Sharma GauravDr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): I rise today yet another time this time to speak on the Freedom Camping (Infringement Offences and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. When I first came to New Zealand as a young child one of the things my family did was travel throughout the country top down visiting different towns and cities trying to take in the beautiful sights of New Zealand. It's something that we're all very used to doing here in New Zealand enjoying our beautiful landscape but also what we've noticed is with the number of tourists increasing over the years there has been a significant rise in people who do freedom camp. In 2000 we had about 10000 visitors a year who were freedom camping. This number grew to 54000 in 2013 and on last count in 2018 it was 123000. So I'll show you a little graph. I don't know if you guys can see it from here—it's a little bit small—but the numbers are rising. The numbers are rising and what this means is the impact of freedom campers on our infrastructure especially in smaller towns is getting worse which means you see more and more people using the public toilets. You see more and more people park their cars in supermarkets making it worse for small-town citizens who then have to actually go around and clean up after these people. So in principle I think we all agree around the House that something does need to be done about all these issues that have gotten worse because of our increased tourism which is not a bad thing. But we do need to have a way of getting this under control especially as the country opens up after this global pandemic is sorted out. As the Minister of Tourism has said the Labour Government has been working on this for quite a long time and the key difference between what the Government is proposing and what the Opposition has proposed is that the Government has taken quite a comprehensive review of this and has involved various stakeholders and a full round of public consultation which hasn't happened in this space. That is quite important because these communities need to be able to get their word in on how the laws will be made around this because it does affect these people in their various communities. I'm just going to mention a few of the things that the Government has done already to make this more sustainable. So if we look at the establishment of the Responsible Camping Working Group where the Government put in $25 million in 2018 to better manage the freedom camping system there was also an introduction of a data and technology pilot to provide real-time information on the capacity of selected campsites which saw over 20000 people check the live availability of the trial sites at that time. In addition to that there were a lot of education campaigns run by Tourism New Zealand about responsible camping behaviours—[Pauses while another member listens to Parliament TV on his cellphone]—sorry I was just waiting for the other member to finish watching his video—and in addition to that there was provision of free access to self-contained vehicle standards saving users around $70 each to allow people to see what was required for certification as a self-contained vehicle. There was also commissioning of research to better understand the number profile and value of visitors both domestic and international who go freedom camping throughout the summer. As you can see the Government has done quite a lot of groundwork already in addressing this issue but the missing piece has been the public consultation which the Government did start in April and as I understand it has now taken place and all that information will be used in making this legislation even better. So while I do thank the member of the Opposition for bringing this bill to the House I think there are lots of missing pieces which can be addressed and which the Minister himself has agreed to look into as we move forward. So I would like to say no to the current bill as it stands and I look forward to the bill that the Minister of Tourism will be bringing to the House in a few months' time. Thank you so much.