Barry Maggie: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarry Maggie: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 18 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1697. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage): This Government is very ably led by John Key and as we heard in the Prime Minister’s statement New Zealand is in good shape and it is getting better all the time. That is something we believe in very strongly on this side of the House. We have a plan we have a programme and we are rolling it out. I need to look no further than my own three portfolios to see evidence of the fact that New Zealand is in very good heart. I think that for my call today I am going to concentrate on some of the aspects of my three portfolios and give an indication of the challenges and priorities that fit into what the Prime Minister was saying about our broad vision of where New Zealand is heading.I have the great privilege of being the Minister of Conservation the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage and the Minister for Senior Citizens. It is the first time in New Zealand’s parliamentary history that one Minister has held the portfolio of conservation and the portfolio of arts culture and heritage at the same time so it gives me the unique opportunity to explore not only what our flora and fauna do by way of defining us on the world’s stage but also how we see ourselves as New Zealanders—what defines us and what matters to us.In this year of the World War I 100th anniversary commemorations—the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I—we look back at the crucible of how our nationhood was forged and at how important it was for us as a fledgling colonial nation to step forward out of the shadows and be a nation in our own right because of the bravery and commitment of our soldiers. I will touch on that later and on the importance of the contribution that seniors have made to New Zealand society because we would not be where we are today without their talent their skill their hard work and their unfailing energy and belief in the values that underpin the society that we are today.I would like to begin though by talking about conservation. It is by telling our stories in conservation that we can connect with people and really highlight the issues and challenges that are important to our everyday lives. Winning the hearts and minds of New Zealanders around our conservation challenges means that we need to engage with the science. We need to understand the problems that exist and how they can be solved. We need to understand why it is so important that the Government leads but communities and partners and volunteers join together to combat the problems that we have.One of the latest examples that I have seen as the incoming Minister of Conservation was launched last year by my predecessor Dr Nick Smith and it was called Battle for our Birds. That was a very deliberate way of describing the challenge that lay ahead of us at that time. What we needed to do was not get bogged down in the emotional arguments around the toxicity of some of the methods that we use to combat the pests that were going to be engulfing and literally extinguishing our at-risk birds. We had to rise above that concentrate on the science and look at the fact that we have very good baiting very good trapping and very good 1080—used in the sense of aerial drops—that will in hard to reach places really make it the only method we can use in some of those places to annihilate the rats and the stoats and to a certain extent the possums as well. As people will recall last year there was a beech mast which meant that there was an epic plague of rats of biblical proportions which needed to be exterminated.I am happy to report that the predator control that we employed with Battle for our Birds worked very well and the results have shown that we have successfully knocked back the rat and stoat numbers and that has allowed our native bird populations—and bats for that matter—to breed over the summer to proliferate and do what nature intended them to do and that is multiply instead of being exterminated by eco-invaders.In addition to extensive pest control given my background and interest in plants I have really tried to concentrate our resources and our thoughts a little bit more on protecting our endangered plant species. Once again it is about controlling eco-invaders. We have what I would call the war on weeds which is about to be rolled out. We have identified again what I call the dirty dozen—the weeds that have choked New Zealand plants and forests for a very long period of time—Carmel Sepuloni: The front bench of the National Party.Hon MAGGIE BARRY: —and really we are talking about plants not politicians on the other side of the House. We need to really combat these eco-invaders.For the Greens’ benefit—we have clematis vitalba and that is known as old man’s beard. These are plants that have botanic names and common names and we do need to ensure that they are kept well under control.Wilding pines are another problem. We have invested in this space and I acknowledge the work that has been done by the Minister for Primary Industries Nathan Guy. We really need to get to grips with the problem of wilding pines. These are the ultimate garden escapees. These are conifers that were planted in order to hold back erosion and for shelter belts and so forth—all of these good ideas—but because they did so well in this wonderful country of ours with its climate they have proliferated. They have seeded too well and you can have too much of a good thing. So we spend a lot of money about $10 million a year on combating weeds and about a third of that is on wilding conifer control. The rest of it is on the sorts of sites that we need to concentrate on to really save our endangered plants. So I am focusing more time and attention on that in the next year.I take great heart from Project Crimson which was as some of you might recall launched about 20 years ago. At the time pōhutukawa trees were threatened to the point where people felt that they would disappear from the north. That is not a science fiction made-up dramatisation; that was the real deal. That is how much damage possums have done to our native plants. The pōhutukawa was in danger. Project Crimson is a great blueprint and one that has reminded me of the importance of getting together with the Department of Conservation—an early partner in that. We also get together with partners that can provide money and expertise and communities and volunteers as a group as a force because the Government cannot do it all. But they have achieved remarkable things with Project Crimson. It was an honour for me last week at Government House to present prizes to the people involved and to acknowledge and value the work they had done in Project Crimson.I remind the House and people out there in New Zealand today about Project Crimson because there are those who are pessimistic about our ability to save the kauri. Kauri dieback is a disease we do not know very much about and it is very complicated. We have put in a lot of money now some $26 million to trying to find out what causes it how it arrived here how to contain it and really what to do about trying to stop its spread. At the moment we have emphasised this and really added extra urgency to this by putting in proper signage so that people know that they need to clean their boots spray on disinfectant and do what they can to not spread this disease which is a soil-borne pathogen from tree to tree. We have contained and confined the disease where we see it by closing off parks by continuing public education. Along with the Minister for Primary Industries and the kauri dieback management programme we are spending $26.5 million. We are rolling that out now. In Whangarei we have just appointed a designated individual who is leading a team that is really working hard to ensure that that programme will do what it needs to do. You can expect to see more areas of bush contained and confined.I have travelled around the country and have seen the work that partners have been doing in saving kiwis for example and I am going to be working more with those people and with iwi as well. The urgency really that I suppose kauri dieback has brought to the notion of protecting the north has I think added impetus to the notion of having a national park. So I am stepping up the work that was done by my predecessor Nick Smith in trying to get that Waipoua national kauri park established—to make our 10th park. Parks are good for people. They are good for our health.Our oceans are the next challenge. I will be releasing very soon a public discussion document about the recreational fishing reserves seabed reserves and as well as that species-specific ones. That is coming out in the next few weeks.We will also be looking at arts culture and heritage priorities around WW100 and looking at our heritage sites and again preserving and protecting what we have and spreading the word that this is a young country and we are a young nation but we have a proud history. I will be engaging with the heritage groups and people commemorating the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi to really spread the message. Those are those sorts of challenges that are coming up at the moment.The Positive Ageing Strategy which we are rolling out at the moment for seniors concentrates on areas to do with valuing our seniors not looking at them as if they are at some kind of disadvantage. Those 660000 New Zealanders are a very important part of our population and we need to be very aware of the problems to do with elder abuse and social isolation. These are difficult issues but this Government led by John Key is making sure that we address them. We are not going to leave our elderly in a situation where they are living with dementia living with social stigma and living in a way that is not befitting of the wonderful contribution they have made to New Zealand society.