Delahunty Catherine: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9318. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): I support my colleague Ruth Dyson’s call for clarity. I think Part 5 of the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill is another example of changes that are allegedly technical but the submitters really struggled with those changes. For them there was a fear that once again changes were being made in order to privilege Cabinet over the Minister or Order in Council over proclamation. Again people did not know why. There was not a rationale for changing this. The Wildlife Act 1953 which was passed the year I was born has been functioning for a very long time. It is there to protect some of the most amazing wildlife in the world. If you look at the Auckland Islands Zealandia Kāpiti IslandHauturu—some of these places are not Wildlife Act reserves but some of them are. What people want to know is what is going on why we are changing this what the point is and how we can trust it.The whole issue with the Crown Minerals Act is because of the purpose—other parts being so clearly about privileging one industry. People at the Commerce Committee hearings were deeply distrustful of other changes. They were not satisfied with superficial rationales about Part 5. They were not convinced that wildlife would beprotected any more than reserves or other parts of the Department of Conservation estate—other areas that have been set aside before by the years of hard work of many many people to protect them. The people at the hearings were not satisfied and they were not clear about it. I do not think that the select committee process made it any clearer. It is unfortunate that my colleague’s questions were not answered. We do not have clarity. No one seems prepared to say why it is better to treat the Wildlife Act provisions in this way and why it is better to change the provisions in Parts 4 and 5.People could argue that we should just trust that the Government knows what it is doing but given Supplementary Order Paper 210 given the rest of this bill and given this week in Parliament I do not think that anybody feels like trusting that the best is being done. I think that if legislation is obscure arcane difficult to understand and unclear to people including those of us who were there after the select committee process and if we still do not see why and we have been through this process—because with officials doing their best the Government did not come clean about its agenda—we get this kind of confusion and we get this kind of concern. I just wanted to stand up and say that this bill has been dogged by the myth that it contains just technical and administrative changes when it is a fundamental shift in values. The Government has misread the values of this country. We do not privilege minerals over all else. We want proper law and proper regimes that actually create fairness and protection for sustainable things. That has not happened. This bill has gone the other way and so there is no trust around Part 5. There is no trust around any of the rest of it. I think that Supplementary Order Paper 205 which was produced on Easter Sunday—the Petrobras burning of the bridges—was a classic example. Thank you very much.