Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. ACT opposes this bill and should we have the privilege of becoming part of the next Government we will work to repeal it. So we want the pastoral farmers of the high country to know that the ACT Party has got their back and that goes for all farmers in New Zealand. We have significant concerns about this bill. This is an erosion of property rights. Advice was tended—Dr Duncan Webb: It's a leasehold.SIMON COURT: —to the committee—Dr Duncan Webb. Advice on property rights was tended to the committee that a 33-year perpetual lease is akin to the right of freehold tenure—Dr Duncan Webb: Oh go back and read your law book.SIMON COURT: —whether it's Crown land or not and Dr Duncan Webb is not a legal expert in property rights so we will defer to those who are. We also recognise that even though there is a Resource Management Act as flawed as it may be there is still a pathway which requires pastoral farmers in the high country who want to carry out activities that require consents under regional plans or district plans to go and obtain those consents and demonstrate to the environmental specialists at their local council exactly how they're going to mitigate the effects of pastoral farming activities that might cause erosion for example or they might be putting in a road and cause a bit of dust during construction phase. There is already a well-understood way that we address those effects: we write a management plan and then demonstrate to our communities and to local regulators that we can meet those environmental tests. That is why it is completely unnecessary to have the same set of tests vested in the Commissioner of Crown Lands and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) who are not people who are environmental specialists; they are simply administrators. They run spreadsheets and they manage property for the Crown.So let's have a bit of a think about what the Minister said. The Minister said that there's going to be a more hands-on approach from LINZ. Well I can tell pastoral farmers in the high country and any other farmers who are interested in what this Government intends for them that there is nothing more terrifying than these nine words: I'm from the Government and I'm here to help." If you've heard that before that was from Ronald Reagan a former US President and it applies as much today in New Zealand to pastoral farming and to people who own property—landlords or anyone who owns anything in New Zealand the Government is coming for you.Then we hear about the public interest. Well there is a public interest in how land is managed effectively but the public doesn't own this land; the Crown does and the Crown has an obligation to the leaseholders it is in a contract with to actually respect the conditions of the lease and to make sure that where the leaseholders have an obligation to the Crown they meet it. But the leaseholders can't possibly have an obligation to the public. This is a fiction created by this Government created by the Minister and the former Minister responsible for introducing this bill to the House. There is no public interest in how these lands are managed. In fact the interest is that the pastoral lessees—the farmers—obtain an economic return and that they can make sufficient profit—sufficient profit; it's a remarkable concept to the current Government and to the Labour Party and the Green Party—to pay for those things like pest control and weed control and fencing and enhancing the natural environment. Then we come to decision making and this is where it really gets concerning because not only do we have unelected officials with a complete deficit of understanding of environmental management who sit in the department and the Commissioner of Crown Lands but this bill also gives decision making through sleight of hand to unelected iwi Māori representatives. There is a provision in this bill which says the Crown must give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi when making decisions about farmers' consent applications about commercial activity applications and about the number of stock that can be carried on the land. Well let's be clear: the Crown does have a contract with iwi Māori; it's called the Treaty of Waitangi. But there's nowhere in the Treaty of Waitangi that talks about principles. In fact what the Treaty of Waitangi says is that every New Zealander is equal before the law. Queen Victoria was the ruler then and Queen Elizabeth is our ruler now—that's the law; "the Crown"—and if anyone tries to take your stuff the Queen or her agents would guarantee your property rights. Now what iwi Māori in 1840 and what the Crown pastoral lessees have in common is that they never realised that it would actually be the Crown coming to take their property rights—to take their stuff. But that's what we're seeing here today.Look evidence was tendered that Ngāi Tahu and other iwi sold their land or divested it to the Crown and they were paid for it. Now whether that was an appropriate level of compensation is dealt with through a Treaty of Waitangi process and the ACT Party supports that process. We understand that Ngāi Tahu and other iwi have had the benefit of a settlement and that was intended at the time to be full and final with of course progressive uplift based on other settlements that have followed and that's entirely fair.So the effect of this decision-making intent in the bill which is allocated to iwi Māori in the specific clause is that it's created a sense of anxiety for families and pastoral farm operators that unelected people from iwi Māori organisations may have a right of veto over consent applications and over commercial activities and the number of cows or stock units they might run. That's completely unacceptable and it's completely unnecessary.Then the legislation talks about inherent values: scientific cultural and environmental values as we heard from the former Minister who introduced the bill and the chair of the Environment Committee the Hon Eugenie Sage. Well look cultural values or what someone thinks of the land that you farm because of their culture their background or how they were brought up is completely irrelevant to the relationship between the Crown as landowner and the pastoral farmers. This should have nothing to do with decision making about how the land is used. What we should focus on are the scientific reasons why you observe different land management practices.We heard about the water supply; in fact it was quite helpful hearing from Hon Eugenie Sage in her description of how tussock catches rainwater and fog and how that water ends up in the ground and then how it becomes available through aquifers and rivers downstream. Well that's a really important problem to solve—how we allocate water efficiently and to the highest value use—but that's not a problem this bill tries to solve except by reducing the rights of pastoral farmers lessees of high country farmland from the Crown by reducing their rights to do stuff with their land and the water that comes with their land.Then we heard about pest and weed control. Well we've heard evidence from environmental scientists and farmers about the Mackenzie Basin. Part of the Mackenzie Basin after a tenure review process was handed back to the Crown and given to the Department of Conservation (DOC) to manage. They excluded farm animals—ruminant animals—that chew the grass from the DOC land. They thought that would allow the tussock to recover but it turns out there's some invasive weed species that have been introduced to New Zealand in the past couple of hundred years and we can't go back in time. There is no TARDIS that allows us to put all of these weeds back into a phone box and ask Doctor Who to take them back to another galaxy another dimension. They're here to stay and the problem is if you try to take the land that has weeds and pests on it and return it back to a pre-human condition you're going to fail. What happened in the Mackenzie Basin was that instead of the tussock recovering a whole lot of different weed species outgrew the native tussock and in fact the only way to manage it without application of all kinds of horrendous sprays was to allow the stock to graze. That was a great surprise to LINZ officials and it was a great surprise to the Government majority. It was such a surprise they've conveniently forgotten that.So there is a reason why ACT opposes this bill: we believe in listening to the farmers who live on the land and love their land. We trust farming families who live on that land and love that land and that's why we will repeal this bill should ACT have the opportunity to form part of the next Government. Thank you Madam Speaker."