Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Responding to Erica Stanford's points it is theoretically possible that an investigation could be started by a council continued by the Environmental Protection Agency and they might complete the investigation give the material back to the council and the council might choose to be the prosecuting authority—rare but theoretically possible. I don't see a problem with that possibility. There's still only one prosecution that could ever eventuate from an egregious breach of rules.Prosecution's actually not the most common route that follows breaches of the Resource Management Act. Indeed councils are understandably reluctant to prosecute in respect of less serious infringements—none the less infringements of the rule of law should be dealt with proportionately. In addition to that prosecution route through the courts the infringement route is made more realistic if you like relative to the costs and seriousness of prosecutions. So I would point out to the member that side by side to this is an increase to the maximum level of infringement notice that can be issued by councils. Councils are calling for that in part because an infringement route doesn't leave the same stain on the record of the person who is held to account; it's different from a criminal prosecution that is a matter of record and it's cheaper for both the council and for the accused and less stressful actually for the accused as well. So that's an important change in this legislation—increasing the infringement fees that can be charged.In respect of the issue as to why this bill and why did we do what we've done in respect of subdivisions and the member suggested that some of the changes we're making were petty. Well from our perspective we're not actually. Some of the changes that were made to make it easier for councils in a less rule-bound manner to deal with boundary effects of a building for example crossing through a recession plain that's set out in a plan—we've left those things. We think those things were sensible. But in respect of the change that was made to remove rights of public participation in respect of sub-divisional applications and related repeal rights we just thought that was wrong. I've already covered the example in respect of airports and quarries but more broadly we believe as a matter of principle that generally in respect of consent activities if your public or private interests are going to be substantially affected by a private activity there should be a right of participation. There's really no difference between a subdivision application and someone building a new factory that's going to be noisy or produce pollution.It may well be—and I'm not predicting what the Randerson report says in respect of this—that there are wholesale changes to both plan making and/or consent decision-making processes but I wanted to get the law back to the point where we had some in my opinion rational approach to all classes of activity which was a rational point to start.The final point: why couldn't we wait? Well the Randerson report will come out now. It's a very complex piece of work as other members have already alluded to. Turning that into law will take a number of years. Whether we're elected or the Opposition is elected at the next Government—and I hope for the sake of New Zealand it's us—I think whichever Government's elected that work will be carried forward but it will take some years to implement. In the meantime we've had problems with declining water quality and some of the provisions that are in this bill are necessary to stop that decline early rather than waiting for that holistic piece of work.