Twyford Phil: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19719. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū):It is good to follow on in this debate and I want to respond to some of the things that the Minister of Transport has said about this Land Transport Amendment Bill. Labour is supporting this bill as we have supported bills that have included these measures going right back to 2009. I am going to talk more about the specific provisions in the bill and why we support them but I think it is worth taking a minute or two just to reflect on the provenance of this bill. The Hon Gerry Brownlee talked about how the Government had been considering all of the international research about lowering the blood-alcohol limits and weighing up the research before it proceeded with this bill. Well in my humble opinion the research that actually informs this bill was Iain Lees-Galloway’s member’s bill being pulled from the ballot. That was the thing that spurred the Minister into action; it was the prospect of Iain Lees-Galloway’s bill that would have lowered the blood-alcohol limits in exactly the same way that this bill does. The prospect of that bill gaining majority support in this House would have been a political embarrassment for the Government.We have seen for 5 years since Darren Hughes’ bill in 2009 which would have had pretty much the same effect as this prevarication by this Government—not checking the research in Australia the US or anywhere else around the world. Actually the reason that this Government did not progress this issue for those 5 long years is that it did not want to be seen as a nanny State. Steven Joyce was so concerned about the optics of actually lowering the blood-alcohol limits and the thresholds that are contained in this bill that he was not prepared to entertain the prospect of lowering the limits. That says a lot about this Government. Steven Joyce himself I think said publicly that you could drink three-quarters of a bottle of wine and still under the current law be able to legally get behind the wheel. To say that publicly and then for 5 long years not actually proceed with this long overdue reform I think says a lot. It is not at all about the international research; it was simply about Iain Lees-Galloway’s member’s bill being pulled out of the ballot. That is why the Government brought this bill to the House and has finally squeaked it through in the dying hours of this parliamentary term. That is a pretty half-hearted effort you would have to say.The purpose of this bill just to recap is to address the problem of drink-driving with a number of amendments including lowering the adult legal blood-alcohol limit from 400 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath to 250 micrograms. So that is from 400 micrograms down to 250 micrograms for a breath test and from 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood to 50 milligrams—so from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams for a blood test. That will without a doubt make a very significant difference. As the Minister pointed out the data shows that there is an exponential increase in fatalities and casualties on the road from drink-driving from a modest but steady increase in alcohol consumption of those people who get behind the wheel. So it makes a lot of sense we believe to lower the limits in this way and it will make a really significant difference to the carnage on the roads.There are some very interesting statistics about the cost of drink-driving. It is one of the major causes of road accidents in New Zealand—an annual average according to the Ministry of Transport of 61 fatalities 244 serious injuries and 761 minor injuries every year. That is an extraordinary roll-call of social harm disruption and loss that people and families face all over this country caused by drink-driving. Economists have calculated that the financial cost of these injuries and fatalities is $446 million. That is the cost of drink-driving every year. That is a massive cost to the country. What the officials advised was that lowering the legal blood-alcohol limit in the way that this bill does will save on average 3.4 lives every year—3.4 lives saved every year. Imagine that: since 2009 if Darren Hughes’ bill had been pulled from the ballot and supported in this House 3.4 lives could have been saved every year for the last 5 years. That is the cost of the delay and prevarication that we have seen. As for the other savings this bill should according to the projections save on average 64 injury-causing crashes from happening and $200 million in social costs of fatalities and casualties over a 10-year period. That is a massive cost-benefit gain that we should see from the passage of this legislation.One of the interesting things about this bill—and I know that it was debated at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee at length—is that the Government chose with this bill rather than just lowering the blood-alcohol and breath limits to set up a civil infringement regime for offences that fall between the old limits and the new limits. Call me thick but I have yet to hear in the previous debates including in the Committee stage when we repeatedly asked the Minister in the chair to get up and take a call—and I really did not find in the Minister’s explanation of the justification of the civil infringement regime in his contribution a very clear or compelling explanation about why. He said—and I think his words were—there is a $250 fine and the number of demerits that you would get is not the “soft option”. Well to be frank it is the soft option. By definition it is the soft option. What this bill does is it sets up a hierarchy between the criminal offences that exist from zero to the old limits and a civil infringement regime between the old limits and the new limits. It clearly is the soft option and I am not sure why and I would be interested to hear from the members opposite another attempt at an explanation as to why they have gone down this track. It clearly sets up a two-tier infringement system and it is not clear to me why the Government would want to do that.There is no doubt that really in our adult lifetimes there has been a massive social change on the question of drink-driving. As the Minister himself said public attitudes now are far far less tolerant of people who want to drink and drive. I think there is an acceptance of the point he made that the general view now is that by all means get drunk in your own home go to a bar go to a club or a restaurant whatever but it is no longer your God-given right to get behind the wheel and subject everybody else to the appalling risks that drunk-drivers pose on our roads.I want to pay tribute to all of the work that has been done by people—by public health workers by public servants working in the ministries and departments by people who have done all of the host responsibility work and by school teachers. There has been a tide of change on public attitudes on this issue and it has had a very very positive effect. I think that organisations like the Drug Foundation for example which has endorsed this bill quite rightly and strongly say that this will have a really positive effect in terms of reducing the harm caused by drink-driving.