Woodhouse Michael: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Woodhouse Michael: Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:14085] 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 I think it is helpful to measure these proposed changes against the road safety priorities that were set out in  
Safer Journeys: discussion document 
. That document very helpfully laid out areas of high and medium concern and also the areas for continued focus and emerging issues. It is helpful because there are an infinite number of road safety initiatives that could be implemented and those initiatives were certainly amongst the thousands of submissions that have been received. It is simply not possible to do all of them. 
The areas of high concern identified were reducing alcohol and drug-impaired driving increasing the safety of our young drivers safer roads and roadsides safer speeds and increasing the safety of motorcycling. Those areas are all either addressed in the Land Transport (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Bill or have been implemented in previous actions by the Minister of Transport—for example the measure on mandatory headlight use on motorcycles and the drug-driver laws that we have recently passed. But I will talk about the first two of the high-concern issues and they are the reduction in drug and alcohol - impaired driving and the safety of our young. 
In respect of alcohol I think it is a bit of a shame that this debate has been dominated by the Government’s strategy of gathering more data on the impact of reducing the blood-alcohol limit to 0.05 because in this area there are a number of very good and meaningful clauses in the bill about alcohol impairment. Lowering the legal youth drink-driving limit from 0.03 to zero lowering the drink-driving limit to zero for recidivist drink-drivers and the use of interlocks are all very very effective measures. The Labour transport spokesman challenged a member of the National Government to guarantee that driving at a level of 80 milligrams would be just as safe as driving at 50 milligrams. Well that guarantee will not happen and the reason it will not happen is that we just do not know. The data does not exist to support it. The gathering of the data— 
David Shearer 
: Whereas we do know about the alcohol. We do know that. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: No there is no data that says that a person driving with blood-alcohol content of 0.05 will cause an accident and that accident will cause impairment. The data has never been collected in this country so it makes very good sense to collect it. I find it ironic that the member Ms Fenton is quite happy to ask our youth for evidence on increasing the driving age from 15 to 16 years because it should be supported by good evidence before we do it but she places no such requirement on the really bigger issue I think of reducing the blood-alcohol level. 
Darien Fenton 
: There is already evidence—lots of evidence. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: Well we will hear about that in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I am absolutely sure but the data does not exist. 
I think the real issue that needs to be addressed—and that some of these measures will address—is that despite all of that an unacceptably high number of drivers continue to exceed the 0.08 level. Last year I think about 36000 people were convicted of driving while over that limit—36000. Despite the best efforts of our law enforcement agencies they will not catch every single person who currently drives when over the existing blood-alcohol level. We probably have several hundred thousand drink-driving incidents on our roads every year. Although I support the collection of data on the issue of whether the level should be 0.05 and 0.08 I very strongly commend the policies and the efforts of the police to reduce that shameful statistic. The introduction of zero blood-alcohol levels and interlocks for recidivist drink-drivers and the youth zero blood-alcohol level will certainly improve that statistic. 
I did not want to get into a political debate on this issue as we will get widespread support for it but Mr Hughes opened the door. In response to an interjection questioning why Labour did not lower the blood-alcohol limit in the 9 years it was in charge he said that a bill was introduced by the previous Government and the road toll had reduced under Labour. I am afraid that is simply not borne out by the statistics which show that in 2002 the 12-month road toll was 404 and in 2009 it was 406. It went up it went down and it went up again but it has basically slid sideways since the turn of the millennium. If we measure that in terms of deaths per vehicle kilometres we have very poor statistics. The statistics are also flat—declining slightly but not nearly as well as they are in other countries around the world. Over the period between 2002 and 2009 New Zealand had an 82 percent higher death rate per kilometre than in the United Kingdom a 60 percent higher rate than in Ireland and a 40 percent higher rate than in Australia. It is simply not true to say that the initiatives of the previous Labour Government were having sufficient effect. 
Everybody agrees even Labour members that this legislation is necessary. Despite that it is good that the vast majority of Labour members with perhaps the unanimous support of all members—I am not sure what the Greens are doing—will support the bill. It will provide a refreshing change I think for the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to work perhaps a little more collegially over the next few months on this legislation than it will on industrial relations legislation and I look forward to that. I commend the bill to the House.