N.Z. Party wants police to replace traffic officers

Press, 19 February 1986, Page 22

N.Z. Party wants police to replace traffic officers

PA Palmerston North The police should take over the role of traffic surveillance and law enforcement, and the jobs of Ministry of Transport officers should be abolished, says the leader of the New Zealand Party, Mr John Galvin.

Ministry of Transport checkpoints on roads are a time-wasting public relations exercise and "an invasion of individual liberty and personal privacy,” he says.

Mr Galvin made his comments in an interview on Monday before addressing the Palmerston North Rotary Club on the drinking-driving issue. He

indicated that his views reflected party policy under a remit adopted at the annual conference. He told Rotarians later that traffic patrols, under the wings of the Police Department, would take a much more pragmatic approach to the drinking driver.

Mr Galvin said he believed the problem of drinking and driving was linked directly to New Zealanders’ attitudes to alcohol.

The solution, he suggested, could be in education and the removal of archaic drinking laws. The New Zealand Party would “abolish every bit

of legislation that makes up the most hopeless mish-mash of drinking laws that anyone could imagine — apart from the age requirement” The laws, all designed to prevent drunkenness, were not working, Mr Galvin said. “If there is a demand for 24-hour pubs, we would have them,” he said, citing a change in people’s attitudes to drink as the only real solution to the “horrifying” road toll statistics. Mr Galvin said the main problem with traffic officers was that they had limited power to deal with confrontations.