Goff Phil: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 21 July 2010. Volume:665;Page:12531. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. There has been a controversy over the last 48 hours since the Government announced its decision over mining proposals. That controversy is because this Government led by John Key had proposed to open up New Zealand national parks and protected areas to the mining industry yet the Prime Minister will not accept responsibility for the part that he played in that decision. 
I hold up the  
New Zealand Herald  
with an article entitled “Muddled Govt mining stance fatally flawed”. It was fatally flawed. Gerry Brownlee does not admit it Kate Wilkinson does not admit it and John Key does not admit it. But their proposal considered by their Cabinet and announced to this Parliament by John Key in his opening statement to Parliament this year was to allow the most precious and protected areas of New Zealand to be opened up to mining. That is what it was about. This Prime Minister will not accept responsibility for the part that he played in that decision but he should. The day before the Prime Minister’s opening statement in Parliament Gerry Brownlee and Kate Wilkinson took to Cabinet a paper that stated that 467000 hectares of New Zealand’s national parks should be opened up for mining yet John Key announced that it was not a Ministers’ paper but an officials’ paper. When I was in Cabinet a Cabinet Minister took responsibility for what he or she took to Cabinet. If one did not support a proposal then one did not sign one’s name to it. Of course Gerry Brownlee supported the proposal because he set it out way back in 2009 in a speech to the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and told that international mining interest everything it wanted to hear. What did this speech say? The major proposal was to gut schedule 4 to allow this National Government to go and dig up our national parks. 
John Key should have known that that was never a runner. Gerry Brownlee went to see him early in 2009 and said that he had a step change for New Zealand and that he was going to dig up the national parks and we would all be wealthy. At that point John Key had the responsibility to say to Gerry Brownlee that it was not on and that it was not acceptable to New Zealanders. It is not right for one Government to destroy the heritage of future generations of New Zealanders. He should have said to Gerry Brownlee that he was the Minister for Economic Development and asked whether he understood that digging up our national parks would destroy our tourism industry and would destroy our “clean green” “100% Pure New Zealand” brand. That is what John Key should have said. He should have told him to take the idea away. It was stupid it was flawed and it would never run. But John Key did not say that. He embraced the idea he announced to Parliament that he was going to do it and he supported Gerry Brownlee’s paper going to Cabinet. 
I will say something about Kate Wilkinson. Kate Wilkinson does not understand that she has a statutory responsibility as Minister of Conservation to advocate for the conservation estate. What did she do? She signed her name to a paper that would have allowed mining in 467000 hectares of New Zealand’s national parks. I cannot remember in my entire time in this Parliament a worse Minister of Conservation a weaker Minister of Conservation or a Minister who failed more in his or her basic responsibility to take the side of conservation and stand up against damaging the conservation estate. 
The other thing exposed by this affair is a total lack of planning by this Government to achieve an improvement in living standards and growth in employment and wages. This is simply the last of a series of failed plans. The Job Summit fell over and the report of the 2025 Taskforce was discredited by even the Government within 24 hours of its being produced. I ask Mr Brownlee what has happened to the idea of New Zealand becoming the world’s financial services hub. It has gone.