Roy Eric: Walking Access Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Roy Eric: Walking Access Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:650;Page:19207] 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 I am somewhat motivated by the words of John Carter in regard to one or two issues here. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: You must be joking. 
ERIC ROY 
: Well Mr Cosgrove may laugh but there are some significant issues here. It very much depends on the expectation of the public and how quickly they want this resolved and on the attitude of landowners and how willing they are to enter into negotiation. It very much depends on those people who have set up structures for private capture for pecuniary gain—and at this stage those people are in a minority—and whether that will be an increasing trend on whether negotiation will resolve that and on how that might tie up the Walking Access Commission. Those things need to be said. I think it also needs to be said quite clearly that if the Walking Access Bill does not resolve some of those issues we will be back in this House facing some debate on some amendments to this bill. We need to put that on record. 
The first clause the title clause is what we are we are debating. The bill is entitled the Walking Access Bill and that might conjure up all kinds of things in people’s minds but essentially the bill is about negotiated access. That is the first point that we need to put out there. There has been a degree of goodwill. It has been about a 5-year journey since the first ministerial reference group set up by Jim Sutton met. 
I have said before in this debate that I think Jim Sutton made an error of judgment when he said he wanted the group to look at the wander-at-will provisions because that just got all the landowners’ backs up. We lost that goodwill for quite a period of time but we have now got it back on track. This bill states clearly that it is about access by negotiation. That fact is not embraced in the title but it is embraced in about seven places where that terminology is used. That needs to be quite clear. We are recognising property rights; it is a walking access bill. 
We are also talking about clause 2 the commencement clause. This bill has been a 5-year journey and I think there is a sense of expectation on the part of the recreational community that this will be advanced. I am not sure how long after the bill is enacted—and the Minister in the chair the Hon Damien O’Connor might like to respond—that the Walking Access Commission will be set up. The bill is also very light on how those people are appointed and what skill sets they have. It is even relatively vague about the numbers—somewhere between five and eight. I can understand that we do not want the Walking Access Commission to fall over if one member becomes indisposed is not able to attend or whatever but the bill is quite vague on those matters. 
Although clause 2 “Commencement” states that the bill will be enacted it does not mention what the time frames are for the Walking Access Commission to be set up and operational or its terms of reference. The fleshing out of all of that is not in the bill. However the National Party is supporting this bill. We think it is a step forward. We look forward to the third reading. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
Clause 2 agreed to. 
Bill reported without amendment. 
Report adopted.