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How many drinks will you have before you drive?
I don't have much of an opportunity to consider that now.
Because you have a driver?
Yes, generally. But prior to coming into parliament I would be a one to two drink person. That would be my own limit because you've got to be careful to make sure you can drive well. And that's the important.
That's the answer we've found in the response from the public. Why not bring the limit down now to match that?
There are a couple of things. Firstly, I'm not sure how you've done your research but there's been a mismatch for a period of time between what people believe you should drink before you drive, which as you pointed out is the very significant majority think it should be one to two drinks. And that's been consistent in the Ministry of Transport for some years, that's a similar story to what we've had previously. But there's been quite a disconnect between that and whether people want the limit lowered or not.
While there seems to be a growing view that that's the case, probably largely because of the amount of discussion that's been had, which I've contributed to as much as anybody. I think there is becoming a greater understanding of what the 0.08 limit means. Certainly as recently as 18 months ago many people thought, and I think there are still many people that do think, one to two drinks is the 0.08 limit.
There is an interesting history behind that. When Australians lowered their limit in the 90s in various states from 0.08 to 0.05 they ran some reasonably hard-hitting ads about how much it was safe to drink before you drove. My understanding was a number of those ads were imported into New Zealand and weren't changed.
The authorities at the time took the view that they could talk about one to two drinks. So for many people, they've always believed that to be the limit. So when you talk to them about lowering it further there are some people concerned that if they had one or two drinks after work, that they wouldn't be safe to drive, legally able to drive.
So in a way they set up a de facto limit the same as Australia by that publicity?
Sort of a de facto limit. I think that's right. For most responsible New Zealanders, most people would say a couple of drinks is their limit. Many of them would say only one. That's their own discipline. I think it has been a de facto limit of a vast number of New Zealanders for some time.
Are we at risk here of by talking about it by encouraging people to drink more and drive?
That is a risk and certainly one of the issues we had to consider when discussing what the limit meant. Counter to that you can't discuss policy unless you can actually discuss what it means. So it's a bit catch 22.
For a vast majority for New Zealanders who are pretty responsible about their driving and for themselves and for other people on the roads it wouldn't change their views at all. If you really look at where most of our drink driving problem is, a lot of it is for people who are well over the limit in terms of the accidents they cause.
That discussion is not likely to have a significant impact on them either. What you see with a lot of people who drink and drive and get those high numbers over the limit, they really are people with an alcohol problem that terms up on the road, as a lot of society's problems do because it's the road is such a democratic place.
That argument often voiced, that if you bring down the limit you are not getting the people that are way over, but there is scientific evidence to say that is not actually the case. There is data from Australia that bringing down the limit to a lower level cut the number of drivers extremely over the limit as well.
That was the data out of ACT. That's the one example where they've seen that. In fact they didn't see that in other states.
Generally what happens is when you have a law change of any type in the road rules you get an element of the change in behaviour is caused by the rule change, an element of it is cause by the publicity around the law change and an element is increased enforcement that occurs because of the law change.
For example if you change the cell phone law then the police will naturally try harder on that because this is a new thing. The public will be more aware of it. Then they'll be people doing it because it's now the law. You get a combination of things so it's hard to judge exactly what has caused what.
The officials make predictions but the reality is, if you ask can you guarantee this they generally don't.
The Ministry of Transport predicts the change could save lives, prevent injuries and save money so why not do it anyway, why waste two years on research?
We've taken the view it may well be done. You can step out in front and if the level of public support is not there then actually you don't get to make road safety changes.
The problem that the previous government got themselves into is they tried to rush doing a whole bunch of things that weren't getting the level of support out there that you want early on.
As a result they did virtually nothing. There was a huge backlog by the time we arrived because they had a fear of making any traffic law changes in case there was a backlash.
We've said there's a lot there to be done. We've got to work through the changes and we want to make sure there's a consensus for the changes that we make. In this particular example, this has been a debate that's been quite emotional for quite a long period of time. There is definitely a move towards accepting the need for a change at the same time, there is some data missing.
If you talk to the opponents of the change, their concern is that we actually don't know the impact of drivers in the range of 0.05 to 0.08 and the accidents that they cause on the road and the damage that they do.
The reality is we don't have that information. Cabinet looked at it and took the view that we should change the law to collect that information that will help develop the understanding of what a change would do and what it wouldn't do, in the meantime we've got a number of other changes we can make that will also have a very significant impact on the road - the changes around lower limits for repeat drink drivers, the interlocks, the nil limit for repeat drink drivers, the nil limit for young drivers and the increased penalties for the most dangerous offences - will have a very significant impact and we can collect data in the meantime and build a consensus that there is actually something that people won't turn around in six months and say why did we do that, it hasn't done enough. Or I'm not happy now because suddenly I'm a criminal now because I've had a couple of drinks.
Why were you willing to bring the limit down to zero yet leave the adult limit up?
Because we have fundamentally a very big problem with young drivers on our roads in a range of areas. One of them is alcohol.
We have a very high fatality rate for young drivers, much, much higher for Australia. One of the reasons for that is the number of young people that die in an accident when there is a young drink driver involved. There is significant numbers of passengers.
The younger you are the more likely you are to be susceptible to alcohol when driving, that's statistically proven. The least drunk young person gets to drive home.
It's poor judgement by the drivers and their passengers. We looked at it and discussed it with officials and around the cabinet and found the unambiguous no will be very clear-cut and straightforward for young drivers so they learn to drive with out the complicating aspect of alcohol.
In saying you've still got 76 per cent of drink drivers are adults, not young people. This is not just a youth issue.
That's true but if you look at those the majority are well over the limit. The first job is to somehow deal with repeat drive drivers and high drink drivers on the roads who aren't able to divorce their drinking behaviour from their drink driving behaviour.
How much is the research going to cost?
It's more the legal ability to collect the data that we need. If you've had an accident and you've had a couple of drinks and the police want to breath test and you do the sniff test and pass it. Even if you've had a couple of drinks they can't legally take an evidential breath test so you don't know if you are on 0.01 or 0.07. If someone dies in a fatal accident that data is collected. It's not particularly expensive to do it. The police are always interviewing after accidents anyway.
Do you support our Two Drinks Max campaign?
I think it's a very good initiative and I think the majority of people are doing that right now. If you get more people to do that, that's great.
Will you sign up?
I don't think it will be appropriate for me to sign up. At the end of the day I'm the person that has to go to cabinet and make these decisions so I think that would be a bit prejudicial to any campaign like that.
Are you afraid of looking like a nanny state on this issue?
I don't have a problem in that respect. We've done the cell phone law change. We've made other changes. The reality is that on the road we have to have a set of road rules and we change those road rules from time to time. It's different from shower nozzles. On the road you're in a reasonably democratic place and there's lots of people meeting. There have to be rules of how they share the roads.
Who are you getting resistance from? Who wants to keep it as it is?
There's lots of correspondence from both sides. This has been an emotional discussion in New Zealand for a long period of time, the pros and the antis. It roughly aligns to the level of understanding. If you said to somebody, you can have one drink or maybe two other the police pull you over and breath test you and you will lose your licence, some people would see that as going to far.
One of the problems with any arbitrary limit is people's tolerances to alcohol are different depending on their weight and gender and the whole thing. It's by necessity a bit of a blunt instrument.
For some people, the various surveys have been done, can drink 8 beers and not be over the limit, other people can drink one and half glasses of wine and be over the 0.5 limit. It's getting people's understanding of it. The correspondence I get is divided into those who think the law is just right the way it is now and we should go out an get the bad recidivists and high level drunk drivers and the others think we should send a strong message as to what the limit is with the change. Those two groups have been around for a long time.
I think it's moving in favour of lowering the limit over time but I think it would create a more durable consensus if we could collect the data that we can't actually collect in terms of the actual damage. It will also give us a clear understanding of what difference it would make and where the issues are.
I'm constantly getting the ministry to do more work on where the problems are because it won't be a silver bullet. It won't change the world. It won't change the world.
But according to the Ministry of Transport it could save 15 lives a year.
That's true but if you look at what they said the combination of enforcement, advertising and would save 15 lives a year. There are lots of caveats. I think it's a worthy initiative. That's why it's in Safer Journeys. Nobody's saying it shouldn't happen but we're just being cautious about when and making sure we have all the facts before we do it.
Are you getting pressure from the alcohol industry?
No. I've had one conversation with the Hospitality Association the entire time. I've had much more strident and aggressive by a factor of 10 by the anti-alcohol lobby. Those that think there shouldn't be any alcohol drunk at any cost.
What did the Hospitality Association say?
They raised the issue of country pubs and how it might be difficult for them. It was a very low-key discussion at the time.
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