Beaumont Carol: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18040] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I really appreciate the opportunity to speak on the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I am in the interesting position of having been on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee when it was considering this legislation and more recently on the Justice and Electoral Committee when it has been dealing with the Alcohol Reform Bill. So I have been dealing with a lot of people submitting on questions around alcohol harm and drink-driving for quite some time now. That has meant I feel very very strongly in support of the amendment that my colleague Darien Fenton has put up about reducing the blood-alcohol limit while driving. I want to go through the reasons for that because I find it unbelievable that in this day and age in light of all the evidence and practice in other countries all of the submissions and all of the views of the public the Government is putting its head in the sand on this issue. 
In fact I heard the Minister of Transport say earlier that this bill is not about social engineering; it is a transport matter. Well actually driving drunk is most certainly a transport matter. Driving drunk means people die. It means people get injured. Families lose family members and friends lose their friends. So this is a very serious matter and this bill is a huge opportunity. The reason it is a huge opportunity is that unlike many other pieces of law reform where the Government has to show leadership in this particular case the public are ahead of the Government on this matter. So it is not even a matter of having to show leadership and cop a few criticisms out there or many criticisms; the public want to see this change. I have heard thousands of submissions now. We heard 90 hours of oral submissions on the Alcohol Reform Bill and just about everybody raised the issue of dropping the blood-alcohol level. Those people were told that the issue was out of scope for that bill but it was being dealt with elsewhere in the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. 
The reality is that it is not being dealt with here. In fact this bill is the most pitiful response that one could possibly imagine. We are to do 2 years of research. How many people will die in that time? How many people will be injured in that time? It is an absolute disgrace. I say again it is unbelievable that the Government is not taking this opportunity when in fact the evidence is there and the public is willing to see the change. I feel confident that in their heart of hearts many National members opposite actually agree with dropping the blood-alcohol level to 0.05 grams. I bet members that is the case; I would put money on it. I urge those members to stand up say something and do the right thing because this matter is critically important. 
We had many submissions both on the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and currently on the Alcohol Reform Bill about why people feel that blood-alcohol levels should be dropped. There has also been the anecdotal kind of evidence and the rather public evidence created by journalists. I heard about one example of that when we were hearing submissions in Dunedin. It was a Christchurch  
Press  
stunt if you like. The Christchurch  
Press  
journalists did it off-road; they did it on a racetrack. They got four young people driving then they gave them alcohol and got them driving again. They watched and evidenced what happened and what changed in their driving. By the time those four people went over 0.08 grams they were absolutely unable to drive safely and later they were aware of that. In fact they made that comment themselves. 
I think we need to be really serious about this issue. Lowering the blood-alcohol level will save lives and it will prevent somewhere between 320 and 686 injuries every year.