Fenton Darien: Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Fenton Darien: Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:658;Page:7230] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call in the third reading of the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill. I too add my thanks to the officials for the work they did in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which I think was done under some pressure at some stages. I acknowledge the members of the select committee. 
I particularly acknowledge the submitters once again. We heard from various submitters—some in Christchurch some in Auckland and some in Wellington. On the first day that we got back from Christchurch where we had heard the first round of submissions on the Government’s two so-called boy-racer bills—this bill and its companion bill—I made a note that it was far more interesting than I had thought it would be. I came away with a very clear view after hearing from the residents in Christchurch who were affected by good boy-racers bad boy-racers the police and officials that there is no quick fix to this problem. The legislation makes us feel as if we are doing something but the question for the select committee and this House is whether these two bills will really make any difference or whether they are just window dressing. Having been through the select committee process and the consideration of the bills I still believe that both bills this bill and its companion bill are window dressing. 
I do however acknowledge that some useful tools are provided in this bill. I have acknowledged that in previous contributions. This legislation gives more powers to the police and again I want to share my colleagues’ concern that that is great but that there are still issues around police resourcing. We did not get an answer from the Minister about the issues around the cuts to the police resourcing we are seeing. Three hundred police cars have been cut—300 front-line vehicles. Enforcement is a really important part of making this bill and the next bill we will be discussing work. For example the police on the North Shore where I work tell me that one in six calls that they attend relates to family violence. If there will not be additional police resources to deal with the measures in this bill which give police more enforcement powers what will happen to the issue of family violence? The previous Government was definitely committed to addressing family violence and this Government may be committed to it. It is an ongoing issue. There is more and more reporting of family violence. There will also be ongoing issues with accident compensation actually and with sexual abuse counselling. However I will put those issues to one side. 
As I said it was pretty obvious from the beginning that there was no easy fix to the problem. Submitters told us that noise was the big problem. I must admit that I came away with my colleagues thinking that if noise was the problem then we should fix it. It felt as if it should have been easy to fix. Certainly we had listened to Nicky Wagner who had submitted a petition and to all of the rarking up she had done over the last 3 years around the issue of noise from the 2005 election through to the 2008 election—“This is something the Government has failed to address. Let us do something about it.”—and I think that that is a very sobering lesson for those members who are now in Government. It is very easy to rark up people. It is very easy to keep people distressed about things. It is very easy to say that we will fix it. But when it comes down to the problem I say to Jonathan Coleman it is not that easy to fix it. 
I am particularly concerned that the expectations of the public have been raised about this bill and the companion bill. I think the public have been led to believe that this bill and the next bill will address the issue of illegal street racing and that suddenly in the four avenues in Christchurch which are at the heart of the problem we have heard about that street racing will stop. There will not be boy racers behaving badly. There will not be any noise. There will not be any of the bad social behaviour we have seen. Overnight it will stop when this bill is passed. I am really looking forward to coming back in a year and asking whether it has. Has the bill made any difference? I think that the people of Christchurch and the other cities who came along and made submissions to the committee about this issue—which is affecting them and for whom we have a huge amount of sympathy—have been misled by this Government. As I said it is a lesson for this Government about rarking up the issues when the issues are actually much more complex than this Government seems to think. During the select committee deliberation on this bill I wondered how much thinking was done by the Government in putting up this bill and whether there were some other approaches they considered. 
All members I am sure who have any interest in road or transport safety as I do will have read the Automobile Association’s report  
Saving Ourselves 
 and its submission on the transport safety consultation Safer Journeys that is out there at the moment. Some of my colleagues have mentioned that there have been successful police approaches to dealing with this issue. For example there was Operation Sniper and I think my colleague Carol Beaumont will talk a little bit about that operation in Manukau. Some young people enjoy baiting the police. The more those young people are out there the more they will bait them. But the police have shown under Operation Sniper how the problem can be dealt with without this sort of legislation. 
Another interesting thing in the AA report is the approach in South Australia. It is said that although New Zealand has stuck firmly to social marketing as an adjunct to enforcement Australia has recognised that driving information campaigns on matters like fatigue cannot be linked to enforcement. Moreover the Australians have gone further with social marketing campaigns to denigrate antisocial driving behaviour. The objective is to achieve a social consensus similar to that achieved on drink driving. The “small finger” campaign is aimed at young men showing off. I am interested to know whether this Government has had a look at what they are doing in South Australia because I think that a lot of it is not just about enforcement and putting more laws in place and making sure that the police have the resources; it is also about changing behaviour. 
The Opposition does support some parts of this bill. We support the increase in demerit points because it is very obvious that fines do not work. In fact fines become a badge of honour for many young people. They boast about the level of fines they have with no intention of ever paying them. But again safe driving behaviour still relies on enforcement on having police on the road and on making sure they have the resources to catch people. As I said we support many other useful tools but that is one of them in particular. I think that a whole lot more work needs to be done around the demerits versus fines issue. There needs to be a whole lot more thinking about that and what it means. Labour is supporting this bill because overall we take a balanced view. The bill has more useful things than useless things in it which is why we are supporting it. 
I think that some real questions will be raised by communities that made submissions on this bill. I will be very interested to see whether in one year those affected by the serious harm that illegal street racers do to communities have found that things have changed. I suspect they will not have changed. I have to say that if the Government thinks that boy racers are a problem then it should wait until the bikers get on the road and start rallying outside this Parliament with the concerns that they have around accident compensation levies. The bikers are just one group; I will not go into all the other groups. 
Some other things were mentioned that people submitted on and one was compulsory third party vehicle insurance. As reported in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee report that insurance was suggested by several submitters as a means of altering drivers’ behaviour and reducing the numbers of unsafe vehicles. We understand that the Ministry of Transport is reviewing this type of insurance. We consider that it needs detailed investigation. The issue is outside the scope of this bill but I suggest to the House that it is pretty urgent. It seems to be from the submissions that this is one way of really tackling the problem of what we have in New Zealand which is a number of cheap cars that are easy to access. We can take them away confiscate them and crush them but then people can get new ones. We have to make it more expensive through that compulsory third party vehicle insurance. Thank you.