Mackey Moana: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is subject to correctionMackey Moana: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 June 2014. Volume:702;Page:18941. Text is subject to correction.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour):I have some amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 475 in my name on Part 1 of the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill. I too would like to voice my concern that this bill has not gone before a select committee even for a very short period of time. I appreciate that the Minister of Conservation wants to get this done quickly but there was not any consultation with members on this side of the House. With regard to the grand statements that we have been hearing of “It would be so wonderful if we could get Labour to support it.” well maybe if Labour had been involved earlier on so that we could have asked some of these questions then maybe that could have happened. But of course there was never any intention or desire to have cross-party support on this issue at all which is why that did not happen. There was no consultation with the local MPs and here we are in urgency having to put a bill through.I have to say with the greatest of respect that having been through the Ruataniwha Dam issue with this Minister I am afraid that I do not trust some of the things he says—bluntly. As my colleague Ruth Dyson said there have been a couple of issues where the Minister has done a sterling job and we will always give credit where credit is due but then we have also been burnt a fair number of times by this Minister and the Ruataniwha Dam was a classic example. So we have deep concerns over the accuracy of some of the statements that have been made. How many jobs and how much wealth is actually going to come back to the West Coast due to this piece of legislation? How much money from royalties is actually going to go to conservation purposes? Although that is stated in the documents there is nothing in the bill that requires that to happen. I think we have just been burnt a few too many times by this Minister to be able to accept at face value everything he has said to us—to accept that there is no ulterior motive here—and support the legislation.Once again as we keep saying time and time again if as the Minister keeps saying this was about taking a few logs out and bringing jobs to the West Coast and if the proper protections were there that would be absolutely fine. Why does the Government keep deliberately overstepping on all these pieces of legislation? There are provisions in here that do not need to be in here and that are deeply worrying.We are being told “Well you don’t need to worry about it. There’s nothing that members opposite need to worry about.” Well if that is the case then why do they need to be there in the first place? The provisions are obviously there for some reason and that is why we have Supplementary Order Papers to remove and change some of the provisions in the bill.The first amendment in my Supplementary Order Paper is to change clause 4 to reduce the time frame from 5 years to 2 years. The Minister gave us his reason in his first reading speech as to why that time frame was the case. Again I would actually like to be able to sit down with officials and go through a lot of that stuff. I think that is what a select committee process albeit truncated would have allowed us—to hear from experts. As a scientist myself I know it is very easy to cherry-pick research. It is much better to be able to sit down with groups of people. I am sure there are divergent views on this issue as there are on many things but it is good to get that expertise at a select committee to be able to sit with people who know a lot more about this than we do and to be able to actually hear from them what they think an adequate time frame should be.I was also concerned to hear the Minister during the first reading speech of my colleague Ruth Dyson who was talking about the Conservation Act turn round and say to one of his colleagues: “Oh that means we can never change the Conservation Act because it’s been there for so long.” It worries me—so we are now talking about changing the Conservation Act. This is the worry. The Minister nods. This is the worry: that this is actually a stalking horse for something more. If this was simply about what he has been talking about—taking a few logs out after a major weather event and bringing jobs to the West Coast—then that would be fine. But that is not what this legislation does. It goes so much further and there must be a reason why which begs the question: what is that reason? And when I see the Minister nodding to show that the Conservation Act might now be up for review and discussion despite the fact that it has been settled since 1987 then that does make me concerned that this is as I said a stalking horse for something else.We have reduced that time frame from 5 years down to 2 years which we think is appropriate but we clearly acknowledge that we are picking numbers out of the air here because we have not been able to have the advantage of expert opinion through a select committee process. Also we have an amendment to clause 5 to include the designated area maps in the legislation. It is a simple change really but they should be in there. They should absolutely be in there. I am not sure why they were not included in there in the first place. I think when it comes—[Bell rung] Mr Chair?The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The honourable member Moana Mackey.MOANA MACKEY: Thank you Mr Chair. I am not going to take too much longer.The other area I would like the Minister to elaborate on is the issue raised by my colleague Ruth Dyson about the monitoring of this and how we will know that it is actually windfall timber that is being taken out and not timber that is actually fine. We have a definition of “irreversibly damaged” in relation to timber that is “dead; or damaged to the extent that it is likely to die within the near future”. “Damaged to the extent that it is likely to die within the near future” does seem to me a fairly subjective definition. Although “dead” is obvious how are we going to make sure that the logs being taken out—where someone is making a judgment call based on the fact they can get a bit of money for that—are going to be likely to die in the future? Where are the belts and braces around who makes that determination?How are we going to check that the logs being taken out are actually logs that were damaged or destroyed during that storm and are not perfectly healthy logs? I suspect given the comments the Minister has made particularly about beech which deteriorates quite quickly they might want to take a couple of healthier-looking trees because obviously if a tree was alive when they actually felled it then it is going to be in much better condition by the time it gets to market. So I think particularly in terms of those trees the Minister himself has identified as being ones that deteriorate quickly there is a real risk that it is not going to be windfall timber that is taken but is actually going to be trees that have nothing wrong with them or are in a state where they would regenerate if they were left to do so. So I would like a little bit of comment from the Minister because obviously that is not stuff that you would expect in legislation. Who is going to be checking this? Who is going to be monitoring it? And how are we going to know that we are not creating a massive loophole for people who want to go in and actually take healthy trees healthy native timber out of our conservation estate as opposed to the timber the Minister is talking about which is the excess stuff that is lying on the ground?I think we have general consensus around the House that it is a normal part of the ecological cycle to have trees that fall that die and that degrade. It is all part of the nutrient cycle. It is part of the habitat. The Minister is talking about a level above that. I am not clear from reading the regulatory impact statement the departmental report or the bill about exactly what level the Government is expecting in terms of the timber take.I note the comments from my colleague Damien O’Connor which I thought showed his knowledge of the area around how much economically is realistically going to be able to be taken out and what the trees that are most likely to be targeted are going to be. What my colleague Damien O’Connor who has on-the-ground experience of the West Coast in this area is saying is quite different from what the Government is saying in all its documentation.Hon Ruth Dyson: Yep absolutely. Who knows the place better?MOANA MACKEY: That is right. So my worry is that in fact this is not just about what my colleague Damien O’Connor talked about which was that when going in and taking out some of those extra trees it is not going to be a lot and it is most likely to be rimu more than anything else. I am a bit worried that this is actually going to be about flooding markets that are already depressed with a large amount of native timber despite the fact that the economics are not necessarily there for some of it.Again I come back to that very serious question around how we know that the timber we are taking is stuff that has been damaged in the storm and is not stuff that someone has just decided to cut down and say was damaged in the storm. I really just want to leave my comments on Part 1 there but I welcome the Minister’s clarification on those points.