Fenton Darien: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Fenton Darien: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:18056] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on Part 2 of the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I want to refer to schedule 4 “Offences against Act”. I do not think there has been any discussion in this debate so far about the provisions in the bill that deal with the issue of logbooks work-time regulations and so on and the issue of providing for search warrants for the police to gather evidence in terms of “chain of responsibility” offences. 
Part 1 of schedule 4 sets out the infringement fees for excess weight offences. Part 2 sets out the infringements for distance recorder offences and there are other things in Part 2 that deal with issues of heavy road transport. I support this measure. I congratulate the Minister in the chair the Minister of Transport on putting that measure in. I acknowledge that an awful lot has been done in terms of truck driver safety over the years but whether or not we like it we still have a problem. Although I congratulate the Minister on doing something in this bill I think the opportunity to do more has been missed. 
Last year 57 people were killed in truck-related crashes—that is 15 percent of all road deaths—and 865 people were injured in truck-related crashes. That has cost New Zealand $358 million. Of course truck drivers are not always at fault. In fact often they are not. I accept that but when a car comes up against a truck the driver and passengers in the car come off second-best. That is why we often end up with very horrific instances of truck-related crashes. 
I am pleased that we are dealing with the work-time regulations and the logbooks and so on but I was quite perturbed to get the information that last year the number of heavy motor vehicle drivers issued with traffic infringement notices for breaching logbook requirements was 1690 people. Also there were 137 traffic offence notices issued for the same thing. It is good that we are catching truck drivers who are breaching those rules. 
Obviously the police are doing their job but the Labour Opposition is concerned about the fact that this is continuing to happen and the number of truck-related deaths is not coming down. I think the Government is failing to address the fundamental underlying issue of our road transport industry. I am talking about small businesses so Tau Henare might be interested. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Say it again with some feeling. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: I thought that member’s Government was the party for small business but he is clearly not interested in hearing what it is like for owner-drivers who buy a truck mortgage the house spend a fortune on the truck and then have a contract imposed on them that means they are unable to make a living without breaching logbook rules without driving long hours and without scrimping on maintenance and all of the other sorts of things. So there is another solution that needs to be looked at here. I have called on the Minister before as he knows and I have called on National to look at this issue of the link between what truckies are paid and safety on the roads. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Make a call on your own party. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That member can keep his head in the sand; that is fine. I know that truckies out there are not very happy with the Government at the moment. At the moment our select committee is considering legislation about road-user charges. Truckies are not very happy; in fact they are threatening another strike. Last week they told us that they will be better organised than they were when Labour was in power. 
I want to tell listeners that Tau Henare is pulling faces to indicate that he does not really care and I am really interested that he does not care about truck drivers or the road safety of the travelling public. He does not care whether truck drivers are on the road driving unsafely and putting other road users at risk.