Fenton Darien: Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill — Second Reading 
Fenton Darien: Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:658;Page:6982] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 First of all I make it very very clear that Labour will support the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill but with amendments. My colleague Clayton Cosgrove has proposed those amendments and we will be interested in the Government’s response to them. 
Once again I acknowledge the submitters who came along to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to make submissions on this bill along with the companion bill that we debated earlier tonight the Land Transport (Enforcement Powers) Amendment Bill. For me because I do not live in Christchurch it was a revelation to hear what some people are going through in Christchurch as they suffer the effects of illegal street racing and the noise and behaviour that goes with it. Quite frankly many of them were at the end of their tether. We are enormously sympathetic to them; we cannot help but be. Anyone who has had his or her sleep disturbed by anything including noise will be sympathetic. It does one harm not to get a good night’s sleep because one is constantly being disturbed. Of course that does damage to people’s well-being. But it worries me a little that I think the hopes of those who came along and submitted to the select committee have been raised enormously. We are back to saying that there is a silver bullet that will fix this problem. There is not. There needs to be a range of things and I do not think that this or the previous bill go anywhere near to dealing with the problem. 
Labour wants to work with the Government to support measures that will crack down on the issue of illegal street racing. I acknowledge all of the members in the House who come from the Canterbury region and the Christchurch region in particular who I know have had meeting after meeting with people. In fact I think my colleague Mr Burns lives in one of the streets or near one of the streets that is affected. So I acknowledge what a huge issue it is for those members and I think to a much lesser degree for other parts of the country. 
We are really concerned that the hopes of those submitters that we will find a solution have been raised and this bill does not do it. It has missed the mark. That is why we are proposing an amendment to the bill to toughen it up a bit. We think that the bill as proposed is window dressing. There has been a whole lot of hot talk and tough talk talking up the issue of car crushing and so on. However as I said there are some things that we can do to the bill. I really am looking forward to the Government’s response to our amendment. We will not stand in the way of the bill; we made that clear in the select committee. It goes part of the way towards closing a loophole but we want to see how determined the Government is to toughen this bill up and see it work more effectively by seeing its support for our amendments. 
As previous speakers have talked about in debate on this bill and previous bills the Labour Government has already passed a law to deal with boy racers. It is interesting to reflect that that law is tougher than any law in Australia. I have just been to Australia and obviously I took notice of the transport issues around me because of my transport safety role and my role on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I asked what the Australians had done about this issue and I had it confirmed that the Labour Government passed a law that was tougher than anything in that country. 
Under the current law the court may confiscate a vehicle on a first offence. It is mandatory to confiscate the vehicle on a second offence within 4 years but that has rarely happened. I think the focus of the work of the select committee and perhaps the Government should have been on why the courts are so hesitant to confiscate rather than just moving to crushing. The courts and people have to get through many obstacles in order for cars to be crushed to the point where the Minister has admitted that it will be only about 10 cars every year. That seems pretty ineffective to me. In 2006 there were 9600 offences in which mandatory confiscation applied under the current laws and over 50000 in which discretionary confiscation applied. But only 1062 confiscation orders were granted which puts the current rate of confiscation at less than 2 percent. So that seems to indicate a real problem we should have been addressing rather than trying to talk up the idea of crushing. 
I am not sure what makes the National Government think its bills will make the courts use the powers of confiscation which are already available to them any more than they already do and when we get to the Committee stage I will be interested in seeking an answer to that question. If the courts are not using the current confiscation powers what makes the Government think they will use the new destruction powers particularly when they are not mandatory? 
Hon Member 
: They have been getting through the loopholes you left and that we are closing. Even Clayton admitted that. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: A loophole in the current law has allowed boy racers to avoid confiscation of their vehicles by having them registered in someone else’s name usually in the name of one of their mates so we support the closing in the bill of the loophole in order to allow the confiscation of vehicles owned by a third party. We will be happy to support that provision during the debate. 
However the Government’s bill does not make practical sense. If the Minister of Police has closed that loophole so that the current mandatory confiscation on the second offence is more likely to be enforced by the courts what is the point of having a third offence provision? The car should have been already confiscated. The third offence provision is discretionary. What is the point of that? The car should be gone by then. We do not believe in allowing cars to be crushed on a third offence when the car should have already been confiscated. It should be gone; it should not be in the ownership of illegal street racers after a second offence. We believe that if that provision were enforced properly it would help combat the boy-racer problem. The focus should be on toughening up the current law and making sure it works so that vehicles are confiscated on a second offence as the law always intended. 
We believe that it makes little difference to offenders whether their cars are confiscated or crushed because either way they lose them. That is what matters: they do not have a car; it is gone. They lose their cars for good. The only people who will suffer as a result of the crushing of cars will be the New Zealand taxpayers who will have to pay for the costs of crushing the car and the fines that cannot be recovered through the sale of the vehicle. 
The National Government has talked tough but in our view the new confiscation and destruction order will be only a last resort. It can be used only if an offender is convicted three times in 4 years. That does not sound very tough to me. It is a higher threshold than the current law and it provides for the mandatory confiscation of a vehicle. I am disappointed that the Government and the Minister have talked up this issue. The submitters came along to share their stories and an earlier speaker talked about how one submitter in Christchurch was so terrified they had someone else come along and present their submission for them because the situation was so awful. I am really sorry because I think that those people will find within a year that nothing has changed. The cars will still be outside their property they will still be making the noise and there will still be the awful behaviour that they described to us. These people will still be losing their sleep and suffering all of the harm that they do. 
I think the Government has missed an opportunity to make some useful improvements to the current law. That is partly because the Minister rushed out of the blocks and started talking tough without really taking the time to think this whole thing through and to look at why the current law is not working. As I said Labour plans to introduce an amendment to the current bill to make confiscation mandatory on a second offence even if the vehicle is owned by a third party. That will reinstate the original intention of the current law that Labour introduced. Labour hopes in the interests of community safety and in the interests of all the submitters who came along and told their stories that the Government will support its amendments. All of the members of the select committee were very moved by those submissions. We were all committed to doing something about it so Labour members hope that National agrees to support the amendments we plan to propose. If the Government really wants to deal with this problem why would it not support our amendments? Thank you.