Editorial, Tuesday August 18, 2015

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

IT WOULD be too much to expect that every employee of every government department is totally committed to upholding whatever standards of behaviour those departments demand of us ordinary people, but revelations about the driving habits of New Zealand Transport Agency staff are mind boggling.

The NZ Herald broke the news that NZTA staff had been caught "hooning" on at least 8500 occasions in nine months, from one end of the country to the other, including in Kaitaia, the Hokianga, Mangonui and the Bay of Islands. We know this because the cars have been fitted with GPS, which the drivers were aware of, meaning their positions and speeds could be and were recorded.

It has been calculated that NZTA cars exceeded 100km/h, presumably (but we're not sure) on the open road, a staggering 34,000 times in nine months. That equates to more than 240 times per car, suggesting that this isn't a matter of a few speed demons but a well entrenched culture.

A three-month sample of the data reportedly showed that at least 45 of the department's cars, from a fleet of just 139, had been driven consistently at speeds of more than 110km/h. The Herald's analysis found 910 cases of cars doing more than 120km/h, 130 doing more than 130km/h, and eight doing more than 140km/h. A member of the NZTA's senior leadership has been implicated, as have a number of managers.

These are the people who repeatedly tell us that the faster we go the bigger the mess, that the speed at which we drive affects other people, and persistently exhort us to obey speed limits. The website currently tells us that in 2013 speeding was a factor in 74 fatal crashes, 305 serious injury crashes and 988 minor injury crashes.

We now know that the NZTA works on the basis that those who don't have access to a department car should do as it says, not as it does, but some questions remain. For example, chief executive Geoff Dangerfield has been quoted as saying that staff who had been identified as breaking speed limits had had "formal conversations" with their managers, which apparently equated to verbal warnings. Further breaches could result in dismissal.

Ironically, GPS units had been installed in the cars to promote health and safety, not only of their drivers, one assumes, but also of the innocent people they could well maim or kill. Now that the information was to hand, Mr Dangerfield added, it was a matter of how it would be used to "turn the situation around."

Not only how it is used, Mr Dangerfield, but when. Given that these data were collected over nine months, it would be reasonable to ask when the chats with managers began - after a pattern began to emerge or after it became public knowledge? It is difficult to believe that any responsible employer, public or private, would sit on figures like this for months without doing anything, especially having gone to the trouble and expense of fitting vehicles with GPS.

There can be no other explanation for fitting GPS than a desire to ensure that drivers were behaving themselves, and if it has taken more than nine months for the department to react to these extraordinary figures, one might ask why Mr Dangerfield himself is not facing dismissal. If the department responded more quickly than that, it would seem that the chats are not working.

A report to the NZTA's senior leadership team in March included data from January, when there were three occasions of drivers exceeding 131km/h, and one exceeded 135km/h for a sustained period. In February there were four cases of exceeding 135km/h for sustained periods, and one of reaching 144km/h.

Apart from anything else, how is it that these people can drive at such speeds and live to tell the tale? We are encouraged to believe that if we speed there is a very good chance that we, or someone else, will die, or end up in a wheelchair. NZTA drivers seem to get away with it; perhaps they have been overstating the dangers. Unless, of course, they are maiming and killing themselves and others on a regular basis and no one tells us. Unlikely, but such is the NZTA's credibility now that some people might believe almost anything.

But there's more. Not one of these speeding drivers were caught by the cops. Given that there is absolutely no suggestion that they have immunity, one has to wonder just how ineffective the policing of speed limits has become. For all the angst about police having ticket quotas and accusations that the policing of speed limits is more about revenue-gathering than public safety, it seems that the chances of getting caught are infinitesimal. NZTA staff might have an advantage over the rest of us by virtue of knowing where the fixed speed cameras are, but their collective luck in avoiding penalty verges on unbelievable.

But if the police can't or won't do anything about it, perhaps other drivers can. Earlier this year NZTA senior executives were tweeted by a woman who apparently found it "hilarious" to see a department car speeding on an Auckland motorway. Perhaps next time she will stop laughing long enough to note its registration and give it to the police. Better still, she might phone *555 and report it instantly.

Dealing drugsJudge John McDonald, who, incidentally, from the writer's experience does a very good job in this community, has come in for some stick over his jailing of Kaikohe woman Kelly van Gaalen on a conviction of possessing cannabis for supply. She had denied the charge, but was convicted by a jury in the Kaikohe District Court.

That has sparked a new debate as to whether cannabis should be legalised, but that aside, every man and his dog seems to have taken the view that this woman has been treated harshly, not only in terms of softening attitudes towards using cannabis, but more pertinently perhaps on the basis of precedent. The appeals that have been lodged against conviction and sentence might well find solid ground on the latter point, but there is one not so small detail in this story that Judge McDonald's critics have overlooked. By her own admission, van Gaalen had been supplying cannabis to 'close personal friends.'

The test for drug dealing does not rely upon money changing hands. The admission that she had been giving it away, having apparently enjoyed spectacular success with a solitary plant (and that is a not uncommon explanation for the possession of substantial quantities of the drug), supports the charge of possession for supply, and subsequent conviction. It is simply not true to argue that no evidence of 'dealing' had been found.

Kelly van Gaalen is hardly the reincarnation of Mr Asia, but she has been found guilty of breaking the law, however some might regard that law as outdated and punitive. It is worth remembering too that cannabis is not harmless. It has done and is doing huge damage in this community, and those who grow and supply it should not expect a great deal of sympathy.

Kelly van Gaalen has clearly made a hugely valuable contribution to Kaikohe, and will hopefully do so again in the future. Her fall from grace might also make a positive contribution, however, by reminding others that drug abuse is a scourge, and that no one is above the law.