Page 2373 - Week 06 - Thursday, 24 June 2010
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chaired by the Department of Territory and Municipal Services, and included representatives from ACT Policing, the Department of Justice and Community Safety, ACT courts, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Government Solicitor’s Office and ACT Health.
My department also liaised with the current providers of alcohol awareness and education courses, the Alcohol and Drug Foundation ACT, ADFACT, on aspects of proposed reforms. The expert working group developed a series of potential reforms to the existing drink-driving laws. These were considered by the most recent road safety roundtable which I co-chaired with Alan Evans from NRMA Motoring and Services.
There was broad support from roundtable participants to proceed with the reforms that were flagged. I am pleased to now be able to present to the Assembly a package of changes to the ACT’s drink-driving laws which are intended to reduce the incidence of drink driving by reinforcing the message “drink or drive”; removing continuing access to a driver licence for more drink-driving offenders; and having all drink drivers complete an appropriate alcohol awareness course.
I will now outline the details of the reforms made by the bill. The first change to the drink-driving laws made by the bill is to reduce the blood or breath alcohol concentration, or BAC, for special drivers from the current .02 limit to zero. Special drivers include learner, provisional, public vehicle and heavy vehicle drivers as well as persons who hold a restricted licence.
The current ACT limit for special drivers is 0.02 grams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. The bill will make the BAC for this group of drivers zero, as is the case in all other jurisdictions except Western Australia. A zero BAC for this class of drivers is appropriate given the novice driver status of learner and provisional drivers, the special responsibilities of drivers of public and heavy vehicles and the need to send a message to persons on a restricted licence who have already committed a drink-driving offence that alcohol and driving do not mix.
For younger and inexperienced drivers it also avoids the uncertainty created by the current .02 limit, about whether it is possible to drink a small amount of alcohol and not have their driving impaired. There is evidence to suggest that novice drivers find it difficult to effectively monitor their alcohol consumption to stay below .02. This change will send the simple message to this group of drivers: drink or drive.
I understand that a concern sometimes raised about the zero BAC limit for certain drivers, which was raised by some respondents to the discussion paper, is whether they may commit an offence as a result of innocently consumed alcohol such as communion wine, cough mixture or consuming, say, a sherry or alcohol-based trifle. I am advised that there is evidence showing that, in practice, this is unlikely to be a real problem because cough mixtures or foods prepared with alcohol when consumed in normal quantities are unlikely to influence BAC levels to an extent which would seriously interfere with the measurement of a driver’s BAC.
Nonetheless, I am aware that New South Wales took the precautionary measure of including a limited defence in its legislation for drivers who register a BAC between
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