Marcroft JennyJENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker and thank you very much. It's an honour to rise and speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this bill the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill and I would like to congratulate the Hon Scott Simpson for having his member's bill pulled from the ballot and having it here in the House tonight.While this legislation accords well with New Zealand First's focus on law and order and the party does recognise that litter is a risk to New Zealand's clean green" brand this bill will not achieve its stated aim which is to be a greater deterrent for littering. This bill we believe is an ineffective instrument for deterring littering which is the aim of the bill.Now to be effective it would be imperative to have buy-in from the local authorities and we're just not clearly getting that from the councils at the moment. Councils have discretion as to whether they punish litterers via the infringement notice and at what rate. For example in Christchurch at the moment the maximum infringement fee for littering has remained unchanged at $100 from 1991 until 2016. Now the general willingness across New Zealand's territorial authorities to hand out fines is actually really low. Tauranga City Council did not issue a single fine between 2012 and 2016. Christchurch: a solitary fine for $100—that was the only littering infringement recorded in the five-year period. Between 2012 and 2015 Hamilton didn't issue a single fine for littering. In Wellington neither Porirua City Council or Upper Hutt City Council issued a single littering fine between 2012 and 2016 but the neighbour Hutt City Council—now this is interesting—they've been handing out infringement notices willy-nilly the most prolific in New Zealand recording more than $100000 in fines with $24200 in 2016 alone. Wellington City Council: just a few more infringements than other parts of the country but they've dropped from just under $9000 in 2012 to just under $2000 in 2016.Now what will achieve the aim of this bill? We believe it's all about education and educating the next generation. We've heard tonight about the Be a Tidy Kiwi campaign and bringing that back and teaching our young people to be tidy. Also the Keep New Zealand Beautiful campaign; it was originally founded back in 1969. That's all about litter reduction and waste minimisation. Every year in September it's Keep New Zealand Beautiful month. Teams and volunteers all over the country do the right thing they hold litter clean ups and these events are in their communities.Just today Dunedin City Council is working to get recycling right and that's the focus. It's not on infringement; it's on educating the community. So what they have said today is that they will help Dunedin residents to get it right when it comes to recycling. They've been holding kerbside inspections and they will be helping people improve their recycling reducing contamination and keeping the staff that collect and sort out the recycling safe. Now some of the common contaminants that they're finding are the soft plastics also the milk or juice cartons and hazardous materials which are getting in to the recycle bins as well. And nappies we've heard about how people are nappy dumping also medical waste and dog faeces—mind you rather that in the recycle bin than on the pavement. But really the message from councils that we're hearing is about recycling and it's about continuing bin inspections throughout 2018.So in summary just a little history here in Spain the Napoleonic conquest put an end to torture in 1808; Norway abolished it in 1819; Portugal in 1826; and torture was abolished in Britain in 1640. Now I mention this as a way of reminding the House that it was some time ago that we sought to maintain some sort of proportionality between crime and punishment. After nine years of living in an ivory tower spitting on the poor people below unfortunately some members of the National Party cannot wean themselves off that habit. Do we really want to drive a wedge between territorial authorities and the public issuing thousand-dollar fines for littering? There's a real irony in the party that oversaw the degradation of our lakes rivers and estuaries who now want to whack the average citizen with gigantic fines for littering. We will not be supporting this bill."