Page 5300 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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on this Bill, we agree with him on the next Bill, and we agree with his view of Mr Humphries that we read about in the paper this morning.
The Motor Traffic (Alcohol and Drugs) (Amendment) Bill, of course, implements the final part of the 10-point package on road safety. I think it is really appropriate this evening that we congratulate the Federal Minister, Mr Bob Brown, who was the driving force behind this 10-point package. The ongoing carnage on Australian roads is something that has long been complained about, but Federal governments have never really seized the initiative to propose uniformity of law. However, it was the Federal Minister who took the initiative at a conference in Perth earlier this year. I am not sure whether it was at that conference that we read about the Minister falling asleep, or whether that was another one of the conferences. It was a conference in Perth earlier this year, and all States and Territories agreed with the initiative of Mr Brown to introduce this 10-point package. Earlier in the sittings we saw other points being implemented as amendments to the Motor Traffic Act.
This is perhaps the most important amendment, as it affects the community. It is certainly the most widely talked of amendment, because it affects the alcohol limit for drivers. The amendment reduces, in effect, the level from .08 to .05 generally, and introduces an even lower level of .02, which is, in effect, a zero alcohol level. It really means that a person cannot drink. It is .02 for the obvious reason that a person may be on some mild form of medication or have partaken of port-dipped fruit cake and not have a zero reading. For all practical purposes, a .02 blood alcohol reading is a zero alcohol reading. It simply means that persons who drive heavy motor vehicles - vehicles of over 15 tonnes - people who drive public motor vehicles, or people who drive vehicles that are carrying dangerous goods simply cannot drink at all, and then drive. That is a situation that has, in fact, achieved fairly broad community acceptance. One could have perhaps expected some opposition to that, but it seems to be generally supported in the community as the inevitable consequence of concern on the road toll.
The other amendment, of course, relates to younger drivers, or inexperienced drivers, and provides that a person under the age of 25 years who is not an experienced driver - that is, a driver who has had a licence for more than three years - must also subscribe to the .02 level. I suppose there could be an argument that that inexperienced driver rule ought not to apply just to persons under 25. Indeed, a person at 30, 40, 50 or 60 who first gets a licence may be seen as an inexperienced driver. Perhaps there is a case for that rule to apply to them as well; but statistics clearly show that it is the under-25-year-olds who, sadly, figure most heavily in the road toll and, sadly, most often have a concentration of alcohol in excess of the legal limits.
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