Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I find it astonishing that there are Government members here who are opposing the recognition and protection from mining of our three World Heritage areas—sites that Unesco has recognised as being of international significance and value to all humankind. The Green Party is very pleased to support the Hon Ruth Dyson's bill the Crown Minerals (Protection of World Heritage Sites) Amendment Bill. We have got these three World Heritage areas in New Zealand: south-west New Zealand Te Wāhipounamu the Subantarctic Islands and Tongariro. There are only 878 sites internationally that Unesco has recognised as being deserving of World Heritage status and we have three of those in New Zealand. Tongariro was the first site to be recognised internationally for its natural and cultural landscape values: the spiritual and cultural values of those mountains which were given so generously by Tūwharetoa to be our first national park.South-west New Zealand has got astonishing values with our ancient beech kahikatea rimu forests the snowcapped mountains and the rivers wetlands and lakes of that region. It is recognised as being an outstanding example of our geological history our evolutionary history and yet only part of south-west New Zealand is protected from mining as a national park: Westland Tai Poutini National Park Fiordland National Park and Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park. There is an extensive area of conservation land from Gillespies Beach near Fox Glacier right down to the Hollyford River that is open to mining. Given this Government's plans to continue with its extractivist economic policy to increase mining on the West Coast we need this bill to protect those areas of the South-west New Zealand World Heritage site that are outside national parks.This economic development study which the Government—the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE)—has commissioned for the West Coast has at its heart increasing mining on the Coast. It is proposing what the Government is calling a single window for considering applications for more mining and what that means is that the provisions of the Conservation Act will be given much less attention. You will have the district councils and the regional council coming together in a whole-of-Government process with central government agencies like MBIE and giving that tick to mining applications.We will have the Department of Conservation (DOC) which once upon a time would have seriously looked at the ecological impacts of mining on the conservation estate being suppressed and told to grant consent because under this National Government we have seen DOC reduced to a mere shadow of its former self in terms of advocating for conservation.So we need this bill particularly in south-west New Zealand because of the extensive areas that the Government wants to open up for mining as part of its regional development strategy on the Coast. This document that MBIE has put out—and the Ministry for Primary Industries has put its name to as well and that the Ministers have signed off on—is all about more mining.It also proposes selling off conservation land on the West Coast and that is because of the pressure that the mining industry is putting on the Government. I think that was symbolised tonight in the TVNZ item where Minister Joyce had been flown around the West Coast by Stevenson Mining to look at the Te Kuha site. He was labelled the Minister of Conservation". We have Steven Joyce as Minister of Finance telling the Minister of Conservation that conservation land is going to be opened up to more goldmining more coalmining and more extractive industry which will destroy its conservation values.The Green Party recognises the international value of our World Heritage sites and wants them protected from destructive mining operations. We are very happy to support this bill."