It's official. This government is just the same as the last one. The "honeymoon" is over and it's time to get dictatorial.

Headline this morning: "Plan to raise age for driving". Some of you might remember that a short while ago the ministry of transport put out a "consultation paper" with regard to changes that they wanted to make to transport in NZ. I guess there were quite a few submissions - mine was one of them.

There was even a - temporary - online discussion forum for interested people to discuss land transport matters. One of the post said (paraphrased as obviously I can't remember the exact words) "this is all a waste of time because I reckon that the bureaucrats in the transport department have already made up their minds what they will do and they are looking for a few people whom they can point the finger at and say 'the public broadly agreed with us'". On the list that the poster had suggested was on the agenda was "raising the driving age".

Well it would seem that that is EXACTLY what the attitude was. As usual they quote all sorts of emotive garbage that has nothing whatsoever to do with raising the driving age, like xxxx number of 15 and 16 year olds were involved in xxxx number of "crashes" (note how there are never any "accidents" today, they are always "crashes" - and I always believed that "crash" wasn't even a real word but just some sort of sound that a baby might make to denote something hitting something else, a "baby talk word" like "bikkie" for biscuit, or "geegee" for horse).

Anyway, here's the link to the story:

Plan to raise age for driving | Stuff.co.nz

See how silly, obvious and plainly idiotic government bureaucrats can be?

We've got to stop kidding ourselves, there is no "consultation" only government agendas - or rather more accurately bureaucratic agendas, coz we all know that it is the government bureaucrat with the obsessive personal agenda who really makes all the decisions. Politicians only get mega-bucks for passing silly legislation and telling lies all the time.

What I can't understand is how is raising the driving age going to help? Really?

I would be more agreeable to them limiting the CC rating of a vehicle driven by a learner/restricted or perhaps under 18 year old driver, like they do for a motor bike license.

Thoughts anyone?

I think there will be no difference at all to the road toll, no difference to "safety" (I think we have a whole generation of people totally confused about the true meaning of the word "safety" as "safety" is how a word that politicians or any gov't department can use to mean whatever it wants it to mean, and as an excuse for all sorts of ludicrous ideas and silly rules).

I think the reason behind raising the driving age is because some nasty, spiteful, bureaucrat in the transport department thought "well I had the opportunity to get my DL at 15, and it was sort of a NZ tradition - a right of passage to adulthood - now I'm going to do my best to make sure that young people today do not have that opportunity). Just like when bureaucrats in government decided that people would pay for their own tertiary education. Their thinking was something like "my own tertiary education was easy and didn't cost me anything, now I'm going to make sure that the next generation has a massive debt before they even start to work". You know sort of "I've had this thing but nobody else is going to get it because I will make them pay, pay, pay".

People who make these decisions do not live in the real world. They work in government departments and start work at 8 or 9 O'clock in the morning, finishing at 4.30pm (nobody else works a 7 and a half hour day) and use public transport all the time. They think that everybody else does too, or those that matter do. I think it is requirement to work in a government dep't that you do not have the ability to reason.

I think government realises that raising the driving age will now help anything one iota, they don't care. They just won't let this little fact get in the way of their spite.

Just adding. Yep, limiting the CC rating of a vehicle driven by a young teenager would be a good idea. I hadn't thought of that.

Wow perhaps I am the first person to think of it ............

I have lots of other good ideas too......if anyone would listen ahaaa

Yeah ...... go ahead!

I'm here anyway. And I write to my MP regularly (in fact he's sick of it).

Every day between 1.00am and 2.30am I am here on this computer, so moot any ideas that you have.

Looks like it's a done deal. Always was I guess, well before "submissions", see this:

Driving age set to rise - politics - national | Stuff.co.nz

I see they're using the word "likely" (yeah, right!) And still not saying what the "raised age" is to be.

One thing is for absolute sure, we cannot ever rely on the word of a minister of the crown (particularly the minister of transport). Ministers of transport in the National party - well any party for that matter - have had a consistent record of "lying like flatfish". So where it says "Public submissions on a review of road safety showed most people supported raising the driving age", we can know for certain that Steven Joyce's nose is growing as he says it.

When I made my "submission" I talked to others and nobody supported this lunatic idea. I even listened to talkback radio programmes about it and - unusual for talkback as they usually get the "hang them, crush their cars, raise the driving age to 90" brigade - people generally didn't see any merit in Steven Joyces insistence that the driving age be raised.

I think he is really talking about a poll he took on this subject with only bureaucrats from the ministry offices participating.

How do you put submissions in for these things? How do you know they are asking for submissions?

Sorry I didn't get back to you before. I only just got home from work, we finished early mainly because rain earlier meant we didn't have much work.

If an idea comes out, is "mooted", it is advertised that there is a Bill in existance to make legislation on something that interests you, there is always a "submission process". Quite often they will say that they only want submissions from "stakeholders" (private companies and government departments who have a vested interest in the legislation that is being proposed) but they always have to take notice of PUBLIC submissions. This is supposed to be part of the democratic process. Officially we have a "participatory democracy", meaning that we not only vote for the representative we want in parliament but we supposedly get to comment on proposed legislation too. Although I fear that in practise that is not always the way it works. Parliament takes notice of "stakeholders" and lobby groups but hardly ever takes notice of the public.

If a Bill is "in the pipeline" you will get to hear about it by listening to the parliamentary session or by reading the news. A date is always given of when submissions "close" on a particular Bill.

I always keep my eye on the news these days in case I miss something important. I learned a valuable lesson in 1998 with the "land transport Bill". There was hardly any publicity about this impending legislation and all of a sudden it was advertised that submissions closed on 31 January 1998 - that gave anybody about two weeks to write a submission and it was over the Christmas holiday period (parliament is full of little tricks like this). I think they demanded something like twenty-five copies of submissions at the time (although the usual is about two copies) and so I rushed to do it only to find that it "had not been accepted" and was not even mentioned in documents I later gained through the official information act about the process for this Bill. Then I also found out how important it is to have ALL the relevant documentation with regard to a Bill "at your fingertips" when you're making a submission. Because we all "submitted" on a document called the "yellow draft" and then found out that a new previously unheard of document - the "green draft" was passed into legislation.

I used to assume that everybody knew how we had been "ripped off" so badly as a nation by this fiasco, but I have only recently found out how few people know anything about this. So I'll tell you how things can turn out and why I have absolutely no trust in parlaiment or the judicial process. A fellow "submitter" on the Bill, Lois McInness, sought a judicial review of the digi-licence scheme on the grounds that it had not been passed into law on a proper constitutional basis.

Despite agreeing with McInnes that former Transport Minister Maurice Williamson had indeed "acted unlawfully", Justice McGechan refused to overturn the scheme on the basis it would cause "chaos and mayhem".

I just think we all have to be very aware that these things can happen (and that Maurice Williamson is STILL in parliament) and try and make sure that they don't ever happen again.

Anyway, I digress (very badly digress actually) and all you wanted to know was about making submissions.

You can make either a written or oral submission.

If it is an oral submission (and you are prepared to be at parliament buildings to speak if you are called upon) committee staff will inform you of the time and place of the meeting and the time allocated for your submission. Notification may be at short notice. This is also if you want to speak to reinforce what you have said in a written submission.

Otherwise a "submission" is just a paper setting out what you believe should happen (much like writing a post to this forum I guess).

You must have a heading, who it is from, set everything out clearly (remember the clerk of the house is usually not too bright, so try to use as many words of one syllable as possible).

You can send your submission by email (the address would be specific to the committee, so you'd have to look that up) or post it to (now I hope I've got the address right - parliament will use any excuse to ignore submissions):

Clerk of the Committee
(What ever Bill) Select Committee
Select Committee Office
Freepost Parliament Buildings
WELLINGTON

Hey, amazing, my son just "wanted to use the computer for a minute to check 'Trademe'" and then left the page open at my "links" and I saw this (it far better explains things than my rambling - although my words are far more entertaining than this):

New Zealand Parliament - How to make a submission

So brilliant! Start writing.