Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. The Greens have long held the view that we live in a world with finite resources and therefore that infinite material growth isn't possible. I think that's pretty pertinent to the tourism industry where prior to the pandemic it was a major player in our economy but it was also experiencing really rapid growth—one that many local authorities were struggling to keep up with—and a growth that actually was starting to have noticeable detrimental impact on our environmental wellbeing in an industry that actually in many ways has been a low-wage industry.One of the issues that I recognise the Self-contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Bill is trying to address is more to do with the impacts that the growth of the tourism industry has had in terms of waste or litter generated by people who are participating in freedom camping. So I note that there has been an attempt here to create a regulatory framework to address this and predominantly it will be done through introducing requirements for vehicles to be self-contained and a regime to therefore enforce this. We do think that in principle the idea of having a much more sustainable tourism industry is worth exploring. Personally I really do not subscribe to the Labour Party's rhetoric around creating a high-value tourism industry because I just think it's very loaded. Like what do we mean? I just heard a member talk about bringing high-wage tourists and the idea that rich tourists actually are less wasteful I think is not necessarily grounded in reality because actually rich tourists can also be some of the people who end up spending the most in some of our most-polluting aspects of the tourism industry. So I do hope that throughout this process we can take much more nuanced views that do not throw dog whistles out in terms of the people that we talk about when we refer to tourists.We do have some concerns with the bill and unfortunately unlike the National Party they are not so much to do with the conversations that Minister Nash has had with Maureen Pugh or to do with the uniforms that the officials in charge of enforcing the regime will be wearing although I do commend Maureen Pugh for taking an interest in this topic and attempting in a very National Party way to address some of these issues. I guess our concerns mostly stem from what we see as this bill being somewhat actually narrow and limited in scope and we do think that since 2011 there should have been a much more comprehensive review. Some of the other concerns that we've got are around the framing of vehicle camping as freedom camping"—and noting that in the last term there was work to encourage responsible camping. I do hope that the Government continues adopting that framing rather than just kind of lumping vehicle camping on to this term. That I think sometimes can be unhelpful.Even though we're creating a regime to be able to identify people who may be in breach of these rules—and that will require data gathering—this bill does not actually increase data on the extent of the problem and by that we mean that it doesn't require local authorities to report the infringements they use. We do think that if the goal is to have a robust framework we could have done a better job in terms of ensuring that the bill also provides the available data for local authorities to be able to exercise the regime. We also basically note that the maintenance of a register of certified self-contained vehicles is a sensible measure. Registry access by the general public will be allowed and there are concerns around ensuring that this bill doesn't result in unfair targeting as a result of these provisions. It's not clear to us yet and this is something that we'll be exploring in the later stages about the consultation with the Privacy Commissioner.Basically we also note that even though the bill in the explanatory note does state that it is not the intention to penalise people staying in tents or vehicles due to homelessness with the substance of the bill there's nothing to actually address that. So I do think that even though the sentiment is great in the explanatory note there is little in the way of actually creating a framework that genuinely protects our transient and homeless community.And I know that a lot of emphasis in the discussion about this bill has been around tourists. We do have to recognise (a) well that not all tourists are international that there's domestic tourism which plays a big role; and (b) that vehicle camping has actually played a role in ensuring that people have a place to live. And for some people it's a lifestyle choice right? It's not just about actually tourism. It is genuinely a lifestyle choice for some people to just live in a vehicle. And so we want to ensure that there are better provisions in the bill to address these.Lastly we do take issue with the fact that public conservation land is not covered by the new requirement. While we do not endorse a regime for the Department of Conservation (DOC) to put in place regulations to better regulate this basically we do think that there could have been an opportunity to have more cohesion around what DOC is doing and what this bill is aiming to achieve particularly since the intent of the bill seems to be so heavily focused on the environmental impacts of freedom camping. So it just feels like a bit of an oversight.So yeah we do hope that there will be a robust discussion at the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee and we look forward to engaging and listening to what submitters have to say because we do know that in the lead-up to this bill there have been people with really strong views about this. And actually the really strong views about this have again not come from international tourists but rather from locals themselves who are deeply worried about the impacts that this could have.So again the Green Party does support the intent of the bill. We have noted some of those concerns. I repeat to the Labour members that we have to make sure that the discourse is not about the interpretation of who gets to participate in tourism. Because I do know that in the regulatory impact statement it was estimated that it could cost around just over a grand and a half for some of the vehicles that could be in theory improved and I do want to note that that could be a barrier actually for some of our low-income communities. Again I think there could be other steps taken by Government to support people to transition into a model where their vehicles do meet these requirements if that is the intent. I do think there are ways that we could bring people on board with these changes for the wellbeing of our environment of the local communities as well as ensuring that our tourism industry is sustainable. We look forward to participating in the discussions. Kia ora."