Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. I'm very pleased to take a final call on the third reading of the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill.I think there's been some fundamental misinformation offered by National MPs in speaking to this bill. They seem to be based in the 19th century rather than the 21st. They don't seem to recognise that the Land Act 1948 is overdue for reform and that the Crown Pastoral Land Act was introduced and passed in 1998 and so the primary reason for this bill is to actually modernise the Act in relation to Crown pastoral leases.Opposition MPs also don't seem to recognise that the Crown actually owns these lands: 1.2 million hectares of largely the eastern South Island which is 5 percent of Aotearoa New Zealand. As landowner the Crown wants to protect its interests in these lands for all New Zealanders. As the late Dr John Hayward noted they have many interests. It's not just their landscape values their astonishing array of vegetation the landscapes from the big river valleys of the Rangitata and the Rakaia the matagouri shrublands—the much depleted habitat—but as Dr Hayward noted they've got huge economic value particularly for water for downstream use because it's tussock grasslands which are really good at harvesting fog and water. That water goes downstream. It's used in horticulture and agriculture to provide drinking water. That and tourism are perhaps their greatest economic value. So the Government in introducing this legislation is modernising the regime to provide for better recognition and protection of the land's inherent values—its scientific ecological cultural values—while providing for sustainable farming on an ongoing basis.It's partly because these lands in the high country have been subject to quite rapid and dramatic change over the last 60 years and again Opposition members don't seem to be aware of this significant change in areas like Lake Station where aerial spraying of herbicide resulted in large areas of 200-year-old matagouri being killed in a second. Once that centuries-old vegetation is destroyed by spraying it's impossible to regenerate. So this major change that has occurred in the high country the number of threatened and indigenous species—the massive change that's occurred with agricultural intensification is one reason and those forward-looking leaseholders do recognise the value of protecting indigenous shrublands and the remaining areas of tussock grasslands.You only have to look at the Mackenzie Basin where 22 percent of the indigenous vegetation on the basin floor has been destroyed in recent years—massive landscape change as that became more like the Canterbury Plains. That is what this bill is about—setting some very clear outcomes. It's responding to the review that Paul Eagle noted was done in 2018 which highlighted some of the problems in the existing legislation: the fact that the outcomes weren't clear the criteria for decision making wasn't clear there wasn't a lot of guidance and there wasn't accountability and transparency. So the bill actually looks to resolve those issues. It makes it clear how the Commissioner of Crown Lands will decide on applications for discretionary consents in terms of the process used. It supports a much stronger relationship between Māori and the Crown and it recognises the relationship of tangata whenua with their ancestral lands.The bill ends tenure review because that had a very mixed bag in terms of its results. The public and the Crown did not always get a fair return when land was freeholded through that process. The Minister noted the figures: over 436000 hectares of pastoral lease were freeholded and some 380000 hectares became conservation land. But yet by 2017 the Crown had paid out a net $57 million to leaseholders while disposing of more land than actually became conservation land and some of those lands that were freeholded were around the margins of lakes like Wakatipu Wānaka Pūkaki and Tekapō and those lands were then onsold by their new freehold owners for considerably more than they had paid the Crown to purchase them. There was about a $275 million capital gain involved in that so that's one of the reasons that tenure review had to end—because of the major public concern about that.Leaseholders had 20 years. If they wanted to go through tenure review they could have done it. Those leaseholders that decided not to recognise that they would be staying with pastoral leases. There would be a change to the regime it was likely to be modernised and they recognised that it was a sound business decision for it to stay as a pastoral lease because of the very low rental that pastoral leaseholders pay to the Crown.National MPs have also totally ignored the Government's investment in the high country and in neighbouring conservation land in terms of pest and weed control. We've seen $100 million go into wilding pine control over four years—that's much greater than the $16 million that the National Government put in—$27 million for wallaby control; innovative projects like Te Manahuna o Aoraki where you've got leaseholders in the Mackenzie Basin working with Ngāi Tahu and working with Te Papa Atawhai on common goals of controlling weeds and pests and protecting those landscapes.This Government and the previous one—the previous Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government—has invested in biosecurity in pest and weed control and in biodiversity protection. The major changes that the bill implements are all about ensuring that we have a much more sustainable regime in the high country. I would encourage National members to really read and to understand what the ecological loss has been in our high country over the last 30 years and what the benefit to indigenous species and habitat would be if we were to have a greater recognition of inherent values and to read the schedule of the bill and the long list of permitted activities there to enable leaseholders to get permission for things like post drilling to controlling pest plants and weeds when they don't kill off a whole lot of native vegetation in the process because it's very easy with aerial spraying and saying that you're targeting broom or gorse to also then clear matagouri kānuka mānuka and associated native vegetation. That's why there are some criteria around those activities.So the bill is a modernisation. It sets clearer outcomes. It makes the Commissioner of Crown Lands more accountable with the statement of outcomes and through the monitoring strategy that has to be developed. Land Information New Zealand is more actively involved with leaseholders through visits on-farm. There are a lot of other economic activities that are happening now on pastoral leases not just pastoral farming but this bill does seek to protect the Crown's interests as landowner in these lands and protect the public's interest in them in terms of their values as landscape for supporting our indigenous species for tourism for water harvesting and for that panoply of values that Māori hold in terms of their ancestral lands. Kia ora.