Copeland Gordon: Forests Amendment Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Copeland Gordon: Forests Amendment Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:12901] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 First I want to speak specifically on clause 4(1) which adds new paragraph (g) in section 67C(1) and is to do with the question of planted indigenous forests. Let me say straight away that I am delighted that the Government has seen fit in this bill to extend the opportunity to export indigenous timber to include that which is harvested from a planted indigenous forest. 
I think that if my experience is anything to go by there is an enormous amount of ignorance surrounding the state of indigenous forests in New Zealand. I say that because in the early 1980s in my consulting days I worked on a major project on the West Coast of the South Island that was looking to put beech timber beech wood through a process—which was actually developed by Sir William Pickering and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California—to create a biomass fuel which we were looking to export to Japan. That project did not go ahead but in the course of it I learnt some very interesting things about beech trees which are growing in our virgin forests in New Zealand. One of the things I learnt is that only about one in five beech trees in our forests if cut down is suitable to be converted into timber. One does not actually know that until one cuts the tree down puts it through a mill and saws it down the middle. Very often when the log flops open it is found to have rotted right down the middle. The reason is that those trees are way way past their optimum maturity date for harvesting. 
Therefore I think the Government really needs to give great encouragement now—with all that has happened with the West Coast Accord and all the other history which is well known in this House—to New Zealanders to begin to plant indigenous forests by way of plantation. I refer for a moment to the speech that was just made by Stephen Franks. I think the answer to his friend’s problem would have been to create an indigenous tree plantation on his 10 hectares of land and then he would have in fact had an asset that he would be free to mill and export. That probably would have made a huge difference to the circumstance the member outlined. 
Stephen Franks 
: If we trust them to do what this says in the future—that is the problem. 
GORDON COPELAND 
: Let us for the moment accept the fact that the bill does open up that opportunity. For the first time it makes that clear. I think we should be prepared to pay a bit of credit when something positive like that has been done that leads people in the right direction. 
The second part of clause 4 that I want to talk about is subsection (3) in subclause (2). There is a little bit in brackets. Subsection (3) states: “No indigenous timber (other than personal effects and any finished or manufactured indigenous timber products) may be exported …”. So the ban on the export of indigenous timber products from New Zealand actually has two exclusions. One of them is for personal effects and I assume that means souvenir-type products that we buy in souvenir shops and take out of the country in our luggage to give as wedding presents and the like to people overseas who are fascinated by our range of indigenous woods. 
But also—and this is very important—in working through the issue of the export of manuka and kanuka products for smoking food the officials were good enough to give some legal interpretation of what the words “any finished or manufactured indigenous timber products” actually include. They defined that exclusion as having three component parts to it. The first is that the products must have been manufactured—that is that one used machinery or something actually to change the essential aspect of the original wood into something else. Of course wood-chips come into that category. 
The second requirement is that the product has to have been put into its final shape and form. “Final shape and form” is a term I have some difficulty with from this point of view: although it is a very very neat answer to the problem of exporting manuka and kanuka based products for smoking food it does not seem to me to be very good when it comes to furniture for example for this reason. It seems to me—and the Minister in the chair Mr Hodgson may like to take a call on this issue; it is quite important—that if we were to use say beech to make furniture then to export it in its component parts to be put together again at the other end at the export destination that should be acceptable. But that furniture can hardly be said to be in its final shape and form. If one were to export chairs for example in their final shape and form then the cost of doing that would be prohibitive whereas if one exported them as component parts to be reassembled at the other end I think that would make a great deal more sense. Maybe that is something the Government should continue to look at because law should never just stay in one state; it should evolve. I think it would be useful for us to apply our minds to how to allow furniture products made of indigenous timber to be exported even though they are not in their final shape and form but are in the process of reaching that. 
The third condition is linked inextricably to that because it says the product has to be ready to be used for its intended purpose. Again that would exclude furniture exports in component form. 
So I suggest to the Government that it continue to think about that issue and maybe bring in a further amendment to the Forests Act at some suitable time to allow those exports to happen because I know and I am sure that the Minister in the chair and his officials are also aware that companies in this country are beginning to manufacture some quite superb furniture products out of beech. It looks good it is a hardwood it is a fabulous product and it is a very very high-value product. That is exactly the kind of thing that New Zealand should be doing; it should be using its indigenous resources to produce high-value products. But it seems to me that the law as written still prohibits the export of furniture components and I think that is a problem that the Government should address. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 211 in the name of the Hon Pete Hodgson to Part 1 be agreed to. 
Amendment agreed to.