Adams Amy: General Debate 
Adams Amy: General Debate 
[Volume:654;Page:3875] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 When I came to this House I came here very proudly to represent the people of Selwyn. There are an awful lot of issues facing the people of Selwyn but one that is very dear to their hearts that they have spoken to me often about and that is of serious concern to me is the menace of boy racers on our streets. There are other issues facing New Zealand and I certainly do not downplay their importance. But when I started hearing stories about an 85-year-old in my electorate who was effectively held hostage for 2 hours late at night because he had the audacity to drive down a road that these idiots were using that was not acceptable to me. Frankly I cannot believe how often in the last 6 months we have had to deal with issues that the previous Labour Government ineffectually minced around for 9 years. Clearly National in its term has stood up and its Prime Minister said very early on that National was a Government that was putting its communities first that this was a Government that was not going to be intimidated by those bully-boys. This week two of our excellent and effective Ministers have done what Clayton Cosgrove and his colleagues could not or would not do. I do not know whether they could not figure out the answer or whether they were just too scared to tackle the problem but let me say that they failed the people of Canterbury they certainly failed the people of Selwyn and I think they failed all of New Zealand. Clayton Cosgrove might have squeaked back in in Waimakariri by a handful of votes—heaven knows how—but the people of Canterbury are not happy with the previous Government’s failure to get any action on boy racing. 
The Government has this week introduced the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill and the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Bill. I have no doubt that those bills will finally make a significant and real difference to this issue. Maybe the previous Labour Government did not realise what a big problem this is. Maybe it did not care. Let us give it the benefit of the doubt and suggest that maybe it did not understand the issue. I will tell Labour members that in 2004 in Canterbury alone we were looking at around 350 offences for boy racing annually. By 2008 that had blown out to 1900 offences. That is a fivefold increase—a 100 percent increase a year. This is an exploding problem it is a serious problem and we do not currently have the tools available to deal with it because the previous Government failed to take it seriously. It failed to make it a priority. This Government will not accept that. 
Minister Judith Collins earlier on in this debate—and I commend the Minister for her excellent work—said something that is absolutely right. Boy racers have no right to keep people awake while they scream up and down Bealey Avenue Lincoln Road Shands Road or through Templeton. They have no right to intimidate people do damage to their property keep them in their houses or hold up old men on the side of the road. But I will tell members something. Communities do have a right to sleep they do have a right to feel safe in their homes and they do have a right to expect to have a Government that does something about it. I am very pleased that this Government is doing something about it. It was obvious to this Government that there were loopholes in the existing legislation. The teeth that the law had were not effective. We made it a priority early on in our term of Government to do something about it. Those bills will go a long way towards doing that. 
I do not think anyone in this House would be prepared to stand up and say that it is OK to have a policeman lured into large crowds of 1000 people or more—often they are young people—to be shot at and to be pelted with bottles. He could have been killed. That is not an acceptable situation. It deserves urgent attention and it has had that attention. It is not acceptable to me that residents of whole streets including people in hospital wards motels and many many homes cannot sleep at night and have to be moved. Often they are too scared to leave their homes. Those people are often too scared to ring the police because of the violent retribution that these thugs are known for. We cannot as a society sit back and mince around the edges because we are scared of them. I have already had a rock through a window in my patch and if that is retribution from these idiots then I say that is fine! We on this side of the House will stand up to them. We will not let this bully-boy behaviour carry on. 
The people of Selwyn have spoken very clearly to me on this issue. When I talked to them recently and surveyed them this was one of the issues that there was almost complete agreement on. It is not acceptable for this sort of carry-on to continue. Additional tools need to be put in the police tool box. Ministers have done an excellent job of working with local police local groups and councils to come up with a set of solutions that will make a significant difference.