Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I am very excited because I do have a really special interest in this bill even though I've only just seen it tonight. The topic is of high interest to me—Dr Duncan Webb: How's the Punakaiki toilets?MAUREEN PUGH: —and I can assure you that this topic is of huge interest to the—Dr Duncan Webb: Shit.MAUREEN PUGH: —people of the West Coast. The reason that is of high interest—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Order! Order! The member will stand withdraw and apologise.Dr Duncan Webb: I withdraw and apologise.MAUREEN PUGH: Thank you Madam Chair for maintaining some standards in this place. The people of the West Coast have a huge interest in this bill and this topic because of course the conservation estate is 85 percent to 87 percent of the land mass of the West Coast. Of course we have the most conscientious guardians living in that area of the Department of Conservation (DOC) estate. So with this particular bill that we're talking about I have a special interest in clause 4 after section 3(2)(g) the new paragraph (h) that is going to be inserted which says enables a levy to be charged to fund or contribute to the funding of costs associated with conservation or tourism."Now my interest in this is around thresholds. I would like to know from the Minister how they are going to set about establishing thresholds for the funding and how they are going to set those standards that will enable applications to be considered fairly. The reason I'm asking that is because of the 1 million tourists that travel through the West Coast every year. This season in particular has been a particularly hard one for the tourist sector. So I'm wondering whether or not these events that have happened will actually trigger those thresholds. For instance we have had three highway closures—one of those included the washout of a major link the Waiho River bridge. Will the Minister consider the impact of some of those events on the tourism industry considering also that they happen within the DOC estate?One of the things that you may not know about this particular area that I'm talking about is that it is one of three World Heritage sites that New Zealand has. We have the Subantarctic Islands; we have the Tongariro National Park; and we have Te Wāhipounamu which is the south-west of New Zealand. So they are particularly precious sites. At the moment we have an old landfill that has been exposed. We have waste from that landfill spilling into a national park—a World Heritage site—washing up on the coastline depositing on beaches and finding its way into the Ōkārito marine reserve. Now this is probably the most pristine of environments it reaches Unesco standards and yet even today we have had only a pittance of contribution from the conservation Minister and we have had no support from tourism.So in terms of thresholds I'm really concerned about the standards that are going to be set in this legislation. How important does it have to be before you actually trigger some support out of this fund? It seems to me that this is a very loose piece of legislation. I have heard the call for standards and I've heard the call for criteria. At the moment all I can see is poacher being gamekeeper. We cannot have a Minister who will not say to us "This is the standard we are going to set." And if we cannot at this point trust the ministries for conservation and tourism to support such a huge environmental disaster down on the West Coast in a World Heritage site—in a marine reserve—that has now been left to volunteers how on earth can we ask or expect really decent support for the maintenance and the clean-up of such an environmental disaster?I think there is a huge amount of work to be done on this bill. I believe because of the impact that this is going to have that it deserved the input from those in the sector that are most impacted by it and it deserved the scrutiny of the community. Thank you very much Madam Chair."