Dean Jacqui; McKelvie Ian; Dean JacquiCROWN PASTORAL LAND REFORM BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 12 August.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): This debate was interrupted at the last session and ACT have the next call.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. The great thing about a five-minute call is that by the time you get this thing off [Refers to face mask] a minute's gone. It doesn't actually give me a great deal of pleasure to speak on this bill and the reason for that I'll enunciate in the short time I've got. I've spent a lot of my life looking around farms in New Zealand being part of the farming community of New Zealand and I've had the privilege of visiting many of our iconic high country farms in the South Island in my time on this Earth. I think that some of them are magnificent. One of the problems with this bill is it's trying to effectively reinstate or reverse something that started to occur some 170-odd years ago. No matter how we try to reverse things that have happened in the past they can't be reversed unless we reverse them with human invention. So you can't expect things to just go back to how they were when they've been effectively changed by I guess human method or whatever we use to do things. So we change things as we go along and history sometimes proves that some of the changes we made weren't necessarily ideal. If that happens then we can at least make an attempt I guess to put things back in as best a state as we can but unless we use modern science and technology human intervention we can't achieve that.But to get back to the real issue around this bill the people who took up these—I guess I'd call them property rights or leases some of them 160 and 170 years ago some families did and still hold them today. They took them up in good faith and the Government put them out there in good faith. In fact I remember in my time even being part of a lease a little bit like this—different leases in the North Island. The North Island didn't have the same kind of pastoral lease as the South Island did but none the less we did have what were called 99-year leases. They did expire; these ones don't. So effectively when these were taken up they were seen as property rights and those people were seen to have the care of that land—I guess they could've foreseen that it would be for ever.We've had a few goes at interfering in this process in New Zealand's history and I think all of them have been unfortunate. But I think that one of the issues that we should consider as a Parliament when we're dealing with issues like what effectively is here called the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill is that people who have what could be termed property rights or the right to occupy and to operate land for profitable reasons or whatever can reasonably be expected to look after that land in a manner that's fully sustainable. The problem here is that we're interfering in a process and in my view negatively interfering in a process because we're putting constrictions on people who entered this process as I said sometimes 170-odd years ago in good faith and with a view to being there for ever.When you hold land you're not going to hold it with a view to undermining its future potential or in fact undermining its value to New Zealand either for that matter. As I said earlier the fact that we've changed the very nature of a lot of this land sometimes 170-odd years ago—or even much longer ago than that actually because for ever we've been using land for different reasons in New Zealand. I accept that we need to make provision to I guess as best we can ensure the sustainability of all types of business in New Zealand particularly agriculture because that's our keep but at the same time we need to take those people with us and take them with us in a manner that they can see a future in and that they're confident that they and their partnership in this case with the Government will operate in a manner that's sustainable.So I think it's very disappointing that we've gone again into this area and tried to—I'm not sure what we're trying to set out to achieve here actually because when you talk to those landholders and as I said almost all of them without exception are extraordinarily capable very talented people who have a love of that land and of the environment they live in that you seldom see matched elsewhere in New Zealand—and I think it's pretty special.I don't have long to speak on this bill but I do think it's a great shame to have gone down this path with this bill and we certainly can't support that. I'm sure that this very issue will come back to this Parliament again in the future one day because it certainly hasn't been—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member's time has expired. Thank you.