Huo Raymond: Conservation (Natural Heritage Protection) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHuo Raymond: Conservation (Natural Heritage Protection) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 04 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13293. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RAYMOND HUO (Labour): About 3 weeks ago I finished a meeting in Auckland and walked along Queen Street going to my second appointment. I was stopped and asked to sign a petition by a young quiet Cantonese-speaking Chinese woman. It was a “Stop sharkfinning” petition or a “Ban shark fin soup” petition. I signed it. Walking along with me was a group of Asian business people who all signed the petition. The young woman thanked me and I thanked her and the group of Asian business people.We should really thank those who are behind the petition. The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society has been campaigning hard to stop sharkfinning in New Zealandand so have independent groups like Greenpeace World Wide Fund for Nature Shark Fin Free Auckland New Zealand Diving and several others which have formed the New Zealand Shark Alliance.Sharks are in decline around the world and New Zealand too is contributing to the problem. Shark fishing in our waters has increased dramatically over the past 15 years. According to the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society on average 24000 tonnes of shark—the equivalent weight of 300000 people—is caught every year in New Zealand waters. New Zealand is one of the top 20 exporters of shark fins to Hong Kong along with Spain Taiwan and Singapore. We must do something about that and the society Greenpeace and all the others have been working tirelessly and campaigning hard to protect those endangered species and their environments and they deserve a big thank you. In a similar vein I would like to thank the member for Waitaki Jacqui Dean for sponsoring this bill the Conservation (Natural Heritage Protection) Bill. We support this bill and we support the initiative.As I said at the very beginning the petition will increase awareness and draw a fine line there. I simply cannot get my head round why on earth shark fin soup is so popular in Hong Kong and some other places. If we increase the awareness to such an extent that people would feel sick just by viewing or imagining the photos of those injured or maimed sharks that would help to stop sharkfinning. The unsustainable killing of these creatures and the inhumane practice of sharkfinning are drawing these creatures closer to extinction.The purpose of this bill is to see New Zealand wildlife and its natural and historic resources being better protected through enhanced penalties effective implementation and by standardising penalties across conservation legislation. The bill as introduced would amend five pieces of legislation being the Conservation Act 1987 the National Parks Act 1980 the Reserves Act 1977 the Wildlife Act 1953 and the Wild Animal Control Act 1977. Those Acts are pretty much between 26 and 60 years old. The existing penalties under those five Acts are also old and extremely low and that can send an unintended signal or message to the offenders and to the courts as well that the offence is minimal or trivial. For example the maximum penalty in the Reserves Act is 1-month imprisonment or a $500 fine plus $10 a day if the offence is ongoing and that has not been amended since 1977.These low maximum penalties provide little deterrence if any. As the departmental report says District Court judges have noted the low penalties under the Reserves Act and the National Parks Act in their oral comments during sentencing. Four District Court judges also encouraged Parliament to consider increasing the penalties for poaching and smuggling wildlife noting that the commercial value created incentives for the offending and the existing penalties did not appear to be providing an effective deterrence.In addition the existing penalties can be exceeded by potential financial benefit from commercially motivated offending which creates an incentive to offend or reoffend. The penalties are not proportionate to the importance of the value of the protected area or species and the costs of prosecuting often far exceed the resulting sentence. So collectively these problems make enforcement more difficult and inefficient.For companies or bodies corporate should I say because bodies corporate will include corporations and unincorporated legal entities as well the existing maximum penalties provide little or no deterrence at all as the gain can significantly outweigh the penalties. The Parliamentary Counsel Office has advised that legislative drafting no longer refers to corporations as the term fails to capture unincorporated legal entities. It is recommended that the clauses that provide separate penalties for companies or corporations be deleted and the penalties for commercially motivated offending andfor other penalties to be applied to both natural and legal persons. This would therefore simplify the bill and ensure that unincorporated legal entities become subject to this bill as well. It would increase the penalty level that a legal entity may face when acting with commercial intent which is likely to be the majority of the offences committed by a corporation and make legal entities including corporations subject to the same level of penalty for other types of offending as natural persons are.The New Zealand Law Society in its submission provided a detailed analysis of combined sentences as proposed under this bill. Combined sentences of different types are the exception rather than the norm in New Zealand. Section 19(1) of the Sentencing Act 2002 provides that “No court may impose a combination of sentences of different types on an offender in respect of 1 or more offences except as provided in this section.” I am very glad to note that the Local Government and Environment Committee in its report recommended a two-tiered penalty approach and I thank Nicky Wagner for being a wonderful chair of that committee.Although we are supporting this bill we are also concerned and disappointed that it will do little to address the fundamental issues facing the Department of Conservation. The first problem is that this National-ACT Government has a tendency to see the environment and the economy as separate entities that need to be balanced rather than as entities that are dependent on each other namely two sides of the same coin. Secondly the Department of Conservation has been consistently underfunded by this National-ACT Government. In the 2009 Budget the Department of Conservation had $54 million cut from its budget over a period of 4 years and there have been over 400 job losses so far—around one in six staff—and this has caused serious concern.