Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It's approaching the festive season and so it's always interesting to hear the Hon David Parker in a speech just after the dinner break and never more so than as we approach the festive season because literally we don't know what he's going to say. We have no idea what he's going to say and it's always a delight to hear him when he confesses to being bemused and aghast because that's a condition that he finds himself in quite regularly these days.And I didn't know tonight whether he was speaking as the Minister for the Environment or whether he had his Attorney-General's hat on. If he had his Attorney-General's hat on then surely he could not under any good conscience be supporting this piece of constitutional abuse of the rules and prerogatives of State agencies and State officers in terms of extending a very dangerous precedent which is actually not at all about the good folk at Fish & Game. This is about a matter of principle about a matter of constitutional appropriateness and rule of law to be honest. These are quite important matters. But as my colleague Sarah Dowie mentioned during her speech this is a bill that was originally introduced by the National Party. My friend and colleague Maggie Barry did it in February 2017. At that time the piece of legislation was designed—I think appropriately and rightly and correctly—to simply extend an infringement notice regime to Department of Conservation (DOC) rangers.Now I have the privilege in this House of representing the good people of Coromandel the most beautiful electorate in the country. About a third of the Coromandel electorate is administered by the very dedicated and professional officers of the Department of Conservation and I'm enormously grateful for the good work that they do on behalf of the natural environment in the Coromandel but not just in the Coromandel of course; all around New Zealand and indeed covering the entire landmass of New Zealand. About a third of the entire landmass of New Zealand is administered by the conservation estate and therefore the good officers of the Department of Conservation. I think they do a very good job but they haven't until now been able to operate a simple non - court-based process for issuing infringement notices for relatively low-level offending that often occurs sadly in our natural environment and in the DOC estate.So this bill when originally introduced by Maggie Barry alleviated that changed that corrected that situation. It was a bill that we supported in Government because that was an appropriate and sensible thing to do. Infringement arrangements infringement regimes actually are very effective. We have many of them in our statutes: parking tickets minor speeding offences traffic offences. Litter offences for instance can be handled by councils by infringement—Simon O'Connor: There must be a member's bill on that.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: And there's a good member's bill on that before the House at the moment but that's not what we're speaking about today. So infringement notice arrangements work really well. For the relatively small but persistent number of offenders in the conservation estate who do abuse their privileges of sharing and enjoying the estate by maybe stealing wildlife by upsetting and destroying—maybe vandalising—flora and fauna these infringement notices will work very well for the DOC rangers but the original scope of the bill was very narrow in its confines in its definition. From memory—and I'd have to go back and check but I think that the number of Department of Conservation rangers who would be able to use the infringement notice scheme that's set up under this legislation is actually a relatively small number. I think it's something less than 200. It's a very small number of DOC rangers that will be able to issue the infringement notices and of course because they are employees of the Department of Conservation they are privy to the rules and regulations and boundaries and training and structure that is set in place under the State Sector Act where clear rules and guidelines about authority and behaviour are set out in a way that provides certainty provides judicial clarity and also provides a degree of discipline and structure that is appropriate for agents of the State.In a previous lifetime or state to extend those powers to non - agents of the State would have been something that the Green Party would have railed against as being an abhorrent breach of constitutional appropriateness. They would have waxed lyrical long and hard about breach of process breach of principle bad constitutional practice extending rules of legal enforcement to agents who were not agents of the State who didn't come under the State Sector Act rules and regulations. They would have argued against that most vigorously. So to hear a Green Minister in the House introducing the second reading of this piece of legislation after it being considered by the Environment Committee I find frankly bizarre because they've done a complete turnaround a complete change of what they once held as matters of absolute principle to now being something that is akin to just mere pragmatism—political pragmatism. If the Green Party and the Government and the coalition parties of the Government were really keen on setting up an infringement notice structure that involved Fish & Game then bring an appropriate piece of legislation to the House that does that. Don't just tack it on as an afterthought to an otherwise separate piece of legislation which was designed initially entirely just to fill a gap that was obvious and clear and needed to be corrected in terms of the role and obligation of the Department of Conservation rangers. Don't just then tack on Fish & Game.Now I'm not getting at Fish & Game; I think they do a very good job. I sometimes raise my eyebrows at some of their methods of advocacy but by and large I think they do a very good job. This is not about the efficacy or the responsibility or the honesty or the integrity of Fish & Game personnel; this is about a constitutional legal significant matter about who amongst us can go out into the wild blue yonder which happens to be the DOC estate and start issuing infringement notices. I would say and we say on this side of the House that actually those people that protocol that regime of infringement notice issuing should be limited to agents of the State employees of the Department of Conservation. Trained appropriately credentialed rangers from the Department of Conservation are the appropriate people to do it.So we come to a situation where a very good piece of legislation has now been amended in a way that we find we can't any longer support and I think that's a shame. I think it's a real shame because this is something that we do want to support on this side of the House in terms of the good work that is done by staff and personnel of the Department of Conservation. Lou Sanson and his team do an admirable job on behalf of all New Zealanders and they do it sometimes under trying and difficult circumstances. Just look at the nonsense that they have to put up with in terms of dealing with people who are opposed to the use of 1080. So they work under difficult circumstances. We now have a situation where a good well-intentioned appropriate piece of legislation has been amended in a way that we can no longer support and I do think that's a shame.As I said earlier this is not a criticism of the good folk at Fish & Game; this goes to the very core principles of our parliamentary democracy of our judicial system. This is an important matter of principle and when the Attorney-General stands in this House and says that he's bemused and aghast well I'm very confused about which hat he was wearing and which role he was being responsible to tonight because I think it was uncertain and unclear. I'm sure that his advisers in his capacity as Attorney-General would be not supporting this piece of legislation so he's conflicted.So it's with some regret that on this side of the House we're not able to support the original intention of this bill which was to give DOC rangers the ability to set up an infringement notice regime for the benefit of our natural environment and our flora and fauna. I for one am disappointed that this bill has been amended in a way that we can't support.