Laws feels heat over ticket from radio mates

Michael Laws. Photo / Wanganui Chronicle

Outspoken talkshow host Michael Laws has been dealt a dose of his own medicine, taking heat from his radio colleagues for driving with an unrestrained child.

Fellow Radio Live presenters John Tamihere and Willie Jackson spoke to the Wanganui mayor on-air yesterday after publicity about an $150 instant fine.

He was pulled over on the Hobson St on-ramp to the Southern Motorway on Sunday with an unbuckled child on the lap of his estranged partner, Leonie Brookhammer.

In February, Mr Laws spoke out against the parents of 10-year-old Blake Fowlie, who was killed on a trail bike near Paeroa, and Federated Farmers.

Mr Tamihere said yesterday: "You took a very robust stance, for instance, on four-wheel drive regulation and the like, and took Federated Farmers to task quite vigorously, because of the number of deaths of young people on four-wheel drive bikes, right?"

Mr Laws agreed.

"And then they wake up this morning and they've seen the papers that Michael Laws has his child, unrestrained, on the front seat of a vehicle, on very busy Auckland motorways."

Mr Laws said that made it sound like the child was sitting on the seat alone.

"It wasn't. The mother was - mum was buckled in. She was holding the little child close to her, comforting her in the way in which mothers do."

Mr Tamihere asked why he was defending the lack of restraint for the child.

"Well I'm sorry but it wasn't floating around on the seat all by itself," Mr Laws said.

The mother had been holding the child "dear to her", comforting her.

Mr Tamihere said the unrestrained child would be a missile in an accident, but Mr Laws said the mother had hold of it and airbags would "go up straight away".

"Okay so baby gets squashed to death," said Mr Tamihere.

Mr Laws said he didn't object to scrutiny, but criticised the police for "deliberately" deciding to reveal the incident "to create a public embarrassment of a public figure, who had already been dealt with by the law".

He has laid a complaint with the Independent Police Conduct Authority.

Mr Laws suggested he had been dobbed in because of past criticism of two "botched" police investigations - the deaths of the Kahui twins and the fatal shooting of liquor store owner Navtej Singh.

"In both those issues I thought that different police procedures might have been used.

"And I guess - and remember they prosecuted me ... The same Auckland police prosecuted me for contempt of court in 2008."

Child health experts and the Plunket Society were adamant yesterday that children should never be carried without proper restraint in vehicles, regardless of the circumstances.

"Nobody knows when a crash is going to occur and the chances of an unrestrained child being severely injured or killed in a crash are exacerbated significantly," said Plunket's national child safety adviser, Sue Campbell, whose organisation is holding a two-day conference in Auckland next week on the subject.

"If a child is restrained properly, they have a far greater chance of surviving a crash."

Neither Ms Campbell nor Starship children's hospital specialists accepted the excuse given by Mr Laws to his Radio Live audience that his front-seat passenger in a car he was driving was offering "a sick and distressed infant some instant comfort under a unique set of circumstances".

Intensive care specialist Dr Liz Segedin dismissed Mr Laws' claim that his passenger could have kept hold of her child in an accident and that airbags would have helped.

"Airbags would have killed the child outright and there is no way that mother would have been able to have restrained that child."

Paediatric Society president Dr Rosemary Marks said it was "not safe for the child, it is not safe for the parent and it is not safe for other road users".

"In an accident the child becomes a missile that can either be injured against parts of the car or can injure other people in the car or be thrown out of the car into an oncoming vehicle.

"If a child is already unwell, then has an accident causing further injury, their chances of survival are going to be further impaired."