Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to rise to speak on this bill. This is my first opportunity and I hope to actually speak in this debate. Considering the fact that I have never done this before—table an amendment in my name—I hope I don't completely cock it up. I haven't actually felt so passionate about other bills as I have about this. Do you know one of the things was that I was actually sitting when other members have talked about it and I have to say that the member who just sat down is my sister from another mother—Denise Lee. You know I agree with her in terms of the exemption and my amendment is also to clause 5. It is to amend the definition of exempt use" in new section 65A and it will add paragraph (f) to the definition. What it basically does is—apart from the volunteers as my learned colleague Denise Lee has said I would like to include emergency services like the New Zealand Police the fire service the St John's Ambulance service and the Wellington Free Ambulance service as well because they have such a little pot of money. Recently I was at a fund-raiser for the St John's Ambulance service that the ethnic communities do—actually it is a Taiwanese businesswomen's association that does a fund-raising event for them. Every so often they do this fund-raising dinner and they raise enough money—just enough money—to deliver them a rapid-response vehicle for the St John's Ambulance. Because St John's Ambulance is not completely funded they rely on donations and on the goodness of the community to actually deliver for them and to slap another tax on these people—the police the fire service St John's Ambulance the Wellington Free Ambulance service—is shameful. It is an absolute shame that this Government wants to tax these services that do an amazing job for New Zealanders. I mean what I think should actually happen is that the current Mayor of Auckland should not be spending almost a million dollars deciding whether there is actually feasibility in moving Eden Park to downtown Auckland—spending almost a million dollars in consulting to decide whether Eden Park should go to downtown Auckland. Instead now he actually wants to tax—this Government wants to tax ordinary New Zealanders for their petrol including these emergency services who do an amazing job. I believe that the emergency services should be excluded from the tax that this Government is trying to put on all of New Zealand. The police service—you know having actually talked about the police and praised them before they do an absolutely amazing job. They are there when people need them. Every single emergency worker puts—Matt King: They catch the crims and lock 'em up. MELISSA LEE: —their life on the line. Actually the police—they do. They have done that. You know I have been a victim of crime—I have actually said that in this House before—when I had a home invasion in my house and I was ringing the emergency services. They were there so fast and were having to calm me down to make sure that I wasn't actually going irrational and that I was talking to them. I think they should not be taxed extra fuel tax for the great work that they do. I mean considering the fact that there are thousands of vehicles operating—whether it's the fire trucks or the police cars or the ambulances there are so many cars on our roads that do amazing work for these organisations and I do not believe that they should be taxed. So I'd like to table my amendment in my name in the committee stage to amend new section 65A to add a new paragraph (f) under the definition of "exempt use" to make sure that all of the emergency services such as the fire service the New Zealand Police the St John's Ambulance service and the Wellington Free Ambulance services—and any others that I haven't actually thought about hopefully—are exempt from this tax."