SpeechDr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. What an absolute pleasure to speak on this bill this evening. The ACT Party will cautiously—Maureen Pugh: Ha ha! We know you mean it!Dr JAMES McDOWALL: —support this bill at third reading—I'm serious. We have our concerns but we acknowledge that there is plenty of concern out there with councils and businesses and tourists themselves and tourism providers saying that something does need to be done. Most support the idea that all freedom campers should be self-contained when they're staying in areas without facilities in particular. However there is concern and I hold concern that much of the evidence might be anecdotal unfortunately.The select committee stage will be especially important in this bill because we need to hear from submitters as to whether the Minister is putting ideology over reality or that the problem itself has been perhaps correctly identified and the solution might be the right one and not a solution looking for a problem. So we need a strong select committee process to hear from a wide range of submitters on this to make sure that we're doing the right thing here.I think that the ideology I spoke of is plainly obvious and the previous speaker alluded to this as well. Look we've got a Government that has launched its attacks on so-called cheap labour—that was a term used earlier today—and low-value tourists. That's not just me saying that; that's the Government benches. We want to be sure that this isn't just creating enormous red tape and that it is in fact improving outcomes. Is the policy objective reasonable? Will it actually solve anything? I note in the evidence that the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment rated the evidence certainty as low to moderate; so not getting off to a great start with that one.I just want to talk briefly about the unintended consequences that could be brought about with this bill. At present members of the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association have free or low-cost testing and certification of their vehicles and moving that certification to the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board looks like it could add significant cost and red tape to the process which I think carries a high risk that those in the target sector will simply be non-compliant. Frankly—again other speakers alluded to this—it sounds like a bit of a racket to be honest.Regarding a basic conversion it's also not clear how one arrived at the $500 to $800 cost estimate for converting a vehicle without a fixed toilet. One product I'm told is $900 just for the unit which does not include installation and modifying the vehicle to suit. While some may attempt some DIY it's probably best left to the professionals given there's a standard that needs to be met. So that's a huge cost burden. The cost associated with this law could be high and easily as I said encourage non-compliance.Further there are existing rules in place for freedom campers and some people just don't follow the rules. I'm not sure that having additional costs and regulations will make a lot of difference for those in question; many may just continue to risk the ticket. Given the cost of compliance could outweigh the cost of being caught punitive measures like this could have less of an impact than actually just providing better infrastructure such as public toilet stations and rubbish bins. I think it's worth noting that the problems in tourism arguably arrive out of Government failing to invest properly or reinvest properly in tourism infrastructure including in public toilets. Central governments took—pre-COVID—billions of dollars in GST from international and domestic tourists but refused to share any of that with local authorities for infrastructure which is actually what we need in this case. There is a lot of frustration there with tourism and a lot of it is just about the lack of infrastructure; not one or two bad freedom campers.There is a fine line between demonising certain types of tourists and tourism businesses on the one hand and acknowledging that if we really want higher-value tourism then Government needs to help improve infrastructure so that what we have to offer as a destination is genuinely world-class. So with that we're taking a constructive approach. As I said we are cautiously supporting the bill at first reading—just the first one though at this stage; I can't say much about No. 2.