SpeechHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): I'm very pleased to take a brief call on Part 1 of this important piece of legislation. As members of the committee will know it's a piece of legislation that has been cooking away for some time. It deals with a very significant issue in our land transport system which is the increasing problem of people who consume substances—which may be licit or illicit—whose driving is affected by that and who potentially can cause significant amounts of damage and pain. The estimates are that potentially up to 100 fatalities in recent years per year have been caused by people who have these substances within their systems. I want to acknowledge the previous Associate Minister of Transport the Hon Julie Anne Genter who in earnest began work on this piece of legislation in the previous term and advanced the bill significantly. There are very challenging issues to work through in this piece of legislation a number of which are captured in Part 1 of the bill. But the process that the Government worked through in the previous term I think has stood us in good stead to have a piece of legislation that can be both effective in terms of reducing the harms that can be caused by drug-driving but also does balance some of the complex rights issues and technical issues that have to be worked through in order to have a fair and robust piece of legislation. The core technical issue to overcome is the fact that the blood tests that we are used to in the drunk-driving regime which give a high degree of precision cannot be easily transferred to oral testing in terms of the degree of accuracy and a direct comparison. The Government took the wise step I think last term in dealing with this issue of setting up an expert panel which was led by technical experts across toxicology pharmacology—people who know this area and how it works better than anyone in New Zealand. And it's that panel who have recommended both the infringement limits and the criminal limits that are set out in this legislation. We've carefully designed a legislative regime around that that ensures that there is fairness built into the system. People who are asked to be tested by a police officer will initially be asked to conduct an oral fluid test. If that results in a positive outcome a second test will be undertaken and it will only be if the two tests both return a positive result that an infringement offence will have been committed and a ticket issued. And that's an important point to make: that at that point it's only an infringement offence. A criminal offence can only occur if a subsequent blood test is undertaken and that a higher limit that is set out in the legislation is reached through that blood testing process. There are a range of complex issues that sit around this in terms of how the legislation describes the powers how it deals with the limits. I'm sure that we'll have a good discussion about that across the course of this committee stage debate. I do want to thank members actually from around the House and also the select committee who I think have engaged in this issue well. These are complex issues but they're important issues and if we get this right we will save lives. So I look forward to the rest of the debate in the committee that occurs this evening.