Road rage is getting worse according to survey results out today, and I think it’s time we made road rage a specific criminal offence.

I’ll come back to that but, first, how about this for a story? A guy’s driving around Governor’s Bay when this boy racer starts tailgating him, then stops in front of him, pulls out a baseball bat and starts smashing the guy’s windscreen.

That was a week ago.

Then we had someone else sent to prison last week after stabbing someone in an apparent road rage incident in Riccarton. It happened back in September on the corner of Blenheim Road and Clarence Street when two guys got into an argument.

The guy who was sent to prison last week got out of his car with a pair of scissors and stabbed this other guy before taking off.

He turned himself into the police sometime after that, and he was sentenced last week.

So you consider cases like that and the incident in Governors Bay the weekend before last, and you think no wonder we’ve got new stats out today saying nearly 50% of Canterbury people think road rage has got worse here in the past year. It's 60% in Auckland.

So, surely, the time has come for us to make road rage an actual criminal offence?

At the moment, no one can be charged with road rage. It can lead to people being charged with things like assault, intent to injure, and reckless driving. But I think road rage needs to be made a specific offence.

I see it in the same light as the stalking laws the Government wants to introduce. Like road rage, stalking can lead to people being charged with other offences.

So why not do the same with road rage?

AA Insurance has found that, broadly, 1-in-10 Kiwis have been involved in a road rage incident of some sort in the past year.

They’ve experienced things like tailgating, being cut off by another driver, being tooted at excessively, and being yelled or screamed at by another driver.

Exactly the sort of thing this guy on Banks Peninsula went through. According to his post on Facebook last night, it was 12:10am and this boy racer was tailgating him when he, obviously, at some point overtook this guy, stopped in front of him, got out with a baseball bat and started smashing up the guy’s car.

And he’s now on Facebook asking people who live in the area if they’ve got any security footage that might help identify the vehicle involved.

He’s trying to track-down a Rego number so the police can, maybe, do something about it. Because, according to his post, the police didn’t do anything on the night.

Although the police have told our newsroom this morning that he was “unable to make a statement at the time” and was provided with information to help him report the incident online. The police did confirm that it was reported to them just after midnight on Sunday March 2.

The guy who was attacked has posted a photo online showing the windscreen smashed on the driver’s side. It must have been absolutely terrifying for him.

As Beau Paparoa, who is one of the bosses at AA Insurance, is saying today - things like tailgating not only increases the risk of rear-end collisions. It’s also distressing and dangerous for the people being tailgated.

But it goes next level when you’ve got some muppet not only tailgating you, then passing you, and stopping right in front of you, and getting out of their car and taking to yours with a baseball bat.

I don't think leaving things as they are and only charging people with other offences, and not charging them specifically with road rage, is going to do anything to fix the problem.

From my experience, I would say road rage has been a major problem for a long time now. Whether I can say that I think it’s got worse here in the past 12 months, I don’t know, but a lot of people think it has.

So surely the time has come to up the ante and make road rage a criminal offence.

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I don’t like this idea of dangling bigger carrots in front of people who own land that the government or your local council might want for big infrastructure projects.

But I'm more concerned about denying people who object access to the Environment Court. Instead of the court, if someone isn’t happy about compulsory sale of their land, they’ll have to complain to the Land Information Minister or their local council – depending on who it is that wants their land.

And we know who’s going to win that argument every time, don’t we?

“Dear Minister, I want to hold on to my land. Yours, so-and-so.”

“Dear so-and-so. Tough. You’ve got no choice.”

Or "Dear council, I want to hold on to my land. Yours, so-and-so.”

“Dear so-and-so. Tough. You’ve got no choice.”

The changes are being promoted as a cost-saving exercise and a way of getting big infrastructure projects happening sooner. The Government wants these changes so that big projects don’t get bogged down.

And the way it’s going to do that is by paying people more money to get their land if it’s needed for a big infrastructure project.

That’s if they agree up front. Because, if a landowner agrees upfront and doesn’t challenge it then there will, of course, be less expense involved.

The Government wants these changes to get cracking on its roads of national significance and its other fast-track projects.

It's all to do with the Public Works Act. Which is the legislation that means if your house is sitting somewhere where the Government or your local council wants to build something like a new motorway, they can knock on your door and tell you that they’re buying your house.

It’s a compulsory acquisition of a property that isn't on the market but is needed for public works.

At the moment, if people don’t want to sell, they can go to the Environment Court. But the Government wants to do-away with that and I don’t agree with that at all.

I suspect that if you’re not affected, this sounds like a great idea. But if it’s your land that the Government or your local council wants to get its hands on, you might feel a bit differently.

I don't even need to be in the position of owning land the Government wants to take off me to know that taking away the right to go to the Environment Court is a bad idea.

Tell that to Land Information Minister Chris Penk, though. He says: "Public infrastructure projects up and down the country are often held up for years by overly complex, drawn-out processes for purchasing the land needed."

He goes on to say: “This has meant that projects which would provide massive benefits for communities end up stalled, with the only action happening in courtrooms.”

Pretty much every time you talk to someone who is anti-the environment court, they start going on about snails on the West Coast.

You’ll remember this one: about 20 years ago, Solid Energy wanted to build a mine where there were these giant snails and Forest & Bird went to the Environment Court trying to stop it.

What seems to have got lost over time is that the Environment Court agreed with Forest & Bird but didn’t have authority to intervene. It was then that Forest & Bird went to the High Court. Which led to Solid Energy paying for 6,000 of these snails to be relocated from the Stockton Plateau, so it could access $400 million worth of coal.

People who think the Environment Court is a handbrake on progress often refer to that case, and see it as good reason for getting the Environment Court out of the picture.

But I don’t see it that way. The Environment Court is a backstop. A backstop people should not be denied access to if they don't want to sell their land to the government or their local council.

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Winston Peters had no option when it came to sacking Phil Goff from his job as High Commissioner in London, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy with it.

I think he’s done the right thing. But he’s done the wrong thing, as well.

Because it just shows how scaredy-cat the world is of Donald Trump. But we better get used to it – this is how it’s going to be for the next four years.

That’s why I accept that it needed to be done, but it’s still pretty cruddy that we are running scared of him like this.

What Goff did was he let the political nerd in him come out when he was at an event at Chatham House, in London, earlier this week. And it looked like it was some sort of Q&A session involving Finland’s Foreign Affairs Minister.

The significance of Finland, of course, is that it shares a border with Russia.

So Phil Goff had the roving microphone, and he asked Elina Valtonen whether she thought Donald Trump understood the history of the second world war.

That’s because people are likening what Trump is doing with Ukraine to what happened in 1938, when Nazi Germany was allowed to get its hands on land in Czechoslovakia in a bid to avoid war.

It was a deal signed in 1938, but, as we know, a year later Germany still went to war.

Phil Goff isn’t the first person to say it. And on the face of it, it doesn’t seem that outrageous, but in diplomatic circles, it was probably enough to have them spilling their G&Ts.

And it was certainly enough for Foreign Minister Winston Peters to tell his people in London to give Phil Goff the flick.

Winston Peters says the reason he did it was because Goff’s comments “do not represent the views of the New Zealand government and make his position as High Commissioner to London untenable.”

And former High Commissioner Sir Lockwood Smith agrees. He’s in no doubt that Winston Peters has done the right thing to minimise any damage.

Phil Goff was due to finish his posting later this year, but that could have been extended, of course. But he’s over there right now and all the diplomatic crew will be chattering.

So it will be very embarrassing for Goff. Not the way he would’ve wanted to go out.

Especially, given that as far as I’m aware, it’s the first time New Zealand has sacked a High Commissioner.

Yes, he was being a bit of a smart-alec, something you’re not supposed to be when you move around in diplomatic circles. Which is a tension that Sir Lockwood talked about when he was on Newstalk ZB this morning.

He was saying that when you’ve been a politician, it can sometimes be difficult to take your political hat off. But he reckons that his time as speaker before being a High Commissioner helped prepare him for that.

Maybe that’s why we’re not hearing about former speaker Trevor Mallard putting his foot in it over in Ireland, where he’s High Commissioner.

But perhaps Phil Goff can take some comfort from Dr Stephen Winter, who is an international relations expert at Auckland University. He’s says if things weren’t so on edge around the world, Goff might have got away with it.

He says: "Goff can take comfort from the fact that he is right, even though he was not diplomatic.”

But things are on edge, and Goff is off.

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