Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I've suffered my way through some of the presentations on this bill being introduced several weeks ago and it's just come back for the end of its first and probably final reading I gather. And I've heard nothing from the other side that actually made any sense at all or defended their position to oppose this bill. It's innocuous; it's such a simple solution. And even if the Minister did have plans to do something quite spectacular which I very much doubt because they're not usually likely to produce anything spectacular but it simply clarifies the situation for the Act that's already in place.Now the Act originally—and it's 10 years old now so it was time it was modified. But over those 10 years there has been some glaring gaps in the rules around freedom camping. And the biggest one of course is proximity to a toilet. So this bill simply gives a distance from a toilet facility unless you are fully self-contained. So it clarifies that. And it also captures—and this is one of the glaring gaps in the original legislation—New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) land and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) land. So for areas that have the ribbon of State highway that runs through them councils were unable to police those areas for freedom camping because the legislation didn't allow for it. It also allows for the infringement notices to be revoked and handed on to the hirer of a vehicle so that tidied up people who would exit the country without paying any infringements. It also allowed for LINZ and NZTA to provide or appoint their own enforcement officers and as the member who sat down just said to inspect whether a vehicle is fully self-contained because quite often people use the defence that they have a bucket with a lid on it and that is their full self-containment. This bill would have made it clear that that no longer is a good argument.But I'm always amazed when this Government stands up to kick a really good piece of legislation to touch because they always fall back on the fact that they know best that only they can do things better and we've been hearing it all day: We don't want to have a look at any of the legislation that's coming forward from an Opposition party" because they're going to do it themselves they're going to do it better and they're always going to do it soon. Soon they're going to announce lockdown measures they're soon going to announce their firearms legislation they're soon going to tell us what the education system is going to look like when we start coming out of lockdown. Soon we're going to know but we've got to wait for the pulpit of truth.But anyway as I said this bill is not going to see the light of day. And the shame of it is that it was so looked forward to by the 140000 members of the NZMCA—the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association—and even by Federated Farmers whose rural membership would have dearly loved to have had this issue tidied up because it does need tidying up. And if anyone who lives in the country—and I'm sure some of my colleagues here understand exactly what I'm talking about: when you live in the country and you see what a mess is left behind from freedom campers you know the situation is urgent. And wouldn't it be nice that when we open up the borders—once National's opening up plan is introduced which it gradually is by the way. Has anyone noticed that? I think we're up to the fifth point of National's plan being adopted by the Government by stealth. And won't it be great to have everything in place ready for our visitors to come back into this country?Now I remember the Minister saying he was consulting widely. This bill has been around for 10 years. We've been hearing the feedback for 10 years. I doubt in the roadshows that he's conducted over the past six months or a year—whatever it's been—that he has heard anything new. The situation is really clear the feedback has been really blunt and if anyone wasn't aware of it before today they've had their feet on the desk they're asleep at the wheel and have no idea about what's going on in the real world. I'm really sad that this bill won't be seeing the light of day."