Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise in support of this fine bill in the name of the Hon Scott Simpson a fine member of this House.When Mr Simpson was introducing this bill he harkened back to some of the days in New Zealand's past when we had certain programmes to encourage Kiwis to do the right thing. Now I wouldn't want to claim to have as many miles on the life odometer as Mr Simpson but I too can remember some of those campaigns such as Be a Tidy Kiwi and Keep New Zealand Beautiful. In fact in those times there was even the television advert that would ask a young man if he knew where Victoria Falls was and his answer was Somewhere near Lake Taupō." Those were great old days and great old programmes. But it appears that New Zealanders despite the passing of time have still not learnt of their own volition to do the right thing by fellow New Zealanders in the sense of not imposing upon them their own waste or despoiling the beautiful countryside which of course is so important to New Zealand that we've seen tourism overtake other economic activity—farming and dairy being one—to be our largest export.So if New Zealanders of their own volition are not going to do the right thing it is contingent upon Government through a member's bill to consider that maybe we can give a little incentive or two to help them on their way. The bill proposes the most simplest of changes taking the maximum fine for littering from $400 to a maximum—and that's an important point to a maximum—of $1000. The change does not mean that the simplest piece of littering will result in such a fine. In fact it would be extraordinarily unlikely that it would stand up to any sort of test were that to be the case.So Mr Simpson with what he has noted himself is the perfect member's bill is saying that we have a challenge in our society that people are still after all this time not thinking of others at times and are littering and despoiling the environment for others. So here's a small lever we can apply that might create—it certainly creates an incentive and it might create some greater deterrence from people doing the wrong thing and instead have them—because no one is required to litter. Unlike any number of other situations you could envisage in society when you could place a sanction on someone and question whether that's the right thing to do we're not arguing here about the least worst alternatives or taking a situation and saying "I'll apply some sort of sanction. Which of the two worst ones would you like?" What we're saying is if you don't litter you won't be fined. No one is required to litter. No one finds themselves I would argue in a position where they feel forced to. So it is simply saying "Well if you're not prepared to do the right thing by New Zealand society and your fellow New Zealanders if you choose to do the wrong thing and you are caught you might find it hurts a bit more than it has done in the past." I think that's a very reasonable situation in which to be applying a greater punitive sanction.I just want to finish with a couple of points that I heard members on the other side talking about. There's a saying that if you have a situation or a problem and you make the problem or the solution more complicated than it needs to be it's called boiling the ocean. We've seen it with at least two speakers on the other side tonight. So the Minister of Local Government talked about "Well maybe we should treat a certain type of littering differently from another type; broken glass."—that somehow we should within the regime treat broken glass as different to another sort of litter and apply a different sanction to that. Then Ms Deborah Russell said "Well you've got different types of littering whether it's pure littering fly tipping or dumping and maybe we should treat them differently as well." So you end up if you take it to its logical conclusion with a complicated matrix of different types of rubbish being dumped and the different forms of littering that you might have. Well that's just I would argue purely ridiculous. If Kiwis are going to despoil the environment for other Kiwis we have a law the Litter Act. We have a means to provide a greater deterrence from that antisocial behaviour. Let's take it. Let's just work the bill through as it stands. I commend it to the House."