Lees-Galloway IainIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 2) is a bland but appropriate title for a piece of legislation that actually does a range of things and makes a range of changes to our land transport legislation. The area that has received the most attention is of course the area of small passenger services which I will come to. But as the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee Jonathan Young mentioned in his very brief contribution there are other aspects to it: the alcohol interlocks matters relating to fare evasion on public transport dealing with fleeing drivers—drivers who attempt to escape from the police and cause police chases—matters relating to heavy vehicles and other miscellaneous amendments as well. It is as close to an omnibus bill as you can get without actually being an omnibus bill because all of those matters are dealt with within one piece of legislation.I also would like to speak about the alcohol interlocks. I think this is progressive. This is an important change to our legislation to try to reduce the incidence of repeat drink-drive offences and to reduce the harm caused by drink-driving. This House has made some changes to our drink-drive rules over recent years—most notably reducing the blood-alcohol limit for drink-driving which itself is already proving to be positive and to be having a positive impact on the harm caused by drink-driving. These changes will essentially make it mandatory not only for people who are convicted of repeated drink-driving offences but also first-time offenders who are seriously over the limit. It is a mechanism to try to keep them off the roads if they continue to attempt to drink and then get behind the wheel.What I would also like to see more of from this Government is investment in actually helping people deal with the problems that being a drink-driver actually signify. If you talk to anybody who works in the alcohol and drug field being a drink-driver is a very good sign of having an underlying alcohol addiction problem—but not for everybody. Sometimes people just make a mistake. It does not excuse it. Frankly I think it is one of the most appalling things that you can do to get behind the wheel whilst you are intoxicated by alcohol or impaired by any other substance for that matter. Sometimes people do just make one mistake but more often than not it is actually a sign of an underlying problem and I would like to see a lot more investment from the Government in alcohol and drug services and using a conviction for drink-driving as a sign that we actually ought to be getting that person into treatment and supporting them to not be a recidivist by actually dealing with the underlying causes. This is important to be able to extend the use of alcohol interlocks and also reduce the opportunities to be exempted from having to use an alcohol interlock. So those are important.It is very important that we clamp down on the evasion of public transport fares. Public transport absolutely relies on everybody making their contribution and those are helpful changes that will help councils in particular to be able to enforce the rules.Fleeing drivers—the bill increases the penalties for fleeing drivers and also gives the police powers to impound vehicles and permits that vehicles can be seized and impounded for up to 28 days after a failure-to-stop incident. Again this is a behaviour that puts the public at an extraordinary risk trying to speed away from a police vehicle when the police officer is trying to pull you over. It often ends in an accident. It often ends in serious harm or death to the driver. But it often involves other drivers and damage to property and injury to people who are not even on the road because high speeds are involved people lose control and considerable harm results from that. Everything that we can do to discourage drivers from attempting to evade and flee from the police especially at speed should be done so we absolutely support that.On the issue of small passenger services—so what we are talking about here is the massive technological change that has occurred all around the world with the introduction of apps such as Uber. Uber is not the only one but Uber is the major operator here in New Zealand and has been the operator that has engaged the most on this legislation. It has been pretty fraught actually and I think the problem that this House has had with Uber is its flagrant disregard for the law. It is one thing to lobby politicians to lobby Governments and Parliaments and encourage us to change the law—and there is no doubt that our law as it stands before we make these changes is simply not fit to deal with this new technology. So absolutely come and lobby us and encourage us to make changes but do not just go out there and break the law. Do not go out there and potentially put other people at risk or undermine other operators that are sticking to the law. That is not on. Then frankly the way Uber came and behaved in its dealings with politicians and with the Government and with the regulators and those tasked with enforcing the law was abhorrent and it did not encourage us to work with it.My advice to any business or anyone actually that wants to work with this Parliament to make positive changes is find out the way Uber did it and do everything in the exact opposite fashion to how Uber went about its business. That is just a little bit of PR and lobbying advice to anybody who wants to work with us in this House. Having said that technological change is coming—well it is not coming; it is here and it has been here for a long time. Parliaments can be a bit slow to keep up with this stuff sometimes and to try to turn back the tide to try to deny the fact that changes are happening and that new technology is available and even to deny that a lot of those changes are positive that they come with positives that they often come with reduced costs or more availability or simpler access—those things are all good. A lot of passengers do enjoy the positive benefits that some of this ride-sharing technology brings. So we should not try to deny that. We cannot try to turn back the tide but we do have to get it right.We do have to get the safeguards in the right place—Sue Moroney: We think it's a good thing. We like ride sharing.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Absolutely ride sharing is a great thing. But we have got to get the right balance between opening up that market and making it work properly making sure that there are good rules in place and making sure that people are safe the passengers are safe the drivers are safe and the other people on the roads are safe. This speaks specifically to the other people on the road. I was distraught when we had an item in the news applauding an Uber driver for having done a full shift and then at the end of their shift driving from Auckland to Wellington in an appalling storm when they were fatigued when they had not taken the appropriate breaks and when they had driven for a longer period of time than what is actually allowed within the law. Initially that driver was treated as a hero. Well I think that driver is an absolute villain because he put himself at risk he put his passengers at risk and he put every other driver who was on the road when he was at risk as well.I am really pleased to see that one of the changes that this piece of legislation requires is that apps like Uber keep records of the distances travelled and the hours travelled. What they also need to do is make sure that they are working more closely with their drivers so that they understand the law and they know when they are in breach of the law. Whether or not that driver knew he was in breach of the law we do not know. It does not actually matter. Being ignorant of the law is no defence. We need to make sure that people are safe whilst we adopt this new technology and embrace it at the same time.This bill represents largely good changes. It is not perfect but it has largely good changes and we certainly do commend it to the House.