Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. I stand to take the final call on the first reading of the Adverse Weather-affected Timber Recovery on Conservation Lands Bill. Unfortunately it looks like it will be the last reading—full stop. And I'll talk a little bit about what has been said in some of the other speeches. One of the main issues is around the terminology of logging". This is a huge mischaracterisation of what actually goes on in one of these weather events—and I will come back to that a little bit later with some stats around that.This bill was never proposing anything that hasn't already happened that hasn't already been tested in both the administration and the practical application the operations that happen on the ground and within the Department of Conservation (DOC). This bill is simply a continuation of the legislation that was passed back in 2014 and that's been mentioned a lot in this House. But what's also been mentioned is that this is a scale-up. This is not a scale-up. The reality is that this legislation parks the authorisation with the Director-General of Conservation for when or if there is another event. Many members on the other side—it must have been in their speech notes—have all said "We can pass special legislation for specific events." This is exactly what this bill sets out to achieve. It creates the template so that the Director-General of Conservation can at any time if there is a scaled event re-enact this authorisation that he will have to maybe go into the forest and take some of that timber out. It puts a huge amount of methodology into the system that we've already got because as I've said it's been tested over the Cyclone Ita experience that we had.The members on the other side are also very confused about the types of land that we are talking about. This bill does not go near any of the nature reserves. It doesn't go near the scientific reserves ecological areas or national parks. So we are not talking about pristine environments. Mainly what we talk about with this bill is stewardship land or land that has very low conservation values. So it's important to note that during the implementation of the 2014 event there were no lost time injuries or events for the workers on the ground or the public that was involved in the forest. It was an extremely dangerous situation and I give full credit to DOC and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) for working together to manage the health and safety aspects of it. But we also saw ecologists and resource managers from Landcare Research Lincoln University MPI and DOC all work closely together to ensure that the timber was removed safely and that there was minimal impact on the environment.Now I just want to explain too about the scale of the operations. So for instance if there were several hectares of windthrow timber only half of that was able to be used—so if you had one hectare here one hectare here had to be preserved. Inside that one hectare you could salvage only a minimal amount—50 percent of the trees that came down in this one hectare. So we're talking about 50 percent of 50 percent. Then you could take only 10 percent of the biomass of each tree. So there was a minimal amount of extraction that went on in the forest.I wanted to go back to talking about some of the comments that were made about the mischaracterisation of what this bill sets out to achieve. It is not plundering. The trees that were flattened in Cyclone Ita covered an area the size of all of Samoa and out of that we got a minimal amount of material. We got 8000 cubic metres of timber that came out of there. There were millions of cubic metres of fallen trees that have remained in the forest. This bill talks about giving authority to the Director-General of Conservation. The problem on that side of the House is that none of them can see the wood for the trees. This was a practical solution."