Page 2377 - Week 06 - Thursday, 24 June 2010
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awareness course before they are eligible to have their licence returned. In practice, what will happen is that, when a person is caught drink driving by police, the person will be provided with information to the effect that if the person is convicted or found guilty of drink driving the person will have to complete an approved alcohol awareness course before getting access to any form of driver licence.
Over the coming months, my department will be working with other government and non-government agencies to settle the requirements for approved courses and to invite providers of alcohol education courses that meet those requirements to seek approval of those courses.
Apart from the measures in the bill to deter drink driving and provide for alcohol awareness education, there are some other amendments that have been included to improve the administration of the drink-driving legislation. The first of these is a change in the process of managing blood samples taken from drink drivers or suspected drink drivers. Currently, when a blood sample is taken, it is split into two containers. The first is sent to the Government Analytical Laboratory for analysis. In most cases the second sample is given to the person from whom it has been taken. If the person is incapable of taking the second sample—for example, where they are unconscious following an accident—the second sample is also sent to the laboratory.
The purpose of providing a second sample to the person is to allow them to have their own analysis of the sample undertaken, if they wish. I am advised that very few people pursue this, probably due to the long-established accuracy of blood analysis. Given the low level of use of the second samples currently taken, and the potential public health issues created by handing people vials of blood, the bill provides for a single sample of blood to be taken and forwarded to the laboratory for analysis. However, in order to preserve the opportunity for a defendant to have an independent analysis of the blood sample provided, the new provisions require the laboratory to take reasonable care to retain sufficient of the sample to be able to make a portion of the sample available to the defendant on request for that purpose.
The bill amends the provision describing how the concentration of alcohol in a person’s blood is to be measured. The act currently refers to the measurement in terms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. However, many newer breath testing machines record and report breath analysis in terms of grams of alcohol per 210 litres of breath, which provides an equivalent. The legislation is amended to reflect this. Finally, the bill includes a provision for a register of approved operators of breath analysis devices.
I have set out the key provisions of the bill, but I will, in the time remaining, take the opportunity to mention another measure which has been raised over the last 12 months as a potential response to drink driving and to indicate the government’s view on this, which is that we will not proceed with it. The suggestion was raised last year, to which I was attracted, that the naming and shaming of drink drivers would be a potential deterrent to drink driving, and I indicated that I would consider this proposal and, in particular, any legal or privacy issues it might raise.
While the advice provided on these issues is that there are no fundamental legal barriers to implementing some form of naming and shaming, it must also be acknowledged that it has not been possible to identify any sound evidence which
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