Fitzsimons Jeanette: Crown Minerals Amendment Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Crown Minerals Amendment Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:610;Page:7629] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Green Party supports Part 1 of this bill as it does the whole bill which after all just seeks to implement the original intent of the Crown Minerals Act which was later shown by the courts not to have quite the legal effect that was intended at the time. So this is just Parliament picking up where Parliament was more than a decade ago. It is part of a trend over several decades to stop giving mining prior status over all other land uses. It has not quite achieved that yet and I will come back to that later. There is still some way to go. In replacing the Mining Act the Crown Minerals Act got rid of the outrageous situation we used to be in where a landowner could be forced to allow access over his or her land to minerals under that land completely disrupting other land uses—farming operations or whatever—and had no right to say no. The landowner’s right was instituted by the Crown Minerals Act in 1991 and that was a step forward. 
The notion of rights to perpetual renewal of leases licences or permits is inappropriate when dealing with public resources. The perpetual right of renewal—such as has been the case for pastoral leases in the South Island for example—has effectively led to privatisation of public assets. Those leasehold lands change hands as though they were freehold. It is virtually impossible for the Government to end the lease even though no capital payment was ever made in the first place for the occupation of the land. The Opposition is talking about property rights and seems to believe that property rights over the access to public resources should be in perpetuity. The Green Party does not agree with that. 
The vesting of pounamu in Ngai Tahu was part of the Crown’s efforts to honour the Treaty of Waitangi and we do not believe it is appropriate for a company to try to undermine that effect of the treaty. Pounamu is a very special mineral. Its value in spiritual and cultural terms is at least as great as its economic value. We note that the bill still protects the legal position of Glenharrow Holdings. 
We support mineral exploration companies having to relinquish at least 50 percent of the area covered by their exploration permits should they wish to extend the term of those permits from 5 years up to 10. That should increase the efficiency of mineral exploration. By the time companies have been exploring for 5 years they should have narrowed down a little bit the area where minerals are likely to be and where they are not. It will give them an incentive to get on with the job—if they do not use their licence they will lose it. 
This bill however misses two opportunities to remedy a couple of defects in the original Act. The first one is the anomaly in the Crown minerals legislation that only national parks created before it was passed in 1991 are covered by the fourth schedule and so are protected from applications to carry out minerals prospecting exploration or extraction. In its 2002 manifesto Labour said it would ensure that the Conservation Act and the Crown Minerals Act provided adequate protection from mining activities for areas of significant conservation value. It is odd that land of equal status under the Conservation Act is treated differently depending on whether it got there before or after 1991. 
Secondly the Government has not used the opportunity to further remove the special status of mining. Labour’s policy stated that it would amend the Crown Minerals Act and the Conservation Act to establish an appropriate public process for the consideration of prospecting exploration and mining applications on conservation land not covered by the mineral activity ban—as occurs with other commercial activities such as tourism and recreational concessions. There is still no process for the public to be involved when— 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. It would be helpful for those of us who are following this debate closely if the member speaking could give us some guidance as to which particular clause in Part 1 she is referring to. It sounds like she is reading a second reading speech and she has not referred to any particular clause in Part 1 at all. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: That is a debatable issue. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: I am speaking on issues in Part 1 such as clause 4 “Record of permit”; clause 5 “Change to permit”; clause 6 “Revocation of permit”; clause 7 “Surrender of permit”; clause 8 “Transfers and other dealings with permits”; and so on. 
Just to finish because I think I must be almost out of time I was saying that there is no process—as there is for other sorts of concessions on the conservation estate—for mining to be open to a public process. We believe there should be.