Uber called on users to protest against the Katter's Australian Party's proposed legislation. Credit:Jorge Branco Uber responded by setting up a 'Katter' option on the app, which showed "no cars available" when selected by customers, along with a prompt for supporters to continue to email their MPs to protest the move. On Thursday, shortly after the parliament voted on an urgent motion after unintentionally passing an amendment the night before which made all passenger services other than taxi's illegal, Speaker Peter Wellington confirmed the Parliament servers had blocked the Uber emails, after receiveing "many hundreds, if not thousands" of missives. "Whether these emails were, in fact, being generated by individuals or individuals utilising some sort of feeder system, or simply being auto generated and were a type of email bomb or blast, one result of these emails was to compromise the Parliamentary Service's email system and members' ability to communicate," Mr Wellington said. "In these circumstances the Clerk took the decision to auto block these emails to prevent the overload of our members' email accounts.

"The Clerk immediately advised members of the action taken and no member complained about that action. "I have received a complaint from Uber about the possible blocking of the emails. I endorse the Clerk's decision as I am sure members do as well." In that complaint, written by Uber Director of Public Policy Brad Kitschke, the company described the blocking move as a "gross censorship of their [Uber supporters]democratic rights". "In a democracy, it is the basic right of every citizen to contact elected officials and to hold their elected officials to account," Mr Kitschke wrote. "...The emails Members of Parliament are receiving are not auto-generated, they are not coming from a bot. Users are asked to email their M.P. and have to choose to send the email from their own accounts, it is not automatic."

It is understood Uber supporters have been calling Mr Wellington's office to complain. During the Wednesday night debate, Labor MP Jim Pearce complained about the inundation of form emails. "It was annoying to me because I was trying to have a bit of relaxation," he said. "This has happened over the last 18 hours. It has been a farce; it has been a joke. If Uber think they have helped their argument, I can tell them that they have done themselves a lot of damage. "I have spoken to a lot of members here today and they are not very happy.

"The member for Burleigh, the deputy chair of the committee I am the chair of, had 10,000 of these messages come through today. "He is a Member of Parliament. He has to be looking after his electorate. He does not want these idiots sitting on the end of a telephone pumping out messages that do not mean anything. They ought to be ashamed of themselves." Mr Kitschke labelled Mr Pearce's comments "an affront to Parliamentary democracy". Queensland's crack down gives it some of the toughest penalties in the nation for ride sharing companies, with the service to remain illegal until after August, when a review into Uber and similar companies and the taxi industry is handed down. The taxi industry, which had been calling for the government to come down harder on the service in the mean time, welcomed the toughening of the penalties. Transport officials had admitted to dropping off with compliance measures, after Uber began identifying and then blocking their inspectors, from being able to book rides.

While Transport Inspectors still can't utilise covert operations and must identify themselves, they no longer have to use the service themselves in order to issue a fine, and can use 'reasonable suspicions' to ask a driver for their licence, as well as be able to use receipts as proof someone is operating as a taxi service outside of the regulations. Uber has vowed to continue to fight but so has the taxi industry, which says it is just asking for a "level playing field". For independent news coverage, be sure to follow our Facebook feed.