Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I'm not a member of the Environment Committee but firstly can I acknowledge Scott Simpson. He's actually brought a big issue to this House. Littering is a huge issue and so I want to acknowledge his commitment to addressing it. But in preparing for tonight I was trying to find the evidence about the efficacy of this legislative reform and actually it seems like we're replicating what the UK did because essentially they doubled the fines in 2016 and this year it's now a £150 fine. So that's been the tool.But I think in communities like mine Manurewa—and if I look at Auckland Council—I think there's been a convergence of this littering issue with waste management and minimisation plan initiatives and I highlight that because one of the big issues we've had is the reduction in the size of our bins for example—and to get a bigger bin it actually costs you $85. So in poorer communities we've tried to force them to recycle to minimise their waste and I think what we've seen and particularly in communities like mine is that this illegal dumping phenomenon is actually a massive problem and it's way more than $5 million because that's a 2012 figure. So I'm here to say that this is an issue; is this the best solution?I guess when I look at my council and their submission I also look at the submission from Local Government New Zealand who's highlighted that we have a 40-year-old Litter Act. So what they've asked us to consider actually as a Parliament are practical ways to help them enforce and issue infringement notices. People may not know but for the council to issue a notice—because that's what we're wanting to do; we're wanting to supposedly give councils more tools to deter people from littering—for one of those littering notices to be issued a council officer has to either (a) observe a person littering or (b) have reasonable cause to suspect such an offence was in the act of being carried out or had just being committed. And therein lies the problem.A lot of these things happen—and I've looked at the national litter survey which was released in July 2018 and the biggest things that are littered are snack food packaging disposable drink containers paper. How are we supposed to prove who that belonged to and who should be issued with this littering penalty to deter them from littering? One of the other things I decided to do was to actually look at effective interventions and I found a paper titled Effective Interventions on littering behaviour of youngsters published in 2015 from the Netherlands. And these are some of the things that actually work based on evidence. So you use social surroundings; you target groups not individuals. And I certainly would like to reinforce that. I'd like a community approach to some of these issues. You have group commitment; you use leaders as influencers. You also attract attention to the issue so you connect the views of community members and their interest and their enthusiasm in trying to address the littering issues. You target beliefs about the effects of littering on the environment. So the relationship our children have with the environment is fundamental to any programme going forward because if our young kids love the environment guess what? They're going to look after it. OK so we need to promote more outdoor environmental education. We reward proper waste disposal. You need to look at mechanisms that are going to help change people's behaviour but also for that behaviour to continue and for them to share that behaviour with their children. And you also facilitate proper waste disposal behaviour. In that regard that's about: have we got enough disposable mechanisms—so bins—so that we can put our litter in. Do we keep away smells? Do we remove litter immediately because actually litter creates more litter? And it is about bins being clean and easily accessible as I've highlighted. So Mr Simpson I want to thank you for bringing the issue to the House but as an effective legislative reform I've got to say it just does not stack up. And it doesn't stack up for a number of reasons and one of the biggest is that many councils aren't using these littering enforcement notices anyway. I mean there are a whole lot that I could have talked about where they haven't actually issued any so if that's your solution to this problem it's fundamentally flawed. Kia ora.