Moroney Sue: Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5153. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):I rise to speak on already the third reading of the Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill. I wish to again repeat Labour’s support for this legislation even though it has been done in urgency. It is not often that we agree with the Government’s rushing legislation through but in this instance we do believe that it is warranted. That is because if we boil this down to its core root without all the technicalities involved this is about the health and safety of our community. Of course we would want to make sure that the rules and regulations that local authorities quite rightly put in around speed limits be adhered to because the reason those speed limits are put in place at the beginning is to keep people safe in our community. I particularly want to ensure that the speed limits that local authorities put in place around schools early childhood education facilities and the places where our young children are prevalent are speed limits that people do adhere to.We are here to fix up some potential technicalities. I guess my one criticism of this process and this bill would be that although we are doing it retrospectively and we are doing it with great haste and as I have said there is a legitimate reason for that it is a little odd that we have a bill that is drafted that says that actually there might not even be a problem but just in case there is we are going to pass this legislation. I would rather be satisfied that there was a problem that needed fixing up. The way this bill is drafted—in fact the purpose clause says that it is there just to “remove any doubt about the validity of speed limits” rather than being quite assertive in saying that there is a problem there is a loophole that needs to be fixed and here is Parliament’s solution to it. None the less Labour is pleased to support this bill.It would be remiss of me not to take the opportunity while debating legislation that keeps people safe on our roads going through in urgency to point out the many other situations that we would really want this Government to urgently deal with that would improve road safety and the safety of our communities as well. The one that is very dear to my heart—gosh people might be surprised that they may not have heard me speak on it for oh probably the best part of a month I think—is establishing a commuter train service between Hamilton and Auckland.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of this debate.SUE MORONEY: Well Mr Assistant Speaker—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No. It is not part of this debate.SUE MORONEY: The Government does not want to hear about it. But regarding keeping people safe on our road there are other urgent matters that I believe our Government ought to attend to and that commuter train service is just one of those.There are potentially loopholes. We on this side of the House do not want people to get the impression that there is a technicality and that that makes it OK for them to speed in their communities. That clearly is not right. We want the rule of law to be observed. There may have been some situations where local bodies local authorities have found themselves in the situation where their by-laws may have inadvertently become—well I would not say they are unlawful but they might not stand up in a court of law if they were contested. When it comes to the safety of our community we cannot be having that and so Labour is here to support the transition of this bill.We hope though that the Government has listened carefully to what we have said in the Committee stage. There was no select committee process for this bill and so there was no ability to really influence the wording in the bill. My colleagues Phil Twyford and David Parker amongst others were at pains to point out some wording changes that they thought could have improved the bill and it is disappointing that the Minister of Transport did not use his ministerial discretion to attend to those matters. I sincerely hope that we are not back here again any time soon to fix this legislation up again as a result of that inattention to detail.So it is a bill that we would rather not be here spending time debating. It is none the less important that we get this right and that we do it swiftly. This is probably one of the better uses of urgency that I have seen in this term of this Government.Bill read a third time.