Delahunty Catherine: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18979. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):That was a point of order; I am taking my call. It is truly a bizarre moment in the history of this country when the Minister of Conservation gets up to do everything he can to justify logging fallen native trees for commercial gain not all over the place but on conservation land so that money can be made. It seems as if milling fallen native timber is suddenly the new cool conservation strategy. Black is white and George Orwell would be rewriting Nineteen Eighty-Four. The bigger picture here has nothing to do with common sense or collecting firewood. It is an attack on the Conservation Act for the long term and on that basis we must oppose it and take it very very seriously.The process point must be addressed. My colleague Gareth Hughes was quite right to rise and talk about the fact that we need a select committee referral. Three months after the storm we are suddenly in urgency because somebody has had a big idea and that big idea which has no ecological worth or economic worth necessarily has suddenly been imposed. We have all seen the photograph but what we have not seen is the trees. We have not talked about the conservation values or what conservation land is set aside for.Why the Government would want to undermine the consensus of the last 27 years is a very interesting question but it is a kind of consistent position for it. It has never supported an end to logging on the West Coast in native forests. It has never supported that. So the idea of taking windfall timber and exporting it overseas is not a problem for it. It never was—the Government is consistent on that.It is also consistent in terms of its attitude towards what the new normal is in the conservation estate. It is an opportunity for commercial development. If the Department of Conservation is so cheeky as to want more money to do its extremely large number of functions that has got to be paid for by exploiting the conservation estate. It is the ultimate in user-pays. It is a complete circle. It is also a boom-and-bust cycle. It is a boom-and-bust cycle economically and also because after 5 years any work it has created will be gone. Also it is a boom-and-bust cycle because it will affect the timber industry in this country. We have never had a commitment to a sustainable timber industry apart from pine. This is not it. It is not designed to be; it is a very obvious election manoeuvre. But what is missing is what the point is of having a Department of Conservation. What is the point? Why is the Government even pretending to call it that when it just wants to open the place up?The ecological wisdom that was revealed by Gerry Brownlee was extraordinary. Suddenly and incoherently the Government members are experts on ecology and therefore they know that there is absolutely no point in allowing dead trees to rot because somehow that is a waste. If we had a select committee we could have a debate about the meaning of the word “waste” and the meaning of the word “worthless”. That is the debate we should be having about this forest rather than launching into a hastily written badly designed completely disingenuous bill that will open up the conservation estate.What happens now in the Coromandel if we have kauri dieback? Shall we pull those trees out and mill them as well? I do not like to make suggestions because anything is now possible on the conservation estate—anything. Whether it is mining oil or logging windfall anything is now possible. That is something the New Zealand public needs to think about. The Minister of Conservation has more of a scientific background than many people but seems more than happy to ignore basic ecological facts if there is money to be made from ripping out storm-damaged timber from the conservation estate. Actually it is a consistent position but we need to name it as such because at the heart of this is the purpose of the conservation lands: they were set aside for the protection and healing of our unique forests. The bill is designed to kick open the door and it could be a precedent. What is more it is sad and ignorant and shows that no conservation value can be assumed to be protected.Once they have brought in the haulers skinners and compactors are they going to helicopter it all out? No it does not say so in the bill. What kind of a mess are they going to make? Those of us who have seen forestry right across the country that is as open-ended as this bill have seen the mess. It has a huge impact on soils it has a huge impact on waterways and it has a huge impact on forest regeneration. The conservation estate is supposed to be about forests but I have not heard a word about forests. All I have heard about is the myth of jobs and there is more to say on that in the next reading. Kia ora tātou.