Sage Eugenie: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 26 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5694. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is opposing this Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill because it makes a fundamental attack on conservation legislation. In the schedule 4 debate in 2010 when 50000 people marched down Queen Street in support of protection of national parks and not opening them up to mining the National Party sought to get out of the can of worms it had opened by promising that there would be public consultation on access applications on conservation land. Certainly this bill introduces and makes provision for that but the bill substantially weakens the process for considering access applications on conservation land because of its provision for those decisions to be made jointly by the Minister of Conservation and the Minister of Energy and Resources and because of the introduction of the economic benefits test. 
We have seen this week that Ministers Joyce and English were putting pressure on conservation groups and environmental interests that are quite legitimately involved in a case before the Environment Court on the resource consent applications for the Bathurst Resources mine on the Denniston Plateau. The Ministers have been putting pressure on those objectors to withdraw. It is obvious that the Ministers and others on the National benches have not been to Denniston are not aware of the outstanding landscape and biodiversity values on the Denniston Plateau and are not aware of the significance of those coal measure ecosystems which are protected as conservation land. The risk is that if you have a joint decision-making power as the bill provides you will have the Minister of Energy and Resources and his views overriding those of the Minister of Conservation and the Department of Conservation. We have already seen that with the Maui’s dolphin decision and the Minister for Primary Industries and that department’s views overriding the Department of Conservation’s views about the need to protect Maui’s dolphins. Where you get that joint decision-making power the user department’s views prevail. 
The other major defect in the bill is the way in which it amends section 61 of the Crown Minerals Act. It is section 61 that sets out the matters that the appropriate Minister must have regard to in considering whether to agree to an access arrangement—that is the objectives of any Act under which the land is administered and the purpose for which the land is held by the Crown. The bill in clause 31 introduces an economic benefits test and requires the Ministers to consider “the economic and other benefits of the proposed activity in relation to which the access arrangement is sought”. That is a fundamental weakening of conservation legislation because it means that the Ministers will be weighing up the economic benefits as well as the conservation purpose for which the land is held. 
We know under this Government that economic benefits always triumph over nature and that the short-term gains of opening an open-cast coalmine on the Denniston Plateau would potentially triumph over the biodiversity values. That is despite the fact that the Denniston Plateau is becoming increasingly popular as a mountain biking destination and as a place where people go to recreate and to look at the outstanding landscapes—the rock tors the gullies and the stunted vegetation—that are special to coal measure ecosystems. By introducing this economic benefit test that will override conservation values. That is why everyone particularly conservation groups and anyone concerned about the future of conservation land should be concerned about this bill because it cuts across the protective provisions that exist in the Conservation Act. 
Yes the public may get the opportunity to make a submission on access arrangements if the proposed mine is significant in the Ministers’ opinions but this weakening of the application of the Conservation Act potentially means that it will be much easier for those mining access applications to be approved. That is one of the reasons the Green Party is opposing this bill because it is an attack on our conservation legislation.