Woodhouse Michael: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Woodhouse Michael: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17807] 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 Welcome back to the Chair Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. 
For all the huffing and puffing I think there are just two questions we need to ask: are we safer on the road than we were 10 years ago and what is Labour’s record during its 9 years in office when it had a chance to do something about it? I will tell members the answer to the second question: none zilch nada. Labour did absolutely nothing. We had a 12-month rolling road toll that had been steadily decreasing since the 1970s and then it flatlined under the Labour Government. When other countries’ safety records improved ours did nothing. We now have road fatality rates per kilometres travelled 40 percent higher than Australia’s 28 percent higher than America’s and 82 percent higher than the UK’s. Labour members can spout sanctimonious sermons but the fact is that Labour did absolutely nothing about it when it had its chance. The public should view Labour members’ crocodile tears for road safety for what they are: populist dog-whistle politics. 
I will move on to the question of blood-alcohol—[ 
Interruption 
] They did; they microchipped the dogs. 
I will move on to the issue of blood-alcohol concentration because it has been the fixation of members opposite during the whole second reading debate. The second question is how many serious or fatal accidents in New Zealand involve drivers whose blood-alcohol concentration was between 0.05 and 0.08 where the driver was at fault. The fact is we do not know. We can draw some inferences from the international data— 
David Shearer 
: 300 reports though. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: Yes but the member has not named a single report that actually answers that question. How many drivers driving between 0.05 and 0.08 caused an accident where they were at fault? 
Even in the  
Safer Journeys 
 document in which the Automobile Association produced some data to support their position that at this stage 0.08 should not be dropped the Ministry of Transport was quite critical of the Automobile Association’s data. In fact the ministry criticised itself. When the Automobile Association pointed out that just 6 percent of drivers involved in fatal crashes where alcohol was a factor had a blood-alcohol concentration of below 0.08 the ministry pointed out that of the 7800 accidents in the 5-year period of the study in only half of those accidents where alcohol was suspected was blood even taken for analysis. The simple fact is that we can draw lots of inferences from the data but we cannot say whether it will save the lives that Mr Shearer claims it will. 
However it is true that increased blood-alcohol concentration raises relative risk and that is also what  
Safer 
Journeys 
 stated. But it does not raise risk evenly does it? Those aged 15 to 19 years old are five times more at risk than 30-year-olds. So alcohol is a factor but it is not the only factor. There are other factors at work; otherwise the accident rate would be extremely correlated. That is why this Government is moving to do better than 0.05 for those people who are at the greatest risk. People aged 15 to 19 years old will have to have a blood-alcohol concentration of zero. Recidivist drivers will have to have a blood-alcohol concentration of zero and they will have to have interlocks. Maybe the evidence will suggest that that is the right thing to do. 
Maybe if Labour members were pontificating over that for 9 years they should have done something about it. I refer to Mr Hughes’ submission that 85 percent of the public supports that even though the Government is not doing it. Well I could name a raft of legislation passed over the last 9 years where 85 percent of the public did not support much of the social engineering legislation that the Labour Government put through with the support of the Greens but that Government did it nevertheless. 
This is a Government that will work on evidence. Again it is very ironic that Ms Fenton somehow is the friend of 15-year-olds. She never mentioned it once in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee where Labour supported the raising of the licensing age to 16 and has now done a complete U-turn despite the fact that the evidence is unequivocal that those 15-year-olds are at risk. Labour will sacrifice the 15-year-olds for the sake of a vote in 2014. Clearly it has lost those people for 2011 but it realises they will be turning 18 by 2014 and maybe then they might vote Labour. I say: “Good luck with that.” But there is not enough evidence to suggest that a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.05 will work. We are gathering it and we will see how that goes. In the meantime I am sure we have not heard the last of this.