Land Transport Amendment Bill

I move, That the Land Transport Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The Land Transport Amendment Bill has six parts. The bill will enable innovative small passenger services to operate and deliver benefits to consumers while managing safety risks. It will also introduce mandatory alcohol-interlock sentences for repeat offenders and first-time drink-drive offenders with high alcohol levels. The bill will create more effective deterrents to reduce the number of fleeing drivers. It will also strengthen the framework managing evasion of public transport fares. It will create opportunities to increase productivity of heavy freight and passenger vehicles. Finally, the bill will make a range of minor amendments to make sure that the Land Transport Act is clear and operating as intended.

I want to thank the members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for their work on the bill. I also want to thank those who took the time to make a submission on it. The committee’s report includes many sensible recommendations that will help ensure the bill achieves its objectives.

Small passenger services: the bill, together with amendments to land transport rules and regulations, will overhaul small passenger services by removing outdated provisions and bringing the sector into the 21st century. Safety will be maintained in the future system with the retention of the P endorsement, certificate of fitness, and work-time limit requirements. Although mandatory signage is being removed, small passenger services will still be required to have a transport service licence card displayed in their vehicle’s window, and drivers will still have to display their driver identification cards.

The changes are intended to encourage innovation and better services, while managing safety risks. There is already scope for the use of electronic logbooks, and I encourage the industry to take the opportunity to implement this and other technology to improve services. As reported back from the select committee, the bill contains several changes that will help ensure that the new system for regulating small passenger services can be implemented effectively.

As I said, it also deals with alcohol-interlock sentences. This is another important part of the bill, and it ensures the alcohol interlocks are a highly effective tool for reducing the incidence of recidivist drink-driving. To increase their use, the bill proposes to make alcohol interlocks mandatory for high-risk and recidivist drink-drivers. As reported back, the bill contains three changes that will help balance the desire to have as many qualifying offenders as possible using alcohol interlocks, with other policy considerations. These changes relate to the way in which alcohol-interlock sentences apply when being considered alongside other concurrent offending; the resentencing of offenders to an alcohol-interlock sentence if grounds for an exception no longer apply; and extending the distance-based exception from 30 kilometres or more to 70 kilometres or more. The greater use of alcohol interlocks by high-risk offenders will help improve road safety outcomes and support the Government’s road safety objectives.

Fleeing drivers: the bill will also increase the penalties for drivers who fail to stop for police. Increasing the penalties for fleeing drivers will send a clear message that this behaviour is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. As introduced, the bill would have extended the ability of an enforcement officer to impound the motor vehicle where the enforcement officer suspects on reasonable grounds that the owner, person in lawful possession, or hirer of the motor vehicle knows the identity of the driver who has failed to stop for police and the person has failed or refused to provide information, or has provided false or misleading information in response to a police request for this information.

In his report under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, the Attorney-General concluded that this creates an inconsistency with section 21 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. To address this inconsistency, the revised bill reported back from the committee relies on the existing power available to police to impound a vehicle if they believe on reasonable grounds that it has been used in a fleeing driver incident. The Attorney-General has advised that he is satisfied that the revised bill has addressed the inconsistency of some of the fleeing driver provisions with section 21 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. What a wise man indeed.

Fare evasion provisions are also in this bill. Another important part of the bill is that it strengthens the legislative regime for managing public transport fare evasion by giving enforcement officers new powers to require passengers to provide evidence that they have paid a fare, provide their contact details when a valid ticket is not produced, and/or order a passenger to disembark the public transport service. As reported back, the committee has ensured that the bill is futureproofed by amending new section 79M(4) to remove reference to ticket vending machines. Clause 31 has also been struck from the bill because it is now considered redundant.

The bill also complements the recent changes to the vehicle dimensions and mass rule and corresponding regulations, by making technical amendments to clarify existing provisions, address operational enforcement issues, and correct anomalies.

Finally, the bill includes a range of minor amendments to clarify interpretations or the intent of the legislation, improve its operation, remove inconsistencies, and make minor technical adjustments, with the committee making a series of changes here that I will not go into, given the minor and technical nature of them. But worthy work it was, indeed, from the committee.

The bill includes other minor and technical changes that I have not explicitly covered. These changes are, of course, set out in the committee’s report. They are consistent with the overarching objectives of the bill, which are to provide better regulation for a more effective, efficient, and safe land transport system. I am proud of this bill. I think it futureproofs our land transport regime, and I commend the Land Transport Amendment Bill to the House.

I rise to respond to the speech just given by Minister Simon Bridges, the Minister who should really be spending his time this evening wondering why he did not pay more attention to the fraud happening in the Ministry of Transport. But, instead, he is talking about this series of changes. The Land Transport Amendment Bill will be supported by the Labour Party, but with serious reservations, actually. If I can say at the outset, many of the technical changes that the Minister described before are things that will make a small amount of difference. They are sensible. They are practical.

In particular, we want to support the mandatory sentences for alcohol interlocks, which is something that we think will improve this Government’s poor record on the road toll, which has started increasing—it now looks like this year will be the fourth year in a row that the road toll will increase, against the trend of decades of coming down. In fact, it is against the international trend where other countries similar to us are experiencing their road tolls coming down year after year. Under this Government’s regime, we have got the opposite happening with the road toll going up, and all of the grief and tragedy that that causes for the friends and family of the deceased. So the alcohol-interlock measure in this bill will be an improvement to road safety, as are some of the provisions about overloaded trucks. Although, I have got to say, that if the Government was really serious, it would not keep introducing larger and larger trucks on our roads, which just are not fit to carry those larger trucks, therefore increasing the incidence of crashes and fatal crashes on our roads.

So there are many areas that we do support. The area that was probably the most contentious, though, of this bill was the bit about the small passenger service vehicles. This is the part—and I think the intention is correct, which is to ensure that as technology improves and changes, some of those new services are now captured and that there is a level playing field that is going to be presented. That is admirable in its intent, but I am not sure that this bill actually brings that about in a very safe way, because it is my view and it is Labour’s view that the role of this Parliament when it comes to small passenger services—and these are not services for small passengers; these are small passenger vehicle services—is to ensure public safety. That is our primary role. The Labour Party does not feel that this bill goes far enough in doing that, so we have some amendments that we will be proposing at the Committee stage, and I am going to outline them now.

The two areas of most concern to us exist around the removal in this bill of Braille signage and, also, the removal of the requirement for in-vehicle cameras. These are two major public safety issues. The reason why we are so concerned about public safety is that we know that the track record of deregulation under National Governments has caused this country great grief in the past. We have only got to think about the Pike River mine, where a National Government deregulated and removed mining inspectors, and that was a significant cause of what happened at the Pike River mine. We have only got to think of the thousands of New Zealanders whose livelihoods and lives have been affected because they have weather-damaged buildings—houses—because the weathertightness is not correct, because, again, a National Government deregulated the building industry and the standards and, therefore, we ended up with a leaky-homes crisis in New Zealand. We have only got to look at those two examples to know that we have got to be very careful when a National Government deregulates in the way that this bill in fact does.

Deregulation is the catchcry of a National Government. National members love deregulating, but they ain’t so keen to put their hands up to actually be accountable for the results of it. With small passenger vehicle services the fact is that people who are using the services—apart from MPs who are using taxis and maybe Ubers from the airport and back to Parliament, but, for the majority of people they are using these services when they are impaired one way or the other. In fact, the largest number of submissions that we had on this bill came from people who were from organisations that were representing people with disabilities, because they are utterly—in many cases—dependent on these services for every movement that they make. They do not have the ability to drive themselves, and, often, taking public transport is not an option for them either.

So they are utterly dependent on this service, and these services need to be safe for them because they are extremely vulnerable. That is the reason why we want to ensure that the requirement for Braille signage is not stripped out of these services, because people representing those who are sight-impaired told us how important that was for them to have certainty over what vehicle they were in so that if anything untoward did happen they could report it. That was something that was very important to them for their security.

But the other group of people, of course, when we talk about impairment is often people who are using these services because they have been out and they have had a bit too much to drink, or they have certainly had too much to drink to drive themselves home, or they may be involved in other substances, and they are using these services. Again, they are very vulnerable when they are in those situations. So this is the reason why we are insisting and asking this Parliament to back our call to ensure that the current provisions for in-vehicle cameras remain. After all, those provisions were brought in only in 2011. That is not very long ago. It was the National Government that put that requirement in place. Why did it do that? Well, it did it on the back of two vicious murders of two taxi drivers: Hiren Mohini in 2010 and Abdulrahman Ikhtiari in 2008. Those two men were brutally murdered. They were taxi drivers, and those murders led to the decision by this Parliament to insist that in-vehicle cameras were installed in certain circumstances.

The Government may well argue that that is no longer necessary because new technology is going to fix all this and it is going to be all fine because, you know, you are going to use your app, and you are going to dial up the Uber or the taxi, and they are going to know who you are and you are going to know who they are, so it is all sweet—except that we had a man come and do a submission to our select committee. He came into our select committee and said: “I’m Rod Stewart.” He clearly was not Rod Stewart, but he had been able to register himself as an Uber driver using the rock star Rod Stewart’s actual photo and calling himself Rod Stewart. Uber accepted him as being Rod Stewart, you know, with the hair and all. He clearly was not Rod Stewart; he looked completely different to Rod Stewart. I do not know what his singing voice was like—he did not demonstrate that to us—but you could see that he was not Rod Stewart. However, he was able to become an Uber driver as Rod Stewart and pick people up as Rod Stewart. They did not say “Hey, you’re not Rod Stewart.” when they got in the car.

But, worse than that, he actually then lodged a complaint against himself as Rod Stewart. He lodged a complaint against himself, and he still was able to keep driving Ubers. Nothing happened. So I think this shows us the folly of relying entirely on new technology to give us an assurance of public safety. It clearly will not do that. Since the 2011 amendment that brought in the in-vehicle cameras, not only have we not had any murders happening in taxis but, in fact, the findings were that just 2 years later the number of violent incidents that have happened in taxis dropped by 40 percent, simply because the in-vehicle cameras were there. So this is something that we should be embracing, not getting rid of, and that Government, I fear, is going down its good old deregulation track again, where deregulation becomes the captain to it all and it forgets about public safety.

Thank goodness for the Labour Party, because we are here to remind it that our job in regard to regulating these services is public safety first—public safety first. If it means a little bit of compliance cost, public safety comes ahead of that, because that is the mistake that was made in the Pike River mine, where safety was put behind compliance costs. It was also the mistake that was made with leaky buildings. So let us please learn from those mistakes and not repeat them, and let us get it right this time round. At the Committee stage I will have those two amendments to put forward. I do believe that they are things that will make a considerable difference to public safety as we move to ensure that there is regulation across the board that captures all of those services.

The other thing that I want to say is that the media had a little bit of mischief during our select committee process and pretended that the problem with MPs is we just did not know what an app was—you know, those of us who are on our cellphones all the time do not know what an app is, do not know what Uber is. Despite the fact that Uber staff are in our offices pretty much all the time telling us exactly what Uber is, and that they came to the select committee and told us several times over what Uber is, apparently we are just a bit thick and we do not know what Uber is—absolutely untrue. But what we do—

I am sorry to interrupt the member, because I was interested to hear the end of the story, but your time has expired.

💬 Sue Moroney: Maybe Committee stage.

Yes, maybe at the Committee stage Sue Moroney can carry on with her story. I just have to say a couple of things regarding Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart is quite a common name, I am sure there are plenty of people around the world who are called Rod Stewart—

💬 Sue Moroney: Who look like that?

—and no doubt there are plenty of people who dress up like Rod Stewart, as well. So to say that that is—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Here’s one.

Not you, Mr Deputy Speaker. But to say that that is a reason why there are objections to this bill is ludicrous.

In terms of safety, this was a big, big issue that, of course, the previous speaker raised. I remember on one journey from my residence to the New Plymouth airport, I spoke to the taxi driver and I said “You’ve got this Braille sticker on the side of your car, so tell me about that. Who uses that?”, and he said: “Yes, there is a person who uses it, who hops in my car every week, and it is the same person every week.” It is the same person every week. He said “He is a regular customer.”—and, look, the reality is that people who have some degree of impairment most often use the same driver. The companies understand their need. The companies provide a personalised service, and good on them for that, because that is caring for their customers. There is a huge connection between those drivers and their customers. They know each other by name.

When it comes to using, for example, a company like Uber—and when I was overseas, I used Uber a number of times. On your app—which can speak to you, by the way; it can talk to you if you have a sight impairment—is the name of the driver, their rating, the identification of the vehicle, and the type of vehicle, so there is ample acknowledgment of identity in terms of the people you use. So what this bill is doing is not minimising or disregarding safety of the public or safety of the drivers, but it is responding to technology that is already amongst us and that people are wanting to utilise.

I understand that as you read the Labour minority view in the report, it acknowledges that there are benefits around ride sharing, or benefits around some of these modes of private transport services, that will reduce congestion and reduce issues around environmental pollution. So in many regards, I think that what the member—and, you know, kind regards to her for caring for people, but I do not believe that this bill puts in jeopardy public safety, nor does it put in jeopardy driver safety. Even though that mandatory legislation regarding video cameras in taxi-cabs was put in place, it still remains the choice of taxi drivers, if they want that technology in their cabs, to put it there. So if they want to have that degree of, I guess, backup in terms of their safety about the identification of their customers and clients who travel in their taxi-cabs, they can still do it, and the price of that technology has reduced, as we know. All technology is reducing in cost.

So I think that the comments of the Opposition—and I appreciate that the Labour member and those members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee are, by and large, supporting this bill. But I do think that their objections do not warrant the level of concern that they vocalise.

So I am keen to speak on many other aspects of this bill, and I am going to do so when we have a little bit more liberty around the time in the Committee stage. But I believe this Land Transport Amendment Bill takes us forward into the world. The future has already come our way and is meeting us, but the bill brings legislation into place that puts sensible regulation around those advancements and those technology opportunities and advantages to our society. So I am very pleased to stand in support and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

As my colleague—

💬 Peeni Henare: It’s Rod Stewart.

—definitely not Rod Stewart—Sue Moroney has said, we support the bill overall, but we do have some reservations about it. We support the bill because the fact is that ride-sharing technology apps like Uber—Uber is not the only one, but it is the one that is most prevalent worldwide, and certainly most prevalent in New Zealand. It is the one that we hear from most often. You know, that technology is here and it has a lot of benefits.

The challenge for us is not to deregulate in response to it, but to make sure that we have appropriate regulation that allows the benefits of ride sharing and the benefits of the mobile technology that goes with it and that enables it to be most effective while still ensuring that drivers and their passengers are as safe as they possibly can be. There is a balancing act there, and, especially when you are dealing with new technology and fast-changing technology, it can be a real challenge for us to land in the right place.

On the one hand you have got the taxi drivers with their very valid concerns, and on the other hand you have got the like of Uber wanting—legitimately, I think—to be able to conduct its business and provide a new service without being tied up in unnecessary regulation, but, to be fair, perhaps overlooking some of the things that we need to do to make sure that we keep public safety as much of a priority as it needs to be.

I think we need go no further than the example of the Uber driver who, at the end of his shift, having worked a shift in Auckland, picked up some passengers from Auckland and drove them nearly non-stop to Wellington. That was a breach of the work-time requirements. I know the New Zealand Transport Agency is investigating this, and the driver claimed that he took the necessary breaks, but what is for certain is that he worked a total of 16½ hours, when the rule is you work a total of only 13 hours before you have a proper break. Because of the way the technology is set up and because of the difficulties we have in enforcing the rules when dealing with an outfit like Uber, that would never have been detected had it not been for the unfortunate circumstance—for the driver—that the passengers were so happy that they went to the media about it and he was hailed as a hero. He was hailed as a hero.

It was really obvious from the outset that it was likely that rules had been broken, that he had put himself at risk, that he had put his passengers at risk, and that he had put all the other drivers whom he came across on that journey from Auckland to Wellington at risk, and yet the initial story was “What a hero.” Well, that tells us something about our culture towards safety in the workplace and safety amongst people who drive for a living, and it tells us that there is something wrong and we need to make sure we get our regulations right.

One thing that this bill does away with—and we have decided not to challenge it—is any signage on the vehicle, because Uber drivers make the case that that is their own personal vehicle, they use it for personal use, and they do not want to go around with Uber signage all over their car all the time. The truth is that with the first Uber I ever took, when we went to put our bags in the boot, there were all the taxi signs that had been pulled off. So now it was a blank, white vehicle that we were getting into, but, actually, it was a taxi. They had just taken all the magnetic strips off the car, put them in the boot, and, all of a sudden, it was an Uber.

But if they take the taxi ones off, why can they not just pop an Uber one back on there and, hey, we know it is an Uber, and the people who are tasked with enforcing these rules have one more thing that alerts them to the fact that this is actually a vehicle that is being used in a commercial way and it needs to adhere to commercial rules? Now, yes, they have got a little certificate on their windscreen so that if you go around with a magnifying glass and you are Inspector Clouseau and you get up really close and you check to see whether that is all correct, you will know that that is an Uber. But otherwise, if it is just driving down the street, you would have no idea that it is a commercial vehicle.

We are not challenging it, but, personally, I think that that is a bit of a flaw. I understand that they are not rank and hail, that they are not going to be pulling up and sitting at taxi ranks waiting for people to get in, that they are using their own cars, that they get called up by the app—I get all of that. But from an enforcement perspective, I think it would be useful to have that on there. That is, ultimately, where I think the challenge is going to lie—not so much in the regulations themselves, but in how we enforce them, and we should make it as easy as possible for enforcement to occur. By the very nature of this business, it is going to be harder and harder for us to ensure that drivers are sticking to the rules and passengers are safe.

I understand the whole thing about how the app works—that you know who the driver is, you know who the passenger is, and everybody rates each other. If a passenger does something untoward in the vehicle, then that driver will put that on their rating and future drivers will know that, or not. If a driver acts in an inappropriate way—like another time I took an Uber and the driver took a phone call on the phone, not hands-free, whilst they were driving, I was able to report that through the app. I get all of that, but it does make enforcement of the rules an awful lot harder, and just being able to see who are Uber drivers would help.

The other thing that I think is incredibly important is those cameras in the cars. It was only a few years ago that the Government thought it was so important that taxis had cameras in the vehicle that it made it mandatory—whether the drivers wanted that expense or not, the Government made it mandatory. OK, technology has changed. We now have the ride-sharing app. That gives us an opportunity to pause and ask the question: are the cameras still important? I think they are. Regardless of what information you can share on an app, whether you are or are not Rod Stewart—if a driver can use a pseudonym, then a passenger can certainly use a pseudonym and then maybe attack the driver, or whatever—having the camera in the vehicle just provides that extra level of safety.

It actually provides safety for the passenger as well. That was the argument that was made when the Government made this mandatory; why not carry on with that argument? There is an expense attached to those cameras, but it is coming down all the time. I think the fact that the Government made them mandatory meant that there was plenty of demand for them in New Zealand, and the cost of them has come down. If someone wants to use their vehicle as an Uber, whether it is full-time or not, then installing a camera for their own safety and for the safety of their passengers is not, I think, a particularly onerous requirement. So we will certainly be supporting Sue Moroney’s amendments around that at the Committee stage.

I just want to say one last thing, and that is around the behaviour of Uber. It has lobbied for these changes. That is perfectly legitimate. Everybody has the right to come to Parliament, to come to the Government, and say: “We don’t think the rules, as they are, are appropriate for the modern environment. Let’s make some changes.” But what Uber has done in its arrogance is flout the rules as they currently are and just act as though the rules are what it wants them to be. This is the way it has operated all around the world. Frankly, the response from the Government has been weak, extremely weak.

The approach this Government takes to actually enforcing the rules in so many different areas suggests that it does not actually think there should be rules. The enforcement of requiring Uber drivers to have their P endorsement, the enforcement of requiring them to have their vehicles properly certificated, has been extremely lax. This is a Government that tells New Zealanders that it believes in the rule of law, that people should abide by the law, and that there will be consequences for breaking the law, but in the case of Uber it has sort of just gone “Oh well.” and shrugged its shoulders: “Nothing we can do about it! It’s a very difficult area to enforce. Let’s just let Uber act in the way it wants to, and, hey, we’re going to change the law in its favour eventually, so why worry about it?”.

Why worry about it? Well, because there are other perfectly legitimate operators out there—taxi drivers—who have abided by the law, and I can understand why they are aggrieved by the way this Government has approached this legislation. We support it, but it sure ain’t perfect.

I am taking this call to support the Land Transport Amendment Bill in its second reading. This bill was considered by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and when this bill was going through the select committee process, my observation was that there was a huge amount of interest in one particular part of this bill. That is the small passenger service industry provisions. If we look at this whole bill, it is quite wide ranging. It covers provisions to minimise fare evasion, to put some effective deterrents in place, to reduce the incidences of fleeing drivers, and to bring in alcohol interlocks to reduce drink-driving offences. It includes changes to heavy vehicle regulations, and also updates regulations regarding the small passenger service industry.

The select committee received 79 submissions, and we had the opportunity to hear from 32 submitters. When I say that there was a huge amount of interest from the small passenger service industry, that is based on the fact that out of 79 submitters, 54 had something to say about the small passenger service industry provisions in this bill. I can understand this huge amount of interest in this particular part of the bill, because we have thousands and thousands of people employed in this industry across New Zealand, and people, schools, hospitals, and businesses use small passenger service providers from time to time to get transported. Yes, public safety and passenger safety are important, but it is also important to see that our regulatory framework is providing effective measures for all operators to be in the sector and work where they have a level playing field.

During the select committee process we heard about passenger endorsement calls, we heard about taxi stand issues, we heard about logbook and time sheet issues, and many of these issues that came up during the select committee process are addressed in the land transport rules. This sector, the small passenger service industry, is just like any other business. Businesses want to cut their compliance costs, they want to be innovative, they want to adopt technology, and by updating these regulations for the small passenger service industry, we will be giving this opportunity for the small passenger service industry to be innovative, to adopt technology, and to have new ways of interacting with its customers and providing services to its customers.

The other thing that I believe attracted a reasonable amount of interest was the alcohol-interlock provision in this bill, and 24 submitters had something to say about alcohol interlocks. The overall view was that alcohol interlocks will prove to be an effective tool to reduce the incidences of people getting drunk and driving. This part of the bill is based on evidence. We know that alcohol interlocks will definitely reduce such incidences, and there will be more use of alcohol interlocks after this legislation is passed. On fare evasion, this is an issue that we thought is mostly seen in Auckland, so there were several suggestions made to put more effective deterrents in place to reduce fare evasion cases.

Overall, there was a huge amount of suggestions, so I want to thank all submitters for their contributions. I also want to acknowledge our select committee chair, Jonathan Young, for his leadership during the select committee process, and I want to acknowledge our Minister, the Hon Simon Bridges, as well. This is a bill that this industry, the small passenger service industry, is very much looking forward to. This bill will strengthen safety and will make our land transport system more effective. I support this bill and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. This bill, like so much that National has done since it has been in Government, is OK; it is not great, it is definitely not world-changing. There are some things that are definitely not ideal about it. When it comes to transport, I think it does some of the bare minimum things that probably should have happened a few years ago, for example, updating the heavy vehicle regulations to align with the changes to the land transport rule around vehicle dimensions.

The Green Party has not supported bigger, heavier trucks because it is not very good for our roads and it is not very good for safety on our roads, but some of the changes around vehicle dimensions have to do with accommodating the reality of passenger transport services in Auckland, particularly bus services. Fully loaded buses and double-decker buses were not able to comply with our rules. Even though we knew that it was happening, bus companies were not able to buy buses that were in accordance with the law, and the law had to change to reflect that. So we support that.

Some of the changes around strengthening the legislation covering alcohol interlocks is good, and I think the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee made that even better, because there were some issues that were raised by the Law Society and I believe the select committee made quite a huge improvement. The legislation, as drafted, would have enabled the police to confiscate a vehicle from someone just on the basis that they believed they knew who might have disobeyed the law. So there was a serious issue around people’s rights that was affecting the way the legislation was originally drafted. We heard from the submitters. We heard that there were issues around that, and we amended the law to improve it. I believe it has been improved. So we can still support that.

Most of this debate has been around the changes to the regulatory system for small passenger services to accommodate the disruptive services and technology like Uber. I have to say, when it comes to Uber, it is really good technology. What is really great about the app itself—the software—is that it enables better utilisation of the vehicles that are on the road and it means that people can start seeing car transport as just one tool in their transport tool kit. That is something that the Greens have been advocating for a long time: a much more balanced transport system, where you have got decent, reliable, frequent public transport in our major towns and cities, safe walking and cycling, which means people do not have to own a car—they do not have to shoulder that expense—but they do have access to a car when they need to use it. Uber is one example of how a car suddenly just becomes another tool in your transport tool kit. You are looking up what is the best option to get from A to B, you have got some passenger transport options—bus and train or ferry services, or walking and cycling, and you combine those. Or, at some times of the day, a car is going to be the best option.

But the issue with Uber as a company is that it is actually not a very ethical company, and although its software is very, very useful—and I do believe it will end up being implemented and adopted by other transport mobility agencies and probably taxi drivers—the way it has gone about it has been quite bad and it is eroding the wages of taxi drivers. So, you know, I think the reality is that if we get self-driving cars in the next 10 or 20 years, driving will no longer be a profession, and that is one example of how, with increasing automation, we need a tax system and benefit system that recognises that and shares resources more fairly, which is very off-topic from this bill. Ha, ha!

But the reality is that we can agree with most of the changes, because I think they have struck a good balance, but we will be supporting Sue Moroney’s Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) when the Committee stages of this bill come up, and particularly the SOP around the requirement for Braille signage in passenger transport services. I do think this is really important. Jonathan Young gave this example of a taxi driver in New Plymouth, which is a very small town with very high car ownership and very few people using taxis. But the reality is that people who are vision impaired might rely quite heavily on taxis, and the reality is that this is not about: “Oh, well, it’s only a small percentage of people who need this Braille signage, so, on balance, we don’t think that everyone should have to pay for it.”

That is not how it works in this society. We actually want to lift everyone up to the same level. And just because someone is vision impaired does not mean that they should not have the right to know what is going on in the vehicle that they are getting into. You cannot make that kind of crude cost-benefit analysis: “Oh, it only benefits one person in New Plymouth, so we don’t really need it because they know their regular taxi driver.” Well, you could not say that in Auckland, because there is no chance in a city of 1.5 million people that somebody who is vision impaired and regularly using taxis is going to have the same taxi driver every time. That is just not how it works. There are heaps of taxi drivers in Auckland.

We heard from the Blind Foundation that it is extremely opposed to this change, and I just think that the test of a decent society is how it treats its most vulnerable people, and people who are vision impaired deserve that our laws and regulations meet their needs, at a bare minimum. The rest of us can put up with a lot of additional cost or additional disruption. We can do that because we can see and things are quite easy for us, but we should be designing the system around the people who have the greatest challenges. So the Green Party will 100 percent be supporting Sue Moroney’s SOP, and we support the minority report that the Labour Party has put in.

So, on balance, I would say that the Green Party can support the bill. We would really like to see this SOP that would look out for our most vulnerable people go through. And we would like to see some greater vision. I know the National Party try—and it is great that the rhetoric has gone there and that it is embracing technology and it is embracing the future, but the reality is that, with the overall approach to transport funding and policy, it is pretty far behind and it is still orienting everything around private car ownership. The vast majority of the transport budget is going on a few extremely expensive stretches of highway. We have not actually seen National embrace technology and the reality that cities are most effective when they are designed around people, not cars.

The Green Party will continue to advocate for our transport policy, which would probably actually be incredibly popular with everyone in Auckland and our other major cities—but particularly in Auckland, I think, people have realised. No matter who they vote for, they support Green Party transport policy because we have realised that the only way to enable people to get around Auckland now is to invest in public transport. National has, sadly—I know not all of their members agree with this—due to Steven Joyce as transport Minister from 2008-11—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Stick to the bill, please.

—gone down the route of spending most of the money on private infrastructure that supports private car ownership but actually results in a whole lot more congestion.

The Green Party supports this bill. We believe it could be better and that National could do a whole lot more for transport in this country if it embraced a more balanced approach to transport spending.

New Zealand First will not support this bill further. We do support, of course, some of its purposes though, and mandatory disqualification for drink-driving offences and, especially, indefinite disqualification for repeat drink-driving offences are some things that we would definitely support, and also the offence of failing to pay for bus or train tickets, which has become a pretty large problem, especially for rail services in Auckland. We would definitely support that as well.

Concerning the impounding of cars of fleeing drivers, we do agree that it is necessary to delete the proposed provision because it is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and that is in respect of the right to be secure against the unreasonable seizure of property. In any event, it is already possible for vehicles to be impounded under section 96(1AB) of the Land Transport Act, which has the power to impound vehicles for up to 28 days for failing to stop. So that is already there, and it is a serious issue because fleeing drivers were involved in 29 deaths in the 5 years to 2014-15 and 2,735 fleeing driver incidents were recorded in that year alone. That is an increase, in 1 year, of 371. So it shows that this is actually a problem that is getting worse and worse. New Zealand First would like to see the police use those powers that they do have more than they currently do. This is an offence that has to be stamped out.

When it comes to small passenger services, however, this is the part of the bill that New Zealand First cannot support. We do agree, of course, that it is silly to have separate rules for taxis and Uber services and others involved in the industry. One set of regulations ought to mean a level playing field, and we support that. But that does not mean that we have to lower standards to provide a carte blanche for Uber services. In that respect, we say in New Zealand First that the taxi-driver industry does have a valid complaint, relating to the wholesale lowering of standards across the board that this bill will inevitably result in. That is especially in relation to the safety of passengers and drivers.

It does seem that this is a price that the Government is willing to pay in order to have and encourage Uber services, but we in New Zealand First say: “Safety first.” We say the safety of drivers and passengers comes before that. We agree with the accusation made by the taxi drivers through their organisation that Uber drivers have been getting away with blue murder as far as the services that they provide without compliance to the current regulations are concerned; whereas, on the other hand, the taxi drivers actually have a very fine record of compliance, and we should be encouraging that and not discouraging it.

Following the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee process, Uber drivers will now be required to obtain a P endorsement, but they should also have to do what taxi drivers are now required to do. One of those things is to have a good standard of English. I would have thought that is absolutely basic for a passenger service provider—absolutely basic for that. Another is an area knowledge test, something that is also absolutely basic for somebody who drives people from A to B. How on earth can they provide a proper service without doing that? Those are the things that are being removed by this bill, all to accommodate Uber.

Another issue is the removal of mandatory signs on and in vehicles. We say they should stay. Uber vehicles should have the same mandatory signs on and in their vehicles as taxis now do. After all, the signs on the exterior of vehicles could easily be removable, in this day and age. Magnetic signs are very easy to obtain, and that could be done without any inconvenience and with very little cost to the Uber drivers. Passengers need to know that a vehicle that is providing a transport service is an authorised passenger service. People are entitled to know that, and they will not know that if the vehicles are not signed. In addition to that, it assists vehicles in being identified as such, so that enforcement when necessary can easily be carried out.

We also deplore the deletion of Braille signs. I could not believe my ears when I heard Jonathan Young say that because of his experience in his home town, where apparently he thinks that only one taxi with Braille signs in it should be needed—well, surely, he has been to larger towns than that, where there are a lot of people who need that service, and all vehicles should be required to have Braille signs inside them. After all, how difficult is that to do? There is very, very little difficulty, and very, very little expense, in comparison with the huge benefit for sight impaired people.

The same applies to interior security cameras. Passengers like that idea, and, most of all, the drivers like that idea, because it is a safety measure and it provides a record of events that would not otherwise be available—a well worthwhile thing inside taxis as they now are. Why should Uber drivers be exempt from that? Is it the expense? Is it inconvenient? Or do they just not like it in there for some reason? I do not understand why that is being deleted by this bill. It just does not make sense, and it is another reason why New Zealand First will vote against it.

We also regret the loss of the approved taxi organisations—because that is what it will be—which ensure compliance and the maintenance of standards and compliance with regulations. The loss of those is going to mean a loss of standards across the board, especially when it comes to the safety of passengers and drivers, all because Uber could not comply with that. So, as a result, we are going to see the demise of those organisations, and that is a sad thing, because it means more drivers taking risks and cutting corners. It is not something we should be agreeing to, and yet this Government is doing it just to make sure that we get these Uber services. It will do anything, apparently, to do that.

We say in New Zealand First that this country is not yet ready for a free-for-all Uber service in the way that you see operating overseas, and that is what this bill is going to do. It is going to do that. It is going to lower standards, and that is all because the Government thinks we need to accommodate Uber. Well, actually, Uber needs to accommodate our legal system and our standards. We deplore that these safety levels will be reduced, and we deplore also, by the way, that Uber takes profits from New Zealand to benefit overseas owners. That is not the case with most taxi providers.

However, having said all that, it sounds pretty anti-Uber, but in fact New Zealand First is not anti-Uber. In fact, all we actually want is a fair deal for taxi operators. That is not what the parties that are supporting this bill apparently want. All we want are these things, and they are pretty simple—they are pretty simple to provide: first of all, exterior vehicle signage; interior security cameras; interior information in Braille; a P endorsement for Uber drivers, as well as for all others providing a passenger service; an English language test; and an area knowledge test. Not until we get those things are we actually going to get a genuine level playing field and a transport system for small passenger service vehicles that will be sustainable, that will be safe, and that could be supported by all parties in the House.

Without those things, New Zealand First will not be voting for this bill, because it is substandard. It is substandard in terms of safety and it is substandard in terms of providing the great level of service that taxi drivers have built in this country over many years. That is all going to be destroyed, simply because this Government has had its arm twisted up its back by people who want to provide Uber services. Well, they should be coming to the party and providing the level of service and safety that our standards currently demand—nothing less. We will be voting against.

I rise to support this bill. This bill aims to promote safety. First let us say that it will strengthen the regulations relating to alcohol interlocks, to make the alcohol-interlock programme mandatory for repeat and very serious first-time drink-driving offenders. Also, it will increase the penalties for drivers who flee police and for those who provide false information or refuse to provide information that may lead to the identification of the fleeing drivers.

I am particularly concerned about road safety, because we do have a large number of vehicle crashes in New Zealand. I had a look at the 2015 calendar year: we had 291 fatal road crashes, 9,446 injury crashes, 319 deaths, and 12,270 people injured. So these numbers are quite high. Of course, each death and each injury will cause huge emotional and financial harm to families, and also, broadly, to societies. We have here the Social cost of road crashes and injuries. Basically: “Road crashes impose intangible, financial and economic costs to society. These costs include reduced quality of life; reduced productivity; medical and other resource costs.” So, if you convert this into the actual dollars, the numbers are very high. For example, here the updated value of statistical life is $4.14 million per fatality at June 2016. So it is particularly important for us to strengthen our regulations to promote road safety.

This bill also aims to promote greater economic growth and, also, productivity by introducing a new regulatory framework for small passenger services. It will enable innovative small passenger services to deliver benefits to consumers while managing safety risks. It is important for us to make changes to accommodate the advance of modern technology. Smartphones have been so popular and it is so easy for us to use, for example, Uber, so it is important for us to have an updated regulatory regime for small passenger services. A better management of small passenger services would potentially have the benefit of managing congestion and, therefore, has the potential to improve the productivity of our economy. So I commend the bill to the House.

David Clendon—a 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party.

In this short call I would just like to touch on a few provisions of this bill. I do not know it well; I have not been on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, but a few things jump out. One of them is the changes made to the enforcement of weight limits on heavy vehicles. It enables police to more easily require overloaded vehicles to be offloaded, and it increases the penalties for taking overloaded, heavy vehicles on the road. Those are good things, in terms of safety and protection of our roads. It is interesting, though, that in the first reading the Minister introducing the bill, Craig Foss, talked about the introduction of more productive freight vehicles. Certainly, allowing larger, heavier vehicles on the road is, in a sense, more productive. It is better for the vehicle operator and, perhaps, for the customer, but it is a classic example, actually, of socialising cost and privatising profits. The impact of those extremely heavy, large vehicles on our roads means a much higher maintenance bill for the taxpayers, traded off against the benefits to the vehicle operators. It is an unfortunate compromise.

There is this wonderful technology called trains, which this Government seems somewhat oblivious to. They are tailor-made and wonderfully designed for carrying large loads over long distances at relatively low cost—social, economic, and environmental. Unfortunately, this Government has gone down the road of bigger trucks, more impact on our taxpayer-funded roads. This bill takes one small step to improving road safety and enforcement, but a much better proposition would have been heavy investment in rail transport.

This bill also does something interesting in the fact that it enables police to better monitor and enforce regulations about weight limits on bridges. It seems there was a little bit of an ambiguity in legislation, and so the possibility of prosecution and enforcing load limits on bridges was much reduced. That is an unfortunate reality, of course—collapsing bridges is something we do not want. So it is a good thing that the Government is now tidying up that little corner of the law. Living in Northland, bridges are something quite close to our heart, of course. There was that one shiny moment of hope when we thought some of our old, single-lane, broken bridges might actually be replaced—10 of them, in fact, if I recall. Sadly, not a spade has been in the ground. We continue to manage with single-lane, tired, broken things. The promise was cheap. Unfortunately, it turned out to be just that—a promise. One day, perhaps.

More seriously, I would like to reference the provisions in this bill that allow for more available use of alcohol interlocks on cars. I think it is probably a good thing that people who are busted drunk-driving for the first time who are seriously over the limit can be obliged to put alcohol interlocks on their car for a period of time. After that has expired, they can then apply for a zero-alcohol licence for a period of, perhaps, 3 years, before they are trusted again to be drivers just in the normal sense of the word, with a standard licence. That is a good thing. If a person does that once—offends a drunk-driving law once—their behaviour is likely to be changed by that serious inconvenience of cost of the interlock.

Unfortunately, the Government seems to think that the interlocks will also work for recidivist drunk-drivers. The fact is that they will get compliance, perhaps. A person who has been caught drunk-driving four, five, six, seven times and possibly has even done prison time for that—they will comply, perhaps, for that period, but technology does not change behaviour. What is missing out of this picture? This is a technical fix for a social and often psychological problem. People who repeatedly offend, who are repeatedly caught drunk-driving, have a deep-seated problem with their behaviour that has to be revealed and dealt with. Technology will not actually solve that problem. Again, it is a characteristic of this Government that it thinks that technology can solve personal and social and, indeed, environmental problems. The alcohol interlocks are a useful strategy in the short term. In the longer term, if we are serious about recidivist drunk-driving, let us get busy and roll out the drug and alcohol courts, which actually deal with the root causes of repeat drunk-driving. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Land Transport Amendment Bill, and I would like to quibble with the previous speaker, David Clendon, who said that the alcohol-interlock aspect of this bill will not make a difference. Well, the member lives in Kerikeri. The member is familiar with rural New Zealand—in fact, he talked about rural New Zealand in his speech. The change that is being made in this bill, coming back from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and that is what second readings are about—means that this bill will apply the alcohol-interlock policy to people even if they live more than 30 kilometres from a major centre. I support that because drunk-driving has taken so many lives, and we should be using technology evenly across New Zealand to restrain all of those who reoffend.

Going from the rural areas to the urban, this bill would also ensure something that is long overdue. In representing the Epsom electorate, at the centre of Auckland, our largest city, I know that we are in a transition from being an archipelago of provincial towns to a country of large cities. That is right, Paul Foster-Bell, there is still some—

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: Archipelago.

Archipelago—thank you. That is right; I am very sorry—archipelago. The fact of the matter is that as we become larger, we need some of those big-city laws and regulations.

We need to ensure that the transport companies and the police are able to enforce fare evasion on our public transport networks. We need to ensure that it is a criminal offence that can be punished when people use our public transport networks without paying, not just because it takes revenue to run a public transport network, not just because everybody should pay their fair share, but because fare evaders tend to be people who are up to no good. We have seen this in the Epsom electorate, where people commit crimes and evade the detection of the authorities by saying: “We are going to use the free train.” That is what the local police will tell you they call it—the “free train”. So it is critical that this bill makes it illegal and gives the authorities the power to police people who would evade fares on our transport networks in our growing metropolitan cities.

Far more interesting and exciting in this bill, in my view, is the change to the regulations for shared transport. Oh my God, are we not so far behind the times in this Parliament when it comes to the idea of people sharing rides for money. You see, the Cancer Society of New Zealand in Auckland has 500 volunteers who ferry patients backwards and forwards between their homes and their treatment without charging anything. That is wonderful, but we have the opportunity to become world leaders in people who share rides in their vehicles with other New Zealand citizens and are given remuneration in the form of cash for performing that duty.

We are starting to see this with Uber, with Chariot, and with Zoomy up and down this country, but the select committee that heard this bill did not understand any of it. Had the members understood what this bill was about—

💬 Sue Moroney: Ha, ha! What rubbish—what rubbish.

There is Sue Moroney. She was one of the worst offenders. She had no idea. She was ridiculed from Northland to Southland for her lack of understanding of basic modern technology.

💬 Sue Moroney: Did you not hear my speech?

Bye-bye in September, Sue. What we need to do is ask ourselves what the role of Government is in ride-sharing regulation. The Government knows what your criminal record is—not yours, Mr Assistant Speaker—and it knows what a person’s driving history is. Those are the only two questions the Government should ask when it authorises somebody to share a ride for money. If we were to make that the only test, then becoming an Uber driver, or a Chariot driver, or a Zoomy driver would become something that almost every New Zealander would be doing. We could lead the world in technology. We could increase the vehicle occupancy rates in our cars, but this bill does none of that, and it is a terrible shame.

It is a pleasure to take a brief call in this Land Transport Amendment Bill second reading debate. It will be brief because whilst I do not normally sit on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, I did have the pleasure of sitting in on the now notorious session of public hearings where, unfortunately, the media did mischaracterise—and I think it was a mischaracterisation—the level of understanding that the members in this House have of ride sharing. Whilst I was very pleased not to be one of those members who was mischaracterised as being ignorant of how an app or a modern ride-sharing system would work, I think it was rather unfair. I do not think the questioning by Ms Moroney was quite as atrocious as was made out in the press.

I want to respond to a couple of things that were said by a member in a previous speech, Denis O’Rourke. I want to respond to his comments about the modern ride-sharing systems. I appreciate the member Mr O’Rourke probably does not recognise a mode of transport unless it is steam powered or piston driven, but the reality is that the changes that have been brought in are very balanced, and I think they do present a balanced approach to reconciling the need for public safety with enabling and underpinning modern, technologically driven services such as Uber.

So, for instance, when it comes to cameras in taxis—Mr O’Rourke referred to the safety aspect around cameras—I think if you go into an accommodation provider in the country or if you go into a backpackers, you can make some informed decisions around whether they have cameras in the lobbies, whether they have card access, and whether they have lift controls and these sorts of things. This is something that the consumer can make an informed decision on. And, actually, given the person booking an Uber, or equivalent ride-sharing ride with their smartphone, has access to an emergency call that they can make directly from their smartphone—their smartphone does contain a camera, and this Government, it should be remembered, is bringing in a 111-equivalent system to enable people to access the emergency services via their smartphones—I think the argument made by Mr O’Rourke was completely specious and it should be dismissed as the piffle that it was.

So I think this is a good bill. It does many other worthwhile things. It does crack down on drivers who flee police—the committee made a sensible amendment so that it does so using existing powers already in existence under sections 7 and 21 of the Bill of Rights Act 1990. There were some concerns about introducing new powers.

I think, taken as a whole, this is a sensible measure, and it does go some way to really underpinning and enabling those new technologies, which I am pretty convinced will be only the start of the transformation of our transport systems in New Zealand. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. In the vein of much of the contribution earlier this evening, I would like to start with a theme. From the 1976 album A Night on the Train, tonight is definitely the night. Tonight is the night when we debate this particular bill, the Land Transport Amendment Bill. My colleague here, Sue Moroney, talked about Rod Stewart and how “Rod Stewart” presented to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and really pointed out the flaws, the discrepancies, and the ease with which he was able to exploit this particular system. For the purposes of natural justice, his particular case was shared with Uber and others who are involved in this particular space, and none of them had an answer. None of them were able to rebuff the fact that this particular gentleman actually flouted the rules, flouted the system, and was able to get away with it.

So, sticking with the Rod Stewart theme—

💬 Hon Member: Oh really?

Well, you know, he is a great singer and is married to one of our locals, so we might as well stick with it.

💬 Sue Moroney: Was.

Well, he was—he was, yes. I could give a bloody good quote of his—but anyway.

I am glad to hear the member for Epsom mention how tonight the good people of Epsom will be able to sleep well this evening, without fear of fare evaders storming through Epsom—running riot across Epsom. There is no ability in the old legislation to actually hold them accountable for evading fares, so we support that particular part of the bill. What we did question during the select committee process was—OK, we can allow for more police officers and other officers of the council to crack down on fare evasion, but that only works if you actually resource them to do it. We certainly do not expect our upstanding policemen and policewomen across the country to be standing outside a train station waiting for anybody who happened to evade a fare of $4 and make sure that they throw the book at them and that the heavy hand of the law comes down on that person who, for one reason or another—who knows—might have caught the train in South Auckland and had no money. We understand the poverty issues. But I digress. We support this particular part of the bill but wonder whether or not it comes with the resources to make sure that the legislation as described here in this bill is actually carried out.

I also want to pick up the point made by Mr Young, the chairman of the select committee, about how he mentioned that some of the apps that are currently available for those who are vision impaired are able to talk to them—are able to talk to them—so there is not a need for Braille. When the submitters came to the select committee they made it very clear that a lot of that technology for those vision-impaired people is still very expensive—very, very expensive. Many in the vision-impaired community were unable to afford many of those particular pieces of technology to allow them to be able to enjoy a passenger service, in particular in Tāmaki-makau-rau, in Auckland. Just to the point that the chairman of the select committee made, it is all fair and well to say that the technology exists and is available there for them, but the fact of the matter is that it is not available to all of them. That is why we will be supporting wholeheartedly the amendments that will be proposed by my colleague here, Sue Moroney, about the small compliance cost to make sure that there is Braille available on a taxi so that those who are vision impaired are able to actually understand that this is who this person is, this is the service that they provide, and, should anything happen to them, they will know who that person is.

We heard, I thought, a quite harrowing story from one submitter, who actually feared for their life as a vision-impaired person catching a taxi. They explained how they were taken to a place where they were not comfortable—the kind of conversation and the inability of the driver to explain exactly what was happening and where they were going left this particular submitter in fear for their life. So we will be supporting the amendment that will be proposed by Sue Moroney to ensure that that small compliance cost surely can be met, to make sure that that community is looked after.

There is also the other one—cameras being available in all taxis. The chairperson of the select committee talked about how technology is the now, it is the future. We do know that with this technology and the market the way that it is, cameras and such apparatus for a taxi are actually quite cheap and easy to install. It is important for the matter of the safety of drivers and passengers that this actually be a compliance that is required for all who are operating in this space. So we will be supporting the proposed amendment from Sue Moroney on that matter.

The other ones are pretty straightforward. Of course we support the drink-driving interlocks, right across the House, and I take the point made by the member Julie Anne Genter. I think we actually made the bill better.

💬 Sue Moroney: We did.

We did. The select committee worked hard. There was rigorous debate. Those who came to explain the technology and the science of it—I think that through the debate in the select committee it was made better and stronger. We all agree that we want to take recidivist drink-drivers off the roads—drink-drivers, full stop, off the roads—to make sure that those who use our transport system are safe.

To another point that I think my colleague Julie Anne Genter touched on, and that is the sad fact that this Government looked at this particular bill as almost in a silo, when, really, what we should have been considering when we looked at this bill was actually a broader look at our transport system, in particular in Tāmaki-makau-rau. We need legislation that will force a change in the way we think about our transport network in Tāmaki-makau-rau. While this particular bill goes some way to doing that, it is only a small part, which is where I take the point made by Mr O’Rourke in saying that this bill is, in some parts, quite substandard.

But the Labour Party will be supporting this bill, in particular the amendment proposed by my colleague Sue Moroney that will come up, no doubt, in the next stage of this bill. That one, of course, is about cameras—about making it compulsory to have cameras in taxi services—and also about the relatively small compliance cost to make sure that Braille is available to the visually impaired community, which relies on these services. Julie Anne Genter explained it quite well, that they are quite vulnerable. In fact, they are very vulnerable. They rely on a sound, strong transport system that looks after their safety but also allows them to participate in our communities far and wide.

Without going on for too much longer, I just wanted to stand up in support of this bill. I would also point out some of the flaws that we encountered as this bill went through the select committee, and I hope that, in its next stage, further debate will be able to take place and we will get the support needed across the House for the sensible and smart amendments that will be proposed by Sue Moroney. Certainly the Labour Party will support this bill.