Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I'm not going to be as oratorically adventurous as Stuart Smith the previous speaker and try and link it to terrorism legislation and climate change legislation but I will note those positive bills the House has dealt with earlier on tonight. This is good legislation. Look I'd describe it as eminently reasonable. Now I'm going to explain what I mean by that because while I didn't have the pleasure of sitting on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee—and I acknowledge the chair Darroch Ball and the members of the committee—the submitters' amendments were eminently reasonable. There are four areas I want to quickly touch on. The first is claims to the disputes tribunal which just clarifies that even though a case can be taken to the disputes tribunal the maximum penalty which is what this legislation is trying to achieve—that a maximum of $100 can be charged to remove a clamp—stands. It is clarifying that. Now why I say eminently reasonable" is because there is also the situation where you might want to actually remove the wheel clamp yourself and what the committee has come up with is new section 98D(5)(b) in clause 4 which is that it can be removed as long as there's "as little damage to the … device as is reasonably possible."—again another eminently reasonable amendment that the committee has forward with. There's also the requirements for being "reasonably available". What the committee has done is notice that this is a subjective term and it has noted that the time limit where an operator can remove the immobilising device must be reasonably available. Now they've identified that this needs to be changed in regulations and to the previous member Stuart Smith who talked about the maximum fine of $100 I know there's been debate previously that it should have been $50 or $100. We've all heard those nightmare cases where people literally with children still in their vehicle are being clamped and charged what I believe is an extortionate amount of up to $700 more in some cases. Now people might have a disagreement on what the actual figure should be but I would point out that much like this requirement for being "reasonably available" to be amended in the regulations so can that $100 fee. So that can be amended in the future. Now the fourth big change was the regulation of signage. I think the committee has erred on the right side of the debate hearing from the submitters that while many submitters thought signage should be required that wasn't entirely necessary. So here you have some very explicitly reasonable amendments to make sure this eminently reasonable bill is more workable. This is really good legislation. I actually recall that maybe the first letter I wrote in this new Government was to the Minister Kris Faafoi. I'd been contacted after the election by the Sunday Star-Times who had a litany of horror stories from the experiences of regular Kiwis where—as we've heard the quote—cowboy clampers had had a disproportionate impact on their families' lives and had taken literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars out of them in a way that I think any reasonable Kiwi would find unacceptable. So I'm really glad the Minister has acted on this. They've moved with the appropriate amount of haste. This is good common-sense reasonable legislation that the Green Party is proud to support."