Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Transport) : I move, That the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) be now read a first time. This is a very busy day for transport. We have two bills in a row being presented in respect of the transport sector. It is an appropriate time that we move this bill, and at a later time in the passage of this bill I intend to move that it be referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for its consideration.

Hon Maurice Williamson: A very hard-working committee.

Hon ANNETTE KING: It is a very hard-working committee, with very, very good members on it, and an excellent chair.

This bill deals with two important issues: introducing a new offence of driving while impaired by illegal drugs, and the implementation of measures to protect personal information held on the motor vehicle register. The bill will also make a number of amendments to facilitate the administration of the register and improve the quality of vehicle owner information.

I will deal first with the road safety initiatives. There was considerable comment from the community about the dangers of drug-driving during the road safety consultation that was undertaken last year by the National Road Safety Committee under the See You There—Safe As banner. The community and the Government have for some time been concerned about the risks of drug-driving. Under this bill we will make it an offence to drive while impaired by illegal drugs.

A roadside impairment test will become compulsory under this bill. When an officer at the roadside has reason to suspect a driver is impaired, the driver will be required to carry out a series of tests. At least 200 police officers will be trained to carry out the roadside impairment testing. There will be occasions where, for safety reasons, an immediate roadside impairment test may not be possible, such as on some busy motorways or narrow roads. It may be that the police will need to take people to a safer and more suitable place in order to carry out the impairment test. The select committee may want to consider how the law might allow for this. The impairment test will be published in the New Zealand Gazette. If a driver cannot satisfactorily complete this test, he or she will be required to provide a blood specimen. If an illegal drug is detected in the blood specimen, an offence would have been committed.

We already have an offence under the Land Transport Act of driving while incapable of proper control due to alcohol or drugs. Together these two offences will send a clear message that people must not drive under the influence of drugs. The new impairment offence will enable an officer to make a well-informed decision about a person’s ability to drive safely, and if the person is not safe, he or she will not be able to continue. It should, however, be noted that any evidence of drug use gathered as evidence of a driving offence will not be able, by law, to be used as evidence of any offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act. This measure is a transport measure.

The bill’s definition of an illegal drug does not include prescription medicines. This means that if a driver is taking prescription medicines as prescribed, he or she has a defence under this Act. As a result of consultation with parliamentary colleagues, I believe that it is important that the instructions given by the health practitioner, along with the drugs themselves, should be considered part of the prescription. If, for example, a driver is told not to drive while taking a medicine because it will make him or her drowsy, but does drive and is found to be impaired, there will not be a defence under this bill. This is also a matter that the select committee might like to consider.

The penalties for this new offence have been aligned with the penalties for drink-driving. The message for drugs is the same as for alcohol: “Stay sober and drug-free, drive safely, and you won’t endanger yourself or anyone else.”

This bill also enables some important research into drug-driving in this country. We will make sure that blood specimens taken as evidence of alcohol-related and drug-related driving offences can be used for research purposes. This will help establish the extent of the drug-driving problem in New Zealand, and make sure we can introduce further measures in future if necessary.

This bill also implements measures to improve protection for personal information held on the motor vehicle register. This register is administered by Land Transport New Zealand and contains the names and addresses of all persons and organisations registered as the owner of a motor vehicle. The law under which the motor vehicle register operates establishes the register as a publicly available publication. Under that law, any person may obtain the names and addresses of the present and previous owners of a motor vehicle simply by quoting its registration plate number. This information is available over the counter at post shops and other registration agencies. There are no safeguards on the use of this personal information. The system is open to abuse. There are instances where angry motorists, in the aftermath of a road-rage incident, have used the register to trace a person then harass that person. The police report that professional car thieves who target high-value vehicles use the register to find out where the car is kept.

Further, vehicle-owner names and addresses began being made available over the Internet in bulk during the 1990s. The intention was to assist local authorities to identify parking offenders quickly and efficiently. But the law did not explicitly limit this information to law enforcement agencies. Specialist marketing organisations were not slow to spot the opportunity. The motor vehicle register is a rich resource for marketing purposes; it contains the names and addresses of 2.3 million people. Information on the make and age of cars owned by people assists marketers in identifying socio-economic groups and targeting their campaigns. The figures speak for themselves. Bulk downloads have grown from 2 million in 1999-2000 to 7 million in 2005-06. The largest single commercial customer downloaded 2.2 million records in 2005-06. By contrast, all local authorities put together obtained just over 1 million records.

In New Zealand, information on the driver’s licence register is well protected, and it certainly is not possible to download drivers’ names and addresses for commercial purposes. Why should motor vehicle owners be treated differently? This bill addresses that concern. The bill removes the current obligation on the Registrar of Motor Vehicles to release information to anyone who asks for it. Instead, requests for information will be dealt with under the Official Information Act in the same way that any request to a Government department or Crown entity is dealt with.

To assist with the consideration with Official Information Act requests, the bill clarifies the purpose of the motor vehicle register. The principal purposes are law enforcement and the collection of revenue. The bill also recognises that on occasions the individual’s privacy interest may be balanced against the wider public good. Therefore, the bill will empower the Minister to authorise information to be released for certain purposes at the discretion of the Minister. Prior to issuing authorisation, the Minister will need to seek the views of the Ombudsman and the Privacy Commissioner. The authorisation may be one-off or it may be a standing authorisation valid for up to 5 years.

The bill also recognises that it is common practice for a person buying a car privately to first check on the motor vehicle register who owns that car in order to find out whether the person selling it is the registered owner. To avoid the need for an official information request in such cases, the bill will enable Land Transport New Zealand to provide instant confirmation whether a specified person is registered as the owner of a specified vehicle. The buyer of the car will provide to Land Transport New Zealand the number plate and the seller’s name, and the computer system will respond with a yes or no. It is expected that the confirmation service will be available over the telephone and over the Internet.

I believe that the bill strikes a good balance between personal privacy and general public interest. This bill also improves the quality of information held on the motor vehicle register. There are a number of measures to improve that information. Where information on the register is inaccurate or out of date, enforcement of offences that rely on linking a vehicle to a person is seriously hampered. This bill seeks to overcome some of those problems. Offences like speeding, red-light running, parking tickets, expired warrants of fitness, and so on, are very difficult to pursue—as are licensing fees—if we do not know who the vehicle owners are. Unfortunately, some vehicles stay in the name of previous owners for months if not years. Currently something like 100,000 vehicles are registered as owners unknown. This bill helps to address that issue.

I believe that the bill gives protection, but it also gives that balance between the right of the public to know and the privacy of vehicle owners.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) : I say from the outset that National will most certainly be supporting not just the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) going to a select committee but also, as long as we can be assured of all of the various bits and pieces, we will support it through the Committee stage and right through the entire process. I am very, very supportive of any measure that will stop people driving motor vehicles while they are impaired. I do not actually care what causes the impairment—whether it is a legal drug the driver has been prescribed but on which he or she should not be driving, an illegal drug, or alcohol—I am really happy with any way we can get our road toll down by taking those impaired people off the road, and I tell members that they can count me in for it.

This issue was canvassed during my time as Minister. One of the concerns back then, which I think technology and time have overcome, was that it would always be difficult to work out what level of drugs were in a person’s system and how much of an impairment it created.

One of the issues I would be very keen to get teased out in the committee is the fact that some illegal drugs are different from alcohol. You see, if alcohol is in someone’s system, then he or she is likely to be impaired during the time the alcohol is there—for a period of about 8 or 12 hours. By the time that person has had a good rest, a sleep, some breakfast, and so on, the impairment will have gone, unless he or she is really blotto. But in the case of some drugs, quite high residual levels will stay in a person’s system for some weeks, or for days at least.

Hon Annette King: Yes, but this only measures the time that it was active.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I understand that. But what happens is that a person may have lost all of the buzz or the little kick he or she gets out of the drug.

Let us say that a person took some drugs, some marijuana, or something at a party on a Friday night and was badly impaired for that night—and if that person was not caught, then he or she should have been. But what if on Saturday that person did nothing, then on Sunday night he or she was driving to a friend’s place and still had quite high levels of the marijuana or substance in the bloodstream but it was not having any effect in terms of impairing that person’s driving ability? This was always the debate in the past—that some of these things have residual levels remaining in the body for a longer time frame but they do not have the same sort of impact that alcohol has. Alcohol knocks a person around when it is there, but once it has worked its way out of the body, it has gone.

Hon Annette King: They can now measure that.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Yes, I understand that. I think the Minister is right in saying that we can now measure some of that stuff. The technology is getting better and better.

There was always the difficulty about trying to assess it. First of all, the initial test on the roadside was always a little bit subjective as to whether someone was actually impaired. Then we get into blood testing and checking, and I am delighted to see that the legislation has imposed an almost complete mirror of what the alcohol stuff is. The penalties are all mirroring the penalties for driving while alcohol-impaired.

Frankly, I do not think the public really care what is creating the impairment; what they do care about is that people should not be out there driving if they are impaired. Those people should not be on the road. Another person’s rights cease when my family is in danger, and I am happy to say that if I know of anybody who is driving while impaired, then I want that person off the roads. I am sure that every member of this House feels the same way. No lame excuse for any of that behaviour will work. Drug-impaired people should not be driving.

This is not a “we are against illicit drugs” campaign. In my view this is nothing to do with a judgment value about whether marijuana or anything else should be allowed. It could turn out to be Prozac, Viagra, or something else—I do not know; I struggle with the name for some drugs these days. Maybe Zantac, or something like that, is a more common drug. Any of those drugs can impair a person’s ability to drive, and the clinician makes that clear by way of the script when the drugs are prescribed.

I understand that if people are not told that a prescribed drug has an impact on their driving, and they are taking, say, Prozac to make them feel a bit better, then it should not be an offence. I am pleased to hear the Minister say that there will be a defence in the case of legal drugs, provided the person was not told they cause impairment. But I know that some scripts and some doctors will say that a person must not drive a vehicle within 24 hours of taking medication. If people ignore that advice, then they should be dealt to in the exact same way as if they knowingly drink alcohol and then drive a vehicle.

This is the sort of legislation that National was always desperately keen to try to do, and there was always some sort of civil liberty argument against it, or we were told that the technology was not quite ready yet but that we would get there one day. I think it was about 10 years ago we were looking at the Land Transport Bill—

Pansy Wong: 9 years ago.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: In 1998 we were looking at doing it and now, in 2008, it will become the law, which is good.

The second part of the bill is, again, something I think we certainly support in principle, but we know there will be some difficulties in regard to technical bits. We think that personal information on the motor vehicle register should stay personal. I think it is just wrong that guys can spot a hot chick driving past and say “I think I might find out where she lives and whip round to catch her to see if I can get a date with her.” That is simply wrong, and I understand that has gone on in the past. Or, in the case of road rage where, for example, a person is cut off, then that person can find out where the offender lives, go round to the offender’s place, and throw rocks at his or her house, and so on.

But there are some legitimate reasons for using the motor vehicle register, and I think the legislation will allow those ones that I am interested in. If it does not, then I hope the select committee will work in a cooperative way—as it does—to try to ensure that the register is not readily available to members of the general public. Certainly, it should not be possible to access information just by making a phone call. I find it really galling to think that big marketing companies can do mass downloads of two-point-something million names and addresses, and suddenly we find our letterboxes full of spam, as if we do not have enough already. We think electronic spam is bad enough, but my letterbox bursts at the seams most days from catalogues, brochures, and stuff I simply do not want. Even the “no circulars” message does not stop it. So we should stop all that.

I know, for example, that if motorcar manufacturers find a fault in a particular model—

Hon Annette King: We can do that.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Yes, I know that. That is what I am saying. One of the things we would most certainly want is for the Ford motor company to be able to say that, for example, there is a particular problem with the latest Mondeo version and, because it involves a faulty brake cable or something else dangerously wrong, it would like to do a recall and it needs to know who the current owners of that particular model are. I know that 4 years after the release of the Chrysler Voyager I own, that model was recalled because a particular fault had been identified. Those cars could easily have been through two or three owners in that time. So that is a legitimate reason for access to the register. Some people in the motor trade industry have expressed to me the need for balance in terms of allowing some legitimate access to this information but not allowing open access to it, as there is right now.

Having said that, I say that the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) contains two very good measures. National has always been supportive of these measures, and I think the time has come where technology will allow for drug-driving testing and for a punitive measure to take effect. We will watch with great interest to see what the various submissions will be on the question of access to personal information on the motor vehicle register. We have to make sure we get the balance right so that access to information is allowed where it can be justified for legitimate purposes, but it should not be allowed willy-nilly—for example, for car thieves trying to get high-value motor vehicles.

Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) : It is good to be able to take part in this debate, knowing there is widespread support for the measures in this Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). I know there will be some debate around what is being labelled the drug-driving situation, but I think that for a long time—as the Minister and the Hon Maurice Williamson both pointed out—there have been concerns about drug-driving and the threat that implies for ordinary New Zealanders driving themselves or their families.

For a long, long time there has been a search for suitable measures. We looked at examples overseas, and we know that the Australians have tried some other measures that are not allowed for or contemplated in this bill because they were found not to be satisfactory. I suppose, to a degree, it is going back to a fairly old-fashioned method that many older New Zealanders might be aware of: the impairment test.

R Doug Woolerton: Walk the line.

Hon MARK GOSCHE: There will be the walk-the-line test and, as the Minister said, it will not be done in the middle of the motorway. It will have to be done in an appropriate place, although the select committee will have to look at that because there are some questions about the appropriateness of these tests. We also know that the police will be giving a significant number of their officers special training to do this, and that is important too.

There will be questions around the level of penalty. As I understand it, penalties are aligned with the penalties for drink-driving, and so they should be. There will also be questions about whether there should be double jeopardy. My understanding also is that the penalties contemplated here are very severe. They are actually more severe than the illegal drugs penalties that other legislation deals with. I think that will answer, quite sufficiently, any calls for double jeopardy to be imposed. It will also send a clear signal to drivers who contemplate the idea of drinking or drug-taking and then driving, because the penalties that exist in the law already are, as we know, pretty severe.

We want to give our law enforcement agency, the police, the ability to take drivers off the road and prosecute them if they are impaired. This law will give those officers the ability to say to such drivers that as they have failed the test they will have to have a blood test so they can guarantee their rights under the law, basically to prove they have drugs in their system.

Hon Maurice Williamson: What about someone who has been both drinking and taking drugs?

Hon MARK GOSCHE: Obviously, that will be something for the officers to detect. They have the existing ability under the law to do the evidential breath-tests, and the like, so I guess that will come down to the discretion of the officers who are doing it. Each way, they will get the same sort of penalty. That is the important thing—to get those drivers off the road and hit them with a penalty that is either for drink-driving or for drug-driving.

The other aspects of the bill are also very important. They deal with the privacy issues, about which many concerns have been raised publicly. I watched the Fair Go programme fairly recently—within the last week or two—that highlighted the ease with which a person could claim to be the owner of a vehicle and change the registration of that vehicle into his or her own name. Obviously, that can be done because of the ease of access to the information.

As Maurice Williamson and the Minister have also pointed out, I do not think anybody contemplated the huge amount of downloads that would enable people to send out junk mail. I must drive the wrong sort of vehicle because I do not get the same sort of mail that Maurice Williamson gets. I am probably thought of as being too poor, so those who send it do not bother sending me all the things he has been inundated with. But I know it is of huge annoyance to people up and down the country to have junk mail of that sort visited upon them. So if this bill in any way helps that situation, then I think we will be doing a lot of New Zealanders a big favour.

Obviously, there are more serious problems in terms of the criminal element who have been able to go to the post shop and get the information for a couple of dollars, figure out where a particular vehicle is kept, and then steal it. There have also clearly been difficulties where other people in road-rage situations have been able to access information. I think the register has also been used in domestic violence situations. People have tracked down partners very simply by having access to the register. Of course, that is something we would all want to cut out in terms of the abuse of the system.

I am also interested to look at some of the smaller aspects of the legislation. No doubt we will hear all about them at the select committee. These deal with questions about what is a moped and what is not a moped, and highly important issues like that. Also, there is the use of supplementary plates for people who have dogboxes on the backs of their vehicles, or bike racks. I am hopeful that we will spend all of 30 seconds dealing with those issues, as long as the bill has been drafted correctly.

Hon Annette King: A moped for Maurice.

Hon MARK GOSCHE: And a dogbox for David Bennett, I would imagine.

The more important aspects are in terms of making sure that our police are able to enforce the law for those who take illegal drugs and then drive, putting others at risk. A way that obviously gives balance to the situation, as the Minister said, is to ensure that people are not picked up erroneously and accused. So the specially trained police, with the impairment test and the following blood test, I think should satisfy those who want to make it clear in the law that we do not nab people just for the wrong reasons.

As I said, and as the Minister has pointed out, in terms of access to the register there are legitimate reasons why people should have access to registration details. It is most important that people who want to buy a vehicle are able to know that the person who is selling a vehicle over the Internet or privately through the newspaper is actually the registered owner and is entitled to sell that vehicle. So it is a simple act of ringing up, giving the details, and getting a yes or no answer over the phone, and the 0800 number that Land Transport New Zealand runs is a very efficient service. That is important. All the other things that one would want to be able to check without the need to identify the name of the owner are still very accessible, such as whether any money is owing on the vehicle and those types of things. So this bill does not interfere in any way with the current situation in that respect.

As the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, I know this bill will be coming our way very shortly. We look forward to the public having their input on those two major issues: drugs and driving, and access to the motor vehicle registry. No doubt we will get some submissions on the other less important issues, but they are in there for a reason. As the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee is a very efficient select committee, we hope we can get this legislation back as quickly as possible so that we do arm the police of New Zealand with the tools they need to enforce the road safety legislation.

As the Minister said in her speech, we want to make sure that we can get the numbers of road deaths and hospitalisations down. We have a very good target of 300 road deaths and 4,500 hospitalisations per year by 2010. This bill will go some way to help in our strategy to achieve those targets. I commend the bill to the House, and I look forward to the select committee process that will follow.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) : The National Party has no problem at all in supporting this Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). It brings about two pieces of law reform that, as Maurice said, we had been thinking about for some time.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member will use the member’s full name.

DAVID BENNETT: As Maurice Williamson said, he considered this matter during his time as a Minister. I guess we could even take a leaf out of New Zealand First’s book and say it is something we have long advocated, and finally it has been presented to the House.

The bill is one that I do not believe the public will have any problem with, either. I think there will be public support for it. In general, people do perceive there is an issue here. They perceive there is an issue relating to the drinking of alcohol and the taking of drugs, and then driving, and that there is a need for legislation to be consistent between them. As the Minister alluded to, it is probably a matter of having the technological ability to develop a testing system and regime that accommodates a drug component. That is still something that will be quite difficult to achieve because there is no test to immediately identify whether somebody is on drugs. The test that is being employed is, in some cases, a very rudimentary test that we used to use for alcohol-related impairment many years ago. Basically it is, as somebody mentioned earlier, “walking the line”. It is getting people to walk along a line in order to see whether there are any obvious impairments in their physical ability. It is asking them to touch their nose and turn round in order to see whether they have the coordination and ability to operate on certain angles; it is to see whether they have that balance of their human nature, which could, I guess, be impaired by drugs. The test is not as sophisticated as we would probably like it to be, and I think we will see this legislation change over time as more sophisticated tests are developed that will actually determine what level of drug taking is sufficient to impair a driver, and what the timing is of that drug-induced impairment.

An issue within the legislation, and with the way we draw up legislation in respect of drug laws, is how we actually test, as those substances have the ability to stay in the body for some period of time after the actual impairment. It is an issue we see on the sports field, for example. Many sportspeople get caught out in drug tests as having, for example, marijuana in their system, even though they may have taken it some time before being tested. It may be just the residual effects of the drug that have stayed in their system, yet they get pinged for it even though their ability to perform on the field, for example, is not affected. So it is a developing area. We have made a start, I guess, in this legislation by identifying that it is something we want to codify and have in law, now that the ability is there to at least make a start in preparing some kind of testing regime.

The heart of the testing regime will necessarily be the blood test. With the inability to test with some degree of efficiency at the roadside, the blood test will become the major testing vehicle. I imagine that most people who are brought to the police’s eye under this legislation will deny having taken drugs and will therefore seek a blood test. That may well incur time and commitment on the part of the police in the initial years as this legislation goes forward, until we eventually get a better testing regime.

The National Party is very supportive of this legislation. The public have waited for a long time to see this happen, and there is no doubt their mood is to support this testing regime. The devil will be in the detail, as always, but the conceptual basis of testing somebody for drug-related impairment will, I think, find support through most parties in this House. I believe that even those who may not support it will find over time, as technology develops, that they change their minds, because the tests will be able to determine the level of impairment present at the time of a person’s being picked up by the police.

The other issue that this legislation talks about is the registration of motor vehicles. The bill sets up a stricter regime on the information flow to people with regard to the register of motor vehicles. We have heard examples of people accessing information to a level of detail that one would not necessarily expect could be accessed easily. With the amount of information that is out there in society, people want to see that they have certain protection of their privacy. We have seen over the last decade or so the introduction of privacy laws, and, through a lot of different pieces of legislation now, the privacy of the individual is seen as paramount. If we look at the way we deal with our Government departments, for example, in heath care, in the beneficiary status of somebody, or in general within many Government departments, we see that the privacy of an individual is something we cherish and want to retain. I guess this legislation is the next step towards the motor vehicle register becoming one of the more practical registers of public information in terms of seeing that that privacy element is retained. So in that regard this step is really just part of the progression towards the privacy of personal and individual information that has been ongoing for a number of years.

As long as we ensure there are balances, this legislation should be sufficient not only to retain privacy but also to allow people to carry on business, as one would expect in this industry. We need to work through the detail to make sure there is still credible access to information for industries and people who have a reasonable and proven need for it. I believe that people will come to the select committee and make submissions on the bill. They will make their case and say that there is a situation where information on the register needs to be found out. Primarily those submissions will be business-related or individual-related with regard to motor vehicles. It is something we can accept, and we can find a balance between the privacy of the individual and the need for some consistency in business so that people can carry on their business with that information flow. Overall, the two issues that this legislation deals with are ones we support.

• Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

METIRIA TUREI (Green) : Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) does two major things. Firstly, a large part of the bill involves quite uncontroversial changes to the motor vehicle registration regime that increase the privacy protections for those who are on the register, and the Green Party fully supports those changes. Secondly, the bill goes on to provide a regime for dealing with drug-impaired driving and the safety issues around that.

The Green Party has agreed to support this legislation through its first reading. We want to support legislation that makes our roads safer. We want to encourage the creation of deterrents and the use of enforcement against drivers who are driving while they are impaired. We do not want legislation that appears to be addressing the problems but is simply complicating the issue with what would be well-intentioned but otherwise ineffective provisions. The Greens are always after the best possible law.

We are very concerned that impaired drivers are on our roads, causing harm to property, and, most important, harm to our community and to our people. The primary culprit for this harm is, of course, the use of alcohol while driving. In 2005 there were 23,000 convictions for driving with excess alcohol. Alcohol remains the No. 1 problem drug for road safety and we believe that further measures could be taken to reduce that harm. A recent Institute of Environmental Science and Research Ltd study shows that of 408 drivers killed, 208 had alcohol in their system—that is, more than half of those drivers had alcohol in their system.

I want to take the opportunity to thank the Minister in charge of the bill, Annette King, and her staff, who have worked collaboratively with the Green Party to design a much better piece of legislation than the one originally proposed. Thanks to Green Party involvement, we have retained the focus of this legislation on impaired drivers and have not allowed this law to become a back-door way of prosecuting drug offences. The presence of illegal drugs detected in drivers’ blood samples will not be allowed to be used as evidence of prosecution under the Misuse of Drugs Act. If we are to go to the point of allowing blood tests as a legitimate form of search and seizure for the presence of drugs, then we need to have a very serious community discussion about the human rights issues implied in that and whether it is the right thing for our community to do. That discussion may well happen in time; the Misuse of Drugs Act is going to be reviewed. But we must not let those kinds of practices be enabled through legislation by assuming it into a bill that does not have that as its purpose. The purpose here is not to find convictions under the Misuse of Drugs Act; the purpose here is to get impaired drivers off our roads because they pose a danger to our community.

In addition to that issue, due to Green insistence—and we have been insisting for some weeks now—legal prescription drugs that are used in such a way as to cause impairment will also be captured by the new offence provisions in this legislation. This is a consistent and cohesive approach to removing dangerous drivers from our roads, irrespective of the cause of their impairment. There is a case, I agree, for dealing with drivers impaired by a variety of causes, and the same Institute of Environmental Science and Research study showed that of the 408 drivers I quoted before, about 11 percent had only cannabis in their system and about 9 percent had other drugs like legal tranquilisers, methadone, morphine, and amphetamines, which are legal drugs. So if there is to be an assumption that illegal drugs cause impairment, the research clearly shows that legal drugs are equally implicated as a cause of impairment that can lead to driver death. The bill as currently drafted needs to be made clearer, and I thank the Minister for her assurances in the House today that the wording around this particular point will be made clearer in the committee process.

Overseas jurisdictions seeking to implement similar measures to combat the problem of driving while impaired by things other than alcohol have faced considerable difficulty in providing effective legislation. No reliable objective test exists for roadside testing of impairment. Roadside testing for the presence of drugs—illegal and legal drugs—faces similar difficulties. A European Union research project in 2006 looked at nine different devices for on-site detection of legal and illegal drugs and found that there was no device considered reliable enough for roadside screening. So the only alternative is the subjective impairment test, with all the inherent problems that surround that test.

The physical impairment test in the bill will be administered by the police and we are very concerned about its subjective nature, particularly as it leads immediately on to a blood test. One of our concerns—and we have raised this before—is the racist filters in the police force that lead to unjustified targeting of Māori, and particularly Māori men, when it comes to drug offences. Research in 2002 from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, the work of Professor David Fergusson, who has done very good work in this area, clearly shows that one of the primary risks for being targeted by the police for drug offences is being a Māori man. The research concluded that the administration of laws relating to cannabis was inequitable and biased against Māori and males, and that the current cannabis laws are discriminatory. The difficulty is that the choice to target one particular person for a search or for being stopped in a car is strictly a matter of individual police decisions. These racist filters have been recognised both in the policing area and in health. This bill will give police another tool for stopping drivers and being able to utilise these racist filters but with only limited instruction and education that will break down those racist filters so that the legislation is used fairly as intended and not as a discriminatory tool against Māori.

The second step in the legislation is the blood test, and we are very concerned about this, of course, because a blood test is a highly invasive form of search and seizure. A blood test is used for detecting alcohol-impaired driving; we know about that and are very used to that process, and that is because we have in the law a lawful blood-alcohol limit under which a person is legally entitled to drive. If a person goes over the limit that person is in breach of the law. That limit is established through proven scientific methods that show definitively that, at that specified level of blood alcohol, a person is impaired and should not be driving. But for the evidence-based legal blood-alcohol limit, a blood test would otherwise be an unreasonable search and seizure.

The same principle should apply when we are talking about other drugs, particularly cannabis. The law should establish, using quality science, a level of drug use for specified drugs that definitively shows that a person is impaired by that drug at that time, and that limit should be set out in law. Our laws should be evidence-based and scientifically sound. The subjective view of a police officer is not a robust test; nor is the simple presence of a drug with no scientifically-based assessment of the level of impairment that that drug can cause. Maurice Williamson just talked about how long it takes for some drugs to wear off; the current research shows that it takes about 1 to 2 hours in the case of cannabis use.

This bill is a very blunt tool for dealing with the issue of impaired driving, and we expect the law will evolve into something much more mature as more research and technology become available. Professor Fergusson—I referred to him before—has produced further research that suggests that young people are simply not aware that driving under the influence of cannabis or other drugs can cause impairment. In large part, that is because of the legal status of the drug; it creates considerable barriers to getting across to young people truthful and trusted information about the harms cannabis can cause. Again, I hope that sometime in the near future we may take a much more mature approach to this issue. Excellent progress has been made towards developing legal limits for driving under the influence of cannabis. In Germany there has been some great research that shows that about 10 nanograms per millilitre is associated with a distinct and identifiable level of risk. That research needs to be brought in and be part of the discussion that we have at select committee. Science and technology in this respect will eventually provide us with much better guidance that will enable us to have good quality law that is based on science, that is based on evidence, and that does not abuse the fundamental rights of our citizens. Until then we still have some way to go. Thank you.

TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Māori Party) : Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. This Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) is more than a matter of a technical amendment to the Land Transport Act 1998. There is a bigger picture here, which we cannot ignore. It is the situation that motor vehicle traffic crashes are a major cause of mortality and morbidity for Māori, and particularly young Māori; a situation that 23 percent of all drivers involved in fatal crashes are Māori; and a situation that 28 percent of all casualties involved in fatal crashes are Māori. There is literally a fatal attraction between motor vehicles and Māori, particularly our young.

Just over the last few years, from 2004 to 2006, the figures tell us that driver alcohol and drugs was a factor in some 29 percent of fatal crashes, and that includes both legal and illegal drugs. It was a factor in 19 percent of serious injury crashes and 12 percent of minor injury crashes. I hate data like this, but the casualties from the crashes give us every reason to explore all avenues possible to prevent the ever-rising growth of such sobering statistics.

This bill tries to address this by increasing the power of the police to deal with drug-impaired drivers, and I take into account what my friend from the Greens has been saying about the powers that the police will have. The bill also seeks to address issues that have arisen around the use of personal information held on the register of motor vehicles. Both of these are serious, yet very different, matters and might have been addressed through introducing two separate bills.

The whole area around motorcar injury and the impact of drug impairment is, however, clouded by uncertainties and dubious information. There has been very little research identifying the key factors associated with crashes involving Māori. This has inevitably restricted our capacity to develop effective strategies aimed at reducing Māori mortality and morbidity related to motor vehicle crashes.

In an article published in the New Zealand Medical Journal in 2004, it was suggested that one of the reasons for such a lack of information has been the difficulty in obtaining data by ethnicity. Police traffic crash records, which are required for all crashes involving injury, have not included ethnicity.

The New Zealand Medical Journal article was able to report that alongside being young and male, a high proportion—70 percent—of Māori who were hospitalised or who died were from areas with very high levels of deprivation. The age factor is of particular concern. Two-thirds of Māori casualties were between 15 and 34 years, with the group between 15 and 24 years being particularly overrepresented. This one group makes up 45 percent of the non-fatal casualties and 39 percent of the fatalities. That figure is absolutely criminal. Our rangatahi, the hope of our future, the leaders, the designers, the shapers, the thinkers, are those who lose their lives in their prime.

Of course, when we think of Māori who were hospitalised or who died as a result of motor crashes I am reminded that for every 100 drunk or drugged drivers killed in road crashes, 56 of their passengers as well as 39 sober road users die with them. The loss of benefits that can flow from having competent, healthy, and skilled whānau members being able to grow and develop as fully functioning families can never be accounted for.

As a worried mother and grandmother, my cautionary advice to our young ones who have been venturing out late at night has been everything to do with their driving ability. I have always told my children to call me, regardless of the time, if there was not a safe driver available or if they had consumed alcohol.

I look at this bill today as being one way to address what we know to be a contributing factor in the appalling car crash data, though we agree that alcohol is the major cause of all accidents. Of course it is not a perfect science, and we know that drugs other than alcohol can be difficult to identify and recognise as having a role in any accident. Research also suggests that the contribution of drugs other than alcohol to accidents may be under-represented in the police-reported crash system. With or without the data, with or without the ethnicity records, there is little doubt that any drug that has an effect on the central nervous system has the potential to impair driving.

So we in the Māori Party support this legislation that ensures our roads will be safer. We support also the intention to make the penalties identical to the penalties for drink-driving and the intention that the police can apply the same powers to stop people from driving under the impairment of drugs, provided there is proof.

However, there are some concerns, which we will be seeking further advice on. We are concerned about the possibilities of the test being used as evidence in drug charges. The bill brings into the testing regime a compulsory impairment test that police officers can require people to undergo if they have good cause to suspect drug taking. But there is a real concern with a provision in the bill allowing blood specimens already taken to be re-analysed for research purposes. The aim of the exercise, supposedly, is to enable a better picture of drug-driving in New Zealand to be established, but we believe there is sufficient concern around privacy, confidentiality, and basic human rights to warrant that a far more robust rationale be provided to justify such an intrusive approach.

The other key intervention introduced in this bill is the establishment of a regime to protect personal information held on the register of motor vehicles, although we are still permitting that same information to be used for purposes consistent with the purposes of registration. Currently the names and addresses of the current and any previous registered owners are able to be given to any person who quotes a vehicle registration number. Violent offenders can track down their partners, direct marketing agents can access addresses for their own commercial gain, and debt collectors can use the data for credit profiles. There have also been concerns about the use of vehicle names and addresses by persons who wish to trace owners to harass them or to steal their vehicles.

Privacy and confidentiality concerns have, therefore, led to the amendment in this bill to protect personal information from release, and that is all for the good, of course. But the question will arise as to whether the overly rigorous requirements about having ownership details recorded are justified. The bill creates an infringement offence of failing to notify a change of ownership, and, if enacted, would mean that the police would be able to order someone’s car off the road or impound the vehicle if ownership details are not on the register.

I return to the research cited in the New Zealand Medical Journal, which identified that a disproportionately high number of Māori casualties were representative from areas with high levels of deprivation, deciles 7 to 10. This finding is consistent with international research that suggests there is a strong association between the social and economic determinants of health in relation to injury in motor vehicle traffic crashes. With this being the case, we raise the question as to whether having sufficient income to go forward towards the registration papers or the change of ownership papers has any relevance to the high mortality and morbidity rates of Māori attached to motorcar crashes. We will support this bill at this stage through its first reading, but we do have many questions that we hope will be fully addressed at the select committee. Kia ora.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) : I want to speak briefly to the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). This is a difficult but necessary bill. It is difficult because the issues it deals with, particularly in regard to drug-impaired drivers, are issues that most New Zealanders would agree need to be addressed, and most New Zealanders would have some concern about the current situation in regard to that. But at the same time, there is this dilemma about how far one intervenes, how effective the testing regime might be, and whether there are undue implications for the human rights of individuals.

I note that according to the explanatory note, this bill will contribute to reducing some 300 deaths and 4,500 hospitalisations each year up to the year 2010 as part of the Government’s overall Road Safety to 2010 strategy and its policies in regard to harm minimisation in respect of the use of drugs. That is good and worthy, but the question we need to focus our attention on, and which the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee will want to give particular consideration to, will be precisely the regime that is being introduced in regard to the way in which drug-impaired driver tests will take place, the possible risk of information that is gathered through those tests being what some people might regard as misused, and also how the samples can be obtained and analysed in a way that will provide for much more effective results.

We have been through many exercises over the years in regard to the testing of alcohol-impaired drivers. We have moved a long way from the days of one simply being asked to walk on a straight line. We then moved to blowing in the bag. We now have sophisticated breath-testers and more sophisticated blood-testing arrangements that flow from those. Each one of those steps has been accompanied by a level of debate and testing before the courts about both the efficacy of the measures being employed and the extent to which the human rights of the individuals concerned are being infringed upon. I suspect we are about to go through something similar in regard to the drug-testing regime that is introduced in this bill.

I appreciate that what is set out here attempts to mirror to the greatest extent possible the provisions in the legislation relating to the testing of perceived alcohol-impaired drivers, and I hope that the reality works out that these two sets of measures are consistent. But there will be difficulties here at one level, it seems to me, simply because prescription medicines are included—and I think they should be. One cannot talk about prescription alcohol—one is either over the limit or not over the limit in respect of alcohol use. There will be a debate, I am sure, about people on medication who suddenly find they may be caught by this regime. That is something that I think the select committee will want to give some considerable attention to.

I note also from previous discussions over the years where matters of drug impairment have been on the agenda that some of the toxicology and pharmacology issues involved in regard to drugs are going to have a different lifespan than alcohol—for instance, the fact that there can be traces in the bloodstream of certain drugs for long periods of time and the implications that may have for a testing regime. So they are issues that the select committee will need to pay some considerable attention to—to get expert medical and professional advice on, then to ensure the legislation that emerges as a result deals with those concerns.

I note that from towards the end of the explanatory note there has been considerable consultation so far with a wide range of agencies that might be presumed to have some expertise in this area, and one hopes therefore that the bill largely reflects their considered advice, and that some of the concerns I have been expressing have either been considered already or have been mitigated in the drafting of the legislation. But there will be many groups in the community with an interest in this who will want to have their say both as to whether they regard the regime being applied here as too rigorous or insufficiently rigorous, whether they think the safeguards are adequate or inadequate, and whether they even think that the issues being addressed here are those that are worthy of consideration.

The second part of the bill, as the previous speaker mentioned, relates to the register of motor vehicles. I do not want to say too much about this other than to observe that this has also been an area of some considerable attention over the years. The steps that were taken by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs in the late 1980s and early 1990s to provide for people to be able to check previous ownership arrangements for vehicles was a dramatic step forward at that time. It was not uncommon for people to suddenly find, upon the purchase of a second-hand vehicle, for instance, that they had also incurred a second-hand debt. It seems to me, from a quick read of the provisions in this section of this particular bill, that it seeks to update and modernise many of those provisions, with a view to also making it a little easier to check whether vehicles have been either misappropriated or are being used in a way that, as the law says here, could threaten the security of New Zealand.

These are going to be difficult issues in themselves to resolve, but I think we are in an environment now where the public is more accepting of these sorts of issues being considered and some restraints being applied that they may not have previously considered were appropriate because of the greater public interest. I note that there are a variety of provisions relating to number plates. I think that on the face of it, although they look tedious, they are necessary in terms of public protection against both fraud and misuse. On the whole it seems to me that this bill, which is essentially a technical piece of legislation, despite some of its potential pitfalls is a positive step forward. We are certainly prepared to support it going to a select committee. We hope that the committee does take the opportunity to hear the specialist evidence and to make recommendations for change where it considers this might be necessary so that we end up with legislation that is not just worthy in its intent but viable in its practice.

LESLEY SOPER (Labour) : I am happy to take a short call on the first reading of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4), which does have wide support for its introduction, and I am looking forward to considering it at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.

When one considers that transport officials estimate that illegal drugs were probably responsible for 38 serious injuries, 77 minor injuries, and 12 road deaths in 2006, one can see why there has been considerable public concern over the dangers of drugged drivers and why this bill was necessary. The bill will send a very clear message to people that it is unacceptable to drive while drugged. Of course, we do already have an offence under the Land Transport Act for driving while incapable of proper control due to alcohol or drugs, but prosecuting a person under the influence of drugs has been difficult under that existing legislation. “Incapable” has been a high threshold to meet, as has establishing that the cause was illegal drugs.

The new offence proposed in the bill is committed when a driver is impaired and there is evidence of illegal drugs in the driver’s blood. “Impairment” is a lower threshold to meet than “incapable of proper control” and will be determined by a more robust published test under the provisions of the bill. Under those proposed new provisions police will put a suspected drugged driver through a roadside test of balance—the one-leg stand test, coordination, the walk-and-turn test, and eye-pupil response. A driver who fails those tests will be given a blood test, and a positive result will lead to prosecution. It is expected there will be around 400 prosecutions a year. The emphasis, of course, is on illegal drugs. If a person is impaired but found to be on a prescription medicine, then, of course, that person should be off the road, and if that prescription medicine was properly taken, then he or she has a defence to prosecution.

There will no doubt be some debate in the select committee around the question of being prosecuted under both driving and drugs laws, which New Zealand First has indicated they want to see, but the bill is currently written so that blood samples taken by police investigating driving offences cannot be used as evidence in drugs cases—that is, no double jeopardy. As to penalties for the new offences, they have been aligned with the penalties for drink-driving, which I think sends a very clear message again about the unacceptability of drug-driving. For a first or second offence that means imprisonment up to 3 months or a fine up to $4,500, plus disqualification for at least 6 months. For a third or subsequent offence it means imprisonment up to 2 years or a fine up to $6,000, and disqualification for more than 1 year.

The other good, balanced aims of the bill are around the protection of personal information held on the motor vehicle register, and some changes in respect of registration and licensing of motor vehicles. There is no doubt that in the past the motor vehicle registration system has been open to abuse. The register has been a publicly available publication. Anyone can obtain the name and address, and some other details, of someone through the system by quoting a licence plate number and paying $2.25c, and there are no safeguards on use of that personal information. It has been used by angry motorists in road rage aftermaths, it has been used to harass women, it has been used by professional car thieves to target vehicles, and it has been used in bulk by direct mail companies to fill up our mailboxes with intrusive material we do not want or need about products we would rather not consume. The bill will remove Land Transport New Zealand’s obligation to supply names and addresses on request. Applications for release of personal information will be treated like any other Official Information Act request, taking into account the principles of the Privacy Act.

The bill will enact a provision stating the purposes of the register: law enforcement and security, collection of revenue, and transport law and policy. Those purposes will guide consideration of requests. The existing right to obtain vehicle details remains, as does the right to seek confirmation that a specified person is the registered owner of a specified vehicle. But the proposed bill restricts the right to fishing expeditions to obtain any other personal information about car owners, including their phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses. Legitimate inquiries, however, such as insurance company advisers and sales yard staff checking trade and vehicle ownerships, and manufacturers recalling vehicles are catered for by the bill’s provisions and will still be allowed full access.

Another very good feature of the bill is that it will improve the quality of owner information held on the motor vehicle register by tightening up current requirements to register changes of ownership and by dealing with the problems of vehicles with no known owner. This is no small issue. About 100,000 vehicle records are currently tagged as “owner unknown” or “gone no address”. It is likely that the real numbers are much higher. They are not usually revealed until there is an inquiry. Some vehicles stay in the name of a previous owner for literally years. Strengthening the requirement to notify a sale or purchase, enforcing more effectively the existing requirement to advise a change of address, and giving police powers to order unknown owner vehicles off the roads are sensible and necessary provisions.

This bill is a good, balanced bill. I am looking forward to sitting on the select committee that considers it. Thank you.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : I want to start from the outset by saying that New Zealand First will be supporting the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). In all probability we will be supporting the bill through all its stages. We recognise that it will be tidied up at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, with amendments and adjustments made. When the bill comes back to the Committee of the whole House there may be further amendments. We believe it is very important that we come to grips with drivers who are driving under the influence of drugs, so we have little choice but to support this bill—whatever shape or form it comes out in. It is important that we in Parliament address the issue.

We recognise that by far the most common offence of driving under the influence is people driving under the influence of alcohol. We would like to see the penalties toughened up for that offence. We are pleased that drugs have come in to the legislation and that at least there is the same punishment for driving drug-impaired as there is for drunk driving.

We are concerned about what the Greens have achieved, and indeed what the Government member who has just spoken, Lesley Soper, described as double jeopardy. We believe that if a police officer stops a car and finds the driver to be under the influence of drugs—if the officer suspects that the driver has been up to no good in terms of drugs and suspects that there could be a prosecution against the driver under the Misuse of Drugs Act—then we believe that that police officer should go ahead and do his or her job. But the Greens want—and Labour has agreed—to stop at just the driving offence. We say that is not good enough. We certainly say it is not double jeopardy. We say it is protecting the drug user and drug supplier, to some degree. Worse still, it is politics and politicians getting involved in operational police work. It is telling the police where to draw the line. [Interruption] Yes, it is telling the police where to draw the line.

Let me give the member a hypothetical example. Two people leave an establishment; both have smoked cannabis or taken drugs. They have both committed the identical offence. One is walking home in a very unsteady movement and a police officer suspects something is going on and wants to pull him up, so he does. He can search the guy because he suspects he has committed an offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act. But the guy who gets in his car and drives home, according to the Greens, can be picked up only for impaired driving. I am absolutely disappointed that the Minister of Police has concurred with that. I am absolutely disappointed that the Minister of Police has been bought off with that argument.

We have argued strongly with that Minister—my colleague Ron Mark has, in particular—that we should segregate policing from transport duties. I have heard the Minister say it. She has said it to my face and she has said it on TV.

Metiria Turei: Just a blood test.

PETER BROWN: Would that member mind giving her jaws a rest.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I just say to the member on my left that backbench interjections in close proximity to each other lead to interference with the microphone. It is a convention that it does not happen. I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 59/3 by Sir Basil Arthur in 1984.

PETER BROWN: I was talking about the hypothetical guy who got in his car and is driving home. The police officer stops him, tests him for being impaired, and finds him to be impaired and driving under the influence of drugs, but that officer cannot take it any further. The Minister of Police told me to my face—and I have seen her on nationwide television saying the same thing—that one of the principal reasons, if not the principal reason, for keeping traffic duties under the control of police per se is that when officers stop a driver for whatever offence they think might have occurred, they look in the car and check around the car and around the person to see whether any other offence is being committed.

We are saying quite clearly that if the police pick up a person who is drug-impaired and driving a car and they suspect that there is a bigger offence being committed under the Misuse of Drugs Act, then they should be able to do their job.

Metiria Turei: That’s right.

PETER BROWN: The member says they can, but I listened to her carefully a while ago and that was not the thrust of her speech. Indeed, I have a letter from the Minister of Transport that actually says, in part: “I understand you do not support the provision that says the evidence of drugs found in blood samples cannot be used as evidence in an offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975.”

Metiria Turei: Under the Misuse of Drugs Act they can.

PETER BROWN: I am saying to the honourable member that she has it wrong. If we are going to allow people to get involved in drugs and drive their cars and pick them up only for the fault of driving, then I say that we have stopped well short of the eight ball.

In terms of prescription drugs, I think we share the concerns that the Greens have. If it is written on the container that holds the capsules or tablets that one should not drive after taking them—if people are told outright that they should not drive after taking the specified number of tablets or whatever—then we have little sympathy for those who take their medication and drive. If they overdose on the tablets, or take so many that their driving ability has clearly been impaired, we have little sympathy for them. But if people have taken a prescribed medicine that is likely to have negligible effect on their driving, and they stick to the amount they are supposed to take, then if the wording on the canister says something along the lines of “this could in circumstances …”, I think they have a defence. But if people are impaired as a result of taking a prescribed drug, and they knew it would affect their driving before they took it, then we have little sympathy for them and they should be held to account.

In terms of the car register, we think it is about time those issues were addressed. I do not have time to go into detail on it, but I will say that I thought the honourable member Lesley Soper covered it very well. She outlined the concerns. I could not do a better job of outlining the concerns than she has done. She did it very well. The bit we did object to was the reference to double jeopardy.

New Zealand First will most certainly support this bill going to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We believe it will be amended there in order to cover the differences of opinion that are emerging between the Greens and New Zealand First. I am certain that our way will prevail and that the member will see common sense in the end.

Metiria Turei: You’ll come round, I know. You are nearly there, Peter.

PETER BROWN: Does the member think so?

We look forward to this bill being addressed at the select committee. I am a member of the committee and I look forward to hearing submissions on it. I know that its time has come. Most members of the public who speak to me about this matter ask me when we are going to do something about it. They have no problems with us doing something; they ask when we are going to do something about it. We look forward with pleasure to working on this bill at the select committee and putting it through the system. Thank you.

DIANNE YATES (Labour) : I rise to speak on the first reading of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). It is amazing to note that if any illness or war killed around 400 young New Zealanders in a year we would be outraged, yet our road statistics are absolutely appalling. I think some people are very cavalier and almost seem to regard road accidents as being like catching a possum in headlights—that it is natural with cars and something we have to put up with. This bill says that it is something we should not have to put up with.

Around 400 people are killed and thousands are injured on our roads every year. One of the worst places to be on a Saturday night is the accident and emergency department of any hospital in New Zealand, to see the people who come in as a result of drink-driving and drug-driving. Often they are young people with terrible, terrible injuries, and often they lose their lives. It is absolutely horrendous. I have been many a time on select committees looking at transport law, and the people who influence me most are the medical people who work in accident and emergency departments in our hospitals. They are often in despair at the fact that we are not strict enough with our road rules and our road legislation. I will support any legislation that comes before this House that will save lives, and I hope many more people will support it and make submissions on it. I look forward to this bill coming into law. We look forward to receiving submissions and I hope that many of the people who work in this area—who work at saving lives—will make submissions.

The bill sends a clear message that it is unacceptable to drive while drugged. I went to a school reunion on the weekend and one of the things that struck me when I walked into the school was the Students Against Drunk Driving poster. It was the first thing that hit me when I went into the school. Thank goodness the young people there are getting the message out that they want to save lives, including those of their fellow students. It is largely young people who are caught up in these accidents and who are caught up with the drugs. Drugs are a huge problem in our society. The police are constantly reminding us that drugs are the curse of this modern age and we have to deal with drugs in whatever way we can. I thank the Minister of Transport for this bill, which increases the penalties and tries to deal with this issue in some way.

As I said, if 400 young people were to die from any other cause people would be marching in the streets. People have said to me that I am against young people because I want to bring in these sorts of laws. I am not. I love young people, and I like them alive, not crushed on a road on a Saturday night or in our hospitals. Mr Worth might screw up his nose, but if it was his child who was killed in this way, he would be asking why the Minister does not do something about the people who are taking drugs and driving. Of course, it is not only young people. Some older people are also doing this, but the statistics show that those who are killed are largely young people under the age of 25.

I commend the Minister for bringing forward this legislation. It also includes provisions relating to buying and selling cars and access to information under the Official Information Act. A number of constituents have come to me about this provision. I am glad that the Minister has listened to what people have said and included provisions relating to the privacy of motor vehicle registration, especially in relation to the purchase of motor vehicles and access to that information. As the Minister said, the bill aims to reach a balance between the right to privacy and the interests of the general public. Hopefully, this bill will do that.

I commend the bill to the House and to the select committee. I hope that some of our Youth Parliament people will make submissions on this, because it was one of the issues that concerned them. I look forward to improved statistics on accident rates on the roads as a result of this bill. I am sure the Minister will be monitoring the efficacy of this law very, very carefully. Thank you.

NATHAN GUY (National) : I wish to make a contribution on the first reading of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). This is important legislation and we have heard from the Minister tonight that it is all about people driving under the influence of drugs. Police officers will be able to carry out an impairment test—a practical test—and I heard from a member on the other side of the House, although I could not get it out of the Minister today, that it is something along the lines of hopping on one foot on the side of the road. So when the bill gets to the select committee, we will be interested to see some of the practicalities around it.

We have heard tonight, as we have traversed around the House, about some of the very bad statistics we have, and about the fatalities that have occurred throughout New Zealand on our major highways, and on some of our rural and provincial roads as well. We are never quite sure whether those people involved are under the influence of alcohol, drugs—

Dianne Yates: Or both.

NATHAN GUY: —or both. Possibly they could be fatigued from long hours of driving or they could be suffering from sleep deprivation. A whole range of issues is involved.

I think it is important to think about an area up the coast from here—the Kapiti coast—where Transit has recently put some barriers down the side of the road, not the centre of the road, to block some culverts and a drain. When we think about the importance of median barriers for saving lives, we should also think about Centennial Highway, or “Killer Highway” as it is called. The Government is currently investing in the extension of the median barrier up there, which I fully endorse, but I want to talk a little bit about how long it has taken the Government to do that, and about some of the terrible statistics on that “Killer Highway”. Unfortunately, 40 lives have been taken in a 20-year period, and 120 serious injuries have occurred on that portion of Centennial Highway. Just recently another very bad incident occurred by the Fishermans Table Restaurant, and I am sure that while the contractors are there putting in the median barrier, the Government should be considering extending it along the centre of the road to Mackays Crossing. The statistics that I got from Transit showed that the median barrier has proved its worth over time. A study done from 1999 to 2003 showed that a median barrier on this section of road would save $40 million.

Somewhere in the bill it is mentioned that a fatality or loss of a human life, in terms of the social cost to the country, was about $3 million—now $3.2 million. It is unfortunate that we have to put a cost on a human life, but that is the cost of the loss to the country. We need to do our utmost with this bill to ensure not only that motorists who are under the influence of drugs are captured, fined, and dealt to but also that the practicalities are taken into account. It will be very important for the select committee to sort out the practicalities of dealing with, say, someone who is under the influence of a drug like Codral, or some other drug like Prozac, which was mentioned earlier tonight.

Gerry Brownlee: What does the local member think about that median structure?

NATHAN GUY: I am not sure what the member is doing, actually. I do not think there is an awful lot of activity going on in Mana or Ōtaki with the local member. That is why I am champing at the bit to challenge the Government, given that it is sitting on a huge surplus, to extend the median barrier along this dangerous piece of road, while the contractors are there, by a couple of extra kilometres through to Mackays Crossing. That seems to me to be paramount.

I want also to talk about registration, which is another very important part of the bill. We have heard tonight, and we already knew, that it is very easy to find out the number plate of a vehicle and the address of the person in whose name the vehicle is registered. It might be that a driver has made a wrong turn and cut a person off, and, as a result, there could be a period of road rage. It is very easy for anyone to get information through the register of motor vehicles. This provision will tidy that up, and that is a good step. Another problem is that the owners of expensive vehicles are often worried that people on the public highway could note their number plates, track where they live, and therefore come and steal their vehicles—do some form of car conversion. There are also safety issues concerning female drivers to take into account. So the purpose of the register of motor vehicles will enforce the law.

I guess all of us—well, most of us, no doubt—in the House have been caught on a speed camera, after which one has the discussion around the table at home as to who was driving the vehicle on that day, and then requests the photo and the time. Then someone has to put a hand up as to who was driving on the day. Another mechanism in the bill is to allow for the collection of charges. We know there are millions of dollars worth of unpaid fines currently, which this Government is unable to get people to pay, so I am sure that issue will come out in the select committee as well.

Part of the legislation will also empower the Minister of Transport to release names if there is a fault in any vehicle through manufacturing. I think that is a good thing. Any person can still seek information, but it will be tougher to do that than it is currently.

There is also a new category for someone carrying on the back of a vehicle a bike or a dog box that obscures the current number plate. The person will be able to get a supplementary number plate.

In conclusion, I say that National will support this bill to go to the select committee. We believe that it is fundamental that we move to reduce a lot of the fatalities and serious crash accidents on our highways and provincial and rural roads. Although a lot of those occur because of the use of alcohol, a whole lot of others occur, unfortunately, through the taking of drugs. I urge the select committee to think about the practicalities of that to ensure that we get this legislation correct. National supports this very important legislation to go through the House this evening.

• Bill read a first time.

• Bill referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.