Sage Eugenie: Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Sage Eugenie: Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:678;Page:1269] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 I am intrigued by the comments of the previous speaker Shane Ardern and the lambasting of the previous Labour Government for a very visionary purchase on a “willing buyer willing seller” basis of both the Birchwood Station and the St James Station. They have been major additions to the conservation estate and the fact that they are now in full Crown ownership means that we can as members of the public go mountain biking go tramping and go walking all over those properties. The only problem with the Birchwood purchase was that the funds that the lessee gained were then used to intensify dairying in the Otago Basin south of Twizel.  
Moving to the Crown Pastoral Land (Rent for Pastoral Leases) Amendment Bill I note that a 2009 Cabinet minute records the National Government’s objectives for Crown pastoral land. One of these is effective stewardship of Crown pastoral land and that was defined in the minute as: “Ecologically sustainable management is promoted.” But Parts 1 and 1A of this bill are a missed opportunity to promote ecologically sustainable management through the renting-setting process.  
 Given that the bill as others have alluded makes a fundamental change in the way in which valuation and rents are set in the high country it would have been much better to have used the opportunity the bill provided to look at the rules for how base carrying capacity is defined. At the moment the bill provides that these rules can be developed using scientific information that is predictive of the base carrying capacity and information about the land. The bill does not provide for any requirement to consider ecological limits in establishing either the base or the current carrying capacity of the pastoral lease.  
Over the last 150 years the combined impacts of burning grazing of both stock and rabbits and the spread of weeds such as broom have dramatically changed the indigenous vegetation on our high country lands. Wetlands have been drained shrub-lands have been burnt and tussock grasslands have been converted to pasture. The health of what remains depends on the management regime adopted by the lessee the number of stock and whether those lessees recognise matagouri as a valuable shelter for stock during lambing whether they recognise its value as a nitrogen-fixer or whether they just regard it as a woody weed.  
If the Government was actually serious about promoting effective stewardship of high country lands it would have included clear criteria in Part 1 the definition clause and new Part 1A in which the bill would require some ecological assessment to be part of calculating the rentals and calculating what actually constitutes current carrying capacity. Those assessment criteria would have included matters such as the health and condition of indigenous vegetation whether wetlands were fenced or stock had access and could degrade them and whether broom or other weeds were extensive on the property.  
High country pastoral lease lands in the uplands provide critical ecosystem services values. Research by Professor Sir Alan Mark and others in the Otago uplands has highlighted just how important tussock grasslands are in maximising water yield. That is because the very long fine foliage of snow tussock plants can collect fog droplets much more effectively than exotic vegetation such as grasses and pines. This combined with the very low evapotranspiration of snow tussocks means that less water returns to the atmosphere and there is more water that can seep trickle and flow downstream when you have got tussock grassland cover in the uplands rather than pasture grass or pine trees. We all know how valuable water is in the eastern South Island and how highly contested it is. If we maximise the health of our snow tussock grasslands in the uplands we can then maximise the amount of water that is available down catchment both for fish and birds and also for other users.  
Therefore it is very disappointing that this bill fails to recognise the ecosystem services role of tussock grasslands and their role in harvesting fog and rain and the fact that the bill neither in Part 1 nor in new Part 1A includes any requirement that there be an ecological assessment to determine what constitutes current carrying capacity. If that was in there it would ensure that the number of stock that the pastoral lease could carry had some regard to what the land could actually sustain.  
The words in new clause 23A are very general. There is a reference to scientific information and information about the land. If it was the Government’s intention that those very general words did include an ecological assessment contributing to the establishment of current carrying capacity we would welcome some elucidation from the Minister about that. Thank you.