Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Well what a load of rubbish we've heard here this afternoon. Now I'm going to say that the National Party on this side of the House says that this piece of legislation is absolutely nonsensical but I did hear—and I did attend the select committee as that member Clare Curran who's just resumed her seat said—some scary things that the whitebait population was in decline. So I thought OK I will go and get the facts. I will go and do the research." I was concerned because on the West Coast and in Golden Bay where they do a lot of whitebaiting we actually have down there some very special conditions that are peculiar just to the West Coast that don't apply across the rest of the country. Our season starts two weeks later; it finishes two weeks earlier. We have closed rivers and creeks to protect those high-value spawning areas and we also have a significant control over the ability to whitebait because—in case you haven't worked it out that's the spring period—the spring period is the wettest time of the year on the Coast and so you can only whitebait when the rivers are not in flood. So there's a whole lot of control over it. Plus we have—and I've flown over the areas and I have seen it for myself—tens of thousands of hectares of wetland in South Westland. You are never going to catch the last whitebait.Now those particular areas—so what I did I went to the Minister of Conservation and I said "Minister I'm concerned about the declining numbers. Can I please have all of the reports memos and advice that you have received and all the data on all West Coast rivers that you have collated that justify your claim that the whitebait stock is in decline." And guess what? They have none. They have no data. They have—Brett Hudson: Misinformation.MAUREEN PUGH: —misinformation. Misinformation—it's missing-in-action information. And so I thought "OK this must be based on something. I will go and find an independent researcher who has got this information." Very very interesting this independent researcher has shown—and this is the information that the public in Hokitika who turned up to a public meeting outraged have heard because they know that it's rubbish what we've got in this bill—in 1964 215 rivers across this country were surveyed and the whitebait stock numbers were recorded. In 2015 those same rivers were surveyed the whitebait stock numbers were recorded and guess what? There is no change. There is no change in the whitebait stock numbers over 50 years; 50 years of whitebait and no change in the stock numbers. Now that is information and that's why the people are angry Ms Curran.So what we want to do with this bill is throw it out because when you apply for land-use consents on the West Coast the regional council take into account whether it affects whitebait spawning areas. They do it on the Taramakau River if you're going there to extract gravel so already the systems are in place to make sure those habitats are OK. But there's another interesting thing that we learnt about whitebait and that is because the whitebait spawning areas on the West Coast are so plentiful. And another thing—whitebait don't necessarily go back up the same river they were hatched in. What they do is they come into this massive nursery on the West Coast—tens of thousands of hectares—and then they come out of the river after about three months and they go around the island and they populate the other rivers. That's where the whitebait for the other rivers come from. So this bill is totally unnecessary.And it's not just this bill because if we look at this bill in isolation we can think "OK we can live with that." but it's actually the cumulative effect of all the other legislation and the policies that are coming out of this Government. No new mining—on its own probably you know not too bad but then we've got the squeezing out of existing miners and that means job losses. It's funny though because while the policy makers over there are still enjoying all the products that come out of mining we've had a two-year delay in a decision for another hydro scheme that would make the Coast even more plentiful in hydroelectricity. We've got wetland designations we've got significant natural areas we've got the land restrictions that will come out of this bill as well. We've got car tax and we've got fuel tax. We've got climate change targets and now we've got a new scary water policy coming down the pipe. We are told this bill is not a ban. Well excuse me if I have no faith in the rhetoric of that Government because a ban by any other name has the same impact."