English Bill: Fiordland Marine Management Bill — First Reading 
English Bill: Fiordland Marine Management Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:622;Page:18127] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 That was a substantial contribution from that member and more than we are used to. 
Simon Power 
: Which is a big call. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Which is a big call. I do compliment the Ministers who have brought this bill forward. I think the House does not understand how radical a departure it is from the usual vein of environmental policy. Both Pete Hodgson and Marian Hobbs have been involved and it is great that they have seen the wisdom of a proposal that has emanated from my electorate. I particularly congratulate John Steffens who has managed this process for a number of years with a mixture of patience insight and determination without which this bill would not be here. 
The reason this bill is such a departure from traditional environmental policy is that it treats the local people as if they have some understanding and sense of stewardship of the Fiordland Marine Area and the national park. The usual way that this Government in particular has done business is to sit in Wellington decide that it wants to lock something up for the good of the nation walk all over the local interests treat them as if they were environmental vandals and do not care push legislation through with the subtlety of a jackboot then sit back watch the controversy and hope it generates some support in metropolitan areas. 
I had to sit through exactly that process when Labour decided to deal with indigenous forest policy and its impact on my electorate back in the late 1980s and flowing through into the early 1990s. It ended up being a disastrous policy. It cost the Government tens of millions of dollars to get something it could have got for almost nothing if only it had enlisted the cooperation of the local people. Although people from the Forest and Bird Protection Society sitting in their offices and the Minister of Conservation sitting in his ivory tower— 
Phil Heatley 
: Same office. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: —the same ivory tower—may think that people who live next to the Fiordland National Park have no idea what a glorious asset it is in fact they do. In this case it is the horny-handed fishermen who initiated— 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: What? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well in every way the Minister might care to take that. They initiated the whole idea of the Fiordland Marine Area. The last speaker the co-leader of the Greens was right: they did it to head off a ridiculous proposal to turn the whole of the fiords into a marine reserve. That was always stupid. It would have ridden over all the local interests and existing users and the locals decided to do something about it. 
So this measure is a new model and it has a number of characteristics that are desirable. First it is localised. Professor Mark regards himself as a local. He is a man of much knowledge about the area but in the end he is a pontificating environmentalist from Dunedin and I hope from the positive contribution he has already made that the Government will not stay wedded to the idea that the success of the whole enterprise has depended on the parachuting in of some academic expert. But the proposition is localised. Local interests generated it and ultimately they will be the guardians of whether this legislation works. 
It is also more integrated and I must back up the comments made by my colleague Nick Smith. New Zealand does not have an oceans policy. The management of these coastal areas is fragmented and fractionated. This measure gives the opportunity for at least one part of New Zealand to operate under integrated management. 
It is also flexible. We will have the opportunity to shift the balance of interests as changes in use shift—and a lot of change in use is going on in the fiords particularly in respect of tourism. It is important that the governance of that area can react to changing circumstances. 
I want to contrast this exercise with what is going on with the national park plan a process run by the Department of Conservation. This exercise is participative and consultative; the various interests get a say and they all feel they have been treated with integrity. That is in sharp contrast to the way that tourism aviation and fishing interests are being treated by the Department of Conservation as it draws up the new Fiordland National Park plan. That plan has been in the making for at least as long as this particular proposal. But what happens after years of talking is that the Department of Conservation lodges a plan everyone submits on it and there are long delays while the department prepares its revised version of the plan. Then at the last minute the department makes proposals for drastic changes particularly in respect of Milford Sound. That has left many of the interests around Fiordland National Park out of the legal process but more important it has poisoned their attitude towards the Department of Conservation which in many respects does not do a bad job. But in this case when large-scale last-minute proposals are introduced—actually a rewrite of whole sections of the plan—and people are given 3 or 4 days to react and submit people have every right to feel they have been duped. 
If the Department of Conservation thinks that is the way it will continue to do business in respect of the national park then it is wrong. The department ought to pay attention to this legislation and to the attitudes the compromises the vision and the environmental understanding that lie behind it. The department is doing itself permanent damage in the eyes of many people who work in the national park and have regard for it. I would hope the Minister of Conservation would do better than to act with his usual dismissive arrogance and to take advice from people who have no particular interest in my community. He should intervene in the process of the national park plan and fix it up. Because not many changes were proposed in the initial plan people did not submit on it. Then when the department made major changes it took the legal view and told people that because they did not submit in the first place they could not submit now—even though the plan looked completely different from the original one. 
I have a final point to make about marine reserves. Although they are incorporated in this plan I think they are a concept that has had its day. This plan shows there is widespread willingness to get to grips with the management of marine areas. The idea was that the only thing one can do in a marine area is to have a marine reserve with all the attendant legal and policing difficulties but it is now becoming clear that that tool does not work. It is not the best tool to have and we will be having a scrap over marine reserves at Kaka Point. It is much better for the Crown to pursue the various management options available that take into account the balance of interests in the marine environment with the understanding that almost everyone has goodwill towards preserving and enhancing that marine environment. 
As the local member I certainly will be supporting the Fiordland Marine Management Bill. I congratulate the local individuals who have put it together. I do not think there is much that the select committee can do to improve on it and I hope that its hearings on the bill will not be an opportunity for the various bureaucrats and lobby groups who do not like it to come round the back door and try to pull it apart.