Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I am very pleased to speak on the Conservation (Infringement System) Bill. I welcome the support from across the House for this bill and acknowledge the work by the former Attorney-General and by the former Minister of Conservation the Hon Maggie Barry. I look forward to the bill going to the Environment Committee. Having been a member of that select committee I am sure that it will apply the usual and scrupulous care and attention to examining the bill to reading the submissions and to analysing those that the former committee in the last term of Parliament did. One of the particular issues that I am interested as Minister of Conservation in hearing the select committee's views on—and advice obviously back to the Parliament—is just the status of Fish & Game in relation to this new regime of infringement notices.The Department of Conservation (DOC) is the only major agency that doesn't have an infringement notice system for lesser offenses under conservation legislation and that is why this bill is important. There are a lot of issues in terms of breaches of the whitebaiting regulations breaches of marine reserves—the smaller breaches where it may not be enough to justify a prosecution—but at the moment because we don't have this mechanism of infringement offences the person may not be penalised at all for illegal activity. So this bill is bringing the Department of Conservation and conservation legislation alongside fisheries biosecurity and other legislation by providing this opportunity for infringement offences.I would point out that it's not going to be like the traffic system where infringement notices are issued on the spot. There will be trained staff and warranted officers so that rangers and staff in the field if they catch someone doing something illegal will be able to gather information and then give that information to the warranted officers to make a decision about whether an infringement notice should be issued. That provides a certain safeguard as does the training there.That's why this whole issue of Fish & Game—and I acknowledge the comments by my ministerial colleague the Hon David Parker and his work in taking proceedings for Fish & Game. The previous Government decided that Fish & Game shouldn't have the same powers as conservation rangers and staff and that is something I'm very interested in hearing the public's views on. I'm sure that Fish & Game councils and others will make submissions and the select committee will actually weigh that because it's the Fish & Game councils that do have statutory responsibilities for the management of game birds for the management of sports fisheries—trout and salmon—for the licences to be observed and those sorts of issues. Under that legislation it may well be appropriate for those Fish & Game staff warranted officers to actually have the power to get the information and to initiate the infringement notice procedure.As others have commented—and I won't go through all of the eight Acts that the bill amends—it's essentially creating an infringement offence under each of those pieces of legislation in parallel to the offences that can be taken to prosecution. It's recognising as I'm sure many other members in the House recognise that we want our national parks we want our conservation lands to stay safe from damaging activities—our marine reserves similarly—but for example if somebody drops litter in a reserve at the moment if it's conservation land the department doesn't have a mechanism to take action against that person. Local councils can under the Litter Act in the areas that they administer but the department can't on conservation land. So it's putting the department on a much more equal footing with other agencies.I would certainly like to acknowledge that the procedures that will be used certainly ensure that Māori customary rights are respected when conservation staff are doing enforcement work because the seriousness of offending guidelines which are going to be developed by the department will recognise whether particular species are taonga species and the impact of any offending on wāhi tapu and other sites significant to Māori. There will be regulations that are developed under the legislation to actually establish the scale of the penalties. That work's obviously still to be done but there's a lot of benefit in this legislation in ensuring that those who seek to do harm to conservation areas can be prosecuted but those people who maybe unwittingly do something like anchor in a marine reserve may not be prosecuted but can have an infringement notice issued to ensure that they recognise that there is a problem in doing what they have done.I think that this bill will help make the whole enforcement system for conservation legislation more effective and efficient and it will reduce unnecessary use of DOC's resources in taking prosecutions for less serious offences and it will help keep some matters out of the courts that don't need to go to the courts thereby saving on court time and resources. So taking heed from the comments of some members of the Opposition who were keen that this bill go to select committee without further ado I really welcome the support that members across the House have given to this bill and to the principle of ensuring that our conservation legislation is much more efficient and I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.