Roy Eric: Walking Access Bill — Second Reading 
Roy Eric: Walking Access Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:649;Page:17934] 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 I have to say that I do not have any significant points of disagreement with the Hon Damien O’Connor who led this debate. 
I am not normally a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee but I did ask our whips whether I might be associated with that committee for the purpose of dealing with the Walking Access Bill. I did that for several reasons. The first is my own personal situation. I am a keen tramper hunter gatherer and boater—I have an inflatable boat with which I navigate rivers that may or may not have marginal strips on them—so I have a whole range of reasons to be associated with the select committee dealing with this legislation. I am also a landowner. On my rather modest landholding I think I have almost every land type that this bill may or may not be about. I have streams with marginal strips streams without marginal strips and wetlands without marginal strips. I have paper roads. I have formed roads that are not legal roads. I also have some pylons that are 70 metres high. So I am aware of quite a number of the issues surrounding the debate about what is quite a significant bill. 
We need to understand that New Zealand is a unique country in a lot of respects. One of them is just the very nature of our country. We think of ourselves as having a sort of conservation estate and a rural landscape yet we are one of the most urbanised countries in the world. A quarter of our population lives in one city another quarter lives in another four cities and in fact very very few people reside in a rural environment. I would not say that we have a conflict but we have this ongoing issue about access. 
Another interesting thing about New Zealand is that it had laid down by instruction firstly from Queen Victoria a whole range of mechanisms of access that overlay a whole lot of property rights that exist. For various reasons as I mentioned when this bill was introduced some of the provisions that were laid down—particularly marginal strips or what is known as the Queen’s Chain—were incomplete. In most cases there is a reasonably amicable interface between the public and the landowner. In some cases it is not so amicable. In some places there has been private capture of some unique public resources and this bill does not actually deal with that. At some stage in the future this Parliament may have to address those issues if they escalate or if some of the issues that exist now cannot be resolved. That may be an issue for the future but this bill does not set out to resolve those issues. 
New Zealand is a unique place and another unique thing about New Zealand is the participation factor. If we look at the figures from Sport and Recreation New Zealand which was the only agency I found to have these kinds of figures we see that about half our population is involved in outdoor recreational pursuits that cross private land or the conservation estate or that need to cross private land in some instances to get to the conservation estate. Camping hunting tramping walking—there is a whole range of things out there. We are unique in a whole lot of ways. 
The first instruction came from Queen Victoria in 1841 I think and there have been a number of times in history when we have tried to look after the uniqueness of this access situation. The last major attempt was made by McKenzie of the Ballance Government in around 1891. This bill is another step forward so we are doing quite a significant thing here. The interesting thing is that this legislation acknowledges the property rights that exist. The bill acknowledges a lot of the difficulties out there but it sees negotiation as the methodology by which these things need to be resolved. That is what it does. 
I will talk a wee bit now about the purpose clause of the bill because I think it is important. Some things around the bill’s purpose need to be amplified a little for the benefit of the House. There is another issue now because of today’s technology. Today we can buy little items like this global positioning system device that I have here at a starting point of $150. We can download a cadastral map and it can have a much more accurate description of what may or may not be out there than what the landowner has in a lot of instances. In a way that also creates an issue that needs to be resolved. 
Let us look now at clause 3 “Purpose” in Part 1. Some bits need amplification. If we look at clause 3(a) we see mention of public resources. The bill does not define what a public resource is. A public resource is many things. It is our conservation estate our vistas our mountain scenery and our access to them. It is the acclimatised fish and birds that exist out there and it is the right to do whatever is necessary to be able to capture and hunt them. It is the right to go tramping. It is the right to do all those things that are intrinsically a part of the New Zealand psyche. It is the birthright that was first laid down essentially by our forebears who wisely created some of the walkways and unwisely acclimatised a lot of birds and animals that probably should not have been here in the first instance but they are here now and are part of our birthright. The public resource is all of those things and this bill enshrines some negotiation powers that are important in relation to accessing it. 
The second thing is that clause 3(c) talks about “responsibility for leading and supporting the negotiation establishment maintenance and improvement of—(i) walking access …”. So negotiation is enshrined in the purpose clause. I hope that when the Walking Access Commission—which this bill sets up to resolve some of those issues—goes about the process of negotiation there is an element of goodwill. Those parties that might be a wee bit recalcitrant need to note that the House has resiled from enshrining definite leverage points in recognition of property rights but the expectation is that there will be good-faith bargaining and that some goodwill will come to the table in terms of that negotiation. 
Further down in clause 3(c) is an interesting little subparagraph that captures something that is not otherwise in the bill. It gives the Walking Access Commission the right to deal with things that are outside walking access and they include the carriage of firearms and crossbows and anything else that might be needed. 
Hon Member 
: Dogs. 
ERIC ROY 
: Yes. The Walking Access Commission is allowed to take part in negotiating those things. 
Let us have a word now about the Walking Access Commission. It is quite clearly set out in the bill that it has a role to negotiate—one needs just to read the commentary and the purpose clause—and that is the key thing that it does. So the bill sets up a Walking Access Commission and its No. 1 job is negotiation. 
It also needs I guess to collect a database of what actually does exist now and I guess that that information will be on a website somewhere so that people can get it. That will be an ongoing process. Brian Hayes who was on the first Walking Access Committee did some work on some specific properties and in some cases it took 1 or 2 hours to actually identify what did and did not exist. In the first reading debate on this bill I raised several issues relating to why that is such a complex matter. 
As Minister O’Connor said another important function of the Walking Access Commission is to set up a code of practice because there is a reluctance by some landowners to allow access where there is no acknowledgment of the kinds of activities that take place on the land and the kinds of things that are appropriate. Once upon a time everybody had a relation who was on a farm and actually understood all of that. As I mentioned at the outset we are now an urbanised country and we have lost some of that institutional knowledge about respect for land use. So there needs to be a code of practice. 
In all National members are supportive of this bill we look forward to its progress through the House and we think it is a step forward. It is not a complete answer but it is a big step.