King Annette: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
King Annette: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:12383] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 I move  
That the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) be now read a first time. 
 This is a very busy day for transport. We have two bills in a row being presented in respect of the transport sector. It is an appropriate time that we move this bill and at a later time in the passage of this bill I intend to move that it be referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for its consideration. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: A very hard-working committee. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: It is a very hard-working committee with very very good members on it and an excellent chair. 
This bill deals with two important issues: introducing a new offence of driving while impaired by illegal drugs and the implementation of measures to protect personal information held on the motor vehicle register. The bill will also make a number of amendments to facilitate the administration of the register and improve the quality of vehicle owner information. 
I will deal first with the road safety initiatives. There was considerable comment from the community about the dangers of drug-driving during the road safety consultation that was undertaken last year by the National Road Safety Committee under the See You There—Safe As banner. The community and the Government have for some time been concerned about the risks of drug-driving. Under this bill we will make it an offence to drive while impaired by illegal drugs. 
A roadside impairment test will become compulsory under this bill. When an officer at the roadside has reason to suspect a driver is impaired the driver will be required to carry out a series of tests. At least 200 police officers will be trained to carry out the roadside impairment testing. There will be occasions where for safety reasons an immediate roadside impairment test may not be possible such as on some busy motorways or narrow roads. It may be that the police will need to take people to a safer and more suitable place in order to carry out the impairment test. The select committee may want to consider how the law might allow for this. The impairment test will be published in the  
New Zealand Gazette 
. If a driver cannot satisfactorily complete this test he or she will be required to provide a blood specimen. If an illegal drug is detected in the blood specimen an offence would have been committed. 
We already have an offence under the Land Transport Act of driving while incapable of proper control due to alcohol or drugs. Together these two offences will send a clear message that people must not drive under the influence of drugs. The new impairment offence will enable an officer to make a well-informed decision about a person’s ability to drive safely and if the person is not safe he or she will not be able to continue. It should however be noted that any evidence of drug use gathered as evidence of a driving offence will not be able by law to be used as evidence of any offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act. This measure is a transport measure. 
The bill’s definition of an illegal drug does not include prescription medicines. This means that if a driver is taking prescription medicines as prescribed he or she has a defence under this Act. As a result of consultation with parliamentary colleagues I believe that it is important that the instructions given by the health practitioner along with the drugs themselves should be considered part of the prescription. If for example a driver is told not to drive while taking a medicine because it will make him or her drowsy but does drive and is found to be impaired there will not be a defence under this bill. This is also a matter that the select committee might like to consider. 
The penalties for this new offence have been aligned with the penalties for drink-driving. The message for drugs is the same as for alcohol: “Stay sober and drug-free drive safely and you won’t endanger yourself or anyone else.” 
This bill also enables some important research into drug-driving in this country. We will make sure that blood specimens taken as evidence of alcohol-related and drug-related driving offences can be used for research purposes. This will help establish the extent of the drug-driving problem in New Zealand and make sure we can introduce further measures in future if necessary. 
This bill also implements measures to improve protection for personal information held on the motor vehicle register. This register is administered by Land Transport New Zealand and contains the names and addresses of all persons and organisations registered as the owner of a motor vehicle. The law under which the motor vehicle register operates establishes the register as a publicly available publication. Under that law any person may obtain the names and addresses of the present and previous owners of a motor vehicle simply by quoting its registration plate number. This information is available over the counter at post shops and other registration agencies. There are no safeguards on the use of this personal information. The system is open to abuse. There are instances where angry motorists in the aftermath of a road-rage incident have used the register to trace a person then harass that person. The police report that professional car thieves who target high-value vehicles use the register to find out where the car is kept. 
Further vehicle-owner names and addresses began being made available over the Internet in bulk during the 1990s. The intention was to assist local authorities to identify parking offenders quickly and efficiently. But the law did not explicitly limit this information to law enforcement agencies. Specialist marketing organisations were not slow to spot the opportunity. The motor vehicle register is a rich resource for marketing purposes; it contains the names and addresses of 2.3 million people. Information on the make and age of cars owned by people assists marketers in identifying socio-economic groups and targeting their campaigns. The figures speak for themselves. Bulk downloads have grown from 2 million in 1999-2000 to 7 million in 2005-06. The largest single commercial customer downloaded 2.2 million records in 2005-06. By contrast all local authorities put together obtained just over 1 million records. 
In New Zealand information on the driver’s licence register is well protected and it certainly is not possible to download drivers’ names and addresses for commercial purposes. Why should motor vehicle owners be treated differently? This bill addresses that concern. The bill removes the current obligation on the Registrar of Motor Vehicles to release information to anyone who asks for it. Instead requests for information will be dealt with under the Official Information Act in the same way that any request to a Government department or Crown entity is dealt with. 
To assist with the consideration with Official Information Act requests the bill clarifies the purpose of the motor vehicle register. The principal purposes are law enforcement and the collection of revenue. The bill also recognises that on occasions the individual’s privacy interest may be balanced against the wider public good. Therefore the bill will empower the Minister to authorise information to be released for certain purposes at the discretion of the Minister. Prior to issuing authorisation the Minister will need to seek the views of the Ombudsman and the Privacy Commissioner. The authorisation may be one-off or it may be a standing authorisation valid for up to 5 years. 
The bill also recognises that it is common practice for a person buying a car privately to first check on the motor vehicle register who owns that car in order to find out whether the person selling it is the registered owner. To avoid the need for an official information request in such cases the bill will enable Land Transport New Zealand to provide instant confirmation whether a specified person is registered as the owner of a specified vehicle. The buyer of the car will provide to Land Transport New Zealand the number plate and the seller’s name and the computer system will respond with a yes or no. It is expected that the confirmation service will be available over the telephone and over the Internet. 
I believe that the bill strikes a good balance between personal privacy and general public interest. This bill also improves the quality of information held on the motor vehicle register. There are a number of measures to improve that information. Where information on the register is inaccurate or out of date enforcement of offences that rely on linking a vehicle to a person is seriously hampered. This bill seeks to overcome some of those problems. Offences like speeding red-light running parking tickets expired warrants of fitness and so on are very difficult to pursue—as are licensing fees—if we do not know who the vehicle owners are. Unfortunately some vehicles stay in the name of previous owners for months if not years. Currently something like 100000 vehicles are registered as owners unknown. This bill helps to address that issue. 
I believe that the bill gives protection but it also gives that balance between the right of the public to know and the privacy of vehicle owners.