Ardern Shane: Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Ardern Shane: Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill. It has been interesting to listen to the speakers from the Opposition speak about why they think this is not a good idea. There is one thing that has not been discussed by those speakers however and it is this: if you apply an amenity value to the lease setting and the Crown pastoral lessee no longer can afford to profitably farm the land they make the call to leave and no other lessee can farm the land profitably then what happens? It returns to the Crown of course. That is what happens and the merinos go. If you extrapolate that across the whole of the 230 leases then you take off 6 million merinos. It has been stated in this debate that there is no value to the Crown of this activity. I understand that it is about $300 million of export earnings. 
It was commented on earlier by a previous speaker that we are in a ridiculous situation where one of our iconic brands Icebreaker can no longer meet the demand for the raw product that it needs from our own country and is looking to source that product from elsewhere. If you take 6 million merinos off the high country and you take out $300 million worth of export earnings then what happens? Now the Crown has a liability probably to the tune of a further $300 million to maintain that land because you see there is a bizarre and absolutely mind-numbingly stupid concept that has been put forward in this debate and that is that you can remove all human activity in the land and it will be fine. Just leave it alone; it will be fine. But in the same debate we have heard about wilding pines and we have heard about the control of other pests and weeds. Whose liability will that be now? What we have seen in the case of St James Station and Birchwood Station where the Crown did intervene decided that these were of substantial conservation value and paid five times—five times in one case—the actual livestock value of the property is that we have had massive increases in cost to the Crown balance sheet. 
So you see the debate is all very well in terms of what is a pure model. The Shania Twain example was used but Shania Twain did not buy a high country lease; they went and bought freehold properties and they paid the amenity value because that is what they wanted to do. If the Crown really wanted to extract the value and the proceeds that could be there because of amenity value then of course it would put the property on the market. That is not the suggestion put forward by those who would argue against this proposal. The suggestion put forward is that we must lock the whole lot up that the Department of Conservation will take on the extra liability and that the Crown will find the money somewhere. Of course it will not and a very poor job will be done as is in the example of a lot of other Crown land that is under the Department of Conservation. So it is a compromise. 
There are 230-odd of these lessees these high country farmers. They are—and I met a number of them during the submission process—hard-working genuine honest decent New Zealanders. And you could argue that they may have had something they were not entitled to if you wish but I would suggest that the amount that they contribute to society both through the communities they live in and the contribution they make to the wider economic benefit of New Zealand far outweighs any shallow vindictive and cheap argument that has been put up by our opponents to this bill about what they may be getting from the Crown for nothing or from transfer of wealth. I would like to see where that transfer of wealth is taking place because there is no pure model here. This is a unique circumstance. 
The irony of it all is that as the Crown has negotiated with these leaseholders over the years parts of these stations have been returned to the Crown and other sections of them have been freeholded what we have seen is an enormous conservation advantage. I know of several examples where the landowners as they have been able to freehold sections of what was originally Crown land have put in huge amounts of investment into conserving certain aspects of what are seen to be areas of high conservation value. That is private conservation. It is not Crown conservation it is not State intervention and it is not State investment. It is personal investment because they have a personal investment in the area. It is not true—it never has been and it cannot be found to be true anywhere in the world—that the Crown wherever that may be and whatever jurisdiction has the sole right and the sole ability in conservation. In fact what you will see when you go and look internationally and within New Zealand is that some of the best conservation work that is carried out in this country is carried out by the private sector or by private individuals. 
It is quite interesting to listen to the debate. I know it is an emotional one because when you start talking about land particularly Crown land people do get themselves worked into a bit of a frenzy. The circumstance that existed before was totally unsustainable and it was in decline. We had submitter after submitter who were leaseholders submit that to us. So the situation if it were allowed to continue would be that you would see a decline in the state of the conservation work on a lot of this land you would see the exodus of families from these high country stations and you would see the loss of that production that the State enjoys. It is an interesting concept that if the private sector is earning money paying taxes and spending that money domestically then there is no State benefit—that there is no State benefit from that. So you do away with business completely take all business out hand everything back to the State and the State will run it better. Well they have tried that in different parts of the world and it has failed. The experience has been that it does not work. So I suggest to those on the other side who have that view that they should go and actually have a look at the basics of some of this and decide where you strike that balance. 
I think that when you look at where the bill is headed and you look at what has gone into the construction of it you see that certainly the status quo was unsustainable. The proposition put forward is a compromise but it is the best that can be done in the circumstances that are unique to this particular issue. Thank you.