Dear Wellington Regional Council,

Background

As part of LGOIMA 2026 05 I was advised of the following:

> On bus services, drivers are required to check SuperGold passes when a service user boards and then select the relevant button on the Bus Driver Console each time. Rail staff are also required to check passes manually and keep a count of SuperGold service users per service that they are on, which is then reported to Greater Wellington.

However pursuant to s.12 (Unauthorised use of SuperGold Cards) of Social Security (SuperGold Card) Regulations 2007 includes:

(3) Only an employee of the department or a person described in regulation 11(2) is entitled to demand or request a SuperGold Card as a form of identification of the cardholder.

(4) Only an employee of the department is entitled to demand or request a SuperGold Card as evidence that the cardholder is eligible for it.

(6) A person required or requested to produce his or her SuperGold Card by a person entitled to require or request its production may be treated as if he or she does not hold a SuperGold Card (or, as the case requires, is not eligible for a community services card) if he or she does not produce it within a reasonable time.

It puzzles me that regional transport authorities or agencies (such as contracted transport providers) are not authorized to in fact request SuperGold Card as a form of identification.

In combination that GRWC treats it as identification of the user.

Request

Please provide

A) Current training materials provided to the bus drivers on how to deal with SuperGold

B) Policy / strategy document that outlined why council chose the option of not requiring SuperGold users to register through snapper which then can be used to authenticate and verify the user

C) Briefing and any other material that formed the basis of treating SuperGold holders differently from the rest of the population, who both need a registered snapper and go through the process of tagging on and off.

Yours faithfully,

Miss M Quicken