The House was considering the Self-contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Bill, a law change being ushered through to try and bring some regulatory force down upon campers — specifically freedom campers — who might not dispose of bodily waste in an entirely sanitary or sightly manner.
Mr Mooney’s electorate takes in the scenic wonderlands of Queenstown and Te Anau, among other spectacular landscapes, so this is an issue which is right up his alley, so to speak.
The Bill, being squired through by Tourism Minister Peeni Henare — Mr Mooney is National’s tourism spokesman — requires vehicle-based freedom campers to use a "certified self-contained vehicle" when setting up on council land, unless the site is designated as usable by non-self-contained vehicles.
It also extends the Freedom Camping Act to Land Information NZ and Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency land, introduces a broader range of possible offences freedom campers can fall foul of, and also amends the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act 2006 — a piece of law which crops up in Parliament more often than you might imagine — so that a whole range of new definitions and provisions, mainly relating to how "self-containment" is defined and certified, can be added in.
This might all seem relatively regular, but 799 submissions during the select committee process suggests passing this particular piece of legislation has been more of a strain than one might have expected.
Tuesday’s committee stages debate afforded Mr Mooney the chance to quiz Mr Henare about toilets. Specifically, the requirement of the Bill for freedom campers to have a fixed toilet, a regulation which Mr Mooney — and, it must be said, several of the submitters — felt would effectively punish campervan users with a suitable, responsibly used portable toilet.
"Leading to the somewhat odd situation of a camper with a fixed toilet, who doesn’t use it, not breaking the law, but a camper who has a non-fixed toilet and uses it will be fined," Mr Mooney said.
"Obviously, we want to focus on those who don’t use them, and stop them from littering our road sides or lay-bys etc, but I can’t see any good reason for punishing 70,000 Kiwis who do use their portable toilets."
Mr Henare replied that the Government wanted the right vehicles to be going in the right places, and that there were still hundreds of places where portable toilet owners could go and "still do it within the parameters of this particular piece of legislation".
For good measure he also traversed another of Mr Mooney’s questions about the definition of who a freedom camper is: the Bill, as drafted, exempts a person other than a person in New Zealand on a visitor visa.
As anyone following the ongoing debate about the Queenstown accommodation shortage, and that includes Mr Mooney, will know, plenty of people on working visas cannot find somewhere to live other than a vehicle. As Mr Henare noted, the definition was intended to not criminalise people who through no fault of their own are homeless.
That did not satisfy Mr Mooney however, who soon hopped back on to his feet to re-litigate the vexed fixed toilet conundrum.
"The minister said that it would be illogical for someone to have a fixed toilet and not use it. My question is: wouldn’t it also be illogical for someone to have a portable toilet and not use it, and why the difference?
"Because if someone has a portable toilet, it makes, I would suggest, just as much sense for them to use that as it would a fixed toilet."
Conveniently, Mr Mooney had a supplementary order paper (SOP) handy which would wipe away any confusion and make it clear that some vehicles’ non-fixed toilets could be certified as self-contained.
Sadly, Mr Henare was not at all inclined to avail himself of Mr Mooney’s proffered facility: "Much to my dismay I won’t be supporting the member’s SOP but I thank the member for his engagement with this particular Bill from its genesis to now."
Mr Mooney was not going away that easily however, as he also had SOP number 356 on the table, which if passed (spoiler alert: it was not) would have changed the definition of a vehicle so as to flush away any sticky definitional issues.
"I would ask if the minister would make it clear if that is being rejected by the minister or whether the minister is minded to accept that and take that on board," Mr Mooney asked the minister.
Who, once again, apologised that he wasn’t going to support SOP number two either, making this quite the crap day for Mr Mooney.
Halfmoon Bay School
Cross party support
School groups regularly visit Parliament, but few travel as far to get there as the pupils of Halfmoon Bay School, in Stewart Island.
The children got quite the welcome too, as the Speaker, local MPs Liz Craig and Penny Simmonds, and a range of other notables came out to meet them.
Ingrid Leary trying out virtual reality at the University of Otago.
Is this real life?
Here’s one for those who think MPs have lost touch with reality.
Last week Taieri Labour MP Ingrid Leary and her list colleague Rachel Brooker escorted Health Minister Ayesha Verrall around Dunedin, a visit which included a tour of the University of Otago’s digital computing research facilities.
Ms Leary took a virtual trip through marae and culturally significant sites, all from the comfort of campus.