Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am really pleased to support the Wildlife (Powers) Amendment Bill and I want to acknowledge the member who has just resumed his seat Scott Simpson and thank him for the considerate way in which he chaired the Local Government and Environment Committee which considered this bill.I also want to acknowledge the outgoing Prime Minister the Rt Hon John Key and say that even though we obviously have serious political differences he has led our country with dignity and I wish him and his family the very best in his retirement or into whatever role he transitions from here. I know that any of us in this House lose a lot of family time and none as much as the Prime Minister so I hope that he is able to catch up on some of that time with his family.We have got a lot of big issues facing our country. We know that we have a serious funding shortfall in health. We know that we have got the same in education. We know that our police are feeling really stretched. I hope that the incoming Prime Minister is able to get her or his head around those issues and prise some money out of the Minister of Finance so that we can start properly supporting the people who do so much amazing public service for our country.The member Scott Simpson quite rightly acknowledged the amazing contribution that the staff of the Department of Conservation (DOC) make in so many areas and I would certainly add my voice to that acknowledgment and my thanks. DOC is significantly under-resourced for the work that it is already empowered to do by legislation—required to do actually. The amount of land that it is able to oversee as our guardian and supervisor has diminished significantly over the last 5 years because in many areas you just cannot do more with less and that is what the Government has continued to ask of every Government department and agency.Although I am supporting this legislation because it is sensible to update legislation that is well over 60 years old and look at what current powers should be given to public servants or honorary rangers as we have debated in relation to the fish and game rangers none of the contribution from the Minister or the Associate Minister has given any commitment at all to adding additional resources to the Department of Conservation which would marry up with the additional work that we are requiring it to do. So this bill gives it additional powers. That means it will have more work to do. It should get funded for it. It cannot continue to do more with less and that is a very strong concern that I have in relation to this legislation. So the new power that the DOC rangers are getting is the power to seize a wider range of evidence. That is clearly needed. Smarter applications are being made in order to commit crimes in the conservation area and we should empower those whom we have given the guardianship of those responsibilities to the legal power to use every tool available. The rangers will now have the power to stop a person; they currently do not have that. They are able to stop vehicles they are able to stop vessels and they are able to take bags but they are not actually able to stop people. So that is an addition that I think is sensible. They are allowed to stop those people for the time that it would take to do an investigation. So obviously we have entrusted our Public Service to not take advantage of the powers that we are giving them. We know that they do not want to detain people for no good reason but it is specified in the legislation that it is to allow investigation of suspected crimes.We are enabling the rangers to seize items such as laptops mobile phones and cameras. When the original legislation was passed in 1953 we did not have laptops and mobiles phones; now we just laugh at the thought of being without them. We did have cameras but not the modern sort that we have now including on mobile phones. So we are giving the rangers the power to seize things that they actually need to seize which were not envisaged because they were not even made at the time of the original legislation.We require suspected offenders to provide identification details and that is where Labour and other parties—New Zealand First and the Greens—differ I think with the National Government. It was a very sensible amendment that David Parker proposed during the Committee stage and I regret that—you know I think that it was just because it was from an Opposition member that the Government declined it and that is stupid politics actually. I am always of the view that regardless of what party people are from you should be able to look at the proposal they are making and determine on a basis of fact whether it is a good idea or not.Currently to enable a successful prosecution under this legislation a person's date of birth must be provided otherwise the case cannot be successful. We give all the other powers to the fish and game honorary rangers but we do not provide them with the one power that was proposed in the Supplementary Order Paper and that is the power to require somebody to provide the honorary ranger with their date of birth. So prosecutions under this legislation will fail because that critical bit of information is not required to be provided. So if a person just says No I'm not going to provide it to you." the honorary ranger has no backing of the law to ensure that that person complies with what they would have to comply with if it was a DOC ranger and therefore the prosecution would be successful. I think it was a foolish decline of the proposal. I actually think the select committee should have picked up that error and amended it. At that stage it did not do that so that was a slight failing in the select committee process then. It declined to take up that opportunity during the Committee stage so the third reading for all the support it is going to get is not giving our Parliament as good a bill as it should.I just want to comment on the earlier contribution that I made in relation to the stress that DOC workers are under. We know that DOC employees do amazing work for our country. We know that they are working in partnership with many corporations many other Government departments and agencies and thousands of volunteers throughout the country. Everywhere we look around New Zealand we see groups of people who just care about their local area and their community and do good things often under the leadership of DOC workers. DOC would not be able to survive and do the work that it does without that partnership with volunteers. So as well as commending the DOC staff I also want to commend the organisations that sponsor them—they get good kudos out of it but so they should actually; they are putting good money into the department when the Government has refused to do it—and of course also the volunteers who do so much not just in this area but in many other areas as well.I know that many academics and people outside the political process have raised concerns about the additional stress on the Department of Conservation and the lack of funding. In 2009 we had 803 DOC rangers in New Zealand; today there are only 637. That is a significant reduction in the amount of front-line conservation staff whom we are expecting to do this work.In 2009 the DOC budget was cut by $46 million. That is a huge cut in a baseline that was already pretty marginal actually. You know they got by but we require it to do so much under statute and then the National Government cuts its budget. In each of the successive years there have been cuts to the budget. There was significant restructuring of the department which proved to be a major disaster actually. There was a lot of centralisation of the activities of the Department of Conservation which although it gained some efficiencies undermines the partnership that Department of Conservation staff must have with local communities in order to generate that trust and shared vision which provides us with the volunteers whom I mentioned earlier. DOC staff deserve to be better recognised by this Parliament but that recognition needs to be backed up by the funds that they need to do the job.So here we are in the third reading giving the DOC rangers the additional powers that they need to do their job well and I just call on the Minister whoever the Minister of Conservation is next week—there will probably be a new Minister—to call on whoever is the Minister of Finance. And who knows whether it is going to be a new finance Minister or not. It is quite hard to pick at the moment. But I call on both of those Ministers to back this legislation up with funding so that DOC staff can do their work properly resourced."