Adams Paul: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Adams Paul: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21379] 
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
: 
 United Future is also supporting the bill. I think one of its strongest points is the restrictions on the taxi industry. I want to pick up on what Deborah Coddington was saying about offenders. I was thinking about that over the lunch break and definitely there are certain areas of transgression that prevent people from having a second chance and being in the situation of being a taxi-driver—such as sexual sins. When we think about the 10-year time period in respect of past convictions we do not know what might trigger somebody in a certain situation. We are talking about the taxi industry about the one-on-one situation between a taxi-driver and a female or male passenger. Therefore the amendment is a welcome addition to enable people to feel safe when travelling in taxis. 
I sat on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for part of the process and it was great to see the various parties in Parliament working well together on this legislation. It was refreshing and Mark Gosche did a tremendous job of chairing the committee and picking up on everybody’s viewpoint. 
I want to touch on the amendment that United Future has had put in the bill with regard to noisy vehicles. We had actually pushed for the ability to have a noisy vehicle immobilised. The noise is made in the late hours of the night and causes a nuisance. It is a problem throughout most of the major cities in the country. However noise in itself is an interesting scenario. In transport one of the things that has concerned me is that we have regulations that car exhaust systems must be no noisier than they were when originally manufactured. That requirement is causing major challenges to the secondary exhaust market. I fail to see how we can have a requirement that an exhaust be no noisier than when it was originally manufactured. Surely we must have the simplicity of putting in a maximum decibel level that an exhaust noise can be. My suggestion would be 100 decibels. To give members some idea of what 100 decibels is I tell them that a Stagecoach bus accelerating away from traffic lights reaches 123 decibels. I myself have checked it with a meter and 100 decibels is not an unreasonable amount. 
There are two types of citizens when it comes to noise. Firstly there are people I refer to as “CAVE” people—“Citizens Against Virtually Everything”—and secondly there are the enthusiasts like myself who just want a nice crisp-sounding exhaust note on their motor vehicle. “CAVE” people are the sort who live around the Western Springs Stadium in Auckland. They move into an area that has the magnificent sound of speedway racing which has been going on there for decades and then they begin to complain about the noise. 
Getting back to the amendment that United Future wanted I think it is of serious concern especially to the tourism industry when people in cars cause undue noise at night-time in resorts such as Tauranga and keep people awake. We need to look seriously at how we will address the problem in that area but I say let us not go overboard and take that nice crisp exhaust note off all cars. 
I am also pleased to see that the issue of a P licence—for passenger servicing—for drivers of courtesy vehicles has been looked at. We have to face up to the fact—and provide for it in legislation—that certain service industries are doing road safety a favour in driving people home. Sometimes it becomes a fine balance in the law as to what we are going to do about that. 
But overall the bill is good legislation. I believe that it will go a long way to cleaning up a lot of areas. We welcome the changes to the logbook requirements. We think that is a step in the right direction. We acknowledge that more and more of this type of tracking will be done electronically and that is great. Probably there will not be a problem with speeding trucks in the long term because all of them will be tracked by the Global Positioning System and the police will be able to see what speeds they are travelling at in various sectors. In the end that will bring greater road safety which I think everybody here is looking forward to. So United Future is happy to support the legislation.