Street Maryan: Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17709. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to take a short call on Part 5 of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill in respect of the comments that the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage concluded his contribution with just now. I do not wish to traverse this unnecessarily but yes it did cause disruption to those Historic Places Trust branches which saw themselves going out of existence. Of course their commitment remains. If that commitment can be similarly expressed under these new provisions then this governance shift will have succeeded. However it will depend on resourcing and the people in my local area in Nelson were as concerned about this as any Historic Places Trust branch. It will come down to resourcing. Although we think the governance structures and processes in this bill are OK and we are supporting them we would like also to have on the record a residual concern about the resourcing of the commitment that has caused the Historic Places Trust branches to exist in the first place.What I really want to do in talking to Part 5 is focus on the first part of Part 5 of the bill which is around the offence provisions. These are the offences and penalties and the provisions around those offences and penalties in the bill. In trying to establish exactly what an offence was the original draft of the legislation had an “offence of harming land subject to heritage covenant” or an “offence of harming archaeological site”. In the course of the deliberations in the Local Government and Environment Committee that word “harming” was altered to be the words “modifying or destroying”—“modifying or destroying land subject to heritage covenant” in clause 83 or “modifying or destroying archaeological site” in the case of clause 84. This is really important.We get to this pointy end of the offences and I think we can all understand that feeling we have when things that are important to us are desecrated in some way. Whether it is an Anzac memorial that is graffitied or whether it is a sign that represents the memory of somebody that has been taken down or destroyed we can sympathise across our ethnic divides with that sense of outrage and that sense of offence—deep profound offence—when such a thing is done. This piece of legislation which is modernising our heritage legislation makes it very clear that every person commits an offence in respect of a historic place or historic area that is protected by a heritagecovenant if the person knows that it is protected by a heritage covenant if they breach the terms of that heritage covenant or if they intentionally modify or destroy the place.As punishment for that offence in the case of a natural person—that is an individual—the fine is $150000. In the case of a “person” other than a natural person—and to put that in English a person in this context also means the Crown or a corporation or a body of people whether they are a corporate or not and whether they are an incorporated society or not—they would be fined up to $300000. These are sufficiently hefty sums for the importance of the protection of these heritage covenants in this instance to not be taken lightly. Similarly there is the offence of modifying or destroying an archaeological site. Again if somebody knows it is an archaeological site and they modify or destroy it or cause it to be modified or destroyed then they are up for a similar amount. In the case of destruction it is a fine of $150000 for an individual and $300000 in the case of a person other than a natural person. So it may be that the felling of the tree on One Tree Hill could be considered in this regard.But similarly I am making the point that it is not just matters of interest to Māori but it is all historic places and areas. Also we have gone to great lengths in clause 89 to consider other offences—whether it is taking an animal or a vehicle on to land that is under the control of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga; whether somebody lights a fire on it; or whether somebody unlawfully alters obliterates defaces pulls up removes or destroys any boundary mark plaque or sign. We have gone to some lengths to describe those offences that would be susceptible to punishment under these provisions. They are right and proper and we have no hesitation in supporting Part 5. Thank you.