Mallard Trevor: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
Mallard Trevor: Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
[Volume:655;Page:4469] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 It is not my intention to speak for long. I have a request to make of Government members: could they stop praising me please? It is causing some problems with my colleagues. 
Hon Steven Joyce 
: I understand that yes; it ruins the whole reputation. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Ha ha! 
I think we have made a lot of progress. Members will understand that there is some training in the delivery of the impairment test to be done for police officers. The test will probably take about 15 minutes to do; it is not as simple as walking along a white line. It was demonstrated to the select committee. I watched a couple of my colleagues attempt to do it and I am concerned that it can be pretty hard. We might end up with some failures in relation to people who are entirely unaffected by drugs. But of course the test will not be randomly imposed on people; police officers will have reasonable cause before they start the process. 
I think we have made a lot of progress. There are some other things that we could have done but that we have not done. I think we could have brought parts of the testing provisions in earlier and had police officers who had had their training out there doing it even before we had all the police officers right around the country trained to do it. But we have chosen not to do it in a progressive way like that although there is an option under the Order in Council procedures to bring the testing in earlier. I encourage the Minister to bring it in as early as possible and I make it clear that the Opposition will not criticise him if he does not have enough police officers trained. There will be places around the country even when this testing has been implemented that will not have enough people to do the test. We know that; we accept that. But if we can start catching people early and get them before the courts I think the message will very much be one of perception as well as one of the facts of prosecution. If people know they can be prosecuted for drug-driving we could well get the behavioural change that we are looking for. In the end we are not looking to have people convicted of driving under the influence of drugs; we are looking to not have people drive with P and other drugs in their system. That is the objective and it is very very important. 
There are some other changes too. Frankly I think that if the select committee had had another month to have a go at the legislation it might have been able to better look at some of the future-proofing of this legislation. If I have one request of the Minister it is that he does not let his officials think that the job is finished now. Work has to be done on the legislation going forward because we know that the technology will change. Although I am generally not in favour of having things come in by way of regulation or Order in Council it may well be that we can have more flexible primary legislation while changes as far as the testing equipment for drugs is concerned are brought in by Order in Council. I hope that in the end we will get past the need to have blood tests. I think that technology is heading in that direction and it may well be that we get to the point of having the easy swab at the side of the road. 
The other point I make in this area is on the question of costs. I do not think that anyone has focused on that question since the select committee brought the legislation back to the House. The changes made at the select committee provide for the presumption that people found guilty will in fact pay the costs of the tests. At the moment—and I say this with some care because up until quite recently I was the shareholding Minister for the Institute of Environment Science and Research and also on and off the Minister for Sport and Recreation—we have found that in sport and recreation it is much more cost-effective to send tests to an accredited laboratory in Australia than to have the institute develop the systems and accreditation to do the tests within New Zealand. One thing the committee was unanimous about was that wherever it is practical the person caught with drugs in his or her system should be the person who pays for the test rather than use the system as it is at the moment where the cost of testing falls much more heavily on the taxpayer. 
So the message to come out of this legislation is first of all to not take drugs. But absolutely certainly if people do take drugs then they should not drive.