Hipkins Chris: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Hipkins Chris: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 It is always a pleasure to follow Tau Henare after he has been speaking on a bill. He normally gives me so much material but having listened to that speech I have nothing because he did not make a single useful point that was worthy of any rebuttal in those 10 minutes. I sat here thinking that that was 10 minutes of my life that I will never get back. That is the only thing I could think when Tau Henare was speaking although he did raise one or two things. He talked about the fact that when he was growing up there were Cortinas—the cars that people could get when he was growing up were Cortinas. Well he must be younger than he looks. All I can say is that he must be younger than he looks because I am pretty sure that there would have been much much older cars on the road when Tau Henare was growing up. In fact I am surprised people actually had motorcars back in those days. I am surprised they had motorcars at all. 
He talked about populist issues as well. I thought that was kind of an interesting itch for him to scratch because I think the most populist issue— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: I thought you didn’t have anything to say about my speech. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I know. Well it is all coming back to me now. The most populist issue in this Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill is raising the driving age from 15 to 16 because there is no evidential base for doing that. The only thing it can be about is populism because the Government has not established an evidence base. 
The Government’s position on the two contentious issues in this bill—the raising of the driving age and the lowering of the blood-alcohol level—is very contradictory. There is a very compelling evidential base to say that lowering the blood-alcohol level for people driving will work. It will save lives and it will make our roads safer yet the Government will not do it. There is clear evidence to suggest it will work and the Government will not do it. There is very little evidence that can be nailed down that says that raising the driving age from 15 to 16 will work and will make our roads safer but the Government is doing it. I do not know what the polling numbers are for raising the driving age although I suspect it would be pretty popular with most of the people who are not in the age category that will be affected by it. But polls do not reflect whether it will work. In the case of decreasing the blood-alcohol level I would not rely on an opinion poll for that. I would rely on the evidence and the overwhelming evidence suggests that it will work and will make our roads safer. There is no evidential base that increasing the driving age from 15 to 16 will make our roads safer. 
In fact this bill does not just increase the driving age from 15 to 16; it effectively changes the system we have so that before young people get behind the wheel of a car independently and drive by themselves they will be 17. That will have a significant impact on a number of young people particularly those who live in rural or isolated areas or in suburban areas where there is no good public transport. It will impact on young people’s ability to participate in sport. It will impact on their ability to participate in any kind of community or team-focused activities. What will kids do when they cannot do that stuff? They will be more likely to get into trouble. They will be more likely to be out there tagging. They will be more likely to be out there doing stuff that we do not want them to be doing. If they had a bit more freedom they would keep out of trouble and we would not have other problems that we might have to deal with as a result of this. If there was an evidential base that suggested that raising the driving age from 15 to 16—effectively to 17 which is what this bill does—then I would be open to that but that has not yet been established. 
Overall when looking at the evidence that has been presented we see there is no compelling case. Most of the crash statistics that the New Zealand Transport Agency collects is for the age band of 15 to 19-year-olds so it is difficult to look at the raw statistics and paint a picture that justifies raising the age. It is also not clear from the evidence whether the crashes that happen in that 15 to 19-year-old age bracket are the result of a lack of experience a lack of supervised driver training or other factors rather than age itself. Are we simply delaying the accidents that will currently happen involving 15 16 and 17-year-olds by a year or two? When young people get their licences will they still end up going through that same phase? If that is the case we have not made the roads any safer at all; we have simply delayed it. The cost of delaying it is that young people particularly those in rural and isolated areas have lost the freedom that comes with being able to drive a car. 
One point that Tau Henare made that I have already alluded to was about his Ford Cortina. I assume his first car was a Ford Cortina—fine. He was correct that we now have much more souped-up cars on the road that young people can get behind the wheel of. Those cars are much much faster. That is a concern but it is not to do with the age at which they can get their driver’s licence; it is to do with the types of cars that we have on the road and the modifications that people make to them. There is a cost factor in there as well. There are a whole lot of other issues that we would need to unpack and consider but the age itself is not the proxy for dealing with the issue of young people getting in trouble behind the wheel. 
One of the things that we could do is look at the structure of driver training in this country because I think driver training in this country is not good; it is quite weak. I think we could beef that up and strengthen that considerably. That is not to do with age; it is simply to do with whether when somebody goes through driver training and learns to drive they are taught to drive safely. They should be taught what to do in an unpredictable situation. Cars are very very unpredictable. Roads are very unpredictable. Unfortunately the way our driver training works in this country in terms of the driver’s test is incredibly predictable. When I was tested for my driver’s licence I went out with the driving instructor an hour before I did my test and we drove the circuit that I was going to be tested on—and there were some roadworks—so that when the time came to do the test I had already been through the roadworks the driving instructor had reminded me that I needed to this that and the next thing when I went through the roadworks and I passed the test with no problem at all. There was nothing unpredictable about it because I had already just driven around that circuit. I knew exactly what the testing officer was going to ask me to do. If we want young people or even older drivers when they are driving for the first time to be tested on whether they can cope we need to look very seriously at the training system that we have in place and the testing system that we have in place for our drivers. 
I would also argue that some of the most dangerous drivers on our roads have been driving for quite some time and have slipped into some quite bad habits. I think some of our most sensible drivers would be amongst some of the newest drivers who have just been through the theory tests and so on—for example they put both hands on the steering wheel. I would bet that not every member in this House—in fact I would say the minority of members in this House—drives with both hands on the steering wheel; they might have one hand resting on the gear lever or on the arm rest. Most young people of course are so blimmin paranoid about it because they have just been through the test and they are so worried about it that they have both hands on the steering wheel. They are probably safer drivers than many older people who have slipped into bad habits. I think we could look a bit more at that if we want to make our roads safer. 
I would argue that it is quite clear that an inexperienced 16 or 17-year-old driver is just as likely to have a crash as an inexperienced 15-year-old driver. So increasing the driving age by a year or two as the bill effectively increases the driving age by 2 years because of the changes it makes to the beginner licensing period will not change the problem; it will simply shift the problem from one age band to another. 
I want to return briefly to the issue of lowering the blood-alcohol level which Labour has been arguing for. The blood-alcohol limit we have now is dangerously high and if anything the debate on it has simply highlighted to a number of people that they can drink more than they thought they could and still be allowed to drive. I think a lot of people—anyone who has paid attention to this debate—did not know that they could drink a heck of a lot more than they thought they could drink and still be legally allowed to drive. This debate unfortunately could have simply been counterproductive and let people know that they can drink more than they thought they could. I think people do drink and drive in this country and get away with it because they are legally within the limit even though they are not fully in control and fully alert when they are behind the wheel of a vehicle. I think lowering the blood-alcohol limit from 0.08 to 0.05 as has happened in so many other countries and as the evidence suggests we should be doing is one of the things the Government should be doing in this legislation. It is not and I think that is a wasted opportunity.