Roberts AngelaANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call on the Crown Minerals (Prohibition of Mining) Amendment Bill. I want to start by congratulating the member: if you only get one crack in 12-odd years it's good to be something that you really deeply care about. So I'm really pleased that we are spending time—Simon Court: Does Labour care about it though?ANGELA ROBERTS: —considering this. It's really important. We got asked—we've just been asked—on 8 May our Rt Hon Prime Minister Christopher Hipkins reconfirmed our commitment to no new mines on conservation land. So we have got a lot to talk about. The really interesting thing is we support the intent of the bill. We support everything that encourages us to have a really good debate about how we best protect our conservation land. We appreciate the policy intent. But this bill goes beyond that commitment and it doesn't actually I believe give us a process where we end up in the strongest position for protecting our conservation land.So we've heard about this amazing nation of ours where a third of our land area—8.5 million hectares of land—is conservation land. Now for those who would be zoning in from other parts of the planet that sounds like Wow you've got all of these national parks; that's pretty cool." I'm very privileged I live in the shadow of Te Papakura o Taranaki—I never get sick of saying that fabulous new name—under that beautiful maunga and I'm very very grateful for the forethought that created that national park so long ago. When you fly over Taranaki and you see that ring plane where at some point somebody realised they needed to stop clearing trees and that recognition is really really significant.But of that 8.5 million hectares we have a whole pile of different classifications and different levels of protection. The intention is to best preserve the natural historic and cultural resources that we have within them. So we have our national parks—like our beautiful maunga—and we have our wildlife areas and we have our conservation areas but we also have stewardship land. Most of that stewardship land was transferred across to the Department of Conservation when it was first created in 1987 because it was kind of considered to have some conservation value. But those areas haven't been assessed since 1987—those areas haven't been assessed to see if they require additional protection. So there's this massive piece of stewardship land which we're not quite sure how we should best be looking after it.If we think back to 1987—many of us can remember back that far. I wasn't actually living in New Zealand at the time but I do remember all of the things that we were thinking about in 1987 and we certainly weren't thinking about our relationship with the whenua in the way that we do today. I think that the maturity that has grown over those decades since 1987 where we have really changed not just our relationship with our land and the way that we think of it—this whole idea of classifying how valuable something is seems well a bit 1980s to me; I think that we've moved on since then—but our relationship with iwi and their relationship with the land and our learning about Te Ao Māori and mātauranga Māori has changed considerably. So the conversations about classification are so different now than they were in 1987.When I think about the latest Treaty settlement with Taranaki iwi with the seven iwi that live around our maunga and the latest settlement with the way that the partnership has been developed between the Crown with the Department of Conservation (DOC) and with all of the iwi it's been a fascinating process to witness and it is a really really different relationship than would've been formed 20 years ago. So we've got huge opportunities with the shift in the way that we relate to iwi when we have these conversations about what these different classes of land are—for want of a better term—and our relationship has changed.The problem with this legislation unfortunately: it goes beyond our commitment to no more mines on conservation land and it goes before. So the problem is it goes before a true engagement in partnership with iwi about the implications for them. There've been quite significant assumptions about the four Treaty relationships that may be impacted—there probably are more—and it goes before we have completed the process of reclassification that we have been involved in. We know that the reclassification that 2.5 million hectares 9 percent of land area and 30 percent of the DOC estate which is the stewardship land which needs to be reclassified so that we can actually add greater protections further protections to protect that conservation land should be done before we have this blanket piece of legislation which will in the end be less robust and will not have the longevity that taking our time and our care to really make the most of the relationships that we have with iwi and with the reclassification—there's a lot of land and we need to take the care. I appreciate the sense of urgency that has been expressed from the other side of the House—I get that completely—but we need to get it right because it's way too important to get it half wrong or half right and then have some careless gaps in it and for it to not be robust.I spend a lot of time in my national park. You know it's quite a thing when one of my children gets their first pair of—when they graduate from sneakers to tramping boots because you know their feet grow too quickly to wear out their tramping boots and finally their feet get big enough that we get their first pair of tramping boots. We absolutely cherish our national parks. This Government is completely committed to protecting our conservation land—that is a given. We know this. So many of us in this House have stories of how precious this land is to us. You know you drag your kids out of bed at 5 o'clock in the morning and say "You're going to love being on the mountain for the sunrise." and they don't think it's a great idea and then suddenly you know an hour and a half later you know you come around a corner on the track and the sun's just popped over the horizon and you see Ruapehu and you see Tongariro and you actually realise how small our little country is. And the kids go "Oh yeah I suppose that was all right." and they're just beaming.You know how good is it for us to have access to such amazing places? A third of our nation is under the conservation estate and we have to make sure that we get it right because if we don't then there will be opportunity for loopholes to be exploited. I think there are challenges around making sure that we get it done in a timely manner but we also need to make sure we get it right.It is about relationships and the weird thing is in 1987 we never talked about our relationship with the national park. You know at that point we were arguing about you know the bumper stickers—you know who was Egmont anyway? You know that's how far we've moved since 1987. In 1987 we were arguing about whether or not we should be naming our mountain and our national park after a guy who didn't even know it existed and now we have Te Papakura o Taranaki. So our conversation has shifted since then. It's really really important that as we reclassify the stewardship land and everything else we do it properly. Our relationship with the whenua and our relationship with iwi require that of us. It is really really important that we do it right and we absolutely respect and endorse the intent of this bill but it is going not just beyond our commitment but before what we need to do to fulfil our commitment to no new mining on conservation land. And it is because of that that I cannot commend this bill to the House."