Wagner NickyHon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much Madam Deputy Speaker. I'm very pleased to talk to this bill today as well. Even though I'm not a member of the Environment Committee certainly I've had quite a lot to do with this bill.I'd like to agree with the member who was speaking Chlöe Swarbrick that we do want to make sure that we look after our environment. We do want to give the Department of Conservation (DOC) more tools in their tool kit but unfortunately this bill goes a little bit too far for us.I'm really disappointed that National can't support it because as has been mentioned today this bill was originally begun by the Hon Maggie Barry. I remember it well because I was the associate Minister at the time. And we worked hard to try and get a middle ground in terms of managing offences on the DOC estate.We do understand that most New Zealanders like to do well by our great outdoors. Most New Zealanders only leave footprints. They don't want to do bad things to our trees or to our animals. But every now and then we get people who break the law. So it's really important that DOC who are charged with looking after our nature have tools to be able to do that well. DOC rangers are out there day and night. Up until now they've only really had two choices: they could either issue a warning if it was a less serious offence or they could actually prosecute somebody and take them to court. The reason that this bill was so important is that we needed to have some middle ground. We needed to be able to do something that was more than just a warning but wasn't a full-blown prosecution. In many cases less serious events did need more than that warning. They did need something that could have some teeth to it but they certainly didn't want to go to court. This bill gets that middle ground by introducing an infringement and fine regime and that is to deal with those less serious offences efficiently effectively intelligently and in a useful way.If you think about a court prosecution it takes a long time it tends to be a pretty expensive process and if someone is successfully prosecuted they end up with a criminal record. So it meant that it really had to be something pretty serious before DOC wanted to go through all that process. So this infringement system will give warnings the teeth that DOC needs. The fines would be set by regulation and they'd probably be somewhere between $100 and $500 and it will provide that timely efficient and effective mechanism to manage those less serious offences.Of course a prosecution is always an option and there are certain misdemeanours or certain activities for which we do need to keep prosecution in mind—things like risks to public safety firearms offences things that perhaps would give significant commercial gain and serious harms to conservation values. So this does not mean that a prosecution will never happen but it does mean that you've got a greater range of options. So whereas National absolutely supports the principle of this bill we don't believe that the powers should be extended to either Fish & Game or local councils. And I know that this was the debate that was at select committee and I do thank the select committee for the work that they've done. There's no doubt about it that National is comfortable with the philosophy behind this and we're comfortable with allowing DOC to manage an infringement and fine regime. Basically that's because they're part of the State services and there are significant checks and balances in that position. But we think extending it just takes it a step too far.So Madam Deputy Speaker thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. I thank everyone for the work that they've done on it. Certainly we agree that DOC needs these tools but we don't think it should go any further. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker.