Jones ShaneHon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): Madam Chair although the hour is late it required the appearance of the provincial champion.Hon Members: Where is he?Hon SHANE JONES: Let's deal with a few facts—Simon O'Connor: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I believe it's unreasonable to make reference to a member who's not in the House.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That is not a point of order.Hon SHANE JONES: I did preface that remark with it is late in the evening". Obviously the tempers are short and the mentality is shallow on the other side of the Chamber as reflected by those totally gratuitous remarks.Number one: what a brilliant provision that strips red tape for a valuable industry. Now Mr Parker needs to be congratulated in Part 2 for seizing an industry that was riddled with red tape where forest owners and investors from overseas had given up hope as a consequence of being denied any opportunity to expand the sector until our MMP coalition Government arrived. So up and down the country investors who want the sector to grow for climate change purposes people who value the sovereignty of New Zealand are applauding Mr Parker for the efforts in Part 2.Why have we brought forestry rights into this regime? Because prior to that they were totally unregulated. And on the other side of the House we do not share their zeal for selling the country out to the highest bidder. That's the ideology of that side of the House. Our side of the House has stood up to ensure that forestry rights are now part of a regulatory regime whilst at the same time sparing these important overseas investors the hassle of being entangled in red tape.Now it's a curious coincidence that I happen to be the Minister of Forestry. That is just an act of serendipity which has been applauded by all the forest owners up and down the country. This will ensure that the size of the sector expands—that the size of the lung of the country to absorb all the nasties associated with climate change is funded where appropriate by overseas investment. I've got no doubt whatsoever that the 1000-hectare rule will ensure that this roadway to converting land away from negative purposes into growing trees will boost the target of a billion trees.There is nothing nefarious there is nothing nasty there is nothing frightening here—all these half-baked notions that the dairy farms of Matamata are suddenly going to disappear into mānuka or pine tree; no no. Those subsidies were offered by the other side of the House not this side of the House. Those subsidies were offered as a consequence of the environment meeting all the costs of dairy farming and I know there's a lot of disappointment on the other side of the House that the dairy farms that they drove into being in the Mackenzie country can no longer be hocked off to foreigners. That game is over. There is only one exception where our climate change credentials will be boosted not by enabling further international ownership of our dairy farms which is at the essence of what the other side of the House wants to do—we are going to drive forestry through appropriate infusions of overseas investment a refined ETS scheme; all those pleasures await you.I absolutely claim credit for lobbying my senior colleague to ensure we strip red tape create something of a primrose path because 70-odd percent of the crop of exotic forests are already owned internationally. We stood down the members of the iwi leaders group and said "Yes we'll provide some slack: up to a thousand hectares. After that the sovereign obligations on all New Zealanders must be imposed on hapū and iwi at the same time." Now we are very conscious of those Treaty obligations. That's why for those groups who have fewer than a thousand hectares with an appropriate partner they are going to join us in ensuring the billion-tree strategy is delivered. We are not going to acquiesce any longer with the wholesale sale and alienation as the other House has done for the last nine years of our valuable rural landscape. Those days are over."