Moroney SueSUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this debate on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2). It does cover a wide range of issues in Part 1 here but I want to focus particularly on a couple of issues in the first of what I hope will be many calls because I have quite a number of Supplementary Order Papers on Part 1 of this bill. Can I first of all say that David Seymour from the ACT Party just jumped the shark. He just jumped the shark. If anyone does not know about jumping the shark it is a reference to what Fonzie did on Happy Days when they were desperate to try to make the show look a bit more groovy and entertaining—that is what David Seymour just did. He just accused me of being like a regime that murders its own citizens because—oh wait for it—I put forward Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 348 which says that this bill should not actually come into force until the day after Uber becomes fully compliant with all the tax requirements obliged of it under New Zealand law. I have put this forward just to say that all of these companies should be compliant with tax laws and we know that in fact there is an issue with Uber. That is why Uber was named. In the New Zealand Herald in July 2016 it was written that Uber declared gross revenue of just over $1 billion in New Zealand in 2014 but paid just $9397 in income tax. So how can that be? How can that be right? We in the Labour Party are all up for having a level playing field here in New Zealand. We want to make sure it is utterly a level playing field. That is why we are supporting this legislation because it is an attempt to get a level playing field in the small passenger vehicle services. That is part of this bill. But we also want it to be fair across the board because the taxi companies are not able to use the sorts of loopholes that Uber is using. They are paying tax on every cent so why is Uber not? So if we want a completely fair and even and level playing field Minister Bridges then we need to get real about the rest of the situation as well. The other Supplementary Order Paper—Supplementary Order Paper 349—that David Seymour seemed to think equated to murdering one's own citizens was requiring Uber to become fully compliant with all Transport Rule requirements regarding log books and driving hours as obliged of them under New Zealand law." The reason for this is that there have now been a number of well-publicised cases where people driving for Uber—and you know the Uber company will be very clever and say: "You know actually we don't employ drivers. We just have partners."—Peeni Henare: Rod Stewart. SUE MORONEY: —that is right—"It's an application. Don't you realise that Uber is an app. It's not a vehicle that is being driven." Of course we understand that but there have been cases where Uber drivers have been driving outside those hours. Every New Zealander should be concerned about that because we all share the roads with those same drivers and I want to make sure and the New Zealand Labour Party wants to make sure that our roads are safe. One of the ways that we do that is we have transport rules and regulations for these services and for some reason Uber seems to think that those do not apply to it. So the Supplementary Order Papers—which I fully accept have been ruled out of order but the ACT member objected to them—were simply about saying that the legislation should not proceed and should not come into force until those issues had been addressed by that company. After all it is by and large that company's performance and introduction into New Zealand that has required the law to be changed in this way. Yes it is time to update this law but let us be really clear that when we deregulate—and that is what this is; be very clear that this is piece of deregulation—we need to be very careful that we get it right. We need to be very careful about that because when deregulation goes bad it costs lives. We know that. We know that through the Pike River mine experience which we have had in our very own country. We know that because much more recently we have seen the tragic events that unfolded in London where fire standards had been deregulated. There was that horrific sight of that building going up in flames when several people—tens of people—lost their lives. That is what happens if we deregulate and we get it wrong. This is a service that people rely on when they are sometimes impaired. They are sometimes impaired. Sometimes that is because they have been out on the town and they have been drinking and they are doing the right thing by not driving themselves but by calling up one of these services. We want to make sure that when people do the right thing they are in safe hands. That is why this is so critically important. Quite frequently it will be young women who are in that situation so we want to make sure that they are looked after. People are very vulnerable in these circumstances. Also—and the Minister made reference to this—people with disabilities rely utterly on this service. It is not a thing that they choose to do every once in a while when they go out on the town. This is how they live their lives because with particular disabilities they cannot drive themselves. The entire way that they interact with their community and the way they get themselves around is entirely dependent on this service so the standards are very important to them. One of my SOPs that thankfully has not been ruled out of order is just requiring all of those services to have some Braille signage on the side of the door as they currently do. If you get into a taxi you will see on the passenger side of the door that there is a little bit of plastic and it has got Braille signage on it. We had disability advocacy service after advocacy service after advocacy service come into our select committee and beg us not to remove the requirement for that Braille signage because they rely on it so utterly. We were told that if it is done well and properly the cost is about $20 per each one of those little plastic stickers. Twenty dollars—for the want of $20 Minister. The cost is not burdensome for the safety that it provides for those very vulnerable people in our community who are sight-impaired. For people who are blind and who therefore cannot drive themselves around and who cannot easily use public transport this is their lifeblood and all they are asking for is for it to be safe in a way that they know they can find out information about what vehicle they have just put themselves into. Yes there is new technology but all of them said that nothing was going to be as secure for them as having that little plastic sticker on that actual door. If you are sight-impaired and you are using an app to try to identify the driver in the picture of the driver on the app to make sure it is the right person and you do not want to get into a vehicle you may regret getting into then that is not going to work for a sight-impaired person. We kind of kid ourselves quite a bit about what all this new technology means as if it is going to fix everything—as if it is going to fix every circumstance. Well it is just not but the thing that has worked are these Braille stickers. They give certainty and security to the people who most rely on this service and who are most vulnerable when they are using this service. So I urge all parties to seriously consider supporting Supplementary Order Paper 346 because all it does is keep the current regulation in place that requires Braille signage in any of those vehicles that are being used to provide a small commercial passenger service. It is not too much to ask but it is incredibly important for those people and it is what they rely on in terms of their safety. I am really looking forward to some further debate on those SOPs. I want to hear from the Government if it is not going to support SOP 346 why not."