Carter David: Walking Access Bill — First Reading 
Carter David: Walking Access Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:646;Page:15641] 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 For well over 100 years the rural landowners of this country have willingly provided public access over their land. The farmers throughout the country have enjoyed having their land utilised by recreationalists but the Labour Government and Helen Clark particularly put all this cooperation at risk when 5 years ago they proposed to legislate over private property rights to deliver public access over private farmland. 
That has been the history of this legislation. 
The Walking Access Bill now comes back to the House in a very much watered-down fashion compared with the Labour Government’s original plans and therefore the National Party will cautiously support it going to the Local Government and Environment Committee. I say “cautiously” because immediately three things raise concern for me. The first is the creation of yet another level of bureaucracy to monitor something that I do not think needs to be fixed. I am staggered at the Minister’s announcement today that this legislation will not go to the Primary Production Committee. He concluded his speech by acknowledging that the legislation will be monitored by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry yet he has quite deliberately avoided sending it to the Primary Production Committee where as most parliamentarians would agree there is the expertise to examine this issue quickly. 
Mark Blumsky 
: We’re very busy. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: I hear from my colleague Mark Blumsky that his select committee is very heavily worked and in fact the Primary Production Committee has quite a lot of spare capacity. So the Minister might like to explain. 
The second thing that concerns me is that the legislation sets out to fix a problem that has never existed. As I said earlier for hundreds of years public access has been provided willingly but 5 years ago Helen Clark with the help of Mr Bryce Johnson and certainly with the help of Gottlieb Braun-Elwert proposed to put into legislation the ability of the public to march unfettered over privately owned rural land. There was outrage immediately from the farming sector as one would expect but the Labour Government was caught by surprise that many urban people also knew it was wrong and joined in supporting farmers to the extent that prior to the last election Helen Clark backed down completely and set up a panel to examine the issue. After a long period of examination by a hard-working commission we now have this proposal before us today. So the Government backed down at the last election but this was not before the Minister who was then in charge of this legislation the Hon Jim Sutton lost his seat of Aoraki over the issue. I guarantee that at the next election soon to be held the Minister now in charge of this legislation the Hon Damien O’Connor will also lose his ever-safe seat of West Coast - Tasman because the farmers know that he has behaved appallingly over this issue. 
As I said it is ironic that the Walking Access Bill actually achieves what National members have said was always the solution to the public access debate and that is around using the large amount of public access that is already available to our rivers our lakes and our coastline. In the very very odd case where there is a difficulty around getting access to a coastline a lake shore or a river then people should enter into negotiation with the private landowner and find a solution. From the very start of this debate in 2003 the National Party said to the Government that this was the solution. Finally after years of commission hearings submissions from people throughout the country and expenditure in total of around half a million dollars the Labour Government has licked its wounds and introduced to the House legislation that contains the very solution that National said was always the solution. 
So we cautiously support the referral of this legislation to the select committee. We do want to see a serious investigation around issues such as whether this access negotiation is better handled with a national entity or whether we can use the conservation boards. I assure the Minister that the message that will be received at the select committee is that these problems tend to be very very localised. If the Minister had known his portfolio area he would also know that because such problems are localised they are better solved by local people having an input rather than a national body. 
We look forward to the progression of the legislation to the select committee. I will attempt to see whether I can get some space to be on that committee and offer my considerable knowledge in this area. Mr O’Connor could have saved all that difficulty if he had referred the legislation to the Primary Production Committee where he knows it would have received a very very fair hearing by the very good members on the committee. Those members know the issue intimately and certainly they do not have a heavy workload ahead of them.