Norman Russel: Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNorman Russel: 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:5138. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Green):I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak to the Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill. This bill is a bill being introduced under urgency and it has retrospective application. Both of those elements are a cause for some concern for the Green Party but none the less we will be supporting the legislation because there appears to be no alternative.This bill retrospectively validates speed limits that have been set incorrectly or probably unlawfully or enforced unlawfully previously. It retrospectively validates enforcement action that had been taken with regard to these speed limits it clears up the existing legal confusion as to how councils can set speed limits and it exempts speed limits set under by-laws from the requirement that they must be reviewed every 5 years—that is they do not have to be reviewed every 5 years once they are set.Having been involved on various occasions in attempts to have lower speed limits it has always been quite a struggle. The New Zealand Transport Agency was never very happy about the idea of lowering speed limits and there have certainly been many struggles to lower speed limits in different areas but we have managed to do it. In Wellington we have got some lower speed limits. On Waiheke Island where I used to live we lowered the speed limit there from 100 to 80 on the main straight—it was incredible that it was ever 100 kilometres an hour on such a small island. In the process by lowering those speed limits we have undoubtedly saved many lives and many injuries—the lives of not only motorists who may have been going fast and if they had an accident then they would have got hurt more severely if they had been going faster but also of pedestrians and cyclists.We have also made our urban environments a lot safer and a lot more human-friendly. The 40-kilometre speed limits and 30-kilometre speed limits that have been introduced in Wellington for example have meant that our urban environments are a lot more livable than they would be with 50-kilometre speed limits or in some places higher speed limits again. So they are a really important tool for local governments in order to be able to control the speed of vehicles in the urban environment. What this legislation does effectively is validate the work local governments have been doing to set all of those speed limits because otherwise—they are meant to be reviewed every 5 years and clearly some of them have not been—all of those lower speed limits less than 100 would have been unenforceable and the tickets that have been issued under them up until now would almost certainly be challengeable in court. So it is essential that we introduce this legislation.Of course there are a lot of things that you could do under urgency in the transport sector. There are a lot of things that we need to do. I mean if I was to think of some urgent transport projects one might be the City Rail Link in Auckland. I mean one does hope that when you hear that the Government is about to introduce urgent transport legislation it may have finally realised the folly of opposing the City Rail Link in Auckland the train link that is essential to make the city’s transport system work better. But it is of course not one of those things but none the less we are supporting the bill because it is none the less essential.As a general rule we do not support retrospective legislation because clearly if you are going to live in a society that is governed by the rule of law you need to know what the law is so that when you go about your daily business you can say: “Well this is the law and if I follow the rules I can’t be prosecuted by the State.” So the danger of retrospective legislation is that it changes the rules after you have already been through. But in this case of course we all assume that the speed limits were the rules and that they were lawfully enforceable.So what this retrospective legislation does effectively is make sure that the rules that we thought were the rules with regard to speed limits really were legally enforceable rules. So in that respect the bill is different from other kinds of retrospective legislation because it does not change the rules after the fact; it simply makes the rules that we thought were the rules at the time legally enforceable today. It means that all those enforcement actions—speeding tickets that were issued during that period—do not suddenly become challengeable in a court. So although generally we do not support retrospective legislation on this occasion I think everyone would agree that it is a matter of common sense and public safety that we support it. So for that reason we will be supporting this legislation tonight.