Turei Metiria: Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill — First Reading 
Turei Metiria: Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:4112] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will not support this ridiculous legislation. It is a waste of taxpayers’ time—and money certainly—and a waste of this House’s time. I will outline some of the reasons why that is the case. 
It really is quite remarkable how much time National members will waste on legislation that sounds good and that makes them feel better but that does absolutely nothing to deal with the real problems our communities face. The Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill will not make any difference at all to those Christchurch people in particular who suffer from the nuisance intimidation and illegal behaviour of not only young people but also often grown-ups and the misuse of their vehicles. 
In 2002 this Parliament passed what the Green Party considered to be quite Draconian legislation. At that time it was Clayton Cosgrove’s bill. It gave the police significant new powers to deal with dangerous driving and its related behaviour particularly around illegal street racing. After that legislation was passed it was found to be a very serious breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. At the time of the debate my colleague Nandor Tanczos led the issue for our party. He made it clear for example that all of the police powers in that 2002 legislation were already available to the police. It is the same case here. All of the powers the police need to deal with dangerous driving its associated behaviour and the nuisance and intimidating effect it has on our communities are available to them as we speak. We simply do not need to keep passing more legislation to give the police more powers because they already have them. 
The difficulty is that no Government whether it was Labour in the previous term or National in this term is prepared to resource the enforcement agencies so that they are able to use that law effectively to protect the community. I know that National members have been going on about the fact that they have invested more in policing and that they are expecting to have 600 new police. Well 300 of them are going into one area Counties-Manukau and they may very well be needed there. But scattering 300 other new police around the country will do nothing. It will do nothing to support the police who are already trying to do that work and it will do nothing for Christchurch people in particular who are the most vocal about their problems with illegal street racing. In effect all that the National Government is doing is throwing law rather than money at a problem and it is not doing anything that will make a real difference. 
I heard Lianne Dalziel talk about the regulatory impact statement and the expression of confidence in it that this legislation will have some kind of deterrent effect. It was great to hear Tau Henare putting out his message to those boy racers. He told them that they should just watch it as the Government is going to get their cars. But no the boy racers are not listening. They are not listening to Tau Henare they are not listening to the National Government and they are not listening to the Minister who is going on about some cars being confiscated. Ten cars out of 10000 might be confiscated and destroyed under the powers given in this legislation. The Government says that that is supposed to provide some kind of deterrent to those—mostly adult men—who are using and misusing their vehicles in this way and causing intimidation and concern in the community. Confiscating and destroying 10 cars out of 10000 will not be a deterrent. Here we are spending hours and hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money passing legislation that will have no effect. 
The cost to the Crown which is mentioned in the regulatory impact statement is worth noting. The operating costs for the courts are estimated to be around $470000 a year going up to around nearly $1.5 million a year in year 2 and out-years. The argument is that somehow the fines that will be imposed on these people when their cars are confiscated and then destroyed will provide some revenue back into the Crown coffers. That will not happen. The Minister has already talked about the fact that a number of these people owe large amounts in outstanding fines. If there are already significant amounts of money owed by people who are engaged in illegal street racing why does the National Government think that more legislation that will impose more fines will somehow make people pay more of their fines back? It will not do that. It never has worked like that and it never will. 
Again these are ineffective and wasteful actions on the part of National and meanwhile the community continues to look for real solutions to the problem. And those solutions are complicated. I guess that is why the National Government has failed to provide any decent solutions. The solutions involve a great deal of community engagement. It means more real money not just in producing more police but in providing proper support for the police who are already engaged particularly in community policing. It means giving councils greater capacity to engage with their communities so that they can find alternatives that will enable these people to do their driving elsewhere in places that are safer. But the Government has no intention of engaging in real solutions or practical ideas that involve working with communities towards addressing the things that need to be changed. What it wants to do instead is waste time and money by putting up legislation that looks good and sounds good and gives the Government something to beat its drum about but is utterly ineffective. That is a serious shame and a real concern for the communities that need help. These communities are desperately trying to find some peace. 
I also note the strange priorities of the Government. It will pass legislation to confiscate and destroy cars that are noisy and create a nuisance yet it does nothing in response to the owners of cars that kill people or seriously maim them. Somehow it is more important to confiscate and destroy cars that are noisy than it is to destroy cars that have been used to maim and kill people. Just this year 189 people have died on our roads as a result of road accidents. Yet this Government instead of focusing on those kinds of transport issues that are of importance and concern to the community and instead of looking at ways of dealing with those kinds of issues is wasting time passing legislation that will crush 10 cars that cause a nuisance. This Government’s priority is out of whack with what the community really needs. The Green Party simply will not support such unprincipled useless and distorted legislation that will do nothing to help our communities that are so desperately in need of help.