Burns Brendon: Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill — First Reading 
Burns Brendon: Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:4120] 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak in the first reading of the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill. As the member of Parliament whose electorate is acknowledged to be most plagued by boy racers I support the introduction of this bill and its referral to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I wish to make it clear that if this bill contributes to reducing the menace and annoyance that hundreds of my constituents face every weekend I am for it. 
I have lived off Fitzgerald Avenue and been kept awake at night by the boy racers. I have sat with constituents watching and listening as boy racers roar up and down Fitzgerald Avenue. I have met people who live off Edgeware Road and whose quiet street has become an occasional drag strip. I have worked with boy racers to try to get a burnout strip established attended numerous meetings to try to make some progress and visited Bealey Avenue moteliers who are in despair yet still we have appalling incidents like last week’s attack on a female airport security guard and earlier in the year the attack on a police sergeant. Those were despicable and cowardly attacks. This legislation is part of a continuum of attempts to deal with such thuggery. 
In February of last year at my first public meeting as the Labour candidate in Christchurch Central I chose to front and chair a meeting and invite the then Minister for Transport Safety Harry Duynhoven to come and outline what the Labour Government was doing. Changes were announced in late 2007 including such things as a specific warrant of fitness noise-level test; a move away from fines which are often left unpaid and run to thousands of dollars; a move towards faster accumulation of demerit points which boy racers take seriously because they want to retain their licences; and moves to set new car-noise limits at 90 decibels. 
After that meeting I told Mr Duynhoven that my firm view was that we as a Government needed to do more. Within a month we had some new regulations giving police more powers to take cars with noisy exhausts straight off the road to have car-owners pay for their cars to be noise-tested and if the cars were over the prevailing 95 decibel limit to have them modified to not exceed 90 decibels at the car-owners’ expense. So no member of this House should be under any illusion that there has not already been a considerable legislative and regulatory effort to deal with the boy-racer issue. We should also acknowledge that the legislation in front of us now will provide some of the same remedies as those that have been passed before. I am pleased to acknowledge the comments tonight from the Minister responsible for the bill the Hon Judith Collins who acknowledged that there has been a concerted effort in the past to deal with these issues. 
I believe that this issue will require ongoing effort and resources. Last year in Canterbury alone the police issued 1500 offence notices to boy racers. That is 10 times the number issued in Auckland. I wish to say without prejudging the scrutiny that the House and the select committee might provide that the bill before the House now is unlikely to provide any silver bullet for the problems caused by boy racers even when one associates it with the tandem legislation discussed earlier this evening. Personally I think that this bill and the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill are as likely to solve the problem of boy racers in Christchurch and to see them park up quietly to drink sarsaparilla as Paul Quinn is to become the Prime Minister. I am sure this bill will though tighten the tourniquet. But the fact is that the measures are already there for the judiciary. 
I acknowledge the contribution to this House of the Hon Clayton Cosgrove whose Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Act of 7 years ago dealt with the problem of street racing burnouts and wheel spinning. It targeted those issues. It gave the police the power to impound a vehicle that is operated in an illegal street race for 28 days immediately if they so wished. It also gave the power to require that an offending car emerge from impoundment with a new warrant of fitness one that did away with illegal modifications such as lower suspensions and noisy exhausts and it gave the courts the power to confiscate a vehicle on the first offence. If the boy racer was caught twice within 4 years the Land Transport Act as amended by the House back in 2003 stated that the court must confiscate the vehicle barring extreme hardship. 
Part 1 of this bill requires three strikes before a car can be confiscated and that in effect is a weaker power. I acknowledge that on that third offence the car can now be crushed. Just how much better than confiscation that will work remains to be seen. Certainly there is a strong public view that crushing should be introduced but Minister Collins has said that perhaps only nine or 10 cars a year will be crushed under this bill. 
If members saw on the weekend the  
Sunday 
 documentary on boy racers they will have some idea of the scale of the problem in my electorate alone not to mention other electorates. There are sometimes hundreds of cars roaring up and down the avenues in Christchurch and I think we need to ask the courts why judges are not using the stiffer sentences that are already available such as the provision that for a first offence offenders lose their cars which is a power already available to the court. I would like to know whether the Minister has any information on that issue. I ask whether she got briefings from officials and whether she can tell us why after people have been charged with tens of thousands of the offences as defined under the legislation introduced by Clayton Cosgrove only about 2 percent of the cars involved have been confiscated. 
I think the police have every reason to be frustrated by this issue. We are in effect wasting valuable police time and sapping their efforts when we do not see the courts use the powers that are already available to them in a wider way. I would like to know whether the Minister has asked for a report on those issues. 
If the courts and judges are not using the powers they already have then one has to ask why they would use the added power that is provided by this bill even if it takes three strikes and not one strike to see a car confiscated and then crushed. Will the turning of 10 cars into cubes each year really send the sort of signal that will be understood and acted on by people who seem immune to anything but their own egos? I am not criticising the Government for adding to what the previous Labour Government did; I just say we should not put all our hopes on the idea that this bill and its companion measure will do what previous efforts sometimes described as Draconian have failed to do. 
The funny thing is that at about this time last year I started getting feedback that the collective efforts were starting to work. I was told by people at two inner-city residents association meetings that the problem of the boy racers was reducing. 
Amy Adams 
: Yeah they’re moving out to Selwyn. How does that fix it? 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Well they may have been moving somewhere but we were quite delighted that the problem seemed to be abating in Christchurch Central. 
Amy Adams 
: Oh! Yeah just wash your hands of it. Wash your hands. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: I am not washing my hands; I am acknowledging what people in the community were saying last year. Then came summer and the problem returned. Perhaps its abating was a result of some stronger police action last year the measures that were introduced or a cocktail of things although I suspect the real reason why the problem abated last year was that the petrol price went to $2.20 a litre. Perhaps that is a signal that when financial constraints are applied the boy-racer problem can reduce. 
Nicky Wagner 
: Like fines. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Well this bill also includes a move away from fines towards the whole issue of using the other options. I note that there is nothing in these two bills to reduce exhaust noise to a maximum of 90 decibels as has been long and noisily promoted by at least one member opposite even to the point of two parliamentary petitions. Perhaps that is being kept in reserve in case these two bills do not deliver the crushing victory against boy racers that is being suggested. 
Certainly we need to refer this bill with its companion bill to a select committee to make sure they add some real measures to what is already in place. But I do not believe that this legislation with its companion bill will provide the silver bullet. I remain in conversation with constituents the police and even boy racers to try to see what more might be done. I believe that Parliament will return to this issue. In the interim I am very pleased to support this bill’s referral to the select committee to have whatever measures need to be added to it to improve and strengthen it. I hope that we can see a beginning to some end of this issue.