Delahunty Catherine: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is subject to correctionDelahunty Catherine: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 June 2014. Volume:702;Page:18941. Text is subject to correction.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Chairperson. I want to take just a brief call on Part 1 of the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill in relation to a number of issues including the regulatory impact statement which is indeed a fascinating document. At least it is not blocked out like some of the times when we are going through urgency and you cannot read it because it has been covered in black ink.But if I was the Government I would wish that it was because actually this is a pretty damning document. It has clearly identified the status quo and there are major problem definitions around dealing with the status quo and this new idea. It is quite damning. One quote from page 2 is: “At some scale their removal would have negative effects on overall ecology and forest regeneration.” That is what the regulatory impact statement is actually saying. It is saying very clearly that native forests are subject to periodic wind events which cause trees to fall are major drivers of the distributions of trees within forests and generate the variety of habitats needed to maintain the biodiversity in those forests. So far from saying what I have heard from the Government speakers—that somehow if we cleared away the logs there would be this wonderful opportunity for the forest to grow up—the reality as my colleagues have said particularly in David Clendon’s last contribution is that it does not work that way in nature. The Green Party is if nothing else here to respect natural cycles and it is a shame that other people are not.The other quote I would like to give from the regulatory impact statement is in Appendix 1 which is the advice from the Department of Conservation’s chief science adviser which tells you that it was not written by the department. This whole bill was not written by the Department of Conservation. It does not come from it. It is being imposed upon it. It was actually obviously the Minister of Conservation who insisted upon this. The chief science adviser at the Department of Conservation says: “Given the severe nature of wind-throw and defoliation in some places on the Coast extensive regeneration and succession will need to be encouraged as much as possible—thus retention of a high volume of deadwood will ensure adequate release of nutrients for regeneration and suitable substrates for seedling growth.” Either this person the chief science adviser knows nothing or the expertise is all on the Government’s side. But actually when the regulatory impact statement says that this is the advice of the Department of Conservation’s chief science adviser it would be nice if it was heard—not only nice but it is really important for the future of our forests that we actually listen to the science and we actually take some cognisance of that science.Part 1 is like the rest of the bill: full of interesting contradictions and things that cannot be monitored. I am really interested in this clause about the poor old Director-General of Conservation who has to make sure that there is no irreversible damage in relation to the timber. You know this is pretty much an impossible task as others have mentioned. This person—well it is Lou Sanson actually the poor thing—is going to have to be the authoriser no longer of what goes on in the Department of Conservation estate from a conservation perspective but now of the new world and as Eugenie said of the multiple-use world. When I first worked for the Department of Conservation in 1990 there were new people there who had come in from Lands and Survey and they had come in from the Forest Service and there were the conservationists and we had this tension between those traditions. But over time the Department of Conservation brought the people together and actually strengthened the conservation effort so that the Forest Service no longer wanted to cut down all the trees and Lands and Survey no longer wanted to bulldoze things. What we did was build a conservation ethic that is the pride of our country.So instead of supporting that if you read the regulatory impact statement and if you read these clauses in Part 1 you realise that the director-general has been brought in to oversee the wake to oversee the end of the conservation ethic in the conservation estate. That is a great job to have for poor old Lou Sanson who is a very genuine conservationist. He has been brought in and I do not know whether he knew that this was coming at him. But if you look at the debacle at Bathurst where they do not have $22 million and they cannot afford to mine we have got the myth of net conservation benefit being fobbed off on the Department of Conservation. It is now having to sacrifice one of the rarest ecosystems that I have ever seen in my life at Denniston for a faux mining operation by an Australian company that actually does not have any money because the coal price has collapsed. But somehow we have got to accept that there will be this miraculous $22 million because mining companies never fail and they never fail to provide the money that they promised! Somehow that is all going to happen magically and now the director-general has this wonderful new job and that wonderful new job is to license logging.