Ivan Dean, Speeches Index

Wednesday 14 November 2007

ROAD SAFETY (ALCOHOL AND DRUGS) AMENDMENT BILL 2007

Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - I support the bill but I have one or two issues with it and for the benefit of members, I am circulating some amendments that I will move in the Committee stage if we get to the Committee stage. I am fairly confident we will get there. As I said yesterday during my noting of the police annual report, at page 59 of that report there is evidence of the number of people now driving vehicles whilst they are impacted to some degree by the consumption of alcohol. At page 59 let us refer again to random breath test numbers exceeding prescribed limit. Since the 2002-03 year there has been a reasonably steady increase every year in the number of persons arrested for exceeding the breathalyser limit during programmed RBT testing. These testing sites are set up on main roads and well traversed areas and so it is fair to say that most people using those roads would expect to meet police from time to time.

Despite that the number has increased steadily over that period up until this year. In 2002-03 it was 3 783, but this year it was 4 426. As the member for Montgomery mentioned yesterday, a greater number of people were subjected to random breath testing in that period. But really that does not matter. What it demonstrates is that there are a lot of people out there driving vehicles with alcohol in their body.

And I guess the higher the number of RBTs that are completed, the greater that number will continue to increase. That is the worry, because one would be hoping that the number would decrease with the number of RBTs being conducted. It is not happening. If you go across to the other column on that same page, total drink-driving charges, and if you read above the graph it relates to it says:

'In addition to random breath testing, drivers may be tested under other circumstances depending on the seriousness of the offence. The driver may be issued an infringement notice or be charged.'

In that category there has been a steady increase also. In 2002-03 there were 5 086, but the number this year reached 5 900. So there is a lot of evidence that people are driving when they have consumed alcohol in excess of the limit that is provided for at law. People are ignoring that. So very clearly that sends a strong message to the Government that there is a need to change the laws, to make the penalties harsher and penalise those people who ought not be behind the wheel of a vehicle in certain circumstances.

It is pretty damning evidence that our current laws are not strong enough. Perhaps our current policing methods need looking at as well and I continually raise that. It is all very well to have the laws there and to have the strength in those laws, but unless we have our policing strategies right and our educational programs right we are not going to be too successful. We have to get it right across the board. I do not think that licensees and that are exempt from this either. Licensees very clearly have a major part in this whole thing in educating people leaving their premises after they have consumed alcohol. I think there is some responsibility on those people. I do not know what they do in relation to clients whom they know.

Ms Thorp - Put them up for the night.

Mr DEAN - I do not know about that, but they know in many instances that the habitual drinkers go out and still drive their vehicles. They know that, so one would think that they would also be doing something to try to prevent that from happening. I am not convinced that they are doing enough.

We have a lot of publicity given to this. You read it in the papers, you see it on the television, you are confronted all the time. You have signs out there about drinking and driving. I do not know how much more really a government or anybody else can do to try to get this message through. The only thing that is left, in my view, apart from all those people coming board, is to make the penalties much stronger and have people realise that if they commit these offences and if they get caught then they are going to suffer a tremendous penalty at the end of the day. Not only will they suffer but perhaps people who depend on them will also suffer as a part of that.

I agree that harsher penalties are necessary and I also agree that those penalties are necessary closer to the time of the offences. There is a lot of evidence - and the member for Nelson would probably be able to speak more about this - that in many instances where people are apprehended and charged with drink-driving the matter is not dealt with for six months or 12 months and there have probably been cases gone on for longer than that, Madam Deputy President. And those people have still been able to drive in the meantime. As the member in the lower House quite often says, 'Justice delayed is justice denied'. It is important to mete out justice as quickly as can be done.

I think also - and I will obviously refer to these matters later in Committee as well - that if we are going to give a police officer the authority to act as an arresting officer and then be the judge and the jury and the person with the ability to take a licence from a person, we need to have in place safety mechanisms that can ensure that there is not likely to be any abuse of that and that good decisions are made. We need to ensure that that occurs. Hence the amendment that I have referred to and which I think has now been distributed to members.

Mr Parkinson - That is acceptable, by the way. We will agree with that.

Mr DEAN - Thank you very much for that. I believe it is an important amendment and will give people a lot more confidence in these changes going forward, because it does relate to a number of other acts of Parliament where police officers are given an authority over and above that of arrest where that extra authority is normally given to an inspector of police and/or above. In this instance I do not see that it needs to be that high, but I am glad that the Government will support those amendments.

Because with some of these offences there are minimum periods of disqualification I think that there will be some pressure on the police and the Justice department to get these people before a court as soon as is practicable. If that does not occur, I could see some of the suspensions or disqualifications imposed by police to be greater than that which might otherwise be imposed by a magistrate and/or a judge, but a magistrate in most instances. I am not quite sure where we are going there and perhaps the Leader might be able to provide some information as to what is likely to occur, because there are occasions where there may be good reason for a matter being adjourned for a long period of time. There are a number of reasons for that occurring.

Mr Wilkinson - The police could be on holidays, which often occurs and has nothing to do with the defendant at all.

Mr DEAN - It does occur and I pose the question, what will happen where a person is suffering a suspension in those circumstances? It will be an interesting issue and perhaps the Leader may l be able to answer that in due course.

There is an appeal process against that disqualification that can be imposed by a police officer, but there will be a certain period of time in getting that appeal before a magistrate, so whilst that is occurring the licence will be suspended. In some instances this will cause tremendous hardship for some of those people. Once again this is a reason why we should and need to get it right in the first place. One can only hearken back to, although I do not know why, one of the main stories in today's paper 'Ben's bungle boost'. We know very well that police do get it wrong from time to time and the case of Ben Cousins is a good example of where the police got it wrong twice. Not once, they got it wrong twice in the same incident.

Mr Parkinson - He got it wrong a third time by going on a bender in the US.

Mr DEAN - Well he did.

Mr Parkinson - Such is life.

Mr DEAN - He did not only get it wrong the third time, he has got it wrong many times, one being playing for the Eagles, but I am glad he is not playing with the Tigers. It is an indication that the police do get it wrong from time to time. I know that they deal with thousands of cases, hundreds of thousands of cases and they get it wrong in a minuscule number in the overall context of what they are involved in. They do a magnificent job but you have to be able to look at those areas where occasionally it does go wrong.

Another example I can give is of an elderly gentleman, in fact in his 80s, who came to see me in a very distressed state recently. I spoke to the member for Nelson about his. He came to me because he had been breathalysed and he knew that he could not have exceeded the limit. He had consumed, I think, two or three light beers and he is a very honest man. He knew exactly what he had consumed. He came to me in tears and when I read the printout from the breathalyser and the other documentation he had been given the reading at time he was pulled up had his address but the wrong name had been recorded on the document. When I pursued that it was found that there was an error within the breathalyser itself. There was a technical error in it and that matter was withdrawn and away he went. If this legislation is approved that person could well have lost their licence during that period of time so we need to ensure that everything is in place to ensure that that does not happen.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that where these drivers in those four circumstances are issued with the notice not to drive, which is equivalent to that of a disqualification notice, if they are later picked up for driving whilst they are disqualified under these circumstances, I wonder what the further position will be. I notice that there is an amendment where police officers will be able to arrest without warrant any person driving whilst disqualified. I think that that is a good amendment and I support that. I have no difficulty with that. I suspect in this situation it is akin to driving while disqualified in all of the circumstances and will be treated fairly harshly.

I again raise an issue similar to the one I raised yesterday. A lot of people who are disqualified will tell you that they sit at home knowing they have been disqualified, their car sits out on a nature strips, in the garage or the driveway. There they are without a licence and obviously wanting to use that vehicle. It is a real magnet to them and it is the incentive, as a lot will tell you, to want to drive that vehicle. You wonder whether or not in some of these cases where -

Mr Wilkinson - It is like cigarettes being displayed at points of sale.

Mr DEAN - You are probably right and that is a debate we will get into next week. In some situations using the anti-hooning legislation we are now able to take and impound vehicles. For the first offence the vehicle is impounded now for seven days, I think, and it goes up if you commit second and third offences up to when you can lose and have your vehicle destroyed. So I wonder with drink driving whether there should be disqualification from driving on second or third offences and whether there ought to be the authority to also impound those vehicles for a period of time. I do not know what a suitable period of time would be but I think it would prevent and stop a lot of further offences being committed.

Mr Wilkinson - Or they could be at another person's premises and therefore -

Mr DEAN - Or impounded somewhere else away from where that person is residing, because it is a real attraction to them to want to drive. If the vehicle is there they want to drive and they go and jump into it and away they go. They run the gauntlet, as it were. I think that we need to seriously consider some of those issues. The unfortunate thing about it is that some people do that again whilst under the influence of alcohol and that is when they are really at their lowest ebb. Having consumed alcohol, they do not think straight, they do not think properly, the vehicle is there and away they go. I think we could probably prevent some of that occurring as well.

The other matter I just briefly refer to, Mr President, is the area that is covered in this bill that police have frequently been troubled by - and I use the word 'frequently' but it is occurring constantly really - the identification of drivers in some car collisions, particularly where the scene resembles a bomb site, and that does happen where vehicles have collided at high speed and it is very difficult to identify who the driver might have been at the time. People are thrown out and there are other instances where there are deliberate attempts to cover up the identity of the driver at the time, so I believe that is a very good amendment and I could not see a member in this House not supporting it.

Police have been in some very difficult circumstances in relation to this side of things over a long period of time and, after all is said and done, what it is about, Mr President, is identifying whether or not a driver at the time was capable of having proper control of a vehicle and it is about ensuring that people are being responsible. That is what this is about, police wanting to do their job properly. This amendment will allow them, one would think, in most situations to gauge an alcohol or a drug reading for anybody who might have been involved in an accident; they have the ability to at least test everybody at the scene who was involved in that vehicle at the time of a collision.

Ms Forrest - They still have to establish who the driver was.

Mr DEAN - They still have to identify the driver but police have found in many instances that the identity of the driver will normally come out. Often it is discovered through information provided to police from family members or from other people within the vehicle.

Mr President, the situation now is that if evidence does not come out then police have lost any ability that they had to test the driver and to gauge what the driver's condition was at the time of driving the vehicle. They can do really nothing about it.

Mr Parkinson - If they have the ability to analyse them all it might encourage the ones who were not the driver to tell the police who was.

Mr DEAN - That is absolutely right. I do not know how police could use that at a scene. I think it could be considered to be unfair and courts might not like that. But if all people are told that they are going to be blood tested, or what have you, at the scene of an accident to determine the driver, then there might be some incentive for them to come forward.

Mr Parkinson - I would imagine that is what the police would have to do. If nobody will own up as to who was the driver you will find the attending officer saying that they are going to have to take them all in for blood analysis unless they tell who the driver is. There would be nothing wrong with that.

Mr DEAN - That would be quite proper in the circumstances, I would think, if they did it that way, and no doubt that is what may well happen. As I said at the beginning, I believe that every member in this Chamber will be supporting this legislation because there is a need to ensure that those people who exceed the breathalyser limit, those people who are driving vehicles while impacted on by alcohol, are caught. If they are caught we must ensure that they are punished sufficiently to act as a deterrent. Again that is what this amendment is about; it is about showing those people that if they continue to do these things and they get caught they will suffer severely.

During the Committee stage there are some issues I will be raising and I am grateful that, in one instance, the Government indicated that they will be supporting the amendment that I have put forward.

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