Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. Thank you. I totally endorse the sentiments of the previous speaker Jamie Strange in terms of the themes that he emphasised of community culture education and valuing the environment and I'm very pleased to take a call for the Green Party on the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill. This whole issue is about culture as the previous speaker noted and when Keep New Zealand Beautiful did some research earlier or last year they noted that New Zealanders are not frequent litterers and we have a culture here of not littering. People endorse the fact and don't like it when people litter and others have quoted those statistics of 93 and 98 percent of people not wanting littering to occur and recognising the importance of clean green New Zealand. So this bill from the Hon Scott Simpson inherited from Jono Naylor—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! I apologise to the member. Could I just call the folk who were having the conversation across the Chamber to order please. Thank you.Hon EUGENIE SAGE: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. So this bill is very narrow. It doesn't deal with the real issues around littering. It was taken up by the Hon Scott Simpson when his Government had nine years to deal with the Litter Act and to deal with the wider issues around the Litter Act that could have really taken action to help here. Instead it is just focusing on increasing the maximum fee for an infringement notice from $400 to $1000. It was the clear advice from both the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry for the Environment that a simple increase in that maximum fee was not going to tackle the issue. It was also completely out of scale with other levels of fee for other infringement offences. It's two to three times the size of infringement notice offences under the Resource Management Act. It's significantly higher than fees that you get for speeding. So there's a coherence about our criminal justice system and as the Ministry of Justice advised increasing it to a maximum of $1000 would cut across that. But more important despite the councils that Erica Stanford quoted from their submissions was the issues that councils have raised about how enforcement can happen and some of the more substantive problems with the Litter Act.So this bill on its own because it is so narrow is not going to fix that. As the official advice noted the Hon Scott Simpson is assuming that just increasing the penalty will have a deterrent effect but actually the major thing that has a deterrent effect is the certainty around being detected and the compliance and enforcement regime that occurs. What a number of those councils were raising in their submissions to the select committee was that there were issues both in the legislation and the way in which enforcement regimes operated that were the problem. And we have seen from the report that the Environmental Defence Society did—the Last Line of Defence—how little gets invested in compliance monitoring and enforcement by councils. So the severity of the penalties doesn't produce a corresponding increase in deterrence as the National Party and the Hon Scott Simpson seem to think.So the Ministry for the Environment and I are aware that the Litter Act has some inadequacies. Those are being looked at but that is not the priority in fixing the nine years of neglect around waste that we had with the former National Government and that member the Hon Scott Simpson who was once Associate Minister for the Environment and who could have taken action in this space. We are focusing on the bigger picture issues which is doing something about expanding the landfill levy which was recommended in a major review of the landfill levy in 2017. The National Government didn't act.What else didn't they act on? They didn't ensure that there are any mandatory product stewardship schemes. They just relied on voluntary schemes. That's something where we're taking action in relation to tyres so that we have responsibility right through the supply chain. So we need a comprehensive approach to waste. Litter is a subset of that. There is already in the legislation both in the Litter Act and in the Resource Management Act adequate penalties to deal with severe offending like fly-tipping and the councils like Auckland have been increasing their response; making sure that when there are examples of fly-tipping that that is cleaned up quickly making sure that there is more effective enforcement through things like cameras and actually taking prosecutions and some quite significant prosecutions in Manurewa and the Waitakere Ranges where people were charged with fly-tipping of oil drums. So that taking action is going to have much more effect than simply increasing the maximum fee for infringement notices.It is an opportunity that has been lost by this member in not looking across the Litter Act and ensuring that this was a real response to the issues around enforcement around deterrence. It's only just a very very very narrow piece and a pretence at action which is what we saw the National Government doing when it was in power. So that is why the Green Party will not be supporting this bill.The point that Deborah Russell made about others—I think it was in Taranaki—focusing on things like cigarette butts is an important one. Keep New Zealand Beautiful the educational campaigns that they have been doing to improve the culture around littering and the research that they have done have shown that the issue of cigarette butts is a very real one and they have recommended that that be the next big area of focus in terms of behaviour change and litter prevention campaigns. I know that in Auckland where there's been a trial of a litter traps that can be retrofitted into stormwater grates to catch litter and prevent it going into the stormwater system and into the sea that in an 11 month trial where 10 kilograms of rubbish was collected at Beresford Street in central Auckland over that 11 months and in that 10 kilograms there were 2000 cigarette butts. So people changing their behaviour around cigarette butts ensuring that if you're smoking you put it in the bin rather than just littering can have a real difference in protecting our marine environment and stopping this waste getting into our oceans and being eaten by fish seabirds and other marine life. So that sort of education campaign will make much more of a difference. The things like litter traps as a practical example of how we can prevent contamination—Hon Scott Simpson: No wonder Green members are so angry at the lack of action.Hon EUGENIE SAGE: —of our rivers and streams and oceans makes much more a difference—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! I apologise to the member. I just have to say to the Hon Scott Simpson you can interject but it's bordering on heckling. And I would ask you to resist being quite so vocal about this and allow the member an opportunity to continue with her speech. The Hon Eugenie Sage.Hon EUGENIE SAGE: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. So those sorts of practical initiatives wider education campaigns reinforcing the culture that New Zealanders have that we don't like littering will make more of a difference than just this simple increase in the maximum fee that can be charged for an infringement notice.There is a real issue too that we don't have a big handle on data across the country. There's been really good research done by Keep New Zealand Beautiful but we need more data so that we can ensure that our response is well targeted. Again that is something that this Government is doing in the waste space alongside expanding the landfill levy ensuring that we get more information on what is going to landfill so that we can have more waste data so that we ensure that our policies are well directed—again something that the former National Government did not do anything about.Another thing that it didn't do anything about was the other issues around the Litter Act and the fact that it is very difficult and an enforcement offence for people who are perhaps throwing something out the window of a vehicle. At the moment the way the legislation is crafted means it's difficult for the litter officers appointed by councils to actually pin that on anyone because they've got to find the person who did it rather than just the vehicle drive. So we recognise that there are issues with the Litter Act but it needs a much more comprehensive review than this bill has attempted. It is much further down the priority list than the effort that this Government is making to use the tools in the Waste Minimisation Act. I would correct Erica Stanford. That was not a National Party initiative. It was a member's bill from Nandor Tanczos which the last Labour Government picked up as a Government bill. This Government is making sure that the tools in that Act are well-used rather than allowing them to gather dust as the former National Government did. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. The Hon Nicky Wagner you have five minutes.