Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill. This is, as the speaker Jan Logie from the Green Party in the previous debate indicated, a perfect member’s bill. It’s a small piece of legislation that makes a necessary and worthwhile change to a principal Act that is now outdated and timed for review in terms of the penalties that exist in it.

The current Litter Act of 1979 allows councils to give infringement offences for littering, and this bill that I am proposing would see the maximum infringement increase under that Act from a measly $400 to a far more realistic $1,000. The bill amends section 13(4) of the principal Litter Act 1979, and that occurs in clause 5 of my bill.

I’m sufficiently old enough to remember as a schoolchild in the 1970s slogans like “Do the right thing”, “Be a tidy Kiwi”, and “Only lazy people litter”. I’m also the member of Parliament for Coromandel, and—

Tim van de Molen: It’s beautiful.

It’s a beautiful electorate, as my colleague Tim van de Molen indicates. It’s a beautiful electorate, but too often as I travel around my beautiful electorate, and I visit the beaches and the bush and the scenic attractions that are so well known not only nationally but internationally and are visited by so many people each year, I see with great sadness the amount of litter that is prevalent in our natural places—in our beaches and in our bush. I fear that over the years since my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s, we’ve lost something of our cultural sense of what it is to be a tidy Kiwi, and that notwithstanding the good work of organisations such as Keep New Zealand Beautiful and others, we seem to have lost the focus on what it is to not despoil our natural spaces with the scourge that is litter.

In 1979, Allan Highet was the Minister of Internal Affairs, and on 23 October in that year, in the second reading debate of the principal Act, the Hon Allan Highet said this, and I quote: “Infringement notice provisions in clauses 13 and 14 are an innovation that has attracted remarkably little attention. … Over the years”, he said, “I have received many representations asking for some sort of instant fine to be written into our statute books, … Most of us have come to live with it when it comes to parking and other minor traffic offences. The procedure laid down … is based on the traffic law, … it will be up to each local authority to decide whether or not the infringement notice provision should apply to its district.”

In the ensuing years since that legislation was passed, back in 1979, local government officers and enforcement agents have simply largely stopped issuing infringement notices for littering, and they’ve done it pretty much because the maximum fine of $400 is hardly worth the effort of administration and enforcement. So this bill that I’m proposing would increase that rate to $1,000.

I took the opportunity earlier this evening to go on to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s inflation calculator. When I plugged in the information on what the cost of $400 was in the fourth quarter of 1979 and I compared it with what the value of $400 back then would be today, in the first quarter of 2018, the Reserve Bank’s calculator indicated that $400 back in 1979 would today be worth about $1,444. So my initial calculation of increasing this $400 infringement rate from the 1979 level to a rate today might have been a little bit underdone. I’m hoping that if this bill goes to select committee, we might be able to increase it a wee bit. Maybe we can get it closer to $1,500 or something like that, because infringement notices are important and they have to be worthwhile for local government to actually do something about them.

Why I like the infringement notice system is because it’s one of the most common enforcement systems and effective enforcement systems that jurisdictions like ours have for responding to relatively minor, but none the less important, offences such as minor parking offences, traffic offences, some fisheries offences, dog control offences, for instance—animal welfare, and those sorts of things. But in terms of littering, we’ve got out of sync over the years since 1979.

An infringement system provides a level of sanctions somewhere midway between a mere warning and a sort of wet bus ticket approach, and a formal court legal prosecution system. Infringement notices avoid the need for attendance at an expensive court hearing by the person alleged to have committed the offence. So it’s a particularly good method for people who may be visiting parts of the country where they don’t normally reside, or indeed tourists who are from overseas. It means that they, in turn, don’t need to attend a formal court hearing in the jurisdiction or the place where the offence took place.

It means that the matter can be resolved quickly, efficiently, and, ultimately, without a criminal conviction for the offender. Systems like this reduce the cost of enforcement for local councils, and they also make it possible for our judicial system not to get clogged with relatively minor matters that are expensive or that involve the full trappings of a formal court process. There’s no need, for instance, to lodge formal court proceedings and there’s obviously no need to engage lawyers or waste valuable court time.

An infringement system is a compliance and enforcement tool, at the end of the day. Under the system, people who are believed, on reasonable grounds, to have committed an infringement such as littering may be issued with an infringement notice. In most people’s minds, in the minds of the public, they would see that as a ticket or an instant fine. The notice on the instant fine would set out the offence they are considered to have committed and what the infringement fee payable would be. At the moment, a maximum of $400 is really literally impossible and not effective in terms of dissuading people from littering.

So if they pay the infringement notice, what it means is that the instant fine is paid and no other action is taken. They don’t receive a criminal conviction, and the dispute is settled. If they want to take the matter further, then they can obviously go through a normal court process.

Littering is pervasive, it’s frustrating for all of us, and I think that as New Zealanders, we all want to live in a country that is clean and green, and we don’t want to see litter tossed around in our natural spaces. This is a small but effective piece of legislation that ultimately will be not a silver bullet but a step in the right direction in terms of sending a significant message to litterers. It will also empower and engage local government to further and more effectively police and enforce our Litter Act laws.

It’s no secret that had the National Party been given the privilege of sitting on the Treasury benches, it was our intention to do a complete rewrite and review of the principal Act. It’s my hope that eventually the new Government will pick up that piece of work, because I think it’s an important piece of work that needs attention. But in the meantime, as an immediate and simple solution to a problem that is causing an issue in electorates like mine and in other parts of the country, I think that this proposal to simply increase the maximum fine for an infringement notice that local governments can apply in terms of our Litter Act, from a measly $400 to $1,000—and maybe at select committee we might look at that upper limit, but I think $1,000 is a good point—sends a serious message, and I hope that the House will support and endorse this bill.

Madam Assistant Speaker, I rise to make a contribution on the first reading of this particular bill. Having heard the contribution of its sponsor, Scott Simpson, I understand the sentiment. I would tend to agree that several of our towns and communities are frustrated by the fact that there is dumping and littering in public spaces, and they do want to ensure that the quality of life that they experience in their towns and cities and in public places can be preserved and looked after by just keeping the place clean.

We do believe that this bill should be supported and go to select committee so that it gets a full hearing. Again, the point was well made that it hasn’t been since 1979 when the principal Act was introduced into the House that there was a significant look at its provisions—more fit for purpose, for the modern context.

The other point that I would say is that increasing the fine is a somewhat punitive step towards addressing the issue, when we know that the reality of enforcement, monitoring, and being able to actually catch the perpetrator of littering is somewhat difficult, and, more and more, councils are reliant on the public to report instances where they see people littering in public places. In fact, I’m sure many members in the House would agree that even with social media now, there’s a lot more community pages that are actually posting instances where in their local town there are some common areas where people do dump.

I thought I would raise those issues because we think that by going to select committee there will be an opportunity for the submission process to pretty much raise these issues but also look at what the opportunity might be in terms of addressing the issues of monitoring and enforcement, but also the issue of promotion. We know that the principal role for promoting, I guess, a clean town and city is undertaken by Keep New Zealand Beautiful, an incorporated society, and that is an important function which goes hand in hand with the monitoring and enforcement provision and with the infringement fine. They all exist together.

In a comprehensive look at this issue, it’s been somewhat of a concern to me that simply increasing the fine from $400 to $1,000 might not achieve the intended outcome. In fact, councils, in how they apply the infringement fine, would have a graduated step as to the levels of fine according to the type of litter that has been distributed. So, for example, cigarette butts vis-à-vis dumping of rubbish vis-à-vis dumping of tyres vis-à-vis dumping of vehicles—they’re all different and, I think, require a different approach. It’s for that reason, again, that the select committee will draw out a better approach than simply an infringement fee and actually address the issue of dumping in our communities, which I think will be a welcome step from councils if we have a serious look at the matter.

It will be an important consideration for the select committee. This is to ensure that they are covering the issue of capacity of councils to monitor. Many councils don’t actually have a lot of people working in this area. Small councils have people who multitask and do the monitoring and enforcement of litter. Larger councils will have up to, say, four or six—or mid-sized councils, let’s say. So, again, the capability within a council to undertake this role, I think, has an impact on whether or not the intended consequence or the intended effect can actually be achieved.

I wanted to go back to the principal Act and identify what litter includes so that there is some specificity as people are working through the issues on the bill to know what that is. In the principal Act: “litter includes any refuse, rubbish, animal remains,”—because often pets are dumped—“glass, metal, garbage, debris, dirt, filth, rubble, ballast, stones, earth, or waste matter, or any other thing of a like nature”. Those are all the kinds of ranges of things—materials that are considered within the interpretation of “litter”.

But let’s come to the issue of glass, because I have young children. We know just about all the playgrounds within our district and we enjoy taking our children there. When you have young children, there is nothing more frustrating than when you go to playgrounds and the bins are overrun with litter—often household waste—but also broken glass because people have used these recreational areas around where playgrounds are for other activities. It’s again worth noting that the principal Act actually separates out broken glass and offers a more significant penalty. I raise that matter also because these are the types of niggles that really impact on people when they think about litter and when they think about quality of life and what needs to be improved.

But, more importantly, broken glass in a public place is very dangerous, so I do think that separating out the definition of broken glass and attributing a higher penalty or higher fine there is actually quite important. There has been an instance that I’m aware of where a young child has gone to a playground where there’s been bark and there’s been a bit of broken glass there and they’ve cut themselves.

But where this will all filter back down to is whether or not the infringement can actually be enforced, and that will be the proof of the pudding, so to speak—whether or not the bill will achieve its intended outcome. If there is going to be reliance on the role of the public to report littering—and these are things that need to be considered, as we considered similar types of illegal activities within the conservation estate and, I guess, safety around rangers, as people reported. I think we really need to ensure that the select committee flesh out all these types of issues so that we can get a better bill. So while I acknowledge Scott Simpson for introducing the bill to the House, I think the issues that I’ve raised clearly set out that there is room for improvement and there is an opportunity to ensure that the intended outcome of this bill can actually be effected.

The other aspect that I want to clearly state, as I have before, is that, by and large, a punitive approach in and of itself does not achieve as much as actually promoting and investing in the promotion of public education around the impacts of littering on the quality of life within a community. In fact, lots of our kids now are the greatest promoters, and the campaigns within schools—Keep New Zealand Beautiful, the anti-litter campaign—and the ways in which young people are taught to pick up rubbish after activities within public spaces achieve a heck of a lot, and we can never underestimate the investment into the public promotion component of this issue.

Finally, can I say that once the select committee—and I’m inviting the select committee to have a broad range of amendments back to the bill, because the final point that was raised was a comprehensive review of the Litter Act. If we consider the huge problems around dumping of rubbish, I think that is an outstanding area that certainly would be improved by considering a comprehensive review. So I support the bill, we support the bill, to go to select committee.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and I rise in absolute support of my colleague, the Opposition spokesperson for the environment, the Hon Scott Simpson, and, of course, the previous Minister for the Environment. I want to acknowledge that I’m in total support of his contribution and reiterate that while this is a small bill, it is very much an effective bill and builds on the work that he had done previously with the National-led Government in waste minimisation.

Using an infringement system and increasing the fine with respect to litter is a small but effective way to discourage people from disposing of their rubbish in inappropriate ways. I think, probably, there are two types of people in New Zealand: there are those that go into the bush or recreate and only leave footprints—and, thankfully, I think that that is the majority of people—but there are some people that simply don’t subscribe to that principle. I think, in my electorate, there’s nothing more frustrating than, for example, driving down the highway and watching somebody throw a carton of fast food out the window—

💬 Brett Hudson: Carton of Rothmans in the Wairarapa.

Ha! I’m talking about fast food at this stage, but throwing some rubbish out the window without any regard for the effect of that. This infringement system certainly will allow for an effective and fast measure to be taken against those types of people.

In my electorate, I, as the local MP, held a beach clean-up at the wonderful Ōreti Beach, which is 26 kilometres of beach and the last bastion in New Zealand—you can actually drive your car up on to the beach and take in the magnificent views and recreate. There are some problems, obviously, with some of our people and their speed along that beach, of course, but sometimes what they can do is act inappropriately and take their rubbish up into the sand dunes. It is quite inappropriate that at that wonderful scenic beach, a place where many Southlanders recreate, some people go and leave their rubbish. In some cases, we have even found a burnt-out shell of a vehicle, which is absolutely crazy and completely inappropriate. But what these people don’t realise is that they leave clues, and, when council officers come a-looking, they can come across evidence that links those people to their rubbish.

They need to take heed of that, and they need to take heed that—as the Minister spoke of previously—it is something that, obviously, the Government is taking seriously, given that they’re going to support this bill to committee stage. But, obviously, there is a sea change going on with regards to the environment—that we are taking litter very, very seriously; that we are taking the inappropriate disposal of rubbish very seriously, and that it needs to stop. This bill goes a long way to showing that we are serious about cleaning up our act and making sure that New Zealand is a beautiful place.

In my last couple of minutes, I also want to talk about another organisation in Southland that builds on that thought, and that’s Southland disAbility Enterprises. They hold the Wastenet contract for recycling and appropriately disposing of a lot of Southland’s rubbish. They have a mantra for their organisation, and that is to enrich the lives of people with disabilities—because it is people with disabilities that are employed at that organisation—through providing meaningful employment and encouraging personal development within a successful business framework.

They take the disposal of rubbish very, very seriously. They recycle many things, and through the Waste Minimisation Fund are looking to dispose of bale wrap, which costs a lot of money, actually, to get rid of and recycle and deal with appropriately. They’re actually doing it for free. They’re saying to farmers, “Look, we’ll take it. We’ll deal with it.”, and it sorts out a very big problem in Southland. I support this bill. It goes a long way to solving litter.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Congratulations to my colleague Mr Simpson for having his member’s bill chosen from the ballot. This is a simple bill—a very, very simple bill. It has only one real change in it: changing the maximum infringement under the Litter Act from $400 to $1,000.

You know, for a party that’s trying to convince us that there is in fact a notion of a blue-green, I have to say: is this it? Could there not be a little more than just a change from $400 to $1,000? I mean, I did notice that, in passing, Mr Simpson suggested perhaps another change could be made—perhaps it’ll come up as a Supplementary Order Paper—when he’ll go from $1,000 to perhaps $1,500, thereby doubling the complexity of this bill. But it’s hard to know what it’s going to achieve. Nevertheless, we’re going to take it to select committee, because we do want to examine some of these issues. We actually do want to introduce some of the complexity that the alleged blue-greens have not yet been able to do.

I grew up in the 1970s and 80s, and I remember the Be a Tidy Kiwi campaign. I’m sure at least a few of us in this House do—don’t worry, Mr Strange; you won’t remember it, but I do. Look, that campaign has been relaunched in the last year. Here, I just want to pay brief tribute, actually, to my daughter Sophia Wright, who has been following me in the House this week and dug this little nugget of information out of a newspaper article for me, talking about the relaunch of the Be a Tidy Kiwi campaign. There’s some really fascinating research. It says that the average distance that a New Zealander is prepared to walk to a litter bin is 8.4 metres—a mere 8.4 metres: about as far as it is from me to Mr Simpson, who has proposed this complex bill.

So New Zealanders won’t even do much in terms of, you know, picking up litter and taking it 8.4 metres to a bin. The bins that, in the original Act, are required to be provided and maintained—“(1) Every person, public authority, and department of State shall at all times provide and maintain in every public place under his or its control”—and that “his” tells you how old this bill is. You’ve got to have those public receptacles, but New Zealanders won’t even walk 8.4 metres.

That suggests to me that the problem is not the level of the fine. The problem is not $400 or $1,000 or—doubling the complexity—$1,500; the problem is attitudes towards littering. We need to do a lot more than just increasing the fine. You see, the problem is not just litter; the problem is dumping and it’s fly-tipping.

Look, I want to tell you about a story from my own electorate of New Lynn, in Green Bay. It was a problem that came up, oh, two or three years ago where there was a serial nappy dumper roaming West Auckland streets, dumping diapers and nappies. They were being stuffed in plastic bags, and someone seemed to be driving along the streets in the lead-up to the Waitakere Ranges and dumping plastic bags full of used nappies. Now, that’s the fly-tipping that’s going on. That’s not just littering—that’s a little bit more serious than just littering.

Even more seriously, at the start of this year—in the first week of 2018—28 oil drums were discovered in a carpark in the Waitakere Ranges. They were just being dumped there. That’s not mere littering, and I think we need to have a little bit of a discussion about the difference between littering—which is maybe just dropping some rubbish—and fly-tipping and dumping. That’s something that we could seriously have a look at, and as to whether we perhaps need a range of differentiated fines for that.

But even then there’s the question of whether increasing the fine will actually compel good behaviour. So there is a whole set of issues that we can examine around this issue of littering—a whole set of issues that perhaps could’ve been comprehended already in this member’s bill. It’s those sorts of issues that we will discuss in full, at length, and see if we can do something substantial in select committee. That’s why we will support this bill to the select committee.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, and thank you very much. It’s an honour to rise and speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this bill, the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill, and I would like to congratulate the Hon Scott Simpson for having his member’s bill pulled from the ballot and having it here in the House tonight.

While this legislation accords well with New Zealand First’s focus on law and order, and the party does recognise that litter is a risk to New Zealand’s “clean, green” brand, this bill will not achieve its stated aim, which is to be a greater deterrent for littering. This bill, we believe, is an ineffective instrument for deterring littering, which is the aim of the bill.

Now, to be effective, it would be imperative to have buy-in from the local authorities, and we’re just not clearly getting that from the councils at the moment. Councils have discretion as to whether they punish litterers via the infringement notice and at what rate. For example, in Christchurch at the moment the maximum infringement fee for littering has remained unchanged at $100 from 1991 until 2016. Now, the general willingness across New Zealand’s territorial authorities to hand out fines is actually really low. Tauranga City Council did not issue a single fine between 2012 and 2016. Christchurch: a solitary fine for $100—that was the only littering infringement recorded in the five-year period. Between 2012 and 2015, Hamilton didn’t issue a single fine for littering. In Wellington, neither Porirua City Council or Upper Hutt City Council issued a single littering fine between 2012 and 2016, but the neighbour Hutt City Council—now this is interesting—they’ve been handing out infringement notices willy-nilly, the most prolific in New Zealand, recording more than $100,000 in fines, with $24,200 in 2016 alone. Wellington City Council: just a few more infringements than other parts of the country, but they’ve dropped from just under $9,000 in 2012 to just under $2,000 in 2016.

Now, what will achieve the aim of this bill? We believe it’s all about education and educating the next generation. We’ve heard tonight about the Be a Tidy Kiwi campaign and bringing that back and teaching our young people to be tidy. Also, the Keep New Zealand Beautiful campaign; it was originally founded back in 1969. That’s all about litter reduction and waste minimisation. Every year in September, it’s Keep New Zealand Beautiful month. Teams and volunteers all over the country do the right thing, they hold litter clean ups, and these events are in their communities.

Just today, Dunedin City Council is working to get recycling right, and that’s the focus. It’s not on infringement; it’s on educating the community. So what they have said today is that they will help Dunedin residents to get it right when it comes to recycling. They’ve been holding kerbside inspections and they will be helping people improve their recycling, reducing contamination, and keeping the staff that collect and sort out the recycling safe. Now, some of the common contaminants that they’re finding are the soft plastics, also the milk or juice cartons, and hazardous materials, which are getting in to the recycle bins as well. And nappies, we’ve heard about how people are nappy dumping, also medical waste, and dog faeces—mind you, rather that in the recycle bin than on the pavement. But really, the message from councils that we’re hearing is about recycling, and it’s about continuing bin inspections throughout 2018.

So, in summary, just a little history here in Spain, the Napoleonic conquest put an end to torture in 1808; Norway abolished it in 1819; Portugal in 1826; and torture was abolished in Britain in 1640. Now, I mention this as a way of reminding the House that it was some time ago that we sought to maintain some sort of proportionality between crime and punishment. After nine years of living in an ivory tower, spitting on the poor people below, unfortunately some members of the National Party cannot wean themselves off that habit. Do we really want to drive a wedge between territorial authorities and the public, issuing thousand-dollar fines for littering? There’s a real irony in the party that oversaw the degradation of our lakes, rivers, and estuaries who now want to whack the average citizen with gigantic fines for littering. We will not be supporting this bill.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this fine bill in the name of the Hon Scott Simpson, a fine member of this House.

When Mr Simpson was introducing this bill, he harkened back to some of the days in New Zealand’s past when we had certain programmes to encourage Kiwis to do the right thing. Now, I wouldn’t want to claim to have as many miles on the life odometer as Mr Simpson, but I too can remember some of those campaigns such as Be a Tidy Kiwi and Keep New Zealand Beautiful. In fact, in those times there was even the television advert that would ask a young man if he knew where Victoria Falls was, and his answer was “Somewhere near Lake Taupō.” Those were great old days and great old programmes. But it appears that New Zealanders, despite the passing of time, have still not learnt of their own volition to do the right thing by fellow New Zealanders in the sense of not imposing upon them their own waste or despoiling the beautiful countryside, which, of course, is so important to New Zealand that we’ve seen tourism overtake other economic activity—farming and dairy being one—to be our largest export.

So if New Zealanders of their own volition are not going to do the right thing, it is contingent upon Government, through a member’s bill, to consider that maybe we can give a little incentive or two to help them on their way. The bill proposes the most simplest of changes, taking the maximum fine for littering from $400 to a maximum—and that’s an important point, to a maximum—of $1,000. The change does not mean that the simplest piece of littering will result in such a fine. In fact it would be extraordinarily unlikely that it would stand up to any sort of test, were that to be the case.

So Mr Simpson, with what he has noted himself is the perfect member’s bill, is saying that we have a challenge in our society, that people are still, after all this time, not thinking of others at times and are littering and despoiling the environment for others. So here’s a small lever we can apply that might create—it certainly creates an incentive, and it might create some greater deterrence from people doing the wrong thing and instead have them—because no one is required to litter. Unlike any number of other situations you could envisage in society, when you could place a sanction on someone and question whether that’s the right thing to do, we’re not arguing here about the least worst alternatives or taking a situation and saying, “I’ll apply some sort of sanction. Which of the two worst ones would you like?”

What we’re saying is, if you don’t litter you won’t be fined. No one is required to litter. No one finds themselves, I would argue, in a position where they feel forced to. So it is simply saying, “Well, if you’re not prepared to do the right thing by New Zealand society and your fellow New Zealanders, if you choose to do the wrong thing and you are caught, you might find it hurts a bit more than it has done in the past.” I think that’s a very reasonable situation in which to be applying a greater punitive sanction.

I just want to finish with a couple of points that I heard members on the other side talking about. There’s a saying that if you have a situation or a problem and you make the problem or the solution more complicated than it needs to be, it’s called boiling the ocean. We’ve seen it with at least two speakers on the other side tonight. So the Minister of Local Government talked about, “Well, maybe we should treat a certain type of littering differently from another type; broken glass.”—that somehow we should, within the regime, treat broken glass as different to another sort of litter and apply a different sanction to that. Then Ms Deborah Russell said, “Well, you’ve got different types of littering, whether it’s pure littering, fly tipping, or dumping, and maybe we should treat them differently as well.” So you end up, if you take it to its logical conclusion, with a complicated matrix of different types of rubbish being dumped and the different forms of littering that you might have. Well that’s just, I would argue, purely ridiculous. If Kiwis are going to despoil the environment for other Kiwis we have a law, the Litter Act. We have a means to provide a greater deterrence from that antisocial behaviour. Let’s take it. Let’s just work the bill through as it stands. I commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you. Well, it might be news to Mr Hudson, but the Litter Act actually does treat the wilful breaking of bottles and glass in a different way to other types of littering, and it imposes quite a severe penalty of $7,500 for that.

What Minister Mahuta was talking about is a much more comprehensive look at the Litter Act and where it can be strengthened, because this is a very flimsy little bill; it doesn’t do a great deal to help reduce litter in New Zealand. It is also a bill that Mr Simpson picked up from his former colleague Mr Naylor, who drafted it, I understand, and put it in the ballot back in 2015.

It’s not exactly what local authorities want either. They, at their conference last year, passed a remit wanting a much more comprehensive review of the Litter Act because there is a significant problem with the enforcement provisions, and I think there’s been some media coverage of that recently with regard to the Wellington City Council. Councils can only use the provisions if they’ve actually got an officer who has seen somebody littering and observed that, or has got reasonable cause to believe that someone has just committed an offence. So the difficulty is more with enforcement rather than the actual infringement fee itself.

Nevertheless, the Green Party will be supporting this bill to select committee because it just does this one small thing of increasing the maximum fine from $400 to $1,000. But the bill, on its own, is not going to take us very far at all. It may also be news to Mr Hudson that we still have major education campaigns around littering, and that Keep New Zealand Beautiful is the major agency that does that. It has got a Do the Right Thing project, which is a coordinated approach to encouraging people to reduce litter nationwide.

I think the information that the very good chair of the Environment Committee, Deborah Russell, referred to was drawn from quite recent research, published earlier this year by Keep New Zealand Beautiful, which looked at the way we behaved nationally in relation to litter. Now, that research, which was done last November-December, found that in New Zealand, about 84 percent of the time, New Zealanders did do the right thing about putting litter in the bin. It also found that Wellingtonians were ahead of people in Auckland and Christchurch in doing the right thing and putting litter in the right place. So, generally, people do the right thing.

The biggest problem they found and the biggest proportion of litter—some 78 percent—was cigarette butts. So what the researchers highlighted is that in the litter space, rather than the fly-tipping waste space, we need to be doing some more education on how you get rid of cigarette butts, rather than just dropping them beside the bin.

So this small bill will only do one thing. It won’t do any action in the space around education, and as others, such as Minister Mahuta and Deborah Russell, have noted, we need more comprehensive action in terms of this 1979 legislation. But as Associate Minister for the Environment, I am not prioritising a review of the Litter Act, because our priority is actually improving the implementation of the Waste Minimisation Act, and ensuring that the levy that applies to landfills is extended to more landfills. We can have more funding in the Waste Minimisation Fund so we can actually reduce the volumes of waste going to landfill, because that is a substantive issue.

The way to actually tackle litter is not just simply increasing one of the infringement fines; it’s actually a much more comprehensive programme of education and building on New Zealanders’ willingness to do the right thing through littering less, recycling more, and thinking about what people buy, rather than just this punitive thing around the infringement fee. But it is worth going to select committee to consider the issue, so we will be supporting it to select committee.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Labour Party will also be supporting this bill to go to select committee, not because it’s some great leap forward in respect of waste minimisation, and as the honourable member and Associate Minister for the Environment, Eugenie Sage, noted, there’s far more to be done.

I congratulate the member Scott Simpson on getting his bill drawn. I wonder if perhaps he’s a little disappointed that what he appears to have thrown in quickly one night has actually been drawn, when he had so much more opportunity to do greater things here. I mean, is this a bill about the environment? Is this a bill about improving our environment? Or is it a classic National Party bill which further criminalises and increases penalties as a knee-jerk reaction to some problem? I expect it’s the latter. It may be that Thames-Coromandel District Council said to the member, “Oh, look, we’d like to be able to slam those fellows, those tourists, those freedom campers, or whatever, with a bit more of a fine if they throw their rubbish out of the window. Bang—let’s up the fine.” And there’s no evidence whatsoever—there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever—that by increasing the fine it will reduce littering.

In fact, what we have seen is that even with the $400 fine it’s barely ever used. It’s barely ever used. And do you know what? By increasing the fine, litter officers will be less likely to use it. So what we have is simply a knee-jerk reaction. But, look, what we can agree on, to my friends across the House, is that we need a society which recognises that littering is a bad thing and we need to address it. I’m hopeful that at select committee we’ll be able to go a bit further than “remove $400 and insert $1,000”, because you know what? We’ve got massive issues. Of all the things we could’ve addressed—we could have addressed plastic straws and plastic bottles. We could have addressed the 60 million cigarette filters that are thrown away and don’t decompose in our lifetime. But, no, we simply increase a fine.

I wonder if the member even actually took the trouble to read the Act, because he talks about needing these fines. Well, did he actually realise that there is a fine for up to $20,000 for littering and up to $30,000 where there is a public danger there? So where there are these truly egregious cases—go and have a look at section 15 in the Act. I can see the look on his face: “Oh, really?” I’m sorry, it’s there. Go back and have a look. If someone leaves a car body on your Invercargill beach, member Dowie, then you can actually charge them, convict them in a court of law, and they have to pay up to $30,000—so there you go. We’ve got a knee-jerk deterrent here, and it’s simply not going to work. But, look, at select committee I’m hopeful we will be able to improve it a little and enter into this discussion about it.

The other thing to remember is that in terms of the education—it actually used to be called the Litter Control Council, but it’s now Keep New Zealand Beautiful—you’ve got an organisation there. The function of that organisation is to advocate for the reduction of litter. So what we need is much more education so that that 8.4 metres that member Russell referred to will in fact—people will not only walk further to the bin; they’ll pick up other people’s rubbish and put it there too. We know that we do have a fantastic country, and whether it be the beaches of Coromandel or Invercargill or even the windswept beaches of Brighton in Christchurch, we don’t want the litter there.

So, look, I do commend the member for touching on something which is close to the hearts of New Zealanders, and we do want to ensure that litter goes where it should. But as the Associate Minister mentioned, it really is not so much about where we put our litter; it’s about not creating it in the first place. So I look forward to having that discussion about education, about regulating what kind of materials are produced so that they can be biodegradable, about properly funding our anti-litter council—our Keep New Zealand Beautiful organisation—and really addressing these matters at their heart, and not another knee-jerk reaction of upping a penalty because that’s what the other side do. But let’s have the discussion. Let’s get on with it. And let’s keep New Zealand beautiful. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

I rise to support this bill, which will increase the maximum fine for littering and illegal dumping infringement offences from $400 to $1,000. I thank and congratulate the hard-working MP the Hon Scott Simpson, and also I would like to congratulate and thank my very good colleague Maureen Pugh. I understand she actually worked very hard and did a fantastic job and drove this bill through the local government sector. The bill had unanimous support from local governments.

New Zealand is well-known for its pure, green, clean image, and that is actually the fundamental basis for our flourishing tourism industry. It is important for New Zealand to maintain that image. Also, it is important for our residents to have a very clean and safe and also litter-free, attractive environment. So that is why it is important to deal with illegal dumping and littering issues in New Zealand. Of course, when we do this, it’s not just for safety or tourism purposes but also because illegal dumping and littering can have many other issues and problems—for example, I will say it’s dangerous because dumped waste can be dangerous for people, particularly when it includes sharp objects and glass.

So it is important to make sure that we do not have this issue and to make sure that people stay safe. Also, it is costly, because to remove this dumped waste can cost councils a lot of money, and it means more money for ratepayers. Also, for the environment—we want to make sure that the environment is safe not only for people but also for birds and fish, so there’s another reason. Also, when we go to the waste dump areas you’ll find that these areas tend to be ugly and therefore the value of the properties in the area can be reduced because of the illegal dumping and also the littering issue.

So, actually, I have done some research online about this particular issue, and I find that, actually, all councils have policies. That means the issue is very common in New Zealand. They all have policies, and most councils have this tiered arrangement of fines. Again, I can say that all these councils are troubled, because the issue has been there for a long time. All councils have fines but the maximum is $400, because that was set by law in 1979. The toughest policy I can find is from the Auckland Council, because the Auckland Council would fine $400 for all second or subsequent infringement offences. So all $400, but a maximum, still, of $400. So still not really enough, because, since 1979, as my good colleague Scott Simpson just mentioned, $400 in 1979 now is equivalent to about $1,500. So we do need to increase the fine to make sure that people take notice of this particular issue.

Now, at this stage, many people are still not aware of the fine, because the fine itself is not punitive enough, because people still do not pay attention to this $400. That’s why we say to make it $1,000 or even more may be better for us to spread the message. And, as a matter of fact, in 2007, when Manukau City and Waitakere City councils increased the maximum fine from $100 to $400, the New Zealand Herald had an online discussion, and there was overwhelming support for increasing the maximum fine from $100 to $400. This was over 10 years ago. Now it’s time for us to deal with the issue and raise it even more. Thank you.

I’m delighted to take a stand tonight to support the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill. I’d like to firstly congratulate the Hon Scott Simpson on having his bill drawn—congratulations for that, and I look forward, also, to working with you on the Environment Committee as we draw out this small but important bill. I appreciate—

💬 Matt Doocey: Size isn’t everything.

—here we go—the attempt around addressing Keep New Zealand Beautiful. I appreciate the sentiments. However, what I think we do need to address is the wee elephant in the room around the infringement system. I think it’s very important to note that in the last term of that Government there was $43 million worth of collected fines that were unpaid. So this may not be the only mechanism, or may not be a useful or meaningful mechanism. Half of those fines were remitted, so for half of them, people were let off. So money is not necessarily a deterrent in this factor. In fact, $400, as it currently is, may in fact be a huge amount to some people. A thousand dollars, again, to some people is not very much. Is it something that is actually going to be a deterrent? It’s part of the kete, and we acknowledge that. That’s part of the kete of us addressing littering.

What we do need to address, really, is waste minimisation strategies across, and we do need to look at landfill, and that’s an important aspect. However, I wanted to give some examples from my local community about dumping or littering. The Western Bay of Plenty District Council reported that from 1 January 2017 to 18 February 2018 it received 362 service requests to collect dumped rubbish in the Western Bay of Plenty, and recorded 10,200 kilograms worth of waste illegally dumped. Now, Mr Simpson, you and I are neighbours. You’re from the Coromandel and I’m from the Bay of Plenty. So I would suggest that it’s somewhat similar in our communities. This is a disgrace. That’s a lot of waste.

I want to give you an example. As you know, I ran a women’s refuge, and part of the thing that we had to do in order to survive, because we were unfunded by Government—your Government—is run a second-hand shop. One of the difficulties of running a second-hand shop is people treat it like a dump site. So, over the weekends, they would bring their couches, they would bring their bags of clothes, they would bring all of their bits and pieces, and they would leave them there. Then other people would come in and they’d sort through that stuff and they’d wreck it, and then that would be left in this huge mess. So I would suggest that we would very likely have contributed to calling for that. We were also given some free dumping as well—a tonne a month. So that helped.

So, finally, in conclusion, I’d just like to say that it isn’t just about littering; it is about a whole systematic process around improving our beliefs and values around our beautiful Earth. But I do commend the member for bringing this bill, as little as it is, as small as its contribution to the kete of resources is. Our select committee and our party look forward to debating this issue further. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s been an interesting debate, and I want to thank members from across the House for their contributions—well, most of them. This is, as I said in my introduction to the bill, a small bill. It’s a very small change to an old principal Act that dates back to 1979. No one, least of all me, would pretend that it is anything remotely close to being a silver bullet in terms of solving the litter issues that confront our nation, but it is a step in the right direction. So I commend members of the Green Party and the Labour Party for supporting it through to select committee, and I’m sure that when we get to select committee we’ll have a good discussion.

I was particularly heartened by the contribution of the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, who indicated that, in fact, select committee could be a place for a wider discussion about litter and litter issues. That’s a good thing. I’m very happy for that discussion to take place. But what did disappoint me was the contribution from the select committee chair. She’s new to this House. Deborah Russell has potential, I think, as an MP, but she will soon realise that sarcasm in a speech of the sort that she gave tonight is a very poor substitute for substance. If she is to make progress in a parliamentary career in this House, then she would do well to have a little look at the legislation, consider it carefully, and not revert to mere sarcasm as a way of debating in the Chamber—or, indeed, actually leading the select committee.

Labour have come late to this discussion on litter, and they’re making up for lost time. What we didn’t hear in the debate was a commitment at all from the lead party in the coalition Government about their commitment to reducing litter. We heard talk about waste minimisation, and that’s fine. No one would object to waste minimisation proposals. In fact, the previous National Government made great strides, did more than any Government in the history of New Zealand, in terms of providing for our natural resources and our natural spaces. So that’s a very proud record.

But Labour come to this debate about litter particularly late, and they’re in catch-up mode. There was an obscure member, whose name I don’t remember, but I think he came from Hamilton somewhere, and he clearly has much to learn. My colleagues at some stage will probably tell me what his name was, but he needs to go back to Hamilton where he comes from. He spoke a lot about Christchurch, and for someone who comes from Hamilton, that struck me as very, very strange. Angie Warren-Clark gave a much better contribution, and what Angie Warren-Clark may not know is that immediately prior to me coming to this House I was chief executive of a children’s charity—Make-A-Wish—and we also ran shops of the sort that she described. So I’m very familiar with the situation, and very au fait with it. Certainly, on the Labour side of the House, they don’t have any monopoly on that kind of background or history.

So this is a small bill. It’s a bill that will be discussed in detail by the select committee. I’m looking forward to submissions from around the country. I hope that local government will take the opportunity to submit, because there are a range of levels of enforcement for litter. Many local territorial authorities have their own regimes, their own structures, their own ways of dealing with litter, but in my part of the world, in the Coromandel and the Western Bay of Plenty, it is an issue, as it is in many other parts of the country.

This bill is a good bill. It’s not a silver bullet but it’s a step in the right direction. It’s a bill that will, I think, help send a message—a message to New Zealanders that this Parliament takes litter seriously, and that we have a real challenge in terms of changing our cultural approach as New Zealanders to litter and actually just not dropping litter. So I want to conclude my contribution on the first reading by just going back to my original call to support this legislation: to remember those slogans that we knew when we were growing up in the 1970s and 1980s of doing the right thing, being a tidy Kiwi, and that only lazy people litter. I’m very happy that this bill appears to have enough support to go to the select committee, and I endorse it to the House.