Wagner Nicky: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wagner Nicky: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:1819. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 The National Government has taken a moderate and balanced approach to Government finances. We all know that the economy is tight and we are determined to do more for less to increase productivity and to get better results from everything that we do. We want to get our finances on an even keel because we want to avoid the horror austerity measures that we are seeing overseas. We need to be disciplined and we need to have a willingness to prioritise and to make trade-offs. We have got a plan and we are sticking to it. In terms of conservation this means that we are determined not only to honour our conservation and environmental responsibilities but also to stretch our dollars as far as possible and to develop new ways to support conservation work.  
We all know that New Zealand is a magnificently beautiful country with a unique and hugely diverse fauna and flora. The Department of Conservation is charged with managing and overseeing our natural and heritage assets on land in the marine environment and also in the freshwater environment. It directly manages the public protected land and marine reserves and it facilitates agreements with regard to protection on private land. But it is also responsible for managing protected wildlife and marine mammals and it has a role in fostering recreation in the wonderful public lands that it manages and I believe that the Department of Conservation is particularly good at its job. It is also particularly good at finding ways to get more conservation work done for less. New Zealanders are keen to protect and conserve our environment. Huge numbers of them work closely with Department of Conservation staff as volunteers and increasingly businesses are getting involved with more conservation work.  
The Department of Conservation is absolutely focused on protecting endangered species. There are many successful breeding programmes right across the country. They include the breeding of the takahe the kakapo and kiwis. As a matter of interest my husband was down in Stewart Island just a couple of weeks ago on a yacht. He was anchored out in a bay looked across the bay and there was a kiwi just sauntering along the beach eating up the grubs at 10.30 in the morning. There are not many places in the world where you can see kiwis and there are not many places where you can see them just as you are going about your ordinary business.  
So we are being very successful with some of our breeding programmes. We have done fantastic breeding programmes for kakariki. We have got breeding programmes in Canterbury at Lady Diana Isaac’s property which has got tuatara kakariki skinks and all sorts of things. She is working very closely with the Department of Conservation. There are also good programmes for fairy tern for whio and even for kereru in some places of the country.  
The department also works with the species that are hard to protect from mankind in terms of smuggling. It was very interesting in the weekend. We were talking to Robin Thomas from the Department of Conservation in Otago about the smuggling that has been going on out of Central Otago particularly of skinks and lizards. It is pretty frightening when you think that if you sell a jewelled gecko on the international market you might get $25000 for it and even selling an ordinary skink will give you US$2000. Just recently someone was caught leaving New Zealand with 53 skinks in his underwear. The point is that the department is being very vigilant about that and it is looking at how to increase penalties and at how to protect those creatures.  
Just last weekend I was on the Otago Peninsula and I saw the work that the Department of Conservation has been doing protecting all the fauna and flora out there. There is a magnificent array of wildlife on that peninsula—little blue penguins Stewart Island shags seals and sea lions—but I was particularly interested in the work that the Department of Conservation has been doing with the royal albatross. The colony there has developed to over 260 breeding pairs. That is a pretty amazing exercise when you think that back in the 1930s one egg was there and it was stolen by a member of the public.  
The work that the Department of Conservation has been doing over probably about 80 years is a really good example of how man and nature can complement each other. The observatory is there and tourists go there but the birds seem to manage that fine and without man’s intervention I think it is unlikely that that colony would still exist because as the temperature is warming we are finding that some of those eggs on the very exposed nests can actually be cooked. So I commend what the Department of Conservation has been doing.