Curran ClareHon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thank you Mr Speaker. Actions speak louder than words" and "commitment to the environment"—those were two phrases I heard from over there. Wasn't that the party that put up big billboards over the summer period about wanting more massive highways putting more trucks and cars on the road and basically running down KiwiRail and converting their locomotives to diesel? Is that "actions speak louder than words" and "commitment to the environment"? I could go on for 10 minutes about that but I won't because I actually want to say some positive things.One of the things that I wondered whether Mr Muller has thought about is actually asking his local council—and Mr Simpson as well—as to whether they've thought about putting out more bins in their community as being a useful way of encouraging behaviour change and education and that that is actually the direction that we as a nation are being encouraged to go in.This is a rather small strange bill I describe it as. I didn't sit on the Environment Committee for the whole of it but I came in at the end and I listened to some of the submissions I looked at what the departmental report had to say and I know it was taken seriously. I hope the member acknowledges that the bill was taken seriously and there were some serious submissions to it but ultimately increasing fines is not necessarily going to change behaviour—it will not stop littering. We were advised against a thousand-dollar fine because it's disproportionate to the infringement offence and I'll talk more about that in a minute. We were—because you know we're reasonable on this side of the House and we're a very reasonable Government that listens—prepared to consider a $500 fine which was considered to be in line with inflation and official advice but that was unacceptable to the member sitting over there.Most importantly—and this is where we go back to the actions speak louder than words and commitment to the environment—is that this Government has a plan and is enacting its plan and is actually doing a lot more about the bigger picture whereas for that side of the House apparently raising the fine to $1000 is going to somehow change the world and solve the problems of our environment.I would like to mention actually some items in the Government's plan and I want to refer to the Minister Eugenie Sage actually—associate environment Minister—and her waste minimisation work programme which has been outlined and which goes much much wider to this. Before I do that I just want to mention a couple of statistics which are useful to know and that is that in New Zealand 84 percent of waste that could become litter is actually disposed of in the correct way. So it's useful to inject facts into the debate. Of course we can do better and this is where the waste minimisation plan is geared to. It's actually looking at how it can do that in a meaningful way and affect the biggest impact rather than raising the fine to $1000 when there aren't enough enforcers which the member Deborah Russell referred to in her speech. So it's actually making a meaningful change.We've got a 16 percent litter rate so what the Government is looking at doing is expanding the waste disposal levy. New Zealand has currently got 420 known landfills. The levy only applies to 11 percent of them so there's a lot of work to be done there. We are undertaking a consultation with the public about the levy expansion. I'm not sure whether the Opposition is actually aware of this work and have actually looked into it but looking at the levy expansion and the potential increases next year the levy currently generates around $30 million annually. Half of that goes to councils to help them fund their waste minimisation activities and the balance goes into the Waste Minimisation Fund and its grants scheme which is about helping progressive businesses and community organisations to reduce waste. If we actually expand that away from the 11 percent isn't that going to make a big difference? Yes it's going to make a big difference. Is raising an infringement fee to $1000 going to make a big difference when you haven't got the enforcers when it doesn't fit into a bigger picture? No it's not.The second and long-overdue task is to improve dramatically the data and information available on waste. We lack a full national picture of what's going into landfills. Now why is that? It's because the previous Government did nothing about that. We don't know. So where was your commitment to the environment? And your actions speak louder than words. That's what I would like to know.I also want to refer to and I know that Deborah Russell referred to Graeme Edgeler's submission. I actually want to elaborate on what she said because while I describe him as being the prince of pedantry—and I make no apology about that Graeme—he made a very good submission and he makes very good points and I want to let you know what those points were in case the member Scott Simpson didn't pay attention when he was giving his submission. He says that "Littering is both a criminal offence punishable by a fine and an infringement offence punishable by the imposition of an infringement fee." That dual approach is relatively common with a range of regulatory offences and more serious breaches can be prosecuted in the courts as criminal offences—resulting in a conviction potentially and a criminal record—while less serious breaches can be dealt with using infringement fees which are like parking tickets or speeding tickets and don't result in criminal records.This bill proposes amending the level of the infringement—the lower level. So it's recognised as dealing with low-level littering and not with more serious dumping. More serious littering would be prosecuted rather than dealt with by the infringement notice. So if there are concerns about dumping and more serious examples of littering then amendments to the maximum fine for littering which is you know around $20000 $30000 for dangerous refuse—then don't change the infringement fee; that would be more appropriate. There are other pieces of legislation that that gets dealt with under.He makes the point that littering is bad but a possible $1000 infringement fee is out of all proportion with the offence especially when we recall we are concerned with the type of low-level littering commonly subject to infringement fees. It's useful to compare to other infringement offences such as speeding where the fee is set at $630. I just got a speeding ticket—it was a bit less than that so clearly I wasn't going that fast. But the point he is making is that it's disproportionate.Is the member clearly saying to the House that he believes that a disproportionate fee of $1000 in a regime where it's clearly being said to us by councils that it's a complex issue that they find it hard to actually enforce the infringement side of it is actually going to make a difference? Isn't it more important to be looking at a bigger picture of the whole of the waste minimisation and making your interventions where it's actually going to matter working with councils to look at how they can encourage behaviour change and ensuring that you are taking a holistic approach to this? Actions do speak louder than words. A commitment to the environment is important and it's this side of the House that's focused on that rather than the petty approach being taken by the National Party."