[Volume:642;Page:12523]
Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill
First Reading
Hon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Revenue) : I move, That the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. This bill arises in rather unusual circumstances. Members will recall that a few weeks ago in the House, following the recent tragic deaths in Christchurch of three 15-year-old drivers, Emma Reynolds, Melissa Norton, and Chloe Cockerell, I raised a question with the Minister of Transport, who suggested that I should seek to test the will of the House on the matter. The House very graciously, a week later, gave me leave to introduce this bill as a Government bill. It arises because of those incidents, and mounting public concern about road safety and young drivers.
The principal purpose of this bill is to raise the minimum driver-licensing age from 15 to 16 years, and to extend the length of the learner-licensing period from 6 months to 12 months. At the appropriate time I will move that the bill be referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.
It is a relatively short bill, with some six clauses. The operative clauses are clauses 4 and 5, which make the age adjustments. The net consequence of this adjustment of moving the age from 15 to 16, and lengthening the period of the learner licence from 6 to 12 months, will be that the time at which a person can obtain a full licence will rise to 18½ years. At the moment, one starts the process at 15 and one can get a full licence as early as 17. The consequence of shifting the period that one starts at by a year, and the period that one can hold a learner licence from 6 months to 12 months, means that the age when the process can be completed will now rise to 18½ years.
A number of comments have been made over recent weeks about whether a change would put New Zealand out of kilter with the international norm. I note that in Britain at the moment the House of Commons is considering shifting the driving age from 17 to 18, to align it with other European nations. I note that in Australia, depending on which state one may be in, young Australians cannot take to the roads until they are at least 16 or 17. In New Zealand the age of 15 was originally struck to coincide with the school-leaving age. That has moved up over the years, and it seems appropriate to look at the minimum licensing age for drivers as a consequence.
But there are other reasons, as well, and I want to draw to the House’s attention some of the statistics relating to the involvement of young drivers in road accidents. Although it is true that car crashes that involve 15, 16, and 17-year-olds are similar overall to the number involving 18 and 19-year-olds on learner licences, those figures change dramatically when these age groups get their restricted licences and are able to drive solo. For instance, the number of crashes in the first month after gaining a restricted licence, compared with the last month that one is on a learner licence, increases about 2½ times for 18 and 19-year-olds, and about 4½ times for 17-year-olds, but there is a whopping eightfold increase for 16-year-olds, and an even greater increase of tenfold for 15-year-olds. That clearly shows that the younger the age at which a driver gets a restricted licence, the higher the chance that he or she will crash. That is really the point of this legislation.
I have heard comments from some quarters that this will adversely affect rural drivers. I even had one person contact me and say this legislation is a total outrage—that he taught all of his children to drive at the age of 12, and why should the law interfere in this way? I have two comments to make in respect of those claims. Firstly, I have little sympathy for the argument of saying: “I taught my kids to drive at 12, so, goodness knows, to hell with what the law might say.” But with regard to the legitimate case of rural drivers who may feel they are being discriminated against by these provisions, I say that that is a matter the select committee should give some consideration to. It should consider whether there is scope or practical ability to give some form of limited licence in those circumstances. I am open-minded on that point. I have some doubt about its efficacy, but I am prepared to see that matter considered.
Overall, we need to see this in the context of the consequences for young drivers of the current situation. It is certainly true that young people are overrepresented in our road-crash statistics. In the year to 31 December last year, for example, young drivers between the ages of 15 and 24 were involved in 121 fatal traffic crashes, 813 serious-injury crashes, and 3,768 minor-injury crashes. If one takes the past 10 years, 1997 to 2006, one sees that crashes involving 15-year-old drivers have resulted in some 37 deaths and 385 serious injuries. Similarly, crashes involving 16-year-olds have resulted in 146 deaths and 949 serious injuries. In other words, crashes involving 15 and 16-year-old drivers over the last 10 years have accounted for some 183 deaths and 1,334 serious injuries.
Some of those deaths have been the drivers themselves, others have been innocent victims, but the net effect has been a very serious impact on a wide range of New Zealanders at a time when, through other road-safety measures, our road toll has been reducing. The figures indicate very clearly that, as with other developed countries, the crash risk is inversely correlated with the age at which a driver starts solo driving. That is particularly so where that occurs before the age of 18.
Members may say that New Zealand is no different from other countries, that this is part of a worldwide trend, and that these circumstances, however shocking they may be, are no different from what occurs elsewhere. There is some truth in that argument. But when one looks at OECD comparative figures and sees where New Zealand fits on the international league table, one sees that we have the fourth-highest rate of road deaths for 15 to 24-year-olds per head of population. I do not think that that is acceptable, particularly when we have placed so much emphasis under successive Governments—and I note that the member opposite, Mr Williamson, during his time as Minister of Transport was very strong on these matters—on bringing down our road toll, because one life saved is one life to the benefit of this country. The net negative cost of injury, death, and the whole trauma associated with road tragedy is one that is controllable, one we can make positive steps towards reducing. The logic, to me, of making a move now to change the minimum legal driving age, to increase it to deal with these statistics, is compelling and overwhelming.
We are not talking here about removing a right from New Zealanders; we are talking about protecting young New Zealanders, about ensuring that the period during which they take their learner licensing test, through to gaining their provisional licence, and finally their full licence, is one where they can be equipped with the experience and the skills necessary to be effective drivers and where their contribution to negative road-safety statistics can be reduced.
I want to observe, as I bring this speech to a close, that there is overwhelming public support for this measure. The Television One Colmar Brunton poll on Monday night showed 82 percent in favour of it. There have been polls in newspapers showing similar figures. I think the New Zealand Herald figure was around 87 percent. Most of the people who have a vested interest in promoting road safety and better driving conditions are also in favour of this move. Finally, I note, as I began, that the parents of the three young women who were killed in Christchurch recently, in very tragic circumstances, have also expressed to the Christchurch their support for a change along these lines. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) : Can I say from the very outset that the National Party has agreed to support this Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill going to a select committee. But can I also say that the National Party—probably like other major parties in this House—has a wide range of views within its members. Some are very supportive, some are not so supportive, and some have some serious questions. I think the select committee will be the process whereby we can go through sorting out what those issues are.
I have to say from my own personal perspective—and I will speak to this bill only from my own personal perspective—this is something that I tried once. Members will know that in 1998, in the Land Transport Amendment Bill of that year, I tried to move the age for driver licensing to age 16. We got the proposal through most of the processes, then it fell at the last hurdle. The reason, I think, was the rural-urban split kicking in, with those from rural areas saying it would disadvantage their kids, and we did not quite get the numbers in the House.
I caution members to be very careful about being susceptible to hysteria, such as the hysteria that flew around over some of the other aspects of that licensing legislation at the time. I will give members an example—although there are others—and that is the issue of the compulsory carriage of one’s licence. Federated Farmers and others said that it was an outrage and a disgrace. They said that farmers would be stopped every day and, because they did not have their licences on them, they would be prosecuted. They said that we must not have it. They came to Parliament and put in submission after submission saying that the compulsory carriage of one’s licence must be taken out of the legislation. I asked several farmers whether they had ever been stopped by a traffic officer in the last 10 years, and they said that they had not. I asked them how that would happen now, and they replied that that did not matter, that it would disadvantage their members in the rural community, and it must not happen. Well, I am pleased that we got that measure through, and I have never heard the issue raised again.
Ron Mark: Like the photo licence.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Exactly. Ron Mark is right. That is a second example.
The photo licence was going to be the biggest breach of one’s civil liberties. Chris Carter—not the member in this House—a talkback host, said that having to have a photo on one’s licence was like Nazi Germany at its worst. War was waged against me. Questions were raised about whether my parents were married when I was born, and all sorts of things. For the first year after the photo licence came in we saw the biggest 1-year drop in the road toll ever. Leighton Smith, one of the other talkback hosts who opposed me, asked how having a piece of plastic in one’s wallet made the road safer. I told him the answer was easy, because for the first year after the measure came in we confiscated 22,000 vehicles from the road. We caught people—and could identify them—who were driving while illegally on the road. Some were disqualified many times—four or five times for drink-driving. But under the old system, when people did not have to carry the old piece of tatty paper, they could swap it with a mate and the cops would not know who they were, anyway.
So I give a caution to this House to be very careful about hysteria when it comes to saying: “This will do all sorts of things.” and “This will stop all sorts of things.” I ask members of the House to just look at comparable jurisdictions around the world to see whether similar measures have resulted in disastrous consequences. For example, I think there is a legitimate argument that says that the driving age should be aligned to the school leaving age. I think that is a very legitimate argument for a lot of rural communities. Where I grew up in Matamata, we used to catch the school bus to school. But once we got to the point of leaving school we could no longer catch the school bus, so to get to work we had to be able to drive. I think that is fine. But it might not have escaped the attention of too many people that the school leaving age was raised from 15 to 16—now 16 is the age. So I find it hard to believe that kids will be disadvantaged because they cannot get to sporting activities.
Well, what about the 14-year-olds? They cannot get to their sports unless their parents take them. My wife tells me she is a permanent taxi driver in Auckland, taking kids to rugby and tennis. My girl has just come back from the aerobics competition in Melbourne. My wife says she is often on the road trying to get our kids here, there, and everywhere—and that is in the city. So get real! It happens for parents, at any rate. I look at a state like Queensland, where the distances from the cities to the rural parts are way bigger than we will ever experience in New Zealand. In fact, some of them are bigger than New Zealand. Yet that state’s driving age starts at 17.
I ask those who have grave concerns—I have heard them over and over again—to please think seriously about this matter. I think 15 is too young to drive. I personally think that 15 is too young to drive. If members want to think about some sort of a compromise—and I advocate that they do not—then let us look at giving some licensing exemption to some children who can be proven to be living way outside of urban areas, who have no alternative when it comes to doing the things they need to, and whose parents are unable to participate in moving them in and out of town. Based on their specific cases—on their address, and for specified hours of the day when sporting or other such activities are going on—we may grant them an exemption. I am not a fan of that idea. I am really a big fan of things like the GST regime, which gave no exemption to anything, because the moment exemptions happen all sorts of lines start to be drawn in the sand, then question marks arise on the other side. But if that is what members from the rural sector are concerned about, then I hope that the select committee looks at the scenario carefully, if there is a need.
I say again that members should look at jurisdictions that are comparable to ours. I am a big fan of not reinventing the wheel. New Zealand should not say “Oh, but we’re different.” We are not as different as that from any countries we like to compare ourselves to. Most European nations, Australia, and so on just laugh at the fact that we let 15-year-olds drive.
One of my most amazing experiences in relation to photo licences was when I went to the California Highway Patrol headquarters. I went to the officers’ mess for a drink at the end of the day. They got my piece of tatty paper and handed it around and laughed and guffawed. They said: “This is not a licence. How would we ever, ever apprehend anybody with this stupid piece of nothingness?”. But, at the time, if one listened to talkback and to the feedback, one would hear that photo licences were the greatest crime ever imposed on this country. But I have never heard that issue raised again since the legislation was passed. How many members have people coming into their constituency clinics saying they are really concerned about the photo drivers’ licences? [Interruption] Oh, David Cunliffe has had somebody come in. I did not think people even knew where David Cunliffe’s office was, but, there we go, he has had someone come in. Well, I have not.
In the last few minutes of my speech I want to repeat what I think the arguments are. I think that extending the time of the learner licence is a really good idea. If there was some way to do so, I would love to measure how much driving people did during that time before they could get a full licence—just like pilots have to qualify with so many hours before they can get a full licence. That is not practical and it is not possible. It would be great to say to young people that they have to do, say, 100 hours of driving with somebody, then when they have qualified with that 100 hours they can get a full licence. I wish that were possible, but the technology is not available and people could cheat or rort it and say they have done their hours. So I am not going to get silly about it, but just getting a learner’s permit on day one, then doing nothing, not even driving for 6 months, then somehow getting a provisional licence, then maybe doing nothing for 18 months, then suddenly getting a full licence means someone may have done only 4 or 5 hours on the road. That does not seem to me to be sensible, either.
But two things do seem to be sensible. First, we should align the driving age with the school leaving age—we always did, and we always should. Secondly, we should look to alternative jurisdictions. I said during the debate on photo licences and I will say it again: if any member of this House can show me a jurisdiction we would like to think ourselves comparable to—I am not talking about Burkina Faso in the Horn of Africa or anything; I am talking about a country that is comparable to us—that does let 15-year-olds drive and has a fantastic safety record, then show it to us. I am happy to be persuaded. But in the debate on photo licences I could not find one. I actually got the Ministry of Transport to troll through every country we could think of to find one that did not have photo licences. We could not find one. Yet Chris Carter on Newstalk ZB said: “If Williamson gets away with this, I’m leaving the country.”
Peter Brown: He’s gone.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Well, he did not actually go. They kicked him off Newstalk ZB but he did not leave the country
Hon David Cunliffe: Why not? He should have.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I agree that he should have, but he did not. That was the hysteria of it, but where would he go? Similarly, in this case, if a member says that he or she knows of a comparable country to ours that has a record of crashes and killing on the roads that is way better than ours and it lets 15-year-olds drive, I will be convinced about it. But I do not believe such a place exists and I think it would be really foolish for this House to deny an opportunity for good debate in the select committee and for proper and careful consideration.
Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Minister for Transport Safety) : Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill. Labour will be supporting this bill going to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.
I want to comment briefly on what Peter Dunne has said. One of the key phrases he used was “the right”. New Zealanders have always had the idea that they have a right to drive. I have a 15-year-old daughter, so I am very aware of the pressure that parents come under on this issue. But with rights come responsibilities. I think this bill has come at a good time.
The Government is currently considering a package of measures to create a safer environment for young New Zealanders to learn to drive in, and to develop into competent and safe drivers. I think some of the issues raised by the Hon Maurice Williamson were very appropriate, and I hope they will be thoroughly considered by the select committee, alongside the package of measures the Government is about to announce.
I welcome consideration and discussion of the move to raise the minimum licensing age to 16, and to extend the length of the learner licence period from 6 months to 12 months as part of that package. Currently our young people pay, in my view, far too high a price for the opportunity to drive, especially in the first 6 months of gaining a restricted licence. Traffic crashes are the single greatest killer of 15 to 24-year-olds, and the leading cause of permanent injury for that age group. As the Hon Peter Dunne said, last year young drivers were involved in 121 fatal traffic crashes and 813 serious-injury crashes.
Fifteen to 19-year-olds are six times more likely to crash than you or me. It is also worth remembering that over the last 4 years fatal crashes involving 15-year-old drivers have averaged two a year—one of which was the tragic case the Minister mentioned in which three young people died—where a 15-year-old driver was deemed to be at fault. Of course, we still do not know the cause of the latest two crashes.
There is a strong commitment on all sides of the House to do something about this, and I commend the Hon Peter Dunne on his launching of this bill into Parliament. It is essential that we create a safer environment for our young people to develop into fully competent drivers. The Government is fully committed to doing this, and it is part of the reason why we have set such ambitious road safety targets in our Road Safety to 2010 strategy. People will be aware that there was a significant consultation programme in the Road Safety to 2010 strategy, which has been running for about 18 months now. A considerable amount of feedback is about young drivers.
Raising the minimum licensing age to 16—that is, the age at which one can begin to learn to drive—and extending the length of the learner-licensing period to 12 months will not, however, on their own create a safe enough environment. The greatest risk period for young drivers is the first 6 months of driving solo—that is, when they are driving without supervision by a qualified driver. In that period—those first 6 months—as Peter Dunne said, young drivers are estimated to be about seven times more likely to have a crash than in the period when they were beginner drivers and were supervised.
The risk of crashing declines rapidly after the 6-month period. But the learning curve to achieve the risk profile of, say, the average 30-year-old is long. It takes about 10 years to achieve that sort of risk profile. So we need to put in place a range of measures that will shift our young people along the driver learning curve at a faster rate, and with less risk of fatality or permanent injury. In particular, delaying the beginning of solo driving by 6 months will allow for a greater amount of supervised driving practice to occur.
Experience in Sweden, which is the safest driving environment in the world, has shown that increasing supervised driving practice to about 120 hours before a young person can drive solo reduces the crash rate by about 40 percent. I am talking about not simply raising the age but actually extending the supervised driving practice period. We are currently considering a range of initiatives alongside raising the minimum licensing age to 16 and extending the length of the learner-licensing period from 6 months to 12 months. In particular, we are considering strengthening the practical driver testing regime. We are not convinced that the current two-test system adequately prepares young drivers for their first months of solo driving. The first test, which, in our view, is the critical one, focuses too much on basic, technical driving skills, and tends to ignore other important factors that determine driving behaviour.
We are also considering whether the current enforcement regime for the graduated driver-licensing system is working effectively, and while I am on that issue I want to say to this House that our graduated driver-licensing system—the concept—is much admired around the world. That is not to say that it cannot be improved. I believe that it certainly can be improved, and I am looking forward to the debate on this, because I believe we can make substantial improvements. I am aware that non-compliance with the conditions of learner and restricted licences is relatively widespread.
Last year I had the opportunity to spend a complete night with a traffic patrol on duty in the Wellington area. Out of the 19 cars we stopped for various things—like not having a tail light, or speeding, or running a red light—seven, I think, were driving outside the conditions of a restricted licence. They either had passengers or they were driving outside the permitted hours, etc. When I commented on what I thought was a high incidence, the traffic officer said it was actually a low number. Normally the incidence of people breaching the driver-licensing conditions of restricted licences was higher than that. The key conditions are the restrictions on carrying passengers and on night-time driving, and these conditions are critical for lowering the risk profile of young drivers.
As I stated earlier, this Government is fully committed to creating a safer environment for our young people to develop into fully competent drivers. It has been one of the themes of my career as a parliamentarian, and, as the Minister for Transport Safety, it is one of the things I take extremely seriously. We support the referral of this bill to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and we will be looking very closely at the debate that occurs at the select committee, once the views of public submitters are known.
We will be particularly interested to hear from our rural communities. We are told that increasing the minimum licensing age to 16 raises issues for communities where the availability of transport alternatives is limited. Another issue is whether people are driving for work purposes or for entertainment and leisure purposes. We will also be very interested in the feedback from parents, road safety experts, and young people on the full range of measures that are needed to keep our young drivers safe. This is a very serious issue for the community, an issue that I hope Parliament will debate really seriously. If the beginning of this debate is any indication, I think there is goodwill to come to a very good outcome.
There are many countries—much of Europe—where for the first year or so of one’s driver’s licence the only vehicle one can ride is a low-powered scooter or motorcycle. That could solve the mobility problems of some of our rural people who require a vehicle to get to work, or football practice, or whatever it is they are involved in. That might be a possible way forward. I think we should look at a range of alternatives, and I hope the select committee will do that.
I look forward very much to the public debate. If the debate is of as good a quality as the debate we have had on the See You There—Safe As programme, I think it will be a valuable experience for New Zealand. It is well time this issue was thoroughly examined, not only by the House but by society as a whole. The issue is that, yes, there is a right to mobility, but with that right comes a responsibility to be a good, safe young driver, and that is what I want to see become the culture of New Zealand—as it is in most other countries. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) : I thought that was an excellent speech from the Minister for Transport Safety, the Hon Harry Duynhoven. It identified some key elements that we will have to look at in the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill.
I know that it is quite easy for us to say we will increase the minimum driver licensing age and that that will solve the problem of traffic accidents involving young drivers, but I do not see age as necessarily being the problem. If we increase the age to 16, I think we will still encounter some of the difficulties we have now with 15-year-old drivers. I think Harry Duynhoven touched on a number of issues in his speech that are crucial to what the select committee needs to look at and what we need to look at as a Parliament. I would like us to ask ourselves what age we were when we started driving. Were we driving at 15? A lot of us were, and it was something we found to be a very important part of our ability to get around our communities, to get to work, to get to school, and to do a lot of activities that we would never have done if we had not had the ability to drive. So I ask members to think of that question, and I wish that members would want to have a look at some other things—for example, the fact that the problem is not a matter of age.
In this House we have had legislation—for example, minimum wage bills—come through, where people have argued that 16 and 17-year-olds have the same ability as 18 and 19-year-olds to work, the same maturity, and all those factors. Yet here we are doing the opposite; we are increasing the age at which young people have responsibility instead of decreasing it as we were expected to do in the minimum wage area. There is no consistency there in rationale. I know there is a difference in age, but there has to be some consistency also in rationale. How many people will want to trust young people? I say that we do want to trust our young people. These young people have a lot of opportunities out there, and they need to be given some respect.
I think that the Minister raised some very good points. The question is not about the age; the question is about the limits we put on people at that age. If we look at what the Minister said, some of the issues we can look at are the times young people can drive, their hours of driving, perhaps the vehicles they can drive, and how long they will be in a situation where they have to be supervised. Those are the key issues. Those are the things we need to debate and find solutions for. Raising the age is just a political attempt to get something forthright that the Government can go out and sell. It does not necessarily solve the problem, because the problem will move. If we change the age to 16, we are taking the chance that 16-year-olds will then make up the high percentage of accident victims. There is the chance that 16-year-olds will then represent the people learning to drive by themselves rather than the 15-year-olds who are learning to drive by themselves now. We could easily just move the problem up a year, and just say then that 16-year-olds are the problem rather than 15-year-olds.
The mover of this legislation put up some very interesting statistics, and they will be good to see, at the select committee. But there is one question I want Mr Dunne, the mover of this legislation, to answer in relation to those statistics—that is, after a breakdown of the statistics to show how many accidents occurred as a result of young drivers being outside the rules they should have followed. How many of those accidents were in relation to young drivers who were drinking, speeding, or driving outside the hours they were allowed to drive? I ask Mr Dunne to give us those statistics, because they are the real statistics, they show the people who are breaking the rules. If we change the age to 16, we will have 15-year-olds breaking the rules and we will have 16-year-olds speeding, drinking, and driving outside the hours they should.
The real question does not concern the age; the real question is whether these people are breaking the rules. If it is the case that they are breaking the rules—which I believe, on my gut feeling, that it probably will be—then we need to deal with that issue. That is the real issue. Are our enforcement provisions strong enough? Are the rules tight enough? Are we setting the right rules, in the first place? Those are the real issues. That is what we need to debate in this House; that is what the select committee needs to work out. If young people just think, because they are 16, that they are driving and they are not going to break the rules, then they have some big lessons to come their way. It is not a matter that at 15 and 16 there is a huge change in maturity that changes the ability to break or not to break the law.
Another thing we need to look at—and I think that the Minister was correct about bringing this out—is that driving solo is where we see the real risk of an increase in accidents. That period of driving solo is when the percentages of accidents increase. Well, are we moving those percentages just to an older age group? Is that the real problem, rather than the fact that young people are 15 when they actually begin to engage in driving? That is a question that I would like the mover of this legislation to give us the research on, rather than just give us those figures that relate to all driving statistics and are not broken down.
I think we need to look at the practicalities, as well. A lot of people have said that in rural communities we cannot have this measure. You know, people have to drive to be able to go to school, to go to work, or whatever it is. But the reality is that I do not believe that just rural communities are affected now. All our communities have changed, and I ask, how many kids go to school on a bike in urban communities? Very few! That is why we have such congestion at 9 o’clock in the morning and 3 o’clock in the afternoon. People have changed the mode of transport they use. Their kids are either driven to school or they drive themselves to school. That is why we are trying to have initiatives like walking buses and so on, to try to break down that driving culture. But the transport culture is a culture that has changed in New Zealand, and over the last few years the days of kids biking to school has not been the reality because of safety issues. There has been a fundamental change in New Zealand. So I say that it is not just rural communities that will want an exemption; many urban communities out there have a lot of children who go to school by car and who will want an exemption, as well. They will see that they will also be affected by legislation like this.
When we look at legislation and try to look at communities that have changed, we also need to look at the way in which work environments have changed. Most people now live in two-income families. Both parties in those families, basically, have to go out and work these days. One will have to work to pay the mortgage and one to pay the living expenses. That is what the reality is, in a lot of communities. But we are saying to those people, who are going out there, doing it hard, and doing all the right things, that they may have to wait another year before they can be that two-income family. They may have to wait another year, because we are changing this rule. A lot of people do not go to work because they know that they have those kinds of responsibilities transporting their children, and they are looking forward to giving their kids the opportunity to take some responsibility. That saves some money because people can go out and work as a two-income family. That is the reality of the communities we live in now. The days are gone where there was just one provider in the house; the world has changed. If we deny those families the ability to have two incomes, then we are denying a lot of people a lot of respect, and a lot of time in the workforce.
Personally, I think that this legislation is not the right approach at the moment. I will be on the select committee, and I am looking forward to the information coming forward. I support the bill going to the select committee, and I support the debate. I would like to see the mover of this legislation, Peter Dunne, give us the real figures in relation to young people who are breaching rules. I think that will be crucial. We need to look at this issue of the minimum driver-licensing age on a wider scale. Are we willing to take away the rights of young people just for a political convenience, or is there a real reason why we are doing this? If there is a real reason, then I think we will find that the bill has the support of the House. But if it is merely for political convenience or for show, then I do not believe we should make legislation on that basis. This is too big an issue—to take away the rights of young people just for the power of getting votes. We need to be very careful of that in this House.
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : Well, that was actually a very interesting contribution by the member who has just resumed his seat, David Bennett. It would have been better, perhaps, if he had got many of his facts straight. Let us address one—the minimum wage. I could not understand why he brought that issue up.
The minimum wage kicks in at 16—not at 15 but at 16, which is the school leaving age. So bringing the driver’s-licence age up to 16 makes it all compatible. The other impression I got from the member is that he left school at 15—an early age—and that he drove himself around town. I do not doubt that he drove himself around town, but I have my doubts that he left school at 15; I think he was at school in a tertiary education organisation for quite some time.
He gave another fact that I have to take issue with. Certainly, in my area I see more and more kids, children, youngsters cycling to school. There may be older children who drive themselves to school, and there may be younger children who are driven to school by their parents, but more and more youngsters, certainly in the area I live in, get on their bikes and cycle to school. That, I understand, is the reason why Tauranga and other places are constructing all of these cycleways. We are producing cycleways everywhere, because more and more people are getting on bikes.
Katrina Shanks: Not in Wellington.
PETER BROWN: Not where?
Katrina Shanks: Not in Wellington.
Hon Harry Duynhoven: Yeah, it’s kind of hilly.
PETER BROWN: Well, that might be the reason for that.
New Zealand First will support this bill’s referral to a select committee, but that is not to say that we will support it as a party after that. Some of my colleagues have some concerns about raising the age, but we have all agreed to support the bill’s referral to a select committee. One must remember that this bill will go to a select committee because the Hon Peter Dunne sought leave to bring it to the House to test whether the House thought such a bill was worthwhile. That went through very quietly and very quickly at a time when, I think, most members of the House were present.
There was no doubt that Parliament wanted this bill to be considered. One might ask why. Well, the simple reason is that the public want to raise the driving age—they want to raise the age when youngsters can get behind the wheel of a car and drive it. I personally am totally in favour of that. I would not let my own children anywhere near a car before they were 16. If I had had my way at that time, I would have raised the age to 17. Peer pressure being what it is, I won out for a year, but after that I encouraged them to drive at 16.
The Hon Maurice Williamson raised a few interesting points. I can recall back to 1998 and the Land Transport Bill, which made reference to raising the driving age from 15 to 16. New Zealand First at one time—and we had just arrived on the scene in any meaningful way at that time—wanted to increase the age to 17. But when we were in coalition with the National Party we were persuaded to drop the age to 16. Sometime later, out of the blue, further pressure was exercised on us by our coalition partner to retain the age at 15, principally because of the rural concerns.
Had National and New Zealand First stuck together and seen that legislation through—the numbers were there to push it through the House and to raise the driving age in 1998—one has to ask whether a few more people would be alive today. My own view is that we should tack this to the school leaving age. We have had the abysmal record read out to the House by the Hon Peter Dunne a few moments ago, and for that reason alone we must take this issue very, very seriously. I welcome this bill going to a select committee, because I know the public want to have a strong say on it. New Zealand First has been informally canvassing our members, and without a shadow of a doubt they want to increase the driver’s-licence age. Many of them want to increase it to 17.
Sandra Goudie: How many?
PETER BROWN: Quite a few—a significant percentage. Of the few hundred we have met with informally, quite a significant percentage want to raise it. I could not tell the member how many want the age to be 17 or 16, but we asked them pretty genuinely, and there was a clear-cut response from New Zealand First members—they want to raise the driving age. There are some who do not and who probably think along the lines of David Bennett. But, on the sample we tested, I would say that, by an overwhelming majority, most New Zealand First members want to increase the driving age at least to 16, and, as I said, many want it increased to 17.
I listened to the Hon Harry Duynhoven, and I did get the impression that he wants to use this bill to improve, or to address, driver’s-licence problems, per se. That is what it sounded like to me, but I think that is coming in the next bill, is it not?
Hon Harry Duynhoven: Yes.
PETER BROWN: This bill will stick to raising the age and extending the length of the learner licensing period from 6 months to 12 months. But the bill that will follow—when; early next year?—
Hon Harry Duynhoven: Hopefully, soon.
PETER BROWN: —hopefully soon—will address driver’s-licence issues per se in some detail.
I think we have to remember that driving on our roads should be a privilege, not a right. I do not think anybody has the right to demand that he or she can get in a car, on a motorbike, or even on a bicycle, and demand the right to drive or cycle on our roads. People should meet a certain standard—certainly in respect of driving a car, a motorbike, or a motorised vehicle—and they should have to apply themselves diligently and follow the rules.
On the weekend that the Hon Peter Dunne referred to, when three youngsters were killed, a youngster killed a civic leader, Graham Condon. He was killed by a 15-year-old driver. I obviously have a lot of sympathy for Graham Condon’s family and for the parents of the young girl. She will suffer from that for the rest of her life. But had the driving age been 16, one has to assume that she would not have been in the car and that Graham Condon would still be alive.
These youngsters are killing not only themselves but other people. The statistics are awful, absolutely awful. No other country, as we have heard, has the driver’s-licence age at 15. I cannot think of one. I know that in Britain it is 17, and the Hon Peter Dunne told the House a little while ago that it is to go up to 18.
Hon Peter Dunne: The House of Commons committee recommends it go to 18.
PETER BROWN: Mr Dunne is just saying that the House of Commons committee recommends that age go up to 18.
So we are not alone in addressing this problem, and, as David Bennett said, I hope we can address it positively. But first and foremost we have to listen to the public. It is not a decision that we make. We have to go with the public. What the public wants must be the priority. I for one welcome this bill going to the select committee. I am on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and I welcome listening to the public and hearing their ideas on what should happen. But I know we will hear a lot of sad stories, and it is an issue that we must take very, very seriously.
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) : I welcome the opportunity to have a debate about this issue of young people driving, because it is an issue that has simmered in the public mind for some time. It is an issue that shows up in the letters to the editor and the letters from constituents. The Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill is a really good opportunity to get this issue out in the open and widely discussed, and I congratulate Peter Dunne on bringing it to the House.
A knee-jerk response to individual tragic cases is never a good context in which to make legislation, but sometimes those cases are an indication of a much wider problem, and that is why we should consider this. Not all members of the Green caucus are convinced that this bill is necessary and that it is not just another beat-up on young people, but all of us are very happy to see it go to a select committee, to listen to the evidence, and to make up our minds for later votes on the bill based on the evidence that is brought to that select committee.
Figures provided to us by the Ministry of Transport, which I actually requested a little while ago before the bill was put forward, knowing this was an issue on which we were going to form a view, were quite convincing. I have found in those figures that 15 to 24-year-old drivers are at fault in three-quarters of the crashes that they are involved in, and that those crashes caused by 15 to 24-year-old drivers account for one-third of the total social cost from crashes. The figures also show that the lower the starting age for driving, the more crashes people have, and that the dangerous point is the first 6 months of solo driving before they have had a lot of experience. That suggests to me that a measure to provide for people to have a lot more driving hours’ experience before they drive solo could be a very good change.
Ministry of Transport figures show that the 15 to 19-year-old age group is six times more likely to crash per 100 million kilometres driven than drivers in the 45 to 49-year-old age group. That is a very significant difference. It seems that the learner stage is relatively safe, but there is a period after that when people are allowed to drive solo where, perhaps, there is an attitudinal problem that takes over, combined with inexperience, and this is where the risk occurs. So a longer period for the learner phase before solo driving and taking passengers kicks in may also be a useful way of addressing that.
It is hard to argue that this bill would not reduce serious crashes and deaths. One might say that that is an obvious reason why we should pass it, but we could actually reduce serious crashes and death by banning driving altogether, but society has decided that there is a trade-off between the road toll and mobility. So the real question is whether the trade-off that we are making for 15-year-olds is actually a worse trade-off than the one we are making for the rest of the population. There is some evidence that it may be.
I will consider another consequence of 15-year-old driver crashes, which will never show up in statistics, and that is the impact a crash has on the life of a young person knowing that at an age of inexperience and perhaps with a lack of driving skills he or she killed another person. I think the impact of that on somebody’s life forever is very significant and we should do what we can to prevent people being left with that legacy, which must mar the rest of their lives.
The arguments against the bill in terms of freedom and mobility focus on young people needing to drive cars for their daily activity—for work, for school, or for social activities. I have to say I have no sympathy at all for the argument that young people in cities need to drive cars to school. There are adequate public transport systems in cities, there are bicycles, there are all the ways that we got to school when we were young. I do not sympathise with that argument. But there are some differences in rural communities—and I happen to live in one—where public transport is not available, and where distances from activities are much greater. I remember what it was like being a parent ferrying 15 and 16-year-old children to music lessons because one cannot easily take a cello on a bus or a bike, and looking forward to the date when my son would get his driver’s licence. At the same time, I knew he was actually quite poorly coordinated and he and I made an agreement that he would not even seek his licence until he was 18 because he was a very accident-prone person. So I have dealt with those trade-offs, I guess, in my own experience as well.
The point is sometimes made that if it is not possible for a young person to get a heavy-vehicle driver’s licence in a rural area, then some employment opportunities are restricted for that person. That may be true, but of course a heavy truck is even more of a lethal weapon in the hands of somebody inexperienced than a light car is, and we have to consider safety there as well. I think it would be very useful if the select committee explore the idea of exemptions in certain circumstances—where a young driver would have to go through additional training like an extended defensive driving course, for example, and would have to demonstrate a high level of skills in order to get the ability to drive solo earlier than the law otherwise states, because of employment reasons or because of where that young driver lives. It would be very interesting to hear submissions on that view and I hope the public will comment on that. There could be a way of tightening up here, reducing accidents for people who have alternatives, and providing greater safety and greater flexibility for people where there are no alternatives.
I look forward to the debate in the select committee. The Greens are happy to support this bill in its first reading; we are still divided about what we would like to do after that.
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tātou e hoa mā, i tēnei pō. I am told by my colleague Hone Harawira that downtown in Papatoetoe in Auckland there is a project called Street Talk, which is literally about getting out on to the streets and helping people to be safe. We are not talking about sexual health, and we are not talking about child welfare; the safety brand that Manukau Urban Māori Authority is promoting is road safety.
Street Talk provides drivers with a chance to learn new safety skills and to look at their own performance as drivers and to improve their style if there is a case for doing that. The programme is funded by the Accident Compensation Corporation. It helps participants to make the right decisions and learn how to manage risk and control, and it even includes the provision of child restraints. It is targeted particularly at Māori and Pasifika people, and it has a specific focus on drivers up to 25 years of age—the key group addressed in this Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill.
At the opposite end of Aotearoa, in Ōhai, the locals are doing much the same thing, except that their programme is based at Te Ōruanui marae. A key concern for the locals was that a lot of the younger ones were driving without licences. Whether it be for literacy, competency, or cash reasons, a lot of the local rangatahi were driving without having sat their licence. I read a comment from the marae kaiwhakarite, Serena Harris, that actually blew me away. She was talking about their plans to offer restricted licence driving courses. She said: “For some people this is the first time they’ve got 100 percent in anything. The confidence somebody gets from getting their licence is unreal.” That is at one end—to do with rangatahi.
But at the other end of the scale, one of our own kuia back at Rotorua of Tamatekapua, Aunty Miro Morrison, aged 79, has just got her licence—for goodness’ sake!—having driven around for 50 years without one. She got snapped—thank goodness!—had her car confiscated, and decided to attend a course for free with Lil Emery at Taharangi marae in Rotorua. So she is away now.
At completely different locations there are resounding success stories of Māori groups making a difference in keeping our people safe, our young ones in particular. The focus of this bill, presumably, is about much the same thing—trying to keep our young ones alive instead of bumping up the national average for car fatalities.
The Ministry of Transport tells us that over the last 5 years 22 percent of fatal car accidents involved Māori drivers, with an even higher number, 28 percent, of fatal casualties from crashes being Māori—that is, the passengers, the ongoing traffic, and the whānau that have the bad luck to be following on behind. Then there is what is called the vulnerable road users: the cyclists, the pedestrians, and the motorcyclists. It makes for another bizarre irony in the debate around peak oil and the search to reduce our dependency on cars as the main mode of transport, when we look at the statistics for vulnerable road users.
We need to be doing something and this bill is a good place to start. We know who is getting killed—it is our young men, who are being daring, risking their lives out on the roads, and too often losing the gamble. Young men aged between 15 and 19 years are seven times more likely to die than 45 to 49-year-old male drivers.
A high proportion of the fatal crashes of our young drivers under 29 years of age occur on rural roads. As other speakers have said, speed is a huge factor in this. Looking at my own electorate, in the 2004 national road safety public attitude survey, 32 percent of drivers in the Bay of Plenty region said they enjoyed driving fast on the open road. That is all good and fine, but it ain’t so good when one learns that in the Rotorua area, excessive speed was a factor in 23 percent of injury-causing crashes in 2004. Taking one year as a case in hand—2004—in Rotorua we suffered the cost of 193 road crashes. We lost eight lives that year from car crashes, 33 drivers and passengers were seriously injured, and another 153 were reported casualties.
One of the things I have picked up from the heap of television ads telling our mokopuna “If you drink and drive, you’re a bloody idiot.” is that the message is slowly getting through and sinking in. But, although it seems that drink-driving is becoming an unacceptable practice across the community, there still seems to be a tolerance towards speeding.
Teenage boy racers, I am told, would tell us that the key to success is all about how fast their machine can go. Success actually counts for nothing for those turning up at the cemetery—at the urupā—a couple of days later to pay their respects. Those turning up to court to receive their sentence are not so successful. All those victims of other crimes in the city that become relegated to a lower priority because the full squad is out with the boy racer squad are not so successful.
This bill does not target any of these factors—speed, booze, social pressure, road conditions, and education. The bill is basically just to raise the minimum driver’s licence age from 15 to 16 years, and to extend the length of the learner-licensing period from 6 to 12 months. Will adding 6 months make a difference? I doubt it.
What will make the difference is the way the message gets through. It could be those billboard messages that tell us it is better to be late than to arrive dead on time. Or it could be what they are doing at the Whakatū marae in Nelson with a driver’s licence course, which has had a 100 percent success rate. They could not get much better than that.
In Nelson the local constable John O’Donovan was getting worried about all the young people in the region who were constantly getting parked up by the cops, their cars being impounded, fines being thrown at them, and their getting caught up in a cycle of offending. A teacher, David Tepania, was enlisted, and, before they knew it, 33 students had passed the course. They found in the programme that some of the reasons cited for not having licences were learning difficulties and low self-esteem. Yet again, that is more proof that basic literacy skills keep proving to be a common underlying factor in offending.
The interesting thing about the programme is that although it picked up referrals from the courts and police, there was support from the city council, Land Transport New Zealand, and Work and Income to get the programme off the ground. Probably the biggest factor of all was that it involved heaps of volunteers helping out for the greater good. That is where I think a lot of our efforts could be usefully spread, as well. Instead of constantly telling our young boys how mad, bad, and fast they are, we should be working with the whole whānau in the interests of whānau well-being and safety.
We need to be thinking about how to create optimum safety environments. Increasing the age at which young people can legally purchase alcohol—from 18 years to 20 years—was one of the strategies to keep our young alive, but it was a strategy that this House voted down last year. We, the Māori Party, block voted. All four of us supported the proposal to raise the legal purchase age to 20 when that legislation came to the House last November. Other Māori members voted to keep it at 18. I was particularly interested that the Minister of Māori Affairs and the sponsor of the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill, Peter Dunne, could overlook the brutal combination of alcohol, age, and fatal crash data, and vote to keep the purchase age at 18. Alcohol is such a huge and potent contributor to fatal crashes that I would have thought it would be impossible to overlook it.
Although raising the licence age and increasing the time of learning licensing practice are better than doing nothing, other actions could be taken, which we hope the select committee will explore—new technologies like alco-locks, education such as the three good examples I offered by Māori groups around the motu, or indeed more accessible and affordable public transport options. Australian and Canadian graduated driver’s licence schemes, for example, require a zero blood-alcohol level for young and inexperienced drivers. The option to reduce the blood-alcohol content limit for our young drivers to zero is certainly something that we would do well to consider.
Finally, I hope that all of these mayors in their first meetings with their newly elected councils might be thinking of ways to keep our young people alive. That is something that I am sure we are all hearing and that we would all support.
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Customs) : I rise to speak today on the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill and certainly welcome the opportunity to debate the issues raised in relation to the proposal to raise the driving age and extend the learner licence period. We have to keep our eye on the ball, because far too many of our young people are dying on the roads. We need to consider what more needs to be done. In doing so, we should not fool ourselves that legislation, in itself, is the answer. By and large, the responsibility of parents and the way they teach their young people how to drive, and more public education—as the previous speaker, Te Ururoa Flavell, raised—are elements to be able to tackle the real issue in front of us.
The Government is committed to sending this bill to a select committee to ensure that it gets a full and robust hearing. I certainly urge more young people and parents to make submissions to the select committee on this matter, because it affects them. I am hopeful that through the course of this debate we will hear informed debate based on fact rather than fiction, and certainly based on sound evidence. Members who have spoken before me have highlighted the need to get good information at the select committee in order to give this bill full consideration.
A number of issues have been raised by members. It is worth highlighting them, if anything so as to commence this debate in a full and frank manner. Issues have been raised about whether the debate should centre on whether setting the age at 15 or 16 is the best way to deal with this—I think the jury is out on that. To some extent we may delay the period for young people in gaining experience on the road, which I think is where we would best spend our efforts in considering the matter.
The other issue is around exemptions for young people, and this is certainly a matter for rural communities. If we start this debate with that premise at the forefront, then we have already lost sight of what the real goal is. However, I accept the very real issues raised in relation to difficulties faced by young people in rural areas. For example, they do not have public transport, or the options for public transport, to be able to get to sporting activities or to work. What we do know is that a lot more young people work at a younger age, and they do need to get to their jobs. They do not have the public transport options available to them. So we should consider the factors of rurality in light of the issues that young people have around transportation.
The other issue that was raised during the course of this debate was around the issue of safety. My colleague the Minister for Transport Safety, Harry Duynhoven, raised the issue of whether further consideration should be given to the types of vehicles that young people have access to and whether this might moderate some of the aspects of poor driving behaviour. Again, more information on that issue might be helpful. A very substantial contribution was made on the role that supervised driving could have in improving the driving behaviour of young people on the road, and this is certainly an area that I will come to later.
By and large, though, there are two aspects of this debate that we should never lose sight of. Firstly, too many of our young people are dying on the roads. That should not happen, it must not happen, and we can do more here. It takes a more comprehensive effort to do that—partly through legislation and also through a commitment within our families and communities to ensure that young people are safe on the roads. The other part is understanding the contexts for the decisions we are going to make that will have an effect on young people. In a sense, gaining a driver’s licence for young people is their first step to independence. It is a way in which they can positively engage in community activities, positively engage in terms of supporting their own independence and getting a job, and positively engage in socialising with the broader part of the community that they are involved in. I think that more social connectedness of young people to their community is a good thing, and that we should find ways to encourage more of that.
Much has been said about the statistics, and I just want to make a brief comment here, because the statistics released by the Ministry of Transport about young drivers earlier this year confirmed that motor vehicles are the leading causes of death and injury amongst young people aged between 15 and 24 years. In addition to that, males are more likely to be involved in crashes, and those crashes are more likely to occur on a Friday or Saturday night. Importantly, fatalities involving young drivers between the ages of 15 and 24 years represent about a quarter of all drivers involved in fatal accidents. So there is a very good reason to debate this issue right now. It is the right time to do so, and we should ensure that this is a robust debate. But we need to ensure that we are targeting the problem in front of us and, more important, finding the best solutions for our young people, their families, and their communities, and with their input.
Often age, or, more particularly, youthfulness is associated with inexperience. A simplistic analysis might suggest that merely by raising the driving age one might gain more experience, or, on the other hand, that if that decision is delayed the opportunity for experience will be gained. Research shows that in the instance of driving, a lack of time behind the wheel rather than age is a primary factor in increasing the risk of having an accident. I certainly hope that by debating the issue of age, consideration will also be given to the aspects of supervised time provided to young people who are learning to drive. I have a teenager in our house who wants to drive right now. I am trying to say: “No, you’re too young. Not until I can spend the time with you behind the wheel in the car actually going through it can you learn to drive.” And that is from someone who learnt to drive at a very early age, at 15—as soon as I could get my licence I certainly did.
But, really, that is to highlight the critical role that parents have. Parents have a role to ensure that when they are teaching a young person to drive—and, let us face it, most parents teach their children how to drive, because often many parents cannot afford to pay for someone else to do it—they understand just how critical the aspect of supervised driving and dialogue while driving is, and how much of a positive effect that can have for a young person in his or her experience. If parents understood that, I am sure that they would be armoured with the right tools to be able to teach their children how to drive. It is my view that if we can do something in that area around supervised driving and extend the learner licence period in this bill, as a positive step towards that aspect, then I think we will be making positive steps alongside young people. Research tells us that supervised driving practice for up to about 120 hours before solo driving will produce a safer driving skills set. The average supervised driving time here in New Zealand is about 40 hours, so we know that there is a lot more to do in this area. In part, the extended length of the learner licence period from 6 to 12 months, as I said previously, provides a good opportunity for supervised driving to be addressed, and puts some onus of responsibility on to parents.
Finally, I would like to draw the attention of the House to some of the recommendations made during the Youth Parliament when we had the Youth Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. That committee investigated the issue of young people involved in motor vehicle accidents and fatalities. It found that the most dangerous period for a driver is the first 6 months of solo driving. The committee went on to recommend regarding the graduated driver’s-licence system that the learner period be extended from 6 to 18 months, with a reduction to 12 months if a defensive driving course is completed. The committee also recommended that subsidised defensive-driving courses be offered through schools, that there be a tougher restricted licence test, that we enable the attainment of a full licence by the automatic progressive relaxation of restricted conditions for those with a clean licence, and that an enhancement of educational support for learner drivers and their parents be embarked on. In part, the consideration of road safety issues during Youth Parliament precedes this debate we are having today. It is my hope that full consideration will be given to the propositions in this bill, that weight will be given to the evidence around supervised driving, and that some insight will be gained from recommendations from the Youth Parliament select committee that dealt with part of the issue we are dealing with here.
I certainly look forward to the report back of the select committee and to having a further debate in this House. It is my sincere hope that there is no politicisation of the debate, because, for our best intents and purposes, we really want to achieve greater safety on our roads for young people.
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) : I rise on behalf of National to support the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill to a select committee. I also reiterate that we want good, open dialogue at the select committee, and for us to not close off any avenue for debate, given some of the many excellent speeches made in the House today. I firstly acknowledge my own sorrow at the tragic death of Christchurch city councillor Graham Condon, who was also a paralympian. In saying that, I am mindful of the words of Maurice Williamson, who said that we should not let emotion drive our decisions around how we address the serious concerns of youth deaths on our roads and the accidents that are caused by young drivers. Maurice also said he wanted statistics about 15-year-old drivers in other jurisdictions. I am not on the select committee that will be considering this bill, but I hope that the select committee will explore the range of statistics.
I noticed that the Bills Digest entry about the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Amendment Bill lists a number of jurisdictions with identified driver-licensing ages. I notice that in Australia the driving age is around 16. In Canada, in Quebec, the driving age is around 15 or 16, but in Alberta it is actually 14 years, which I thought was extraordinary—14 years! It would be very interesting to see what the statistics are from Alberta in regard to 14-year-olds with driver’s licences. I am not suggesting, by any stretch of the imagination, that we drop the age down, but it would be interesting to see what the statistics are for that particular age group, and what the conditions are around drivers’ licences in that area. The United States also has a driving age of 14 years in Arkansas and North Dakota, and, again, it will be very interesting to see what the findings are from the research provided to the select committee for those areas. In France and Sweden the driving age is 16, in Great Britain it is 17, and in Germany it is 17 years and 5 months.
I will now comment on some matters that were raised by David Bennett, who gave an excellent critique of this bill and the matters pertaining to it. He asked clearly whether it was the 15-year-olds we need to be looking at, because once we shift the age, all we will do is shift the problem up into the 16-year-old age group. The problem that we are looking at is significant between the ages of 15 and 18. We all have a range of ideas about how the issues might be able to be dealt with. One thing that he only slightly touched on that I would like to expand on, which I think could be a very simple solution to the problem in the main, concerns the cc rating of the vehicles that young people are driving. In this legislation we are focusing on the individual driver—and, yes, there are some problems there around the licence period, around the understanding of the rules, and maybe around the level of responsibility, etc.—but we are not talking enough, in my view, about the cc ratings of the vehicles that young people are driving.
Our society has changed. We are a nation of petrol-heads—we love our cars, and we have a lot more cars on the road. Our society is changing so that nowadays generally both parents are working. Parents do not have time to leave their jobs to come home to pick up their children, when those children have come home on the bus, and take them back to school, or to pick children up from school because those children have had to stay behind for a music lesson, or whatever. David Bennett is quite right. The problem does not necessarily apply just to young people in rural areas, who are particularly challenged by lack of public transport; it also applies to our young people in urban areas, because sometimes they go to schools that are well outside the area where they are living, or that do not connect them to available public transport.
I really would like to see consideration being given to the cc rating of vehicles. Why is it that a 15-year-old can drive a V8? Why should 15-year-olds have access to vehicles of that calibre of power and put them on the roads?
Ron Mark: Some V8s have less horsepower than some 1300s.
SANDRA GOUDIE: Now we are hearing that some V8s have less horsepower. Be that as it may, we have young people who have ready access to vehicles. They like nothing better than to work on these vehicles—to soup them up—so that they can get the maximum power out of them, get them on the roads, congregate, do wheelies, and indulge in those sorts of activities. Those are a lot of the activities, in actual fact, that many people in the community do not like. It is all of the add-on activities that young people do with their vehicles that many people in the community do not like.
I understand that in England young people are constrained to a vehicle with a lower cc rating. Maybe we should be looking at what sorts of changes that would make to the statistics for our young people who learn how to drive. Consider a small vehicle, a small Volkswagen—I do not know; what car has a low cc rating? I am not very familiar with what is on the road these days. I am referring to the kinds of cars that we would call granny cars or shopping baskets. I cannot imagine young people going out to do wheelies and burnouts in a car park at night with a vehicle that can do only about 120 miles an hour. However, our vehicles have changed incredibly—
Hon Maurice Williamson: Only 120 miles an hour!
SANDRA GOUDIE: It does not bear thinking about. I still think that looking at the power of the vehicles that young people drive is worthy of consideration.
As I said before, every single one of us has a whole range of ideas. We all have different opinions about the solution to the problem, but I note that Paul Adams made some very sensible comments. Of course, he was a former national rally champion. I happened to have the occasion to be a passenger in a vehicle he was driving, and I found him to be an absolutely superb driver. He considers that training, enforcements, and boundaries all need to be in place. In picking up the idea of enforcement, I do not know how many members have heard stories of young drivers who have been stopped, found to be in breach of their learner licence conditions by having passengers in their vehicle while driving, and have had a traffic officer or a policeman give them a warning and send them on their way. I think that enforcement is a big issue, and it will be very interesting to see how these statistics will be viewed at the select committee. Again, it was David Bennett who raised that very excellent point, because we need to look at all the aspects around the conditions for these accidents. Is it about the breaching of the rules? We need to look at how much young drivers are breaching the rules and what those breaches are. I am only just starting to look at a very, very small part of all of the different aspects relating to this bill.
The New Zealand Automobile Association Inc. also made some sensible recommendations, which have been reiterated here. It recommends doubling the duration of the learner licence from 6 to 12 months. That provision is in the bill, and I think it is a sensible change to the rules. The association also identified that attitudinal training might be able to be incorporated with the defensive driving course. I think there needs to be a little more emphasis on that and that we need to make restricted drivers’ licensing tougher.
All of these matters will be discussed in the select committee. I have been thoroughly impressed by my most excellent colleagues Maurice Williamson and David Bennett, who are members of the select committee. They will be giving due consideration to this legislation and wanting to explore the statistics. They will want to see how they relate not only to 15-year-olds but to 16 to 18-year-olds, and they will not want to limit what the possibilities might be in terms of addressing the issues. I do not want to see 15-year-olds disadvantaged when they do not have access to public transport and when both their parents are working, regardless of whether their environment is urban or rural. I do not think they should necessarily be penalised by the actions of a few. The statistics will actually show us where the troubles are occurring. So I am happy to support this bill, and I am looking forward to further debate and seeing the statistics. Thank you.
MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) : I found myself agreeing with a lot of the points Sandra Goudie made, which is somewhat of an unusual experience. Along with her, I certainly want to compliment the previous speakers. I know she meant to include the Hon Harry Duynhoven and the Hon Peter Dunne in her praise. I add them to mine and also acknowledge David Bennett, who made a very good contribution, as did the Hon Maurice Williamson.
Their speeches highlight the fact that all members of this House want to have, and see, a very—if you like—sober analysis of the issues and problems being posed with regard to the terrible propensity for young drivers to have a much higher proportion of fatalities and injuries than other age groups. Just raising the driving age from 15 to 16 will not on its own be the cure-all panacea, but it will give us a starting point for a renewed national, New Zealand - wide discussion to address some of the horrific statistics we observe with regard to our young people.
In that sense, I want to personally thank the Hon Peter Dunne for his initiative in getting this proposal back on to the parliamentary agenda, and I think the select committee is the place for its analysis.
David Bennett, my good colleague from Hamilton East, illustrated the differences and complications that exist around the argument. I am sure he will have lots of intense discussions with the Hon Maurice Williamson and Sandra Goudie, because obviously they will be going to him for some guidance. I acknowledge very seriously Maurice Williamson’s previous experience in this area. Some of his contribution is particularly worthwhile reflecting on today.
If the information I have in front of me is correct, then, as I understand it, according to the Waikato Times we have a situation even within my own city. The editorial of 26 September expressed that it was not in favour of raising the driving age. It made some very interesting points with regard to praising Harry Duynhoven in terms of his work around trying to address the issue of boy racers and on his call for third-party insurance to be made compulsory. It quoted Harry as saying that the move would provide an incentive to drive safely, because blemishes to driving records will push up the premiums, and high premiums will discourage younger drivers from buying high-powered cars.
That is one of the raft of issues that need to be addressed in the context of driving age. It is not just a simple issue for the select committee members to say we should increase the driving age from 15 to 16; there are other issues to consider. Also, I have to say, with cynicism, that for years and years, bureaucrats in this country advised me why we could not have compulsory third-party insurance. I remember meeting constituents and giving them those bureaucratic reasons, when in fact my own heart was saying: “Wait a minute; I agree with Harry.” I thank Harry Duynhoven for putting that particular issue back on the agenda. Some of the bureaucrats might listen, frankly, to how we should be doing something about the issue. It is so logical that we have third-party insurance. Again, it is something that will hit people where it counts—in the pocket.
On the other hand, just to give an illustration of the range of views on the issue, a few days later on Monday, 8 October 2007 a headline in the Waikato Times stated: “Top cop backs driving age lift”. Inspector Leo Tooman is the region’s road policing manager. David, Nanaia, and I all know Leo very well—along with my good friend Sue Moroney, who will be on the select committee. He is well respected. He is quoted as saying that “lifting the minimum driving age from 15 to 16 not only made sense from a safety perspective but would bring the country more into line with the rest of the world. No other country in the rest of the Western world has a driving age lower than 16.”
A telephone poll conducted in Hamilton by the Waikato Times of a random group of people showed that 75 percent of people agreed that the driving age be raised, with most people wanting the age to be lifted to 18. Again, that is just an example from my own city of the variety of views on the subject. At the moment, on the face of it, there is a huge groundswell of support to raise the age at which young people can start to learn to drive. Some people are even looking beyond the age of 16, to 18 years.
I think the Hon Peter Dunne has done a huge service in getting this issue back on to the parliamentary agenda. We have all read some horrific statistics, not just of, say, 15-year-olds who are experiencing fatalities but also of some terrible tragedies as a result of, in some cases, mad, wantonly reckless driving, often by young people. In other cases, decent, wonderful, lovely young people have just made a misjudgment through lack of experience but are really lovely kids. It is every parent’s and grandparent’s absolute nightmare. These kids are in the wrong place at the wrong time and have a momentary lack of judgment.
That also raises the issue of the review of the way in which young people learn to drive—for example, the length of time taken to get the learner licence. What should be the conditions to enable a learner driver to start to drive? What should be the terms and conditions around the restricted licence?
My children will not be listening to this—and they certainly will not be watching the Parliament channel on Sky, so they will not see this—but I have to say as a parent that extending the curfew has great appeal. The biggest worry parents have when young people go from a restricted licence to a full licence is that they can drive around the clock. I quite like the 11 o’clock curfew.
One of the other things that I think we really need to look at—and I refer to the announcement by Ministers Mark Burton and Damien O’Connor—is the review of under-age drinking. As members know, I sponsored a bill to raise the drinking age from 18 to 20 years, but Parliament, in its wisdom, exercised its right to vote against that bill, hoping that the compromise measures forecast by the two Ministers would move us into a much better frame and a much better environment in relation to the serious, disturbing binge-drinking culture amongst teenagers in this country. I am not referring just to the under 18-year-olds but also to the under 20-year-olds in that context.
One of the issues I think the select committee needs to look at is the proposal to have a zero alcohol limit for any person under 20 on a restricted driver’s licence. In addition to the debate about whether we raise the age at which young people can start to learn to drive from 15 to 16 years, maybe we should debate whether we should have a zero drink-drive limit for every person in this country aged under 20 years who drives a motor vehicle. Maybe that is a discussion we need to have.
Along with the other speakers in this debate I acknowledge that, just on its own, raising the driving age from 15 to 16 years is not the cure-all. It is not a magic bullet or the total answer; it has to be seen in the context of other measures. I hope the select committee and its researchers have a comprehensive micro-look at the individual states of Australia and at the social and road safety impacts of its driver licensing. If any country is a rural country then it is Australia. It has huge rural distances and issues with some of its young people getting from A to B in those far-flung rural communities.
We have great commonality with Australia. I would be genuinely interested to know whether those states give exemptions, what the dynamics are, what research has been done, and whether there are gains or losses, given the fact that Australia’s statistics are better than ours. However, having said that, I point out that Australia’s statistics may reflect that it is a much more urbanised country in terms of the fact that most Australians live in the big metropolitan areas. What are the rural road safety statistics? What are the rural young driver statistics? I think there are some issues there to consider. And what is the situation in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and in other countries that have better statistics than us?
In summary, this bill is a very, very good starting point to revisit the whole issue of road safety for our younger people. Thank you.
- Bill read a first time.
- Bill referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.