Robertson Grant: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4375. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 I just want to pick up where my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson our excellent conservation spokesperson left off. The Minister of Conservation has also christened herself I think the “Minister for Looking”— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Just looking. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: —just looking—because that is what Kate Wilkinson told a select committee when people raised concerns about whether it was a good idea for this Government to go on a search of World Heritage sites for mining opportunities. Kate Wilkinson said: “Nothing to do with me. I’m just the ‘Minister for Looking’. I’m not the Minister responsible for the drilling or the digging; I’m just the ‘Minister for Looking’.” 
What I would like the Minister of Conservation to be is the “Minister for Doing”. I would like the Minister of Conservation to actually get out there and do something to protect the conservation estate. I would like the Minister of Conservation to actually get out there and do something about threatened species but instead all we have seen from this Minister of Conservation and conservation under this Government is funding cuts—no sense of the value of the conservation estate to New Zealand no sense of its intrinsic value to New Zealand and New Zealanders and no sense of its real economic value. 
The numbers tell a story. In the 2009 Budget $54 million was taken out of the conservation budget and that has its impact year on year on year. But then we come to this year’s Budget with a further $11 million taken out of the conservation budget—a further $11 million that the Department of Conservation has to find has to cut from the services that are being provided to New Zealand and to our conservation estate. But there is good news coming for the Department of Conservation. Next year it gets only an $8.7 million cut. So there we go; the Government in its generosity says: “No next year it’ll just be $8.7 million more that the Department of Conservation has to cut.” 
We have been told time and again by this Government that these cuts are back-office cuts and nothing will be happening on the front line. Well let us look at where staffing cuts have come from in the Department of Conservation as part of the $54 million reduction in that first 2009 Budget: 21 staff cut in Nelson 18 staff cut in the Waikato 12 staff cut in Wanganui and around 12 to 15 staff cut in Southland. These are the people at the front line of conservation in New Zealand. These are the people losing their jobs under National. 
This is not some back-office cut. These are not some services that New Zealanders will not see. These are the people in our regions who are doing the work that New Zealanders know is important and that tourists see every day and say: “Isn’t it tremendous that you’ve got that Department of Conservation that is looking after what makes New Zealand beautiful.” They are the people in our regions. It is those jobs that are going. That is what this Budget has done. It has continued National’s cuts to a vital public service agency the Department of Conservation not in some back office in Wellington but out there in the regions of New Zealand. 
Part of those cuts were to scientists. There is not much more front line for the Department of Conservation than the science that it does. Hundreds of scientists wrote to this Government and said: “Recessions come and go; extinction is forever.”—extinction is forever. Only around 200 of the 2700 threatened species in this country are actually currently being monitored by the Department of Conservation and that goes down every year. Ruth Dyson has already mentioned what is happening with possum control. The Department of Conservation is now able to look at only 1.2 million of the 8.5 million hectares it covers for possum control. 
This Government is hamstringing the Department of Conservation from doing its core functions and it is hiding that under the rhetoric of saying: “We’re going to cut back on bureaucracy.” Nothing about that statement is true. All that we see in front of us is cuts to the services that the Department of Conservation provides and New Zealanders will be worse off as a result. We will be worse off in terms of the environment that we live in in terms of the biodiversity of this country and we will actually be worse off in terms of our tourism. 
Then it goes to the most ludicrous extent because now the so-called partnerships that the Department of Conservation is undertaking are being forced on it because it does not have the money to do its core business. It is privatising looking after the kiwi. What is more New Zealand than looking after the kiwi? Yet that is now being privatised. This Budget is letting down New Zealand when it comes to core conservation values and looking after our environment. 
Vote agreed to.