Shirley Ken: Forests Amendment Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Shirley Ken: Forests Amendment Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:12906] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 As everyone is aware the ACT party certainly opposes this legislation. I would just like to reflect on the principles that underpin Part 2 which deals with compensation regimes and show what a nonsense this bill is. All owners of indigenous forest in this land lost their property rights with the passage of the Forests Amendment Act in 1996 without any compensation whatsoever. That was bad legislation based on the premise that New Zealanders could not be trusted to retain the remaining indigenous cover on our landscape. 
Sure through the 1970s and 1980s we had quite substantial clear-felling. The point is that it was driven by agricultural subsidies. Farmers were given subsidies to go out and clear beech forest. They were then given subsidies to bring the land into production. Subsidies drove the clear-felling. 
When we think about it we owned a precious resource—but the native forest was seen as just wasteland. One could not do anything with it. There was no international market for specialist timbers as recently as the 1960s and 1970s. Farming was the only productive use of the land so the Government gave subsidies to clear the forest. That all changed prior to this Parliament passing the Forests Amendment Act which was driven by the Green movement which was very concerned about forest clearance. The world changed and there is now a very great market for high-value specialist timbers—often associated with low volume. So the best asset of a landowner immediately became indigenous forest. Who would want to go out and clear-fell it and convert it to pasture when the standing timber is the value? That is sustainable forestry and that concept became globally accepted through that same era. 
My point is that this country’s entire indigenous forest policy is based on a stack of cards. It is foolish and stupid and those property owners who have had that right stripped off them by the indigenous forests Act receive no compensation at all. Beech is a very easy timber to grow on a rotational basis. It is a fast-growing species and can be harvested every 30 to 40 years. Ideally it would be done in coupes. The original indigenous forest plan had coupe sizes of five hectares. That is a very sensible thing to do because the natural situation is that the wind-blow goes through beech forest and often a five-hectare patch is cleared by the wind-blow anyway. 
Beech does not need replanting. There is a massive seed bank in the soil and any clearing is sprouted over very quickly. Better-quality timber comes up in those fast-growing clearings. That is the natural cycle of beech forests. But what the successive Governments in this country have said is that the Government needs to step in and take away property rights. We got to the ludicrous situation on the West Coast which relates to this bill directly of this Labour Government saying that indigenous forest cannot even be cleared in a five-hectare coupe size. 
The proposal was to have one tree per hectare extracted by helicopter on a 15-year rotation. No one could ever see where the tree came from. That was not good enough for this Labour Government. It said that even that could not be done. The West Coast forestry corporation said it had a viable business with high-value export products. It asked to extract one tree per hectare by helicopter on a 15-year rotation but the green nutcases in the Labour Party driven by their mantras tore up the West Coast Accord—which the Hon Phil Goff had signed in October 1987—and totally reneged on the commitment in the West Coast Accord that said harvesting could be done on a sustainable basis in perpetuity. 
I always thought “in perpetuity” meant forever—but not in the Labour Government! As far as Labour was concerned it meant for only 10 or 12 years. Labour ripped up the accord—totally reneged on it—with no compensation and now it is having the anguish of how to compensate the landless Maori who are covered by the South Island Landless Maoris Act. What an absolute nonsense! What I say is: yes those landless natives do have a property right and yes it should be respected but so should the property rights of every other indigenous forest owner in this country.