Amendment’s delay ‘playing with lives’

Press, 2 December 1981, Page 31

Amendment’s delay ‘playing with lives’

PA Palmerston North To defer legislation which •would close loopholes in the drinking-driving laws was playing with people’s lives, said Professor Richard Batt, Massey University's dean of science and head of its alcohol research team. Professor Batt said it was a matter of urgency for the Transport Amendment Bill, closing loopholes in the drinking-driving laws, to be taken back to Parliament and made law “because lives were at stake." A lot of people were concerned about the drinkingdriving legislation, he said, and there should not have been anything like the delay there had been in tightening the law. He was critical that the parliamentary select committee, chaired by Mr K. R. Allen (Nat., Tauranga), had not reported back to Parliament before the session closed so that the drink-drive laws could prevent drunken drivers escaping on a technicality. “New Zealand needs leglis-

lators who are prepared to act in what can fairly be called an alcohol crisis,” he g said. Mr Allen, who is Undersecretary to the Minister of Trade and Industry and chairman of the Parliamentary Commerce and Energy Committee which was studying the bill, adjourned the committee on October 14. There was no opportunity for further discussion. Professor Batt said New Zealand’s drink-drive laws were probably the most ineffective in the world. Legislation closing loopholes in these laws would have been at least one step

towards helping to reduce the carnage and deaths caused by drink-related accidents, he said. If the Parliamentary committee had reported back to Parliament and the bill had become law on December 1, as Parliament had intended, the new measures would have been in force for the Christmas-New Year holiday period. "Traffic officers would be putting in overtime, doing their best through drinkdrive blitzes to cut down the carnage, but the legislators in Parliament by this delay are hindering rather than helping,” said Professor Batt.