Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. As my colleagues have said the National Party is supporting this legislation and looks forward to the select committee process. I don't think there's anybody in the House that doesn't believe that there is legislation required and I certainly do which is why I brought my own bill here to try and get it through over a year ago. But of course rather than adapting what was already in the system and modifying it to suit the Government's own special nuances it was kicked to touch. So it's been over a year and we've had another summer but here we are. It's started a process now.When we started initiating these bills—and you know I've been working on the freedom camping bill for probably 15 years and I initiated it through local government prior to the Rugby World Cup being hosted here in New Zealand. So I do have a bit of experience with it. Sadly when it made its way to central government it was not as complete as it possibly could be. So with that in mind that's what my member's bill sought to address. It was to fill in the gaps that the initial legislation had left.But what we're seeing now of course is a totally different environment. When we had hundreds of thousands of visitors coming to New Zealand and travelling around and freedom camping the communities had lost their tolerance for it. But of course now we can look back and think Well weren't they the good old days? What a problem to have." In some cases I think our communities would welcome back those numbers of campers that were travelling around New Zealand. So we can live in hope that they will return in similar numbers and that we will have a regime in place that does control how they tend to park up and camp around New Zealand and especially in some of those very very special places.One of the challenging issues that we had on the West Coast and up in Tasman is the isolation and the lack of ability to monitor all of the time and I see that with this bill—especially with the Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) and New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) land—that unless a council changes its existing bylaw and gets written permission from those entities to include NZTA or LINZ land in their bylaw those entities NZTA and LINZ are not going to be monitoring their property across the country. So it's going to take bylaw changes from local government to actually enable this legislation to be enacted around the country. Now from the feedback that we get—and I'm sure my colleagues will agree—local government hasn't got this at the top of their priority list right now. And I don't see this being dealt to by local government any time soon. So in fact we're going to pass this legislation but actually getting it implemented and on the ground is going to rely on the goodwill and the time and the affordability of councils because to pass a bylaw is not a cheap thing to do. There's going to need to be the bylaw written. There's going to need very expensive consultation advertising submission processes etc. As I say I doubt very much whether local government is going to turn its mind to this piece of legislation any time soon.But there's quite a few bits within this legislation which I've only just had a look at today and I think there's going to need to be some really serious talk around the select committee table about the wording in here. For instance in the infringement offences relating to conservation land there's an infringement if you make preparations to freedom camp. What on earth does that mean? What does making preparations to freedom camp mean? There is no definition for that.There are infringement offences and if the Minister was looking for a deterrent I think he's found one because they are up to $10000 for offences against some of the registration or $1000 for infringements and penalties for freedom camping. But I think one of the most concerning parts of this piece of legislation is that it is going to rely on the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board to do not so much the monitoring but to set up the database for the vehicles. So when I thought about that and looked at the bill in front of us I thought the NZTA already has the database of vehicles in this country so why on earth isn't there some concurrent system working beside that to simply mark off on that database that this particular vehicle is now certified as fully self-contained? But instead we're going to set up a whole new system. It's going to require a whole new platform and then have the data inputted and then have the data maintained and changed over time. This is a whole new system that is being created to make sure there's a toilet in your campervan. I just argue that this is probably overkill when it comes to the intention of the legislation. It's definitely—as Todd McClay said earlier—hitting a nut with a sledgehammer. But there are other questions I had about the legislation too about the cost of that database. This is going to be a huge cost especially the platform that it's going to be maintained on. So that cost of course is going to fall back on the users of that who are the people who are coming in to have their campervans certified. But the other point that has been made tonight—and it's very relevant—is that it's all very well if you've got a $100000 or $200000 motorhome and you can have a fully plumbed-in toilet but there is another cohort in this country and that's mum and dad and the kids who want to get out and have their camping holiday. They're using a very small porta-potty—that is a chemical toilet—that is as healthy as any other that you will have except its containment is right there rather than plumbed in under the vehicle. That's completely suitable and it's completely safe and sanitary but that's going to be excluded from this bill. I just want to pay tribute too to Wayne Ravelich who has contacted many of us about some of the points that are going to be missed in this legislation. One of them is the back-country experience or the camping experience. I know that when I introduced my bill over a year ago I was very clear that we did not want to capture a dad and his son heading down to the river to go on a fishing trip pitch a tent and stay the night boil a billy and cook their baked beans. That is the Kiwi experience that we want to make sure is not captured by this legislation because as it reads in here they will be. So we want to make sure that in the select committee process we do exclude that type of experience from this. There are other issues around the consultation and as Mr Ravelich has pointed out when the consultation was done by the Minister it asked for submissions on the suitability of the toilet regulation 75 percent came back and said "No we don't want to go there." But unfortunately the Minister had already made up his mind and that ended up being not negotiable. Simon Watts: That sounds familiar.MAUREEN PUGH: But the cost—and it is. It's very familiar. This Government is very good at setting up bureaucracies and increasing costs. But I do have to concede that the NZMCA or the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association—the wings people—have been calling for some kind of consistency across the sector for many years. They do want a regime that gives certainty to not only their members but all members. So not only can you turn up at the Nelson market and buy yourself a 10c self-contained sticker and whack it on the back of your sleeper van your station wagon with a mattress in the back—we want to get away from that. So I know NZMCA will work really closely with the select committee to ensure that there is a regime that is workable and that it does not capture our back-country experience. If you want to listen to Bob Dylan on your bike in the mountains you should be able to do that but we don't want to impose onerous expense. Thank you Mr Speaker."