Simpson ScottLITTER (INCREASED INFRINGEMENT FEE) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I move That the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill. This is as the speaker Jan Logie from the Green Party in the previous debate indicated a perfect member's bill. It's a small piece of legislation that makes a necessary and worthwhile change to a principal Act that is now outdated and timed for review in terms of the penalties that exist in it. The current Litter Act of 1979 allows councils to give infringement offences for littering and this bill that I am proposing would see the maximum infringement increase under that Act from a measly $400 to a far more realistic $1000. The bill amends section 13(4) of the principal Litter Act 1979 and that occurs in clause 5 of my bill.I'm sufficiently old enough to remember as a schoolchild in the 1970s slogans like Do the right thing" "Be a tidy Kiwi" and "Only lazy people litter". I'm also the member of Parliament for Coromandel and—Tim van de Molen: It's beautiful.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: It's a beautiful electorate as my colleague Tim van de Molen indicates. It's a beautiful electorate but too often as I travel around my beautiful electorate and I visit the beaches and the bush and the scenic attractions that are so well known not only nationally but internationally and are visited by so many people each year I see with great sadness the amount of litter that is prevalent in our natural places—in our beaches and in our bush. I fear that over the years since my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s we've lost something of our cultural sense of what it is to be a tidy Kiwi and that notwithstanding the good work of organisations such as Keep New Zealand Beautiful and others we seem to have lost the focus on what it is to not despoil our natural spaces with the scourge that is litter.In 1979 Allan Highet was the Minister of Internal Affairs and on 23 October in that year in the second reading debate of the principal Act the Hon Allan Highet said this and I quote: "Infringement notice provisions in clauses 13 and 14 are an innovation that has attracted remarkably little attention. … Over the years" he said "I have received many representations asking for some sort of instant fine to be written into our statute books … Most of us have come to live with it when it comes to parking and other minor traffic offences. The procedure laid down … is based on the traffic law … it will be up to each local authority to decide whether or not the infringement notice provision should apply to its district."In the ensuing years since that legislation was passed back in 1979 local government officers and enforcement agents have simply largely stopped issuing infringement notices for littering and they've done it pretty much because the maximum fine of $400 is hardly worth the effort of administration and enforcement. So this bill that I'm proposing would increase that rate to $1000.I took the opportunity earlier this evening to go on to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's inflation calculator. When I plugged in the information on what the cost of $400 was in the fourth quarter of 1979 and I compared it with what the value of $400 back then would be today in the first quarter of 2018 the Reserve Bank's calculator indicated that $400 back in 1979 would today be worth about $1444. So my initial calculation of increasing this $400 infringement rate from the 1979 level to a rate today might have been a little bit underdone. I'm hoping that if this bill goes to select committee we might be able to increase it a wee bit. Maybe we can get it closer to $1500 or something like that because infringement notices are important and they have to be worthwhile for local government to actually do something about them. Why I like the infringement notice system is because it's one of the most common enforcement systems and effective enforcement systems that jurisdictions like ours have for responding to relatively minor but none the less important offences such as minor parking offences traffic offences some fisheries offences dog control offences for instance—animal welfare and those sorts of things. But in terms of littering we've got out of sync over the years since 1979.An infringement system provides a level of sanctions somewhere midway between a mere warning and a sort of wet bus ticket approach and a formal court legal prosecution system. Infringement notices avoid the need for attendance at an expensive court hearing by the person alleged to have committed the offence. So it's a particularly good method for people who may be visiting parts of the country where they don't normally reside or indeed tourists who are from overseas. It means that they in turn don't need to attend a formal court hearing in the jurisdiction or the place where the offence took place.It means that the matter can be resolved quickly efficiently and ultimately without a criminal conviction for the offender. Systems like this reduce the cost of enforcement for local councils and they also make it possible for our judicial system not to get clogged with relatively minor matters that are expensive or that involve the full trappings of a formal court process. There's no need for instance to lodge formal court proceedings and there's obviously no need to engage lawyers or waste valuable court time.An infringement system is a compliance and enforcement tool at the end of the day. Under the system people who are believed on reasonable grounds to have committed an infringement such as littering may be issued with an infringement notice. In most people's minds in the minds of the public they would see that as a ticket or an instant fine. The notice on the instant fine would set out the offence they are considered to have committed and what the infringement fee payable would be. At the moment a maximum of $400 is really literally impossible and not effective in terms of dissuading people from littering.So if they pay the infringement notice what it means is that the instant fine is paid and no other action is taken. They don't receive a criminal conviction and the dispute is settled. If they want to take the matter further then they can obviously go through a normal court process.Littering is pervasive it's frustrating for all of us and I think that as New Zealanders we all want to live in a country that is clean and green and we don't want to see litter tossed around in our natural spaces. This is a small but effective piece of legislation that ultimately will be not a silver bullet but a step in the right direction in terms of sending a significant message to litterers. It will also empower and engage local government to further and more effectively police and enforce our Litter Act laws.It's no secret that had the National Party been given the privilege of sitting on the Treasury benches it was our intention to do a complete rewrite and review of the principal Act. It's my hope that eventually the new Government will pick up that piece of work because I think it's an important piece of work that needs attention. But in the meantime as an immediate and simple solution to a problem that is causing an issue in electorates like mine and in other parts of the country I think that this proposal to simply increase the maximum fine for an infringement notice that local governments can apply in terms of our Litter Act from a measly $400 to $1000—and maybe at select committee we might look at that upper limit but I think $1000 is a good point—sends a serious message and I hope that the House will support and endorse this bill."