Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I thank the Hon Maggie Barry and the prior Minister the Hon Nick Smith for the work that they did on this bill and acknowledge the fact that this is a machinery of Government bill that is coming out of the machinery of Government as a consequence of your efforts rather than ours. I thank you for that.Can I also make a comment on the Environment Committee which I've had the pleasure of sitting on a number of occasions and note that I think the Environment Committee is often one of the best-peopled committees in the House—Fletcher Tabuteau: You would say that.Hon DAVID PARKER: No it's because of the importance that New Zealand attaches to it. I've sat on a lot of select committees and I've always been impressed with the level of capability that sits on both sides of the fence if you like on the Environment Committee the whole time I've been in Parliament which started when I had a bit more hair 15 years ago. So I'm sure that this bill will be well considered—DEPUTY SPEAKER: And it was a different colour.Hon DAVID PARKER: —when it gets to select committee. And I have some suggestions—I didn't hear that. What was that?DEPUTY SPEAKER: As was mine.Hon DAVID PARKER: Ha ha! Oh right.The key aspects of this bill have been addressed by prior speakers. I want to make a couple of comments about some aspects of it that I have personal experience in. I didn't do a lot of prosecutions as a lawyer but my firm used to do a lot of work for what were acclimatisation societies and then the Fish & Game councils and I did prosecutions on a lot of these minor offences.I think one of the things that is mentioned here about both the complexity of process for the prosecutor and the difficulty of the process for the accused is actually right. The idea that someone who's charged with a minor offence whether it's a camping offence or you know running a dog in an area that they shouldn't be in—you know I'm not wanting to diminish the fact that these things ought not to do be done but they ain't murder. And within each of those offence categories there will be a spectrum of activity some of which should just have a warning some of which should have a full prosecution—and I'll come back to that with the trade and endangered species stuff—and some of which should have an infringement note that sits in the middle.For just about all of the ones that I used to do for the Fish & Game Council they should've been an infringement notice—fishing without a licence. Really you know—do we really want to force either the Fish & Game Council or the accused to go into a court process where someone ends up with a criminal conviction rather than paying a fine for an offence notice? Really? Really? Let's get a bit practical here.What's the difference between this and the parking fines that are dealt out by district councils? What's the difference between this and the broader powers in respect of traffic infringements that used to be handed out by councils before all of those things were centralised to the Ministry of Transport and then eventually into the police? It's not so many years ago that there were a lot of other classifications of driving offences that were prosecuted by some councils.And I think we're in danger of being too precious about some of these things if we say that there's some special status that relates to Crown employees in the Department of Conservation compared with trained employees of a statutory authority Fish & Game—because they are a statutory authority. No they're not the Crown but Parliament has decided that in this area of governance it's going to delegate instead of to a council—a regional council or a district council—or instead of delegating it to the Department of Conservation they're delegating that function to Fish & Game.Now are Fish & Game to be trusted in these areas? Well they seem to have done all right in the prosecutions in their exercise of prosecutorial discretions in the more serious route that they can already take so why can't they be trusted in this? Is it because of this idea that somehow they'll be subject to judicial oversight and without that judicial oversight they'll be irresponsible? I think that is wrong. They haven't needed to have judicial oversight of some of their other functions.You know their decisions as to whether they advocate for things before councils which are probably—you know they have serious effect on public and private property rights. They do that and they've done it responsibly. In fact I think it's probably true that an amazing proportion of New Zealand's river protection work that's been done in New Zealand actually hasn't been done by the Department of Conservation; it's more often been done by Fish & Game. That's true—if you look at most of the conservation orders throughout the country they've been done by Fish & Game and it's a minority of them that has been advanced by the Department of Conservation.Hon Maggie Barry: Public accountability though.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well they do have public accountability: they're accountable through their Minister.There was with respect a ridiculous decision I thought that was taken by the last select committee when we were actually asked in respect of their ability to seek information for a prosecution—the pedantic advice that came from the Crown was that the Fish & Game Council could not be allowed to require the person to give their date of birth. They can require their name they can require their address by law; they couldn't be required to give their date of birth. What a nonsense because the prosecutorial guidelines that they have to meet when they file a prosecution include that they've got to give the date of birth of the accused. It was absurd. It was absurd advice and I was one of those who thought at select committee we should fix that despite the officials' advice to the contrary. But that was nonsensical.The very things that are there for the prosecutorial guidelines that applied to them including the date of birth they couldn't gather and that has practical consequences. John Smith sometimes lives in the same house as the father of John Smith John Smith. So how do you distinguish between John Smith and John Smith both living at the same address if you cannot ask for their date of birth? So that's how pedantic these things have become in New Zealand and I personally think that the select committee should look favourably at the idea that Fish & Game councils should have this.There are lots of Fish & Game Council employees out there. They are already paid for. There is no additional cost to the State or to Fish & Game. There's lots of these people. They have a training regime that was explained to the select committee last time in respect of their exercise of discretion. There was one issue in respect of putting people at risk in respect of firearms offences which I think the committee should look at. I wasn't sure about that one myself. I can understand that there might be concern about that but I would've thought that's an issue for Fish & Game to have a look at through their lens as an employer of these people rather than for Parliament to say they should not have this this infringement offence.So I think I've probably covered the main points that I was going to make in respect of that. They are a statutory authority they are fulfilling a statutory duty and they have a jurisdiction in respect of things that effectively no one else is policing. So if they're not policing it in an effective way—we all know that the court processes are hugely expensive and we don't want to put unnecessary burdens on either prosecutor or accused in terms of the cost of those functions and we don't want unnecessary stress to be faced with them.Returning to the discretion that's going to have to be exercised assuming this legislation does eventually get approved by the select committee and Parliament—and I think the former Minister the Hon Maggie Barry was right that this legislation is likely to pass through all stages eventually in this House and become law—a discretion has to be made. It will have to be exercised by those that have these powers—or they'll have more than one power; they'll have a power to decide whether they issue an infringement notice or whether they go down the more serious route. I certainly think that the department should be funded to take prosecutions not just infringement notices in serious cases. The law should be enforced.I know the last Minister so I'm not sure which Minister would have seen the cost of prosecutions of some of those people who were stealing our jewelled geckos—you know our rare and endangered species—and smuggling them overseas or birds eggs or—you know there's some real ratbags out there in the world. Some of them have very very low ethics and they will come and they will threaten our endangered species and when we catch them I think the ministry should be sufficiently funded to actually throw the book at them because I think it's abhorrent that they would be trading in New Zealand's endangered species. In terms of criminal offences it is such a deliberate act. It's so planned and we have threatened species. So with those comments I support the bill.