Blue Jackie: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — Third Reading 
Blue Jackie: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — Third Reading 
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Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak in the third reading debate of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). The bill has three main purposes. They are to provide for more comprehensive anti - drug-driving laws to provide more privacy provisions regarding access to the register of motor vehicles and to preserve certain provisions in various transport Acts that are due to expire on 1 July this year. It is the first purpose that most New Zealanders will relate to. This bill is about getting unsafe drivers off the road in order to make the roads safer for us—that is the prime purpose of this bill for me. We already have an established mechanism in relation to drink-driving; that has been well accepted and well publicised. Drink-driving is simply not acceptable. There is a very easy screening test that can be done at random and it takes just a few seconds. But that is not the case at all for people who take drugs and drive. 
This bill establishes a regime for prosecuting drug-impaired drivers who have consumed a controlled drug or a prescription medicine. The penalties are aligned to those that apply for drink-driving. The police will have similar powers in such circumstances to those that are in the drink-driving legislation. There will be defences for people who have consumed prescription medicines in accordance with a prescription or in accordance with instructions from the manufacturer of the drug or a health practitioner. The screening test for a person who has taken drugs and driven is a compulsory impairment test that tests coordination physiological reactions and markers for drug impairments such as pupil dilation and a blood test. It takes some 10 minutes or so to complete the compulsory impairment test. Police officers will be trained in the technique. 
The compulsory impairment test will not be used as a screening test but it will be used as the breath test can be used with regard to alcohol. It will be used in a targeted way—namely if an officer notes that a car is being driven dangerously or erratically the officer will stop the driver and if the driver passes the alcohol breath test the officer can then proceed with the drug impairment test. Provision is made for the impairment test to be done away from where the driver and the car have been stopped. That takes into account the fact that the terrain where the car has been stopped may not be conducive for the test to be undertaken there or the roadside may be poorly lit. That provision is there to ensure that the test is done in the safest possible situation. 
There have been a couple of changes since submissions on the bill were heard by members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The first change concerns situations where a person has been injured in a road traffic accident and is unable to do the impairment test. In the original bill if the driver was hospitalised and unable to perform the impairment test the driver could not be prosecuted. A Supplementary Order Paper introduced by the Hon Trevor Mallard in the Committee stage will ensure that hospitalised drivers can be prosecuted for a new offence of driving with class A drugs in their blood. That is the same process that occurs already when injured drivers are proved by way of a blood test to be over the alcohol limit. 
The second change is to clarify the situation whereby the police can advance both an alcohol test and a drug impairment test at the same time on the roadside. The change makes it quite clear in the law that if a person marginally fails the alcohol breath test and the officer is concerned that the person exhibits signs that he or she is more impaired than the level of blood alcohol suggests such as having slurred speech then the officer can proceed to do a drug impairment test. If the person fails the impairment test then he or she will have a blood test to check for drugs. 
The select committee heard very concerning interim evidence from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research. It presented reports that really made the point that drinking and taking drugs and driving cause death. I will quote from a couple of studies that the institute gave the select committee. One study which was carried out over 4 years from June 2004 to July 2008 was of 826 drivers who had died as a result of a motor vehicle accident. Samples were taken from deceased drivers whose deaths were deemed not to be due to medical problems that occurred prior to the accident or due to intentional harm such as suicide. The study found that 80 percent of the drivers were culpable for their own accident and that that was particularly true for those aged under 20 and over 80. Those drivers were all analysed for drug and alcohol use and the interesting statistics are that 48 percent had no alcohol or drugs in their system but that over 52 percent had used alcohol and/or drugs. That is over half of those drivers. 
The select committee asked the institute how many innocent people had died as a result of drivers taking drugs. The institute provided a further evaluation of the data for the 5 years from 2003 to 2007 and looked at 90 people who had died in crashes where drugs were cited as a contributing factor. Of those people 53 were drug-affected drivers who had died as a result of their own driving having taken drugs but 28 were the passengers of those drivers and a further nine were other road users. So out of the 90 deaths 37 of them were innocent victims—that is over 40 percent. That was quite a horrifying statistic to me when I heard it and that is why it is so important to pass this legislation. It will ensure that drivers can be tested for drugs through the impairment method that has already been described. 
The second purpose of this bill relates to the motor vehicles register. The bill improves the protection of personal information held on the register. Applications for the name and address of a vehicle owner will be dealt with under the Official Information Act which applies a public interest test and there will be special provision for approved bulk users. This bill also implements new measures to deal with vehicles where the name or current address of the owner is unknown. It also provides for much of the detail that is currently contained in the statute to be dealt with in regulations where it can be easily updated. 
In summary this bill is timely and necessary and it will save lives. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.