Franks Stephen: Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:4581] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I always listen to Ron Mark carefully because I believe he is quite sincere. I think he is correct when he says that people are fed up and saying that enough is enough in this area and that something needs to be done. However that has never been enough of a reason for producing bad law that does not do what it says it does. 
Let me quickly draw Mr Mark’s attention to the statement about what this bill does. It says that it is designed to combat the problem of unauthorised street racing wheel spinning and other stunts. In fact it could have simply stated “to outlaw” but it does not. It states: “aimed at combating”. That should have been the signal that the drafter did not think it was going to do very much. 
When we look at Part 2 we see that the actions that are to be penalised are simply those that are not authorised by law. If we look at subsection (4) of the operative section in clause 5 it states that in each case the operation of a vehicle is authorised if the speed is “within the applicable speed limit or speed limits” and the vehicle operator does not break some other law. So in other words it will be perfectly permissible to continue wheelspinning away from the lights as long as one does not do it at over 50 kilometres an hour. People can wheelspin all the way to 50 kilometres an hour or all the way to 100 kilometres an hour on the open road and they can do a doughnut if it does not endanger others if it is not careless driving and if it does not break one of the other existing laws. 
I say that that is sensible. I say that those are proper constraints on this new law. They make this new law tolerable. But what they do say is that most of the rhetoric in this Chamber this afternoon is just that. This bill is just camouflage. This does not allow that public aversion to be reflected. What we in ACT say is that if we really want to change behaviour we have to start right at the basis and ask why our law is treated with contempt generally. 
The second element that ACT is concerned about is an issue of high principle. Punishment is for the courts. In our system of British justice that we inherited punishment is for the courts. It is for the State to enforce by bringing people before the courts to get punished. The reason we are opposed to this law is that it is an extension of a very bad principle that turns police officers into commissars. The big difference between States like the Soviet Union which had a very low crime problem because the State was all powerful and States that inherit the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition is that in the latter it is judges who impose punishments. The fact that punishment is now so completely useless—because this Government will not bother to uphold the orders of the judges—is the thing that the Law and Order Committee should have been looking at. The select committee should have been asking itself why young people can scoff at the courts. As my colleague Deborah Coddington says $19000 in traffic fines gets written off—or $9000—and the guy is in the courts 2 weeks later giving the finger to the law. That is what should have been looked at. 
This power to confiscate in the hands of the police is a punishment power. This is the Government that would not even put punishment into the Sentencing Act. It would not even allow the Parole Board to take into account punishment as one of the factors for keeping someone in prison. This Government is just writing slogans and they are intended to mean nothing. There is nothing in this law that outlaws wheelspinning street racing drag racing or any of those other stunts as long as the person stays within the existing law. In other words this law was intended to do nothing. ACT stands for quality in law. We do not think there is anything to be achieved by this bill. Who remembers “Take the bikes off the bikies.”? Mr Cosgrove’s great guru—his early idol—made one of his slogans “Take the bikes off the bikies.” Has it happened? Have the bikies lost their bikes? No because it was law that was badly conceived in principle and quite correctly sensible police do not set out to antagonise the public by using powers that might tempt them into overuse.