Sage Eugenie; Parker DavidHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Thank you Madam Chair. Dealing with Places of national importance" and clause 427A "Interpretation" as the Minister for the Environment noted there's a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) in my name 394. What that seeks to do is put the Natural and Built Environment Bill (NBE) on a similar—to put outstanding landscapes and natural features on a similar footing in this bill to the Resource Management Act (RMA) where there has been a lot of work done by district councils and regional councils to identify and assess areas of outstanding natural landscape and natural features and to have those included in plans.So when the Minister noted that it's optional that outstanding natural features and landscapes at that regional and local scale be identified is it his expectation that the work that has been done to date by councils throughout the country will be used and put into natural built environment plans even though the much narrower definition in clause 427A means that these regionally and locally outstanding natural features and landscapes aren't recognised as being of national importance which under the RMA they are because there is no qualification that they just have to be outstanding at a national level. It is a fact that outstanding natural features and landscapes are a matter of national importance under the RMA.The Green Party's concern is that the change in the NBE bill really undermines the recognition of landscape values. It is often these are issues that are quite important in getting people to think about how we do land management in a way which respects natural systems the soils the features and ensures that the landscape values of places like the Queenstown Lakes are protected from inappropriate development such as houses and subdivisions that are very obvious and undermine that naturalness characteristic. So what happens to all of the existing information can that be incorporated?Then I also have another question about clause 427Q which is about the protection of high value biodiversity areas. The Minister's SOP 389 makes on page 299 some changes to clause 427Q around fishing and it seems to me there are double negatives in there. But the protection for high value biodiversity areas is not as qualified in relation to fishing. Is there the risk that the provisions in the SOP will actually undermine the intent of the Motiti case? The Motiti case enabled councils through their regional coastal plans to protect areas against the effects of fishing and that built on previous case law in Golden Bay. But in the Minister's SOP and the changes to 427Q that appears to really really narrow the ability of plans to protect against the effects of fishing by only being able to do that if these high value biodiversity areas are very clearly identified.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I thank the member Eugenie Sage for her contribution. In respect of the highly vulnerable biodiversity areas and places of national importance we are wanting to make that a rarefied group of high standard places of national importance not regional importance. Once that is accorded to those sorts of places then the protections are very very high and they're not easy to knock over. There are some very limited exceptions but they are very limited.In respect of other matters we are actually leaving that to the local region and the same high level of protection doesn't automatically apply. That doesn't mean to say there is no level of protection. And the member's right that the landscapes around Queenstown are important and that subdivisions that are in the wrong place can undermine landscape values in a way that the people of the area ought to be worried about. That is preserved—you know that can still be done but you won't be able to I don't think in space like Queenstown say that all of the landscapes are of that critical importance. And why that's important in the example that's been given to me by officials including by Transpower New Zealand officials is that they find it very hard to get any new transmission line approved into Queenstown because everything is categorised as being of importance from a landscape point of view when in actual fact they need a new transmission line into Queenstown because the population is growing.In respect of the other issue that the member raised around the marine space and fishing what the amendment is intended to do is—we don't override the Motiti case. The Motiti case is actually preserved and there is a planning function there which is actually starting to work out quite well in New Zealand now. There's been some recent experience around the Bay of Islands. And I'm glad that we didn't overreact against the Motiti case because it's working its way through the system quite wisely. But what we didn't want was for there to be an onus on the fishing industry to prove whether or not there are areas of high biodiversity value before they can fish because the scheme of the bill as drafted created the risk that it would be for the fishing industry to prove that there weren't areas of high biological value before they could fish whereas we think that actually it should be the other way around. Before you can stop people fishing where they're ordinarily fishing there should be an onus on someone else to prove that that's an area where there ought not to be fishing otherwise the regulation of the fishing industry would have become impractical."