McAnulty KieranKIERAN McANULTY (Labour): It's not often that two speakers from the same party get to follow each other on speaking on such an important bill and so I would like to take the opportunity which I haven't had up until this point and say that I agree wholeheartedly with the previous speaker the Hon Clare Curran. That's not something I've been able to say and it's not something that I can say tonight when I think about the contributions—the two contributions—thus far as sincere as I'm sure they were on this the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill.The issue is the principle that raising a fine will stop the behaviour you wish to halt. It's not going to work. In all the examples we've heard tonight of littering in the Coromandel and littering in Papamoa and dear I say even littering in the great electorate of New Lynn—how many of those perpetrators were seen and fined? None. So there is no evidence to suggest that the current fine system works and there's no evidence to suggest that increasing it to some arbitrary figure of $1000 is going to work as well. That's essentially what this bill as proposed by the Hon Scott Simpson suggests.Us on this House—we oppose this bill because we believe it is unnecessary. It's not going to be effective and it's not actually going to go towards anywhere which we all want to see—we all want to see less littering. If you were to look at the examples that were raised by Dr Deborah Russell in speeding and drink driving they were used because often if you commit those two acts then you will end up with a fine less than what's being proposed in this bill. Now dear I say that the reason us in this House do not drink drive and most people in this country do not drink drive has got nothing to do with the fine but it's got everything to do with the potential shame that would be attached to that the loss of wages that could be attached to losing your licence or a much more serious nature of actually causing a serious harm to somebody else or your own. It's got nothing to do with the fine.I would argue that it is much more effective if we want to stop littering to actually look at changing the culture around littering. Why do people litter? Trying to understand this—and there's a list of Government initiatives that are going around on this that I am looking forward to outlining in the remainder of my speech. I went to Taiwan last year—it was a marvellous trip to a marvellous place—and the one thing I noticed was that there were no rubbish bins. None. I couldn't find any. There was someone on the delegation that enjoys the odd cigarette and that person couldn't find anywhere to put their cigarette butt. So what that shows is that there is a culture over there that you simply do not litter. You take your rubbish with you and you dispose of it at home. Nowhere to be seen was there a rubbish bin. Now the same cannot be said in this country. In fact—SPEAKER: Order! The time has come to leave—it's kai time. It's time to leave the chair.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.KIERAN McANULTY: The issue of course is when you get on a roll and you start a speech and it stops for the dinner break you lose your momentum—and of course you might also have a different audience. We all know that there are more people that watch Parliament TV after dinner than before so I thought perhaps a little recap of what I said earlier might be the way to go.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): There are Standing Orders Mr McAnulty around repetition.KIERAN McANULTY: Ha! Well it was worth a crack. But essentially the arguments were that this is a bad idea and we won't be supporting it. The reasons behind that are quite clear because arbitrarily lifting a fine from $400 to $1000 is going to do nothing particularly when at the moment the system of imposing those fines hardly really exists. As my colleague Dr Deborah Russell mentioned in her contribution in order for someone to be fined for littering they essentially need to be witnessed in the act. They can go back if they can prove that it was someone that was littering—so perhaps they may have thrown in a power bill amongst the bag of rubbish or something like that. But essentially the Litter Act 1979 which the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill seeks to amend is really targeting those small-scale litterers: your cigarette butts your lolly wrappers and your McDonalds' packages etc. And so what we are arguing on the side of the House is that we are certainly not suggesting that the intention behind this bill was not sincere—I'm sure it was. But we view this as a rather pointless change because ultimately if we are going to reach the objective that we all want to see where less people litter—ideally no people littering—Hon Ruth Dyson: Fewer people.KIERAN McANULTY: Fewer. Fewer. I'd like to acknowledge my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson. Never say less" in front of Ruth Dyson when you mean "fewer" because she will point it out.I was thinking about my recent trip to Taiwan and I just started talking about that before the dinner break. What struck me in Taiwan was that this is an island with 23-odd million people and I can honestly tell you the whole time that I was there I didn't see one single piece of rubbish. It's quite remarkable for a city so condensed that they have that many people in such a relatively small area and I didn't see one single piece of rubbish and just as interesting is that I also didn't see a single rubbish bin. So I started talking about that before the dinner break and I actually thought to myself while I was having a feed "I wonder why that was? Maybe it's because they've got a really strong fine system in place. Maybe the Hon Scott Simpson was on to something." I've got seven minutes of my speech left; it's not too late to correct the record. If I was wrong I wouldn't be too ashamed to say so.It turns out that they do not. The fine in Taiwan for littering is the equivalent of NZ$40—$40. But what they've done is they've created this culture where people just do not litter. Taiwan—I've since found out in the last hour and a half—was colloquially known as "Garbage Island". It's quite incredible—"Garbage Island". And yet what they've done is they've imposed a system which this Government is arguing would be a much better approach than the one that's suggested in this bill where they make it easy for people to recycle and they make it easy for people to dispose of their rubbish and they've created this culture. If we were to compare that to what's proposed here of simply suggesting that increasing the fine from $400 to $1000 is going to be effective in stopping people from littering then I believe that is a mistaken concept.You couldn't compare that to Singapore. I read a news report where one resident got fined NZ$21500 for throwing a cigarette butt out the bus window. We probably wouldn't litter if the fine was $21500 but of course we'd still have to be found out. We'd still have to be found out wouldn't we? I suppose that's the point. In Singapore they have this fine system but they also have the people there to witness the act and impose the fine. And this argument that we can just chuck an arbitrary figure out and hope that it's going to be successful this side of the House clearly argues that it is not.I note that there are some figures here that the vast majority of people in this country do not litter. We all know that. It's around at 84 percent. And I think it's actually because even though we do have a fine system in this country—I think people here in this House if they saw someone littering in front of them they'd probably say "Excuse me would you mind picking that up?" or words to that effect.Hon Members: That's right.KIERAN McANULTY: That's right because we do take pride in this country—not everybody but most of us do. I guess if you consider the arguments that were given by some of the submitters and also most certainly the feedback that was given by the department when the Environment Committee were considering this they made it very clear indeed that they did not recommend increasing the fine to up to $1000—Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Killing an ant with a sledgehammer.KIERAN McANULTY: Thank you Priyanca Radhakrishnan. I appreciate that. "Killing an ant with a sledgehammer" she says—an utterly pointless exercise. On that I do agree.So if we were to consider what the Ministry for the Environment advised the select committee they said that there are no bigger issues with enforcement that $1000 is not going to be a deterrent because ultimately that's what a fine system is for: it's to stop and deter a particular behaviour and $1000 for those in this country that do litter is not going to stop them littering. What we would argue on this side of the House that is going to be much more effective is the initiatives that the Government is investing in in terms of littering projects. Non-regulatory tools to reduce litter—I know that there's a lot of pride in the keep New Zealand green and Keep New Zealand Beautiful campaign. I remember that from when I was much younger as a child.Hon Ruth Dyson: Last week.KIERAN McANULTY: "Last week" has been the quip from my left which isn't bad because I am the youngest person in the Labour Party caucus so I take some pride in that.The fact is that if we just think back to 10 years ago and the amount that we all recycled—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member. I call Erica Stanford."