Tolley Anne: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Tolley Anne: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1960] 
ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 In speaking to this third reading I start by acknowledging the work of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and the Minister for Transport Safety who led that work in order to get this bill into shape and back into the House as soon as possible. 
I also want to acknowledge the taxi drivers and bus drivers in my electorate who were forced out of their business and their jobs as a result of the Land Transport Amendment Act 2005 which took effect in January. I have several in my electorate who have suffered great financial hardship as a result. 
But bad law is bad law whether it was passed last year or is passed tonight and I am positive that this House will be found guilty on both occasions. Last year Parliament passed the Land Transport Amendment Act and when the then Minister of Transport the Hon Pete Hodgson introduced the third reading—which is about the final shape of the bill to be passed—he said: “The bill prohibits persons convicted of serious violent and sexual offences from being a passenger service driver. That will address the risk to public safety from having those with such convictions in a one-on-one situation with passengers.” That was the original intention of the amendment Act that was passed last year. It was passed to protect people such as women young girls and boys and other vulnerable citizens who when they hop into a taxi or jump on to a bus have the right to be safe and to feel safe. 
But the 2005 amendment Act went off the rails. I quote again from the Minister: “The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee extended the scope of the provision in order to cover offences committed prior to the commencement of the bill which means that the provision will apply to existing passenger service drivers with convictions for serious violent and sexual offences.” I wondered why the select committee had done that. If it had not done it we would not be here tonight debating this amendment because that was the problem. Earlier this afternoon my colleague Dr Mapp quite generously I thought acknowledged that the select committee did not during that process closely examine the list of sexual offences that it was excluding from even the right to appeal. I thought that was pretty generous of him considering that it had wandered off the rails. 
But when I looked at what actually happened—and I went back to the third reading of the amendment bill—I saw that it was because the one-time ACT member Deborah Coddington had sailed into the select committee and said that as she said in her third reading speech what was dear to her heart was “cleaning up the taxi industry by not allowing those who have convictions for serious sexual abuse crimes to hold a P endorsement on their licence and be able to drive taxis or buses.” She went on later to say: “I think this legislation does actually make New Zealand in some small way a better place.” Well she was wrong but she is not here to clean up the mess. 
I am not a lawyer but I had not been in this House for very long before it was very clear to me that one of the most dangerous things we can do in this House is pass retrospective legislation. We are here tonight debating this amendment because driven by Deborah Coddington that select committee and this House passed legislation that retrospectively judged people and took away their ability to earn a living their ability to drive taxis or buses which many of them had been doing quite adequately for 20 or 30 years. We cannot say we are actually dealing with the law of unintended consequences because the select committee actually set out to do that. It might have been a matter of ignorance on the part of the one who drove the amendment but I believe that it was actually based on a rather shallow perspective and it did this House no credit it did Deborah Coddington no credit and it caused grief and economic hardship for some decent hard-working New Zealanders. 
If we have a look at what the changes last year did we see that all taxi or bus drivers who had been convicted of murder or of any sexual offence with a penalty of 7 years’ imprisonment or more were banned from holding a licence with a P endorsement and they could not apply for reinstatement. What the select committee actually recommended related to persons convicted of sex with a person aged 12 to 16—which are the cases we have been talking about—or convicted of indecent assault who did not receive a sentence of imprisonment. Originally letters that I had from both the Taxi Proprietors Federation and the bus association said that if we focused on the sentences that were given in the courts we would actually see the seriousness of the crime. So many of those people who were affected by that retrospective law had in fact not been sent to jail or to borstal. They had received very minor punishment and that reflected the seriousness of their crimes. That was a reasonable way to deal with it—if they had not gone to prison they could apply to the Director of Land Transport for reinstatement. National was very happy with that. We believed that we should be looking back at the sentences of those guys and that if they had not served a period of imprisonment they were suitable to carry on. 
The thing that concerned me about the select committee recommendation was that the rules for those with serious violent offences were not changed and they could continue to apply for reinstatement. What we have done now with the Anderton amendment is open that wider. We have said that right across the board any person with a sentence of 12 months or less—whether it was for rape a violent crime or a violent sexual crime—can now apply for reinstatement or for a P licence. I think that is appalling. When New Zealanders wake up tomorrow morning and realise that this law has been passed on the hoof tonight they will not believe it. The select committee spent a lot of time dealing with what are difficult issues. I think everyone involved in this debate knows how difficult the issues have been. But no amendments have come into the House tonight and at the last minute have been passed that actually do far more damage to the original intention of the Land Transport Amendment Act that was passed last year than the small mistake that was made—driven by Deborah Coddington—did. 
The temptation to wander off focus when we start fiddling with legislation has not been lost. We are here tonight trying to correct a glaring mistake that was made last year and we are compounding it and making it much worse. We have completely walked away from the original intention of the Land Transport Amendment Act passed last year and we have ensured that any young daughter young son or young grandchild of ours who gets into a taxi or on to a bus cannot know for sure that he or she is safe because we cannot have confidence that the person at the wheel—particularly the wheel of a taxi in a one-to-one situation late at night—does not have a conviction for a serious offence that could be as serious as rape. 
I am appalled at this legislation. I believe that National’s position has been quite consistent all the way through. We are concerned of course about the retrospective injustice that was done last year by this House and we are equally concerned about the terrible law that is being passed tonight that does away with the safety of individual New Zealand citizens using passenger transport.