Beaumont Carol: Land Transport Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Land Transport Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15145. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): It is very interesting to me that very brief calls are being taken on the other side of the House on something that is a very serious matter and something that in my time in this House has been traversed on many occasions. Like my colleagues I stand to support the Land Transport Amendment Bill. It is about time. It is about time we did something about lowering the legal adult alcohol limits.This is something that is not as I have said new. I happened to look back at the Law Commission reportAlcohol in our Lives: Curbing the Harm. I sat through many hours of submissions on the legislation that arose from that very important work done by the Law Commission and I just thought it was worth reminding the House what the Law Commission said. It said: “Drink driving and transport policies—In our Issues Paper we suggested there was a strong case for the blood alcohol limits to be reduced from 80 to 50 mgs of alcohol per 100 mls of blood for all drivers with zero tolerance for drivers under 20 years of age. We also said consideration should be given to the introduction of alcohol ignition locking devices for all convicted drink drivers. Although we did not seek submissions on these matters”—and this is the important bit—“but encouragedthem to be made directly to the Ministry of Transport as part of the Safer Journeys consultation we received more than 1240 transport-related submissions. These were forwarded to the Ministry of Transport for its consideration. Our view is unchanged: like the majority of the submitters we believe blood alcohol limits must come down.” That was the Law Commission in 2010.The fact of the matter is that there have been numerous opportunities to do what is being done now. My former colleague Darren Hughes as others have mentioned had a member’s bill to deal with this issue because the Government was not brave enough to deal with it at the time and kicked it to touch instead of dealing with it as part of the alcohol law reform process and then the follow-on to Safer Journeys. Instead of being brave enough to deal with something that actually would have saved lives as others have said we went for more research. In fact I can recall listening to discussion in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about how we needed more research on this matter because our roads were different from those in the other countries we were talking about so therefore we needed this research. We had submitter after submitter and evidence provided around what was done in other jurisdictions why it was important to make this change and how the level of impairment between 0.05 and 0.08 increased dramatically. All of that information was there but no action was taken.It is important that we have on record here the very real question of why it has taken the Government so long to introduce this bill and how many New Zealanders have died as a result of that inaction. That is a serious matter. Certainly it is clear that most years apparently drink-driving is still the major cause of road accidents in New Zealand with an average of 61 fatalities 244 serious injuries and 761 minor injuries caused by at-fault drivers who have been drinking. The social cost of those injuries and fatalities is $446 million—a huge sum in our country. But that of course is just the financial cost; the emotional cost to the individuals who are seriously injured and to the families of people who are killed or seriously injured is just phenomenal. It is a huge issue and the fact that it has taken so long I do think is very very serious.We will be looking closely at the penalty regime that is put up in this Land Transport Amendment Bill. We are not convinced that the suggestions around a different regime for those who have blood-alcohol levels between 0.05 and 0.08 are right but we will be carefully scrutinising submissions on that matter. Thank you.