van de Molen TimTIM van de MOLEN (National—Waikato): When Deon Hadley's Audi crashed head-on into an ambulance he had meth in his system and his erratic driving had already sparked a call to police. That's the opening sentence from an article in yesterday's Waikato Times outlining the details from the crash investigation report from an accident that occurred in late 2022 in the Waikato. It goes on to say both Hadley and the ambulance officer Susan Cutler died as a result of that crash on State Highway 1. She had been with St John for over 50 years. Speed was not a factor but methamphetamine found in Hadley's system is considered a contributing factor.This is from another article After his car was hit by a methamphetamine-affected driver Nick McEwan sat in his wrecked vehicle unsure whether his three children in the back were alive." Fortunately they were. They were all helicoptered to a hospital and recovered although one of his sons has been left with permanent injuries. Another article "A driver drank alcohol smoked methamphetamine and cannabis and snorted ecstasy at a Halloween party before crashing a car killing his cousin and injuring seven other people."Drug-driving is an absolute scourge on our roads. It is totally unacceptable and we need to get tougher on it. This Government is introducing the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill to address that very issue. It enables the random roll-out of those roadside oral fluid tests to help reduce the number of drug-drivers on our roads.I do just want to touch on the fact that the previous Government introduced a bill and it had an intent to try and address some of this. But I do just want to make a couple of corrections because actually it wasn't a timely response. The National Party had on six previous occasions tried to introduce legislation to give effect to drug testing. Alistair Scott in 2018 introduced a member's bill. It was voted down by the then Labour Government. The Hon Dr Nick Smith on numerous occasions attempted to reintroduce a bill to enable that to occur. The Labour Government voted that down. So there were six previous attempts and finally they did introduce a bill but as we've heard it hasn't been able to give effect to actually enabling practical outcomes on the road for our police officers to try and reduce the number of impaired drivers. So this piece of legislation will do that. We've heard the criteria around that outlined by previous speakers. I think we can also look back at some of the impact the change in behaviour over time around drink-driving and although that's not an apples-with-apples comparison there is some relevance there. Behaviour has changed over time. Perceptions have changed. Approaches from law enforcement to cracking down on that have changed.People now generally would say if they drink and drive they would expect to get caught. We need that to be the expectation of anyone that is using drugs—not that they should be using drugs in the first place but if they are then they should not be getting behind the wheel. We can hear apologist comments from the Māori Party and the Green Party around why we need to change that approach. But I note again the articles that I referred to at the start. Those families that have been impacted unnecessarily by the terrible behaviour of a few individuals deserve better outcomes than this.This legislation will help to address that. And look we don't for a second expect that bringing in this law will stop every drugged driver from getting behind the steering wheel but it will help change that behaviour. As Mr Rutherford said the expectation that there will be 50000 tests conducted annually will make it quite clear to those drugged drivers that if they get behind the wheel there is a much higher chance that they will be caught and if they are caught there is a much stiffer consequence for that.Ultimately I am confident that those actions will in a number of cases change behaviour and if we can stop a single one of these horrific accidents from occurring as a result of that change then I think this is a great piece of legislation and it should be progressed. I look forward to following the progression of this bill through the select committee and back to the House."