Brownlee Gerry: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is subject to correctionBrownlee Gerry: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 June 2014. Volume:702;Page:18941. Text is subject to correction.]Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery):I cannot work out from the speech given by their lead speaker this afternoon Ruth Dyson exactly what it is that the Labour members find so troublesome in the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill. It is hard to work out why it is that they would deny that there is a significant resource lying on the ground and likely to rot with no value to anyone and why they are saying “Just leave it there. Do not touch it.” Then they are dressing it up by saying that they do not want to touch it and they do not want it used because the local people on the West Coast have not had a chance to have their say about whether we should or not.I would say to Labour members that they should go back to Blackball where they did their grandstanding efforts just a few months ago and go to other small communities on the West Coast and ask them want they think. If the answer is not 90 percent in favour of recovering this timber then I will eat my hat. If I were Damien O’Connor who is relying on the defence of the Labour position in that speech by Ruth Dyson then I would say: “Now you all know why I look even more grey than usual.”What an appalling argument to run. Firstly there is a suggestion that there will be the destruction of an industry on the West Coast that exists now. Well the destruction of that industry occurred in the early 2000s when native logging was cut dead—cut dead. There were all sorts of extravagant promises made to millers at the time about the quantity—or the stumpage as it is known—in the exotic forests. What was found in a very short time? That it did not exist. There were people on the West Coast who made millions of dollars’ worth of investments in what they thought would be an exotic-logging opportunity for them and that was lost because of misinformation peddled by the then Labour Government about the state of those timber stocks.Here we have the party that did all that coming into this House today to say that if we were to recover some of those 200000 hectares of wind-blown timber—a small fraction of that will be recovered mind you; that is all—it would destroy some local industries. Well I need to tell the House that this will not make one jot of price difference to any of those superb timbers.It will be an adjunct to the market—no doubt about that—but it will let other New Zealanders share the sort of ambience that members of Parliament sit in every day that the House sits.The other thing that I found fascinating about that speech from Ruth Dyson was the concern for the local member Damien O’Connor—actually I should say the lack of concern for the local member. I suppose that is the problem. As I spoke of before the local millers on the West Coast made those big investments thinking that there would be exotic logs for them to cut but found that there were not and found that their businesses in trouble. They went to the local member and said: “Can we have some help? The Government is not able to honour its promises to us”—the Labour Government—“so can you help us out? We’ve made these big investments.” He did nothing—not a thing. He did not lift a finger. He was sitting in Cabinet and never even brought the issue up. It took the advocacy of the National member Chris Auchinvole to put it before Cabinet and to get a resolution. In 2010 it was a National Government that came to the aid of that distressed industry on the West Coast not a Labour Government.Hon Ruth Dyson: Oh ha ha!Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: They sit over there laughing. Well Mr O’Connor do not laugh at your own constituents would be a good piece of advice that I am sure the Speaker would want to give you.The other point that staggered me was Ruth Dyson sort of labouring over this idea that the Department of Conservation which will be the beneficiary of funds that are accumulated from this particular exercise was spending about $6500 on a photo opportunity. Well let me tell the House this: 1 cubic metre of mataī timber will sell for that price—1 cubic metre. We have got at least 200000 hectares of native timbers that will be recovered. There are probably up to 10 cubic metres in each single stump so that is tens of thousands of cubic metres. So taking the equivalent of 1 cubic metre to tell the West Coast very publicly and in a very demonstrable way that United Future the Māori Party and the National Party are very keen on giving them an opportunity in their area seems to me to be pretty good value. Certainly it is cheaper than the cost of having to bail out the West Coasters who were lied to by the previous Labour Government over the extent of the exotic stumpage available to them.Hon Ruth Dyson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I take offence at the comment the Minister just made and I ask you to require him to withdraw and apologise.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): No. This is a very robust debate. We live in a healthy democracy. The member is not making any dispersions against members individually. He has addressed the House. This is a robust debate.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well let us look at it this way then: the Labour Government went out and ended the indigenous timber industry on the West Coast—shut it down. Firstly it gave some money to a trust to see what it could do and then said to all the millers over there “Here are multiple blocks of indigenous timber so that the industry can carry on.” In a very short time it was proven that the figures that the Labour Government gave to those millers were wrong and people lost tens of thousands of dollars in individual businesses.Chris Auchinvole: Closing businesses.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Those businesses in many cases closed down. It took nearly 10 years and the advocacy of Chris Auchinvole to point out the terrible situation that the Labour Government had dumped the West Coast in and for that matter to be sorted out. I was very pleased to be in the party with him in 2010 when we sorted that out.So coming back to this bill the issue here is simply this: if the Conservation Act back in 1987 had anticipated that there could be these tens of thousands of hectares damaged by windfall would it perhaps have made some provision for it then? The fact is that it has been almost 30 years since that Act was passed and this is the first and only time that we have seen this type of destruction so it is appropriate that the person who brings this bill to the House the Minister of Conservation is able to recognise that this is an extraordinary opportunity for the House to consider a one-off exception to that Act. It would be utterly appalling if all of that wind-blown timber was just left there to rot—just left there to waste.The other point I would make—and there will be people out there who want to argue with me on this because they of course will be learned people who know a lot about this from their textbooks—is that if timber is left to lie on the ground like that it will delay the regeneration. It will delay the regeneration.I well remember my uncle who was involved in West Coast timber milling telling the story of a group of conservationists with a very well-known conservationist leading them—a person well known to us in fact. They came up the road in a bit of a bust on the bush road. My uncle came across him coming out of the bush in his Land Rover with the crew. When they met on the one-way road and had a bit of a talk these guys said they were coming to have a look at the native logging operation there on the Coast. He said to them: “Well look around because this is where it is and this is where it has happened.” That was selective logging in new clean native forest. It had regenerated to that level very very quickly. I make the point too and you can argue if you like that a beech forest can return in 80 years. So why would we leave trees rotting for 30 years prolonging that regrowth to 110 years when you could have it sooner? These are the small little points that the Green Party will overcome because all of a sudden there is going to be an explosion of bugs and all sorts of other grubs that eat timber. And when that happens we will probably be cutting down the trees so that we can feed those bugs and grubs in the long term!I think that this is a good bill. I think that it does reach a pragmatic solution and it creates an opportunity for the West Coast. I have got to say that even if he crosses the floor on this bill everyone on the West Coast will know that voting for Mr O’Connor—voting for a Labour-led Government with the Greens driving the bus—is never going to see progress for them.