Carter David: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Carter David: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:22136] 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 In the dying days of this Labour Government I hope the Minister of Agriculture Jim Sutton will take the opportunity to tell New Zealand what Labour’s position on public access is. What is Labour’s position on removing farmers’ rights to restrict public access to privately owned farms in New Zealand? Last Thursday Mr Chris Carter the Minister of Conservation said at a public meeting of his mates from the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society that the legislation was finalised that the decisions had been made and that as soon as a Labour Government was returned to power the legislation would be frogmarched through this Parliament. 
That contrasts completely with what Mr Sutton keeps saying. He has said to the farmers of New Zealand that the matter will now require further consultation and that no decisions have been made. I ask the Minister in the chair Mr Sutton to take the opportunity to clarify who is telling the truth. Is the debate finalised? Is the legislation finalised? Is Mr Chris Carter the Minister of Conservation actually telling the truth or is Jim Sutton to be believed when he says to Federated Farmers and the like that the Government is prepared to continue genuine consultation? I say to the Minister that he cannot have it both ways. New Zealanders are fed up with the trickery of this Government which continues to prance around New Zealand saying one thing to one audience and another thing to another audience. 
That brings me to another point I want to know today: what has been the Department of Conservation’s role in the preparation of this public access policy? I ask that because during the examination we became aware of a number of consultants that the ministry had used in the preparation of reports. We asked for copies of those reports and the Minister in the chair Jim Sutton agreed to give them to the select committee. He subsequently came back and changed his mind saying that in actual fact there were no such reports and that that money had been paid to staff. I became immediately suspicious when I saw that one Ann Vogle who is a personal friend of the Prime Minister received $35000 for work on walking access policy. That lady besides being a personal friend of the Prime Minister—and I acknowledge that that in itself is not a crime—had apparently been working for the Department of Conservation immediately prior to her secondment to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to collect $35000 for this policy work. 
But that is only part of it. Mr Sutton’s department spent in total nearly a quarter of a million dollars sourcing information from what we were told by members of that department were consultant assistants with specialist skills. When we looked more deeply at this stuff we found that it was paid to groups like Careering Options Ltd and Wheeler Campbell Consulting Ltd which I understand to be recruitment agencies. The Minister needs to tell the Committee how that could ever be considered consultation assistance to get specialist advice. 
The Minister ought to tell us how much resource has been wasted on the development of the public access policy how many man-hours the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has put into this and how many man-hours the Department of Conservation has put into it. 
While he is at it the Minister might want to tell us the relationship between the New Zealand Fish and Game Council and the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society in this regard because I do not think New Zealand farmers have been told the truth. We certainly have not been told the truth when the Minister attempts to tell us that the policy is now back for genuine consultation. That is not the case and the Minister hangs his head because he knows that is true. 
This is the greatest issue worrying rural New Zealand. That is why rural New Zealand has completely lost confidence in the Minister of Agriculture. Never before in the history of New Zealand have Federated Farmers passed so many votes of no confidence in that Minister.