Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): I am happy to provide an explanation and can I acknowledge the work of both Maggie Barry and the Department of Conservation in developing these more practical provisions for dealing with concession applications.I think it is important to firstly understand and explain—for the question from the member from New Zealand First—that at the moment when a concession application is received by the Department of Conservation the Minister has to make a decision as to whether they intend to grant the concession. It causes huge confusion. The member may well recall the controversy when I was privileged to be Minister of Conservation around both the tunnel proposal and in respect of the monorail proposal. It creates quite a difficult confusion because it is as though the Government wants to favour. What we do want to have is—and members like Eugenie have been absolutely correct in saying these lands are there primarily for conservation purposes. The Minister of Conservation has got a really important role to protect that.What is being provided in the improved process in new section 17SB inserted by clause 178 is that before an application is even notified the department and the Minister are able to say: No I am not even prepared to consider that. I don't want to publicly notify; it is obvious that it is inconsistent with the purposes of what that land serves." In other words it is saying that it is so out of left field that we just want to say no at the beginning and I think that is a reasonable provision. These are public lands and for that purpose.The second question that has been asked is around the time frames and the 40 days / 20 days. The challenge I have for members opposed to this provision is: why is it any different from the Resource Management Act (RMA)? Whether it be for mining or whether it be for substantive activities if the arguments that Mr Parker wants to put forward that say that you have got community conservation organisations that are concerned—Hon David Parker: They're public lands.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Or what about a major mining proposal that has big impacts on the quality of water? That is a public resource equally important as our conservation land.What the Government is saying both in terms of the notification period—the 20 working days—and what is provided for in this part around the Christmas break period is to make the provisions exactly the same around conservation concessions as they are in the RMA. If members of the Labour Party and other Opposition members want to argue that these time frames are wrong I would put to them that they should also change the RMA because you can have massive multibillion-dollar projects with huge impacts on public resources on coastal space—all sorts of things—and I just think there is a really sensible argument for those to be consistent.The third point I would make around these provisions is actually a real problem for Ministers of Conservation—well certainly when I was there and previously. It is that people can lodge applications for concessions with minimal information requirements. I do draw members' attention to this part which substantially boosts the Department of Conservation's requirement that if you want to apply for a concession on public land you have to provide a lot more and better-quality information for that concession even before the clocks start ticking and they are being publicly notified. That I think is a substantial improvement in the way in which we manage concessions on public land."