Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21350] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 On some of the parts of this bill it will be a little bit difficult for us to get an exceedingly strong debate going on because they are pretty mundane and run of the mill. But they are worthwhile. Part 1 has only one clause—clause 3 “Purpose”. I guess that every bill has to have a purpose and if we are to stick to the very— 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: You’re having us on. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No. Clayton Cosgrove needs to learn a lot about how legislation works and one of the things that legislation should always have is a purpose. The purpose of this bill is to “promote and enhance provisions in that transport legislation relating to safe road user behaviour and vehicle safety;”. I would doubt that there would be a member in the Chamber who did not believe that that was an ongoing quest for us and for years to come I am sure this Parliament will be looking at ways of improving them. 
One of the ways in which change will occur over the years is in the technology used to record where vehicles travel and what they do. Already in the heavy traffic fleet a number of big trucks are recorded on the Global Positioning System. I imagine that paper logbooks will one day be an anachronism and we will simply have everything on a Wi-Fi network running back to a base with Land Transport New Zealand being able to look at any one truck at any one time and with police enforcement officers being able to bring that truck up on their screens as they follow behind it etc. 
Paragraph (b) of clause 3(1) states that another aim is to “improve and enhance the enforcement provisions” of the land transport legislation. It is that provision that I am starting to get a bit nervous about. I say to members of the Government that there has been a distinct shift in the mood out there in the community with regard to enforcement. Let me talk about the commercial vehicle investigation units of the police. I think everybody who is interested in safe operations wants those bodies to work in a collaborative and cooperative way with representatives of the heavy vehicle industry to ensure that heavy vehicles operate in a safe way—just as say in the civil aviation branch people work with the industry to assist it and try to promote a safety culture. We will never actually get a safety culture if we do it only by punitive measures; we have to try to work in a collaborative and cooperative way. 
But I tell the Minister for Transport Safety today that the more and more times I go out and talk with operators of heavy vehicles around the country the more and more anger I hear being expressed. The commercial vehicle investigation units have turned into a far more punitive “ping ’em lock ’em up throw away the key deal to them” regime even on some of the trivial logbook technicality issues and they are putting unbelievably punitive fines in place. Instead of those units having the effect of as clause 3 states improving and enhancing the enforcement provisions of the transport legislation instead of their achieving the aim of safe road-user behaviour and better vehicle safety they are getting almost a negative reaction from the industry—“If that’s how we are going to be treated then we’re going to pull down the shutters ‘go to the mattresses’ ”—to use an expression from  
The Godfather 
—“and go to war with some of these things.” I do not think that is helpful. I hope the Minister takes that on board. 
At the committee the other day I raised an example of a fairly large crane operator in Tauranga Todd and Pollock Crane Hire and Haulage. I know that the owners do not mind my mentioning it; I think they are pretty responsible operators and it is a good company. One of their cranes happened to go from their location to a building site less than 5 kilometres away. The driver forgot to remove the counterweight which is supposed to travel on a separate truck and that meant that the crane was 380 kilos overweight. There was a 400-kilo fuel tank on board so if the crane had had a nearly empty fuel tank it would have been within the limits. The fine was $35000. The crane has been off the road pink-stickered for 2 months and has been unable to generate revenue. Quite properly the owners of that company are angry. Yes they know they made a mistake and yes they would be happy to pay the $800 fine for the crane being overweight because it should not have been. Yes they want to cooperate. They would rather the commercial vehicle investigation unit guys came in sat down and worked with the drivers to try to make them understand the rules. 
But I am saddened to say that this legislation does not do very much in the area of trying to promote people working together cooperatively to as clause 3(1)(b) states “improve and advance the enforcement provisions”. Well enforcement will not work unless it is the final area of use. We should ping the bad operators and the best thing which I have heard suggested many times is to get a risk rating system up and running. I know that Land Transport New Zealand applied for it in the Budget and was turned down. Treasury declined it. But let me say to the Minister that we cannot treat all the operators the same because there are some really good ones some average ones and some bad ones.