Delahunty Catherine: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is subject to correctionDelahunty Catherine: 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.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):In the short time left before dinner I would just like to pay tribute to some people: the people in this country who 27 years ago and since stood up after many a battle to protect the trees on the West Coast so that they would not be logged. They stood up against logging—climbed trees lobbied wrote bills submitted educated others—and said that there was something more valuable for the future of this country than the commercial logging of those trees. The conservation estate did not set aside all the trees but it set aside enough. In that space those trees rely on us. They rely on us to do the right thing tonight and make sure that that forest can regenerate—not through some bizarre manufactured scheme where we say “Let’s remove the wind-blown timber and then it will all be so much better.” which is an ecological absurdity but by allowing nature to take her course. I would like to thank Rod Donald Jeanette Fitzsimons and other giants of the conservation movement including my colleague Eugenie Sage for their principled and consistent stand that said that we actually need to protect the forests. This is an issue for the whole planet.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Why are we here? Why are we here on a Thursday night watching the Government pretending to be acting in the interests of people and the environment? This West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill is a game bill masquerading as economic pragmatism unattractive as that would be on its own. So read it and weep. We could be having an authentic and genuine conversation about the West Coast forests. We could be having an authentic and genuine debate about windfalls and about the use of those trees in relation to conservation and in relation to their role in the natural cycle. We could be debating that properly. We could be talking about the state of the native timber sawmill industry which the Government has never cared about. But all of a sudden under urgency it cares about that industry so desperately even though this bill will distort the market considerably.We could talk about the place of the West Coast forests in the conservation of the planet. It seems to me that we have forgotten where we are in the 21st century and we have just leapt back to the 19th century. But the people of this country are not leaping back with the Government. We will not be able to destroy what people know and care about with some cheap pragmatic shot. It is not possible for people to forget what they have learnt after 27 years of the conservation consensus around not logging on conservation land. It will not be possible to persuade the people of this country that there are no values to protect on the conservation lands except expediency. It will not be possible to persuade people that storm after storm the job is for humans to intervene in the natural process and clean it up somehow miraculously assisting the forests which cannot do it on their own. Nature of course does not know what she is doing but God and the Government do—let us intervene and let us make an industry out of a so-called disaster!The planet is changing and we are in the face of the greatest threat to the planet we have ever seen: climate change. There will be ongoing storms. My own area has just experienced one. Is that an argument for greater exploitation of the forests that protect us from climate change? That logic is not going to wash. It did not wash years ago which is why the people won the argument. It was not won in this Parliament; it was won by the people of this country. In the end we have to win these arguments. We have to recognise yet again that there are still people for whom money is the only motivation—that and political gain. This is not really about the money. This is not really about jobs. This is not really about making change. What this is really about is that this is an election year. If you wanted to drive a wedge between people this was a good manoeuvre but it does nothing for the status of the Department of Conservation or the status of the agreement that was made in this country to protect the conservation lands. It does not add up and people are not going to forget what happened here and in whose name and why. There is much more to say but for now I would just like to acknowledge as I did at the beginning that many people fought to protect these forests and many people still remember and will fight again.