Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I'm delighted to be speaking to the Conservation (Infringement System) Bill's second reading. The current legislation allows only two possible responses to any offending. The first is that they provide a warning—so just That wasn't the right thing to do. You're warned. Don't do it again." and the second option is prosecution in the court. So there's a big gap in our system and that's what this legislation is intended to fix. And I want to just acknowledge a member who hasn't yet been able to take a call and that is the former Minister of Conservation the Hon Maggie Barry who introduced this legislation to the House. It's clear now though if you look at the passage—or actually lack of passage—of the bill that the Hon Maggie Barry has never had the support of her caucus and tonight they're pretty well relishing in the ability to say that to the House.If you compare the conservation infringement system regime to other legislation for example the Fisheries Act they do have a ticket-issuing system—you know an infringement system—and it works very well. So for low-level offending under the fisheries legislation you get a ticket. If you pay a fine then that's the end of the matter. There's no court process. There's no conviction. There's no extraordinary amount of time and money spent on that. So for that system there's major benefits for the Department of Conservation (DOC) there's major benefits for the offender and there's certainly major benefits for our court system.The original bill as I said introduced by the then Minister of Conservation the Hon Maggie Barry just got nowhere with the Government so I was really pleased to see the current Minister of Conservation the Hon Eugenie Sage—I'm always actually very pleased to see her because she's got such knowledge in these areas—take a really high level of interest in what submitters were saying. She listened to people who knew what they were talking about and had bothered making a contribution to the bill considered it listened to the select committee responses and has backed the changes that are made as we see them now.I was stunned to hear Sarah Dowie say that we can't have Fish & Game issue the equivalent of parking tickets because they're not trustworthy. Fish & Game currently have significant prosecution powers under the Conservation Act. They have paid enforcement officers and they take a large number of prosecutions. So I look forward to seeing Sarah Dowie's member's bill which strips away those enforcement provisions which are in the current Conservation Act from Fish & Game. Cards on the table National Party: if Fish & Game are not to be trusted then I think that should be a National Party slogan. Bring it on. I think Fish & Game have proven themselves to be people of integrity who work for the good of the environment and they should be supported to work alongside DOC keep people out of court who shouldn't be clogging up our court systems but making sure they have appropriate penalties attracted to the offences they have caused.I found the criticisms from Sarah Dowie and others of Fish & Game offensive and I want to put that on the record. My colleague Dr Duncan said "Shameful."; I agree with that. I am delighted that we now have a Minister of Conservation who knows her stuff is passionate and pragmatic listens to people and gets solutions that will deliver real time and benefit to conservation and I'm very pleased to support the bill."