Fitzsimons Jeanette: Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill — Second Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:658;Page:6984] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Green) 
: 
 New Zealanders who have the misfortune to live in some parts of some of our cities and in particular in some parts of Christchurch are fed up with the noise intimidation and associated criminal activity that goes along with boy racers. The Green Party acknowledges the size of this problem and how desperate people can feel when night after night they cannot get a decent night’s sleep because of what is going on in the street outside. The submissions made very clear how some people are suffering as a result of the behaviour of these people. 
But the Greens are not supporting the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill because we have a history of not supporting window dressing. This bill will not solve the problem. It is actually nothing more than an expensive ideological branding exercise. The bill is unnecessary because the police and the courts already have the powers they need to deal with dangerous driving and associated behaviours and the nuisance and intimidating effect that they have on our communities. Judges already have the power to confiscate cars after the first offence and they must do so after two offences within 4 years. This bill actually goes backwards on that count. 
The fact is that as successive Governments have found it is easy just to pass another law. It is much harder to give the police the resources they need to enforce the law that is already there. In fact if the money that this bill will cost were put in to greater enforcement of the powers that are already there I believe we would see a much greater decrease in this activity than the decrease we would see under this legislation. After all the Minister herself has said that nine or 10 cars a year will be destroyed. I wonder whether the people in those streets in Christchurch will be able to notice any difference in the decibel level if there are nine or 10 fewer cars than there were previously. I suspect that they probably will not. 
It also raises the wider issue that confiscation and destruction are being used for cars that are noisy but not for cars that are used to maim and kill people. Why is it that we are giving a higher priority to noise and nuisance—awful as they are—than we are to behaviour that is actually killing and maiming people in large numbers? Just this year and these are today’s figures from the library 314 people have died on our roads as a result of road crashes. But instead of focusing on those kinds of transport issues we are looking at ways of dealing with nuisance. Surely there is a hierarchy here; both are important but we do not put nearly enough effort into preventing deaths and injuries on our roads. 
This will not be a cheap bill to administer. The operating costs for the courts alone are estimated to be $470000 a year going up to about $1.5 million in the second year and out-years. The theory is that fines may compensate for this but we have a lot of illegal street racers now who already owe money to the Crown. The fines are not paid. Successive fines are not paid. The fines cannot be collected if those people do not have money. If their cars are destroyed they will be even less likely to pay. It seems to me very unlikely that there will be enough money collected through fines to compensate for the greater cost of putting this law into practice. If we put that $1.5 million a year extra that it will cost the courts into enforcing the law we have against boy racers now I predict that we could reduce the nuisance even further. 
The bill will also of course turn Government agencies into used-car dealers. I wonder whether those agencies do not have better things to do with their time than disposing of cars that are confiscated but not crushed. We support the intention to do something about this serious nuisance that is causing citizens a lot of distress but this is not the right way to do it. It will be ineffective and the Green Party will not support window dressing.