Little Andrew: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is subject to correctionLittle Andrew: 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.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):I am Andrew Little. That is all right Mr Assistant Speaker—I have only been here nearly 3 years. It is easy to forget!The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): My apologies to Mr Little.ANDREW LITTLE: It is all right Mr Assistant Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill. It is a bit rich of that member Chris Auchinvole to claim that the National Party is the great loved one of the West Coast. The people of the West Coast loved their last National MP so much they threw him out at the last election. The truth is this: the West Coast thrived under the last Labour Government. It opened up mining. It had great investment in mining and in other activities. Tourism blossomed. I do not think they have a blossom festival on the West Coast; they may well do. Tourism at least flourished under the last Labour Government. In the dairy industry the milk flush was flushing. It was a great time on the West Coast under the last Labour Government.One thing is absolutely clear about this bill however and that is that this is not a West Coast economic development measure. This is a cynical manipulation by a desperate National Government of a difficult situation for the West Coast a region of the country that has been hard hit by economic downturn and now by weather events. And what does the National Government do? It manipulates it calculates it connives and it cajoles. It is not about good-quality sustainable economic development; it is about manipulating people in a difficult and sensitive time of their lives.So here is the reality. There are two things that are very important to members on this side of the House and I think to all New Zealanders. One is conservation and certainly preservation of the conservation estate. That has been a cast-iron principle for this party and this side of the House from time immemorial. That is an important principle. The other important principle is promoting economic development particularly in the regions and especially now on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand to be absolutely specific—coming from a west coast electorate myself but it happens to be in the North Island. What we have now in this country in most regions including in Taranaki but actually especially on the West Coast are people crying out for a Government that understands regional economic development and crying out for a Government that is prepared to do a serious regional economic development plan not this sort of spontaneous opportunistic manipulative strategy that we have got from the Government at the moment. No siree that is not what we want. We want a proper serious economic development plan and this is not it. I personally have no objection to the extraction of windfall timber but what I do not like and what the Labour Party and my colleagues do not like is the manipulative silly dumb way that this Government goes about dealing with this issue. You do not need to have a 5-year time frame. You do not need to eradicate coverage of the Resource Management Act on this sort of stuff for that sort of length of period of time.The other thing you need to be is totally and utterly honest with the people whom you claim to be benefiting. Chris Auchinvole sits there with a Cheshire cat grin on his face because he knows he is in trouble even though he is on his way out. He knows that when he goes back to the Coast and has to rub shoulders with the rich and wealthy of the Coast he is going to have to explain why it is Mr Auchinvole that when this bill is passed the West Coast actually will not see much as a result of it. It is going to be all the people outside the region of the West Coast. It will be mills all up and down the South Island because there are not many in the West Coast area that actually accommodate the timber that is going to be processed. Why is it that there will be very few suppliers of allied services that will benefit from this?This is just a joke. This is the National Party of old—the old Muldoon. It is sort of the equivalent in 2014 of the Clyde Dam empowering legislation and it will do nothing for the people who it claims benefit the most. It is a nasty sort of politics and a nasty National Government and it will not help the people but above all it is a manipulation of important protections that we have in this country for the conservation estate and an open-ended abuse of protection rights and it is nothing to do with jobs on the West Coast. There is only one party that understands that and it is the Labour Party because we have experts in Damien O’Connor and experts from the last Government which did so well in job generation when we were last in Government.