Dowie SarahSARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Look thank you Mr Chair for the opportunity to take a call in this Appropriation (2018/19 Estimates) Bill and as the lead for conservation on this side of the House that will be the focus of my contribution here. Of course as we are aware this is an opportunity for the new Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage to spell out her vision for conservation and the conservation effort in New Zealand moving forward and how she will enable the Department of Conservation to engage the community and lead them to involve themselves in a conservation ethic that will bring about a betterment for New Zealand.Quite frankly I was disappointed with a Minister that while she was a member in Opposition had all of the answers. She was very quick to tell us how to run the Department of Conservation and how to run our conservation initiatives but yet in the chair at the hearing she had no answers and quite frankly was wedded to an ideology that would take the Department of Conservation back to the 1980s—to the bad old days where the State would do everything—and she would not engage community. In the hearing she was quite clear about her reluctance to involve business to involve community and to involve people in a conservation initiative. One of the things that she said was that she was reluctant to garner support from business to garner support of extra funding into initiatives because she wanted to keep these businesses at arm's length and she was somewhat dubious about the influence that they would have on her officials.Well first of all I have faith in the officials at the Department of Conservation that they will not be swayed as to a conservation ethic and what is the right thing to do with respect to protecting and conserving an environment. But the other thing is that when you can bring business and partners on board not only do you get a financial return but you get that engagement where they can build trust and where they can bring stakeholders from a range of varying backgrounds together to push forward conservation benefits. That is true in one example with respect to Fonterra and their Living Water initiative and particularly in my area with respect to Waituna Lagoon which is a Ramsar Convention site. There is an ability to bring together farmers to bring together conservationists to bring together a range of different people—birdwatchers fishers or whoever is in the area together—and build that trust to look at a wetland and recognise its beauty and its conservation value and to work together around a table to create a set of common goals to bring forward conservation in that area.My question with respect to this is: how far will the new Minister take this? Will this continue—this abhorrence to involving the community in the likes of Predator Free 2050? Predator Free 2050 is based on the fact that we need our community to engage in the eradication of our pests and to involve themselves in conservation at community level at the grassroots. So is she going to sabotage that initiative by turning away people that want to get involved in conservation? And even further does this anti-partnership model stem to even other departments with partnerships such as the Department of Corrections where we take offenders and rehabilitate them through conservation efforts to build kākāpōriums to plant and nurture plants and then replant them and restore certain landscapes? How far will she take us backwards with not involving people on the ground in conservation? Conservation should not be a polarising issue. Conservation is owned—and everybody in New Zealand has a passion for conservation. We have an innate sense of connection to our natural environment and at all costs a connection with community should be cherished.