So it was for Taieri New Zealand First list MP Mark Patterson on Wednesday. The House was sitting under urgency and in extended hours, and he was scheduled to be the duty minister in the House — standing orders dictate that there must be at least one minister in the House at all times.
When Parliament adjourned the previous night, it had been debating the committee stages of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill, a piece of legislation far from Mr Patterson’s bailiwick of rural communities and agriculture.
No such luck though as the minister responsible for the Bill, Transport Minister Chris Bishop, was nowhere to be seen — presumably off in sunny Auckland getting ready for the Investment Summit he has been placed in charge of.
That meant that a minister had to deputise for him: the previous evening that had been the entirely qualified for the job James Meager, who as well as being Minister for the South Island, until recently chaired the justice select committee and is an associate transport minister.
But, alas, Mr Meager was also not in the chamber, meaning that the duty minister was next cab off the rank. And that meant that Mr Patterson started his day doing a crash course on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill.
Pun intended, because stopping crashes is exactly what this Bill aims to do. As the current TV advertising campaign tells us, a substantial number of injury and fatality road crashes can be partially, if not entirely, attributed to a driver being impaired by drugs — in 2023, there were 64 fatalities where the presence of drugs was detected in the driver, and a further 32 drivers were found to have both drugs and alcohol in their systems.
The current Bill seeks to introduce a roadside saliva testing system for police to assess drivers they suspect of not being fit to be on the road.
If this seems familiar, it should. Parliament passed this way before, in 2022, but it transpired that the testing regime could not be implemented because no devices met the legislative requirements for approved use. Whoops.
But seriously, not only is this a tricky area of science, this is also a fraught area of law as an argument can be made — now as it was then — that such testing amounts to unreasonable search and seizure.
What’s more, should the whole process take a long time, it could also amount to being unwarranted detention: both would be in breach of the NZ Bill of Rights.
Tricky stuff to get your head around in a few minutes: junior ministers are hardly expected to know every detail of every government Bill.
Happily for Mr Patterson, assistant speaker Greg O’Connor, who was chairing the committee of the whole, decided to take a few calls on part one of the Bill before inviting the minister to respond.
This is the kind of situation where those much-derided bureaucrats come into their own, as Mr Paterson was supplied with a steady stream of notes and post-it noted briefing papers as the questions — including some from southern Green list MPs Scott Willis and Francisco Hernandez — started to pile up.
Mr Willis wanted to know what evidence base showed that drugged driving testing actually worked, how it could be implemented in such a way as to avoid discrimination and what thought had been given to those on prescription drugs. In a generous nod to his Taieri colleague, he also asked how it would affect rural communities.
Dunedin list MP Mr Hernandez, meanwhile, inquired about what would amount to success for the government if the Bill became law?
"I’d say there are some broader policy issues there that go a little bit away from [the Bill] ... but the minister looks like he’s keen to answer," Mr O’Connor said.
Whether the minister was keen to answer was a moot point, but answer it he did.
"This is not a good thing having people driving around under the influence of drugs. We’re intending to do something about this," Mr Patterson started promisingly.
"I’m sure successive governments will look upon making this as effective as they can, but these are the measures that we are putting in place at this time. We intend to deliver on them."
Mr Paterson then answered a question from Labour’s Tangi Utikere (whom he seemingly came perilously close, with profuse apologies, to calling Tangi "Ukulele"), before regaining his poise and handing back some good old-fashioned NZ First rhetoric to Mr Willis: "I think the New Zealand police force are an incredibly professional force. We have absolutely backed them on this side of the House, and I think insinuations that they’d somehow be biased when operationalising this legislation we would refute."
And with that Mr Patterson was into his stride, handling the rest of part one and a decent chunk of part two with, if not aplomb, certainly with enough competence to keep the wheels of Parliament grinding on long enough for Mr Meager to come to his rescue.
The honourable member for the Otago University Students Association
Mr Hernandez was briefly stumped by parliamentary courtesy during his contribution as he struggled to work out whether James Meager was the Hon James Meager, or not.
"He is an ‘Hon’, I can assure you," Mr O’Connor helpfully clarified.
"Thank you, Mr Chair. I would never question the honour of a former fellow Otago University Students’ Association exec member and a former Otago graduate no less," Mr Hernandez replied.
