Simeon Brown: Transport Minister on the work to bring down driver licence wait times

The Government promises it's pulling all the levers to bring down driver licence wait times. 

It's allowing people to drive on an overseas licence for 18 months in November, extending it from a year. 

The Transport Minister's admitted there's still more work to do after scrapping the unlimited free driver licence re-sit policy. 

Simeon Brown told Mike Hosking NZTA is speeding up the training process as well. 

He says the Transport Agency's recruited extra training officers. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And so if you're trying to get a driver's license,
here's another problem. If you're trying to get a driver's license,
that's still an issue. The average wait times over a month.
We do seemingly have as temporary fix. Overseas licensed conversions
will be extended from twelve to eighteen months. So in
other word, to become here, you get an overseas license,
you've got to convert it, but you can now hang
around for a bit longer, from twelve to eighteen months.
Transport Minister Summing and Brown is with us on this
good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Good morning mine.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Of all the leavers you can pull, how material is this?
How many people we got on overseas licenses that may
or may.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Not convert, Well, there's tens of thousands are The reality
is we've had significantly high immigration the last number of years.
That's adding to the backlog of people trying to get
their driver's license, which is exacerbating a situation which was
created when the last government unlimited free resets for people
doing tests. So we're pulling a number of levers to

(00:48):
get these weight times down. We've removed the free research
is now only one for New Zealand citizens and residents.
There's no free resets for people on overseas driver license conversions.
We're now extending the actor from twelve months to eighteen
months for people doing these conversions just to free out
more space. And we've got over fifty more driver training

(01:09):
officers across the country in place, so we're getting the
numbers down, but there's still a ways to go.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
I was going to say, do we need more people
just doing the job.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
That's one of the leavers we've done. So n DTA
has recruited an extra fifty two full time driver training officers,
We've got nineteen temporary driver training officers, and there's more
in training at the moment, and of speeding up the
training process to get more people on the job at
the same time. So we're pulling all the levers to
get these numbers down. I get a lot of people
writing to me about how long it's taking for their

(01:39):
children to be able to get a driver license test.
My own sister who lives in Norkland, she's had to
go to Rhoda Orua. So we need to do everything
we can to get these numbers down.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
And that we've just been through, is this a cartel?
Because we had real troubles out, took a what do
you call it, the defensive driving course, you know, to
speed up to get your license, and they get that.
You can't ring anybody. It's all online. You can't get
to choose the guy you had was an idiot. You
wanted somebody who wasn't an idiot. They said, no, no,
this is the system. You do as you told. The
whole thing seemed gerrymandered and Soviet Union to me.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, the NDTA is doing some work around the contracts
for the driver training or sorry, the driver testing. Those
contracts will be coming up for renewle at some point
I think next year, and so there does need to
be some work done around that. They will be making
sure that it's more efficient. But in the meantime, we
need to get these numbers down so that people can
get their driver license tests in a timely fashion.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Do you know what you do? Do you want a
top tip?

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Sameon I'd love a top tip.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
They refresh every hour for the people who have booked
and then drop out. You go on the top of
the hour and you get in. We got in the
next day.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh, that's it's fantastic. Top tip and one of the
other initiatives they are doing is actually ringing people beforehand.
They are you actually coming along because no shows is
a big problem.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
That, by the way, was free from me to you.
You have a good day. Appreciate it, Simmy and Brown,
who is the transport mines. That's what we did. It
wasn't that hard. It's not to say it works every
time and don't tell me and go. And that's because
that's who you are. It's got nothing to do with it.
They refresh every other computer. You just go to the computer,
ring them up straight after. Would you said you've got
any cancelations? They go, oh, yes, we've got one drop off,
now go bank, we'll take it. For more from the

(03:11):
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Speaker 2 (03:14):
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