Woods MeganDr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my absolute pleasure to take a call on this bill. There is not a lot left to say. There has been a lot said through the course of some very fine speeches in this House about what this bill does.I did not have the experience of sitting on the Local Government and Environment Committee and hearing submissions but from what I see in front of me it seems like we have some important amendments to a piece of legislation that has a very important job. That job is around protecting and providing for the management of New Zealand's land fresh water and marine species and making sure that we do provide the right provisions to ensure that we can protect our biodiversity and that we have a safe haven for these very important species. This bill absolutely protects most native birds—and I think that is one of the important things—all native reptiles frogs bats some specified native land and marine vertebrates and eight marine fish species. That is absolutely important.Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard you may also be very interested to know that the bill also provides for the management of game birds—mallard ducks being on that list along with grey ducks and pukeko. They are all managed through this legislation and through the New Zealand Fish and Game Council. It is illegal to hunt or kill game birds in a closed season without a licence. It may give you Mr Assistant Speaker some reassurance to know that there is only a season in which that can be done.What this piece of legislation does is put in place powers for Department of Conservation (DOC) officers—a really needed increased power for our DOC officers to be able to enforce these laws. What it does not do in any way is change the kinds of powers that the Fish and Game officers have. My colleague the Hon David Parker put up a very fine amendment asking that there be some changes to the information that Fish and Game officers would be able to collect when someone was apprehended and that was the date of birth. Other people in their contributions in the House have explained why this is necessary. This is the kind of information that is required to lead on to a prosecution for the kinds of offences that those officers who are working really hard and doing a fine job of protecting our natural environment are seeing being committed. Date of birth is the information that is required.What other contributors to this debate have spoken about is that these are sorely needed provisions. We need to ensure that we have got the right kind of powers for our DOC officers to be able to do their job.But when we give increased powers to a group of people we also need to make sure that they have the requisite funding and the requisite resourcing to be able to do that. This is our reservation: that we are asking DOC officers to do more and we are not putting in place increased resourcing for them to be able to do it. We know that DOC already struggles with its funding. It has been a massive job. In December 2015 University of Auckland biological sciences senior lecturer James Russell stated that DOC's funding over the past few years had affected the amount of land it could look after to the appropriate standard. When we have the critics and consciences of our society who are charged with looking at such things sounding a warning about the levels of resourcing that we are putting into this we should really be listening to them.We already know that DOC staff are overworked. Last year 1500 DOC staff took work-to-rule industrial action after being offered pitiful pay rises. They are being asked to do more and more and no one is meeting that. In 2009 there were 803 DOC rangers; now there are only 637. This is not the level of resourcing that needs to sit beside the fine rhetoric that we have been hearing from the Government benches about how it is that we need to protect our wildlife and our natural environment. The members opposite need to ensure that the Government and the party they are in actually put money where their mouths are and ensure that adequate funding and resourcing are in place. Labour members are happy to support this legislation but we are also eager to see the appropriate resourcing sit beside the new functions. Thank you.Bill read a third time.