Hughes Gareth: Land Transport Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Land Transport Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15146. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support the Land Transport Amendment Bill 2013. I want to start off by just acknowledging the families and friends of victims of alcohol-induced road deaths on New Zealand streets and roads. For these people this is not academic and this is not politics; this is about a loved one whom they have lost so I want to acknowledge the heartbreak. We know there have been hundreds of whānau affected by alcohol on our roads and what the Green Party wants to see is fewer Kiwis dying needlessly because we have got rules in place to protect other drivers and other passengers on the road to make better decisions and to keep us safe on the roads.We support this bill. We think it is a good step forward to see the blood-alcohol levels reducing through this legislation. Obviously we can rehash all the old political debates of a few years ago but what we did see was a tremendous missed opportunity 2 years ago where a confluence of factors—official advice the Law Commission public campaigns by the media public opinion polling—turned in the direction of lower blood-alcohol levels. This side of Parliament very clearly called for it. We did not take that opportunity but it is good we are finally doing it now.What we are seeing is some changes from that such as the effectively zero blood-alcohol rate for under-20-year-olds and alcohol interlocks. They are some progressive steps but we need to go further and align our entire blood-alcohol levels at that 0.05 level.What this bill basically does is reduce from 400 micrograms to 250 micrograms and from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams the blood-alcohol breath and blood tests respectively. We support that. We support the 0.05 blood-alcohol concentration as it is called because it is the World Health Organization recommendation. I understand that around 23 other OECD States have a similar regime. This is the norm internationally. When you look at the data—we have had the debate around whether the data is sufficient or not—we have seen 300 international reports calling for this and this is something the Green Party has been calling for for a while.What I would like to question and we welcome the approach of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee are the official statistics that the New Zealand Transport Agency has put out around this that are contained in the legislation. It says we are going to see around 3.4 fewer fatalities a year and a net benefit of around $200 million a year. This is significantly lower than the agency was estimating only a few years ago if I recall correctly in theSafer Journeys document which talked about fatality savings of 15 to 33 per annum from reducing from 0.08 to 0.05. So we will look at that in detail at the select committee.We note that the benefit-cost ratio of this law is around 10:1—considerably higher than the motorways the Government is ramming through our Parliament. There we see independent reports saying that there is a benefit-cost ratio of 0.4 for the motorways. In other words you are throwing 66c away for every dollar the Government is borrowing off the taxpayer to invest in them. I guess we would also like to make the point that when it comes to saving lives on the roads sometimes think-big - style motorways that cost billions to borrow to build are not the best solution. There are cost-effective solutions we could be doing right now across Northland’s roads Waikato’s roads and the roads in the Coromandel if we were not spending so much money on some of these mega white elephant projects—solutions such as better walking and cycling median strips and the like.Hon Maurice Williamson: That’s the way to get freight to the market eh—cycling.GARETH HUGHES: Cycling? We know that it is a lot safer to cycle Mr Williamson and the benefit-cost ratio there is in the order of 20-30:1 not the less than 0.5:1 that as we see for the Government’s motorways.We would also like to question in the select committee the penalties. We note that these are extraordinarily low. The fine for breaching the new civil—not criminal—infringement period is $200 and 50 demerit points. That is quite a lot lower than the current civil penalty so will it be a disincentive? We would also like to question why no evidential blood test is required and also given that the Attorney-General has called the bill inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act what the good rationale for it is. As it is presented it is simply a cost-saving measure which he rightly points out could actually cost more in the long term if we see more legal cases.But ultimately what we need to get to the bottom of is our alcohol problem in this country: why Kiwis are even contemplating having a few drinks and driving unsafely. We need to have more alcohol treatment for the 30000 people who are detained for alcohol offences while driving. Only 5 percent got alcohol treatment according to the latest data I have seen despite the $4 billion social cost. It is high time that New Zealand dealt with our cultural alcohol problems and that we support safer roads. Kia ora.