Abel Steve; Simmonds PennySTEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. I had a very excellent experience some many years ago in my capacity as political liaison for Greenpeace where I would attend the Bluegreens conferences which are excellent I have to say often. One of the more impressive ones was where it was held in Raglan—Tom Rutherford: I was there.STEVE ABEL: You were there. Scott Simpson was there. A lot of people were there. We were taken to the very excellent Xtreme Zero Waste facility in Raglan where they are diverting I think around 90 percent of waste from going to landfill—incredible recycling a dump shop and great composting facility. That is the sort of innovation improving of what is possible with waste that should be being funded by a levy.We support a waste levy. We support an increase in the waste levy and I believe my colleague Kahurangi Carter will speak to how much that increase should be. It should in fact be greater than what is being proposed. But as Led Zeppelin say if the levy breaks we'll have no place to stay. What this legislation does by its allocation—that seemed to be a very in-joke that no one got!CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): We were laughing within Mr Abel.STEVE ABEL: Thank you. I appreciate that Mr Chair.With this allocation of that levy to things beyond the purpose for which the Waste Minimisation Act was originally set up—with the allocation of that levy to other things—it will be literally frittered away on things that are not to do with waste minimisation. So on one hand you're increasing the levy but on the other hand you're vastly broadening the category of things that it can be spent on. Therefore the increase at $5 a year is barely beyond the increase in interest. It barely stays ahead of interest rate increases at $5 a year. It needs to be more.The impact of it being allocated to so many other purposes is that it is near nominal. In fact you may well find—because 50 percent of it is going to go to councils as it should but that 50 percent that is open to the discretion to be spent on other things such as remediating mine sights now suddenly—that we may even get less money spent on waste minimisation because the category is so broad for how it can be spent. So we submit that the levy should be greater for the categories of waste construction and demolition fill" and "managed or controlled fill disposal". It should be greater than a $5 increase—and my colleague Kahurangi Carter will speak to the exact dollar amount. But we should not increase the municipal disposal rate more because it is not fair that general members of the public who are disposing of their municipal waste should be being pinged for the cost of cleaning up a mine site as this legislation currently proposes to do. Thank you. Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for the Environment): I'm very mindful that we traversed the broader scope of the bill in Part 1 but I note also that the Green Party would like a much greater increase in the levy rates. We on this side are very careful about the impact of any increases on the cost of living crisis that businesses are dealing with and not wanting to also impose significant costs on to the building and construction sector in a housing crisis. So we are happy with the rates as they stand. Can I just note—because the member is so fixated on mining—that mines have remediation as part of their conditions under the Resource Management Act. CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): I'll just note that we've had two very good speeches that have gone a little beyond but have provided good context. But from here on we'll be reminding members of the relatively narrow focus of this Part. The Hon—Glen Bennett: Rachel Brooking.CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Rachel Brooking."