The bill establishes a regime allowing police to carry out random roadside oral fluid screening tests to detect drivers with drugs in their system, with detailed thresholds and substances set through secondary legislation. It also includes review provisions to assess how the regime operates.
Parliament advanced this bill under urgency (committee of whole house, third reading) — moving it through faster than usual, with less time than normal for public submissions.
These are claims MPs made in Parliament’s debate — not verified facts.
This bill sets up a regime letting Police carry out random roadside oral fluid (saliva) tests to screen drivers for drugs, working much like the existing random breath testing for alcohol. Drivers can be stopped and screened without prior suspicion; the specific drugs tested for and the detection thresholds are set through secondary legislation (rules made under the Act rather than written into it). A driver who fails or refuses a test can face an infringement penalty and be barred from driving for a set period. It affects all drivers and Police, and includes provisions to review how the regime operates.
The bill is a coalition road-safety measure, modelled on regimes already used in Australia. The main argument for is safety: officials point to drugs and alcohol as leading factors in fatal crashes and say quick roadside screening will deter drug-impaired driving. The main arguments against, raised by legal groups, concern the accuracy of saliva screening — the risk of false positives and of detecting drugs after impairment has passed — and the civil-liberties implications of random testing.
See the Parliament.nz ↗ site for the full bill.