Prosser Richard: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is subject to correctionProsser Richard: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 June 2014. Volume:702;Page:18941. Text is subject to correction.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):I rise to take a short final call on the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill. I am disappointed as this is a bill that we really wanted to be able to support and now we find that we cannot. We support the idea of harvesting wind-blown timber but we cannot support this bill. We do not want to leave this timber lying out there to rot. It is a waste. It is a double waste.Maggie Barry: Well then support the bill.RICHARD PROSSER: Well Ms Barry as I said and as I have said all the way through we would love to have been able to but we had questions about the construction of the bill and about some things that were in it. We still do not have the answers to those questions. No one has told us why this bill has been set down in the way it was. I asked the Minister of Conservation during the Committee stage to answer some simple questions that we had but he has chosen not to.Maggie Barry: It’s politics.RICHARD PROSSER: You say it is just politics but actually it is a lot more than politics. It is economics and it is people’s lives. It is about being honest. If your Government had been honest about what it was doing and why we might have been able to gain some more understanding. We look at the way this bill was written and what it is going to do and we wonder why it has been constructed in that way.To start with we wanted the application process for extraction permits to be open transparent and fair but it is not. The bill stipulates that the application process for extraction permits can be anything the Director-General of Conservation wants it to be. He or she can put an ad in the public notices he or she can run a tender or he or she can simply just get on the phone to a logging company anywhere and say: “Hey apply for an extraction permit. We think you’re up to the job.” Then they can go in behind closed doors and negotiate some kind of deal. Again it is down to the discretion of the director-general. We would love to see this work go to West Coast companies and West Coast people but there is no guarantee that that is going to happen and the bill specifically stipulates that it does not have to.We would like to see that the existing environmental protections under the Resource Management Act are maintained. Currently they are exempt for 5 years. Again no reason for that was given. Why are the protections in the Resource Management Act that deal with water quality and that deal with land use just pushed aside? There is no explanation given. Why is that we are going to allow bulldozers to move on to conservation land—without any kind of consent and without any kind of regard for the environment—cut tracks take logs out push rubbish into the rivers take water out for whatever purpose they like destroy the whitebait and destroy greenstone boulders with nothing so much as a by-your-leave and with no questions asked and no questions needed. It is laid down in the bill. It is allowed to happen and we are not told why.We wanted the West Coast to be the principal economic beneficiary in terms of jobs and processing. There is no guarantee that that is going to happen. It is not in there. Anybody can get this work. The way the bill is constructed the contracts can be given to any company from anywhere in the world which could bring in its own workers because they have to be specialists. They have to be able to work in the dangerous conditions so they have got to be properly trained and qualified. Whoever it is who gets the contract during the negotiations behind the closed doors with the director-general at the director-general’s absolute discretion can decide that only its own people from wherever else in the world are sufficiently qualified and they will come in and do the work.We are very concerned that native timber that is recovered under the bill will be allowed to be exported in any form other than as a finished product. It is allowed to go out under this bill. It is specifically allowed for against the provisions of the Forests Act in the most simple and basic processed form that there can be being sawn timber. Members from the Government side made the point that timber processed in that way could be stored for future use. Yes it could. We agree with that. But the bill specifically provides that it can be exported even though it cannot be exported in that state at the moment. Why? We are not told why.We wanted to see that the royalties paid to the Crown for the extraction of this valuable resource stayed in the economy in New Zealand and that a proportion of them went back to the West Coast. Instead the bill not only says nothing about a proportion of the royalties but specifically says that the director-general can waive or refund any fees or royalties. Why? Why on earth is that happening?The Minister did not answer any of those questions during the Committee stage so I ran a scenario. I wonder if when this process gets under way—and it is going to get under way because the Government has the numbers to pass it. Again I reiterate that we want to see this timber harvested. We want to see this resource used. We want to see it utilised. We do not want to see it go to waste. We do not want to see it rot on the ground. We want to see people have good jobs have work earn money get wealth and have that wealth stay in the country. But when this process begins to unroll as it will and the contracts are let to foreign companies the foreign companies will bring in overseas workers. They will cut down the trees they will pull the timber out they will give it minimal processing and they will turn it into sawn timber. That sawn timber will then be sent overseas—there are no sawmill jobs in New Zealand there are no further processing jobs in New Zealand and there are no furniture factories. Our native timber will end up getting turned into furniture in other parts of the world using slave labour that we do not benefit from. Some of it will be exported back here and sold as—look—New Zealand native timber. Is not that great? The people on the West Coast will not get a dime. Will the Minister then front up to the West Coast people and tell them why he has established this bill in the way that he has?New Zealand First does not support this bill. Thank you.