Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you. The Green Party certainly wants to close the loopholes in the Wildlife Act that make it difficult for the Department of Conservation (DOC) to take action against smugglers of our native birds and geckos and to investigate offences so we are supporting the Wildlife (Powers) Amendment Bill. It contains useful enforcement powers for conservation officers to intervene and to prevent offending.But the Wildlife Act was passed in 1953. It is more than 60 years old and National's changes to the Act in this bill and in the member's bill in the name of the Hon Jacqui Dean which increased the penalties for offending are mere tinkering around the edges. We need a much more substantial overhaul of the Wildlife Act and a major updating of it. The Green Party in Government would be much more ambitious than the National Party is and increase its efforts to protect the future for wildlife in Aotearoa. We would be much more ambitious whether it is the tiny rock wren or the much larger rāpoka or New Zealand sea lion. They are species that have lived in these islands for millennia. Now 60 years on from when the Wildlife Act was passed we understand the seriousness of the biodiversity crisis and the extinction risk that many of our indigenous species are facing. So we need a sweeping review of the Wildlife Act not just the useful but small changes that we have in this bill.We need a Wildlife Act that protects species in the places where they live and protects the habitat of our native birds invertebrates bats and fish especially when so many of them are staring extinction in the face. The Resource Management Act (RMA) has utterly failed to protect the habitat of native wildlife on private land and often on conservation land. We need a Wildlife Act that gives priority to safeguarding the places that our native species live not legislation that allows as has happened under the RMA a coal mining company to open-cast the Denniston Plateau which is habitat for great spotted kiwi. We need law that protects river systems like Hawke's Bay's Tukituki River which is home to at least 18 species of native fish not law like the Wildlife Act and the RMA which is allowing that river to be dammed blocking passage to the sea of native fish and preventing their ability to breed. When we have got 74 percent of our native fish species threatened with extinction we need law that protects their habitat yet this bill which is amending the principal Wildlife Act does absolutely nothing to protect native fish. There is a total ban in our law on the sale of trout. They are an introduced species. But there is nothing in our law that protects native fish and their habitat.So not just the little changes the useful changes that this bill is making but a much more comprehensive review is needed and that is what the Green Party as part of a new progressive Government in September would do. We are committed to improving the prospects for whitebait and all of our other native fish. We have got a commitment to clean water and investing in conservation not starving the Department of Conservation (DOC) of funds as the National Government is doing. We would increase the funding for predator control on conservation land and not force DOC to steal funds away from other programmes in order to slightly increase the amount of predator control it is doing. We would wind up the subsidies for irrigation that lead to more water pollution and further loss of habitat for our native fish species. We would amend the Wildlife Act to put a moratorium on commercial fishing of long-finned eel and to give protection for the banded kōkopu the giant kōkopu the kōaro and all of our native fish species seeing as their continued existence is so precarious. And we would put in place law that protects our wild rivers in a similar way to the legislation that protects our national parks. We want to protect the habitat for our indigenous species and improve their prospects not let them further decline as the National Government is doing.