Sage Eugenie: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4371. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chairperson. The summary of new policy initiatives in the performance information for Vote Conservation is the story of funding cuts and it is yet another example of the anti-environment stance and policies of this Government. In Vote Conservation we see $8.7 million axed from the purchase and development of new reserves to meet the Government’s cost-saving target. We see $1.5 million cut from natural heritage management. Those are the programmes to care for our public conservation lands for threatened species and for pest and weed control. That means there will be six fewer possum control operations done than in the previous financial year. We see a $1 million cut in the management of recreational opportunities so that means fewer kilometres of walking and tramping tracks are maintained and fewer pamphlets promoting the opportunities to go walking and mountain biking on conservation land. 
If the $1.67 million that the Ministry of Economic Development wasted surveying the unlikely mineral potential of Te Wahipounamu - South West New Zealand World Heritage Area had gone to the Department of Conservation it could have paid for more than 100000 hectares of aerial pest control to protect mistletoe rata and fuchsia from possum browse and to improve the prospects for threatened species such as the rowi or the Haast brown kiwi. The funding cuts that we see in this vote combined with the policy direction that we see in the Department of Conservation’s statement of intent are worrying. The department is signalling that conservation lands are open for business and that includes some quite destructive extractive businesses. 
The department’s statement of intent has a major section on business opportunities. One of the initiatives in that section is to “increase the number value and quality of commercial ‘sponsorship’ partners providing net benefit to conservation.” The Department of Conservation already has a business relationship with five major corporates: Mitre 10 Rio Tinto BNZ Solid Energy and Genesis. Those companies generated a mere $2.5 million in sponsorship revenue in the 2010-11 financial year. That is paltry given their size and given the major public relations benefits that companies such as BNZ have had from the kiwi recovery programme where departmental employees have had to wear BNZ-branded clothing when they are filmed or photographed working with kiwi. The Government’s cuts to conservation funding mean that the department is putting out its begging bowl to the corporate sector to help meet that funding shortfall. 
The statement of intent does not include any specific targets but this is a very worrying initiative particularly when we hear the reports that the department is considering accepting sponsorship from Fonterra. This is troubling because Fonterra’s shareholders are responsible for some of the most extensive serious and severe water pollution problems in New Zealand. That is from agricultural intensification particularly dairying expansion in the lowland areas and the impact that is having on our lowland streams. So the department needs to be very careful when it enters into sponsorship arrangements. 
Fonterra does not operate on conservation land and any sponsorship arrangement is potential “greenwash” for the company. If Fonterra sponsors the Department of Conservation this raises questions about what Fonterra would expect in return—what compromises the department would have to make to its statutory advocacy—because under this National Government the Department of Conservation has cut back its Resource Management Act advocacy for nature outside the conservation estate. 
Despite the Rakaia water conservation order recognising that that river has outstanding values as habitat for braided river birds such as the black-fronted tern and the wrybill plover—both threatened species—the department has not been involved in TrustPower’s application to amend the water conservation order and change the river’s flows. The department had a major role in the first generation of district and regional plans. Working with conservation groups it got rules controlling indigenous vegetation clearance wetland drainage and stock access to waterways. In Canterbury the Environment Canterbury commissioners have just notified the combined land and water regional plan for Canterbury. 
If Fonterra becomes a commercial sponsor of the Department of Conservation will this constrain the department’s already limited Resource Management Act advocacy? Will the department seek stronger policies in that plan and other plans to protect the habitats of native fish will it oppose irrigation takes or will it wind back its limited advocacy?