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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: Oh, the government wants to change up our driver's licensing

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Speaker 2: system as looking at a new proposal to new drivers

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Speaker 2: will only have to take one practical test instead of two.

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Speaker 2: Restricted drivers with defensive driving and clean records will automatically

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Speaker 2: gain their full after twelve months. There's a bunch of conditions,

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Speaker 2: including halving the number of demerit points, and there'll be

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Speaker 2: a zero percent alcohol breath limit regardless of their age.

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Speaker 2: So AA Road Safety spokesperson Dylan Thompson joins me, Now,

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Speaker 2: good morning to you.

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Speaker 1: Dylan, good morning.

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Speaker 2: So this is good because it's cheaper, but it's bad

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Speaker 2: because they spend less time supervised driving.

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Speaker 1: Well, I think I'd say it's good in that the

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Speaker 1: government is actually looking at making some significant changes and

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Speaker 1: we're right on board with zero alcohol limit and more

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Speaker 1: consequences for learner or restricted drivers breaking the rules. I

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Speaker 1: think the way I thought it is we think it

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Speaker 1: could be better if we looked to also make some

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Speaker 1: changes that requires learners to do a lot more practice

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Speaker 1: in preparation and training than we currently do in New Zealand.

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Speaker 1: So if we look overseas, a lot of the countries

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Speaker 1: it has systems like this with just one on row test.

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Speaker 1: They have a minimum number of hours of practice and

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Speaker 1: incentives for people to do professional lessons in driving courses.

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Speaker 2: Now, Chris Bishop actually talked about an app, an app

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Speaker 2: to be your supervised driver. Do you trust that?

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Speaker 1: Well, no, it's not an app to be your supervised driver,

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Speaker 1: but a lot of an Australian states. What they have

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Speaker 1: is when you're a learner, you can have an app

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Speaker 1: that records all your practice hours of driving. And what

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Speaker 1: that will do is if you're the supervising driver with

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Speaker 1: that person, so that might be mum or dad or

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Speaker 1: a grandparent or a friend with full license, you get

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Speaker 1: a message saying this person says they're about to do

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Speaker 1: a practice drive with you. Is that true? You say yes.

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Speaker 1: Then the app records the time, the distance and everything

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Speaker 1: like that to make it easier.

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Speaker 2: Fascinating. Will this make it cheaper? Will it reduce the backlog?

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Speaker 1: Well, if we had only one test, it would definitely

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Speaker 1: reduce costs and would mean that, you know, there was

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Speaker 1: more capacity in the system for focusing on the restricted

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Speaker 1: test if we if we saw this change. But I

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Speaker 1: think that that key thing has really got to be

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Speaker 1: focused on safety and are we doing things that are

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Speaker 1: actually going to reduce a really high crash rate right

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Speaker 1: amongst young people in New Zealand.

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Speaker 2: Well, Dylan, good on you, thank you for joining us.

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Speaker 2: Dylan is the AA Road Safety spokesperson.

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