Alexander Marc: Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Alexander Marc: Land Transport (Unauthorised Street and Drag Racing) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:607;Page:4601] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 New Zealand politics is seemingly no longer a line from left to right but a circle. Who would have imagined the Greens and ACT together! That ACT wakes up with the Greens in its bed should have alerted it to just how wrong it was. Could anyone imagine Deborah Coddington and Nandor Tanczos in agreement about anything let alone a position against the rights of the law-abiding against the demands of the police and against ACT’s supposed law and order priority? Ranting by the Green-ACT double act about people being innocent until proven guilty flies in the face of preventive policing. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act has been dredged up time and time again but whose rights are we talking about? It has been mentioned once or twice in the House that the rights of the public who have every legal right to be on the road and the rights of the boy racers themselves—whose health we are trying to protect and whose deaths we are trying to prevent—are part and parcel of this issue. They take precedence over the property rights—and nothing more than property rights—that the ACT party in particular is trying to uphold. 
If people look like they are about to commit a crime that should be enough for us to jump in and prevent it. Is the “ACT-Green Party” suggesting that we wait for the body to drop before we do something about it? The Greens have suggested that the law is not the issue; it is the resourcing of the police. It might come as a surprise to the Greens but no matter how well-resourced the police are it is the laws that dictate the rules of the game. I suggest that members spend a night in a squad car and see the kinds of things that the police have to deal with night after night. Those who place the rights of these thugs on wheels above the rights of the community the law-abiding and responsible drivers—like ACT and the Greens seem to do—are not the ones who will be there to pick up the pieces. That will be left to our hospitals our police and the families who lose their loved ones. When we put property rights first—car property rights—before the rights of people as ACT seems to have done we have lost our way. 
The demand for this bill comes not only from the police who are sick and tired of being undermined by inadequate laws but also from communities that are fed up with living with excessive noise abusive behaviour and smoke from burn-outs—to say nothing of the injuries and death that accompany illegal drag racing. It is endemic. That is why there has been a call for action. The ACT party which has stood as the party of influence and zero tolerance for crime is now joining its new-found “buddies” the Greens in opposing a bill that has the capacity to prevent the crimes associated with these thugs on wheels. It will have a deterrent effect and allow communities to reclaim their roads and save lives. 
We will support this bill and we will support it speedily. We again thank Clayton Cosgrove and both National and New Zealand First for their efforts. We thank the select committee which put teeth into the bill and ensured that the initial idea from Clayton Cosgrove was brought to fruition. Let us hope that this bill saves lives. That is its importance and its significance and that is the reason we want to see it passed now.