be very very well received by the New Zealand public particularly by those who have lost loved ones at the hands of someone who has been behind the wheel when they should not have been—either through having had too much to drink or consuming other drugs—or who has taken a life as a result of reckless driving. I know that will certainly be well received. 
Where the Labour Opposition departs from the Government’s view on this bill is that we think this was an ideal opportunity to reduce the adult blood-alcohol level from 0.08 grams to 0.05 grams. This was one of those rare—perhaps not so rare—opportunities that everybody in Parliament looks for when both the evidence and the court of public opinion come together. The evidence is strongly in favour of reducing the blood-alcohol limit the public opinion is strongly in favour of reducing the blood-alcohol limit and indeed the Minister of Transport’s own anecdotal research is in favour of reducing the blood-alcohol limit. So it really is a missed opportunity for this Parliament to carry out something that the evidence says not only is the right thing to do but would be extremely well received by the New Zealand public. 
The Minister and the Government say that we need to gather more evidence on this issue. I have no doubt that once that evidence is gathered this change will occur. I have absolutely no doubt that in the fullness of time the blood-alcohol limit in New Zealand will be reduced from 0.08 to 0.05. It is just a pity we are not doing it now. If we look overseas to Australia we see that in New South Wales an 8 percent reduction in fatal crashes was achieved and a 7 percent reduction in serious injury crashes was achieved after the state reduced its blood-alcohol limit. In Queensland an 18 percent reduction was achieved in fatal crashes and a 14 percent reduction in serious crashes. Belgium achieved a 10 percent reduction in all alcohol-related fatalities and France achieved a 30 percent reduction in alcohol-related fatal crashes. So the evidence is there. We do not really need to wait to gather more evidence or to put at risk any more lives; we could be doing it now. But I do have hope that in the fullness of time this change will occur and that Parliament will go ahead and do what is right—do what people are crying out for us to do if we are honest. 
The other area where we disagree with the Government concerns increasing the driver-licensing age from 15 to 16. That I guess is a slightly different situation from what we have seen with the blood-alcohol limit. I can imagine that a lot of people out there instinctively feel that increasing that driver-licensing age is the right thing to do. It just seems as if to increase the age from 15 to 16 is a sensible thing to do. We know that a lot of the crashes happen amongst those young people and we know that if we allow someone to mature an extra year then they will be that much more mature. But the evidence simply does not bear that out and we have to be making evidence-based policy and passing evidence-based legislation in this Parliament. Much as the public might think instinctively that it is a good idea—and certainly when I first heard of the idea I thought it was a good idea—when we looked at the evidence we found that the evidence simply did not back it up. The problem is that young drivers in those first few years of driving are at a much higher risk. It does not matter whether they start driving at 15 or 16. Really unless we were to increase the driver-licensing age to 25—the age when the frontal lobe is fully developed and hopefully when most people have achieved a much greater level of maturity—then increasing the age would not make sense. But the evidence does not back up the increase from 15 to 16. 
There are some areas where Labour differs from the Government’s position but overall we are very pleased to support this legislation.