Shirley Ken: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Shirley Ken: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5506] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 I was not going to take a call on this part of the debate but I have been provoked by Mr Baldock—I want to say Mr Baldrick as something about him reminds me of Baldrick; I cannot remember what it is but it is something in my past. 
The Greens do not realise they have been duped. The speech we just heard from Jeanette Fitzsimons really epitomises that. Let me just walk members through it for those in the Committee who have perhaps not been following this process. The first bill came in here in Simon Upton’s time. Labour then put it to a new select committee which did a very thorough job—I think Nick Smith was involved and Jeanette Fitzsimons chaired the committee. The select committee heard a lot of submissions all around the country and did a very thorough job. It reported back way back in May 2001 and the bill then sat languishing. Why? Because Labour had an absolute obsession with the limited notification which the Greens and the chair of the committee were emphatically opposed to. 
I support limited notification and would actually go a whole lot further. I believe in full standing. [ 
Interruption 
] No I believe in consultation but there is a point where consultation debases democracy and we end up with so-called participatory democracy where everyone just talks to each other for ever and nothing actually gets done. However I do believe in appropriate consultation. But that is an aside. 
Although I disagreed with them the Greens stuck to their principles—and that is to their credit. The bill did not go anywhere. All of a sudden there was a new Parliament. We got the babes in the wood United Future which is happy to say that it will go with limited notification. It will support that. So the Government then cancelled the old bill and introduced a whole new bill. It has been truncated from 18 parts down to 2 parts and Mr Baldock has just put out a press release about how he is emphatically opposed to terms like “spiritual” “cultural landscape” and “ancestral landscapes”. I agree with him—they are absolute nonsense and he should be opposing them. He should be standing with Opposition parties and opposing the whole bill as the Greens did in principle. It really shows that United Future does not have the same principles as the Greens—United Future will go with anyone. Having been as quiet as a lamb through the process the member has the audacity to vote for it now that it is going through. He does not realise that he is the instrument of passing into law the very measures that he rails against in the press release he put out just this afternoon. Is that a lesson in politics or what? 
As I say I was not going to get up and take a call but the member was so full of puffery and was so pleased with himself—as though he had been such a good politician in doing all the work— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I remind the member of the commencement date. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: It is all about the commencement date—that is the point. It would not be going anywhere if it were not for that member. It would be going nowhere—which is all about commencement in any bill—just as it went nowhere when the Greens stuck to their principles as misguided and confused as they were. 
This member is right on the issue of limited notification and he could stop it going anywhere. Instead it seems that it could well be passing through over the next few days and possibly even receiving the royal assent. That member and United Future have to realise that they have been duped. They are being manipulated by the master manipulators over there. We had a term for them before which was “deceitful” was it not? 
Pansy Wong 
: Devious. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: Devious. They have been very devious in this process. It is a lesson to that member and his party that Government members are a very devious lot. I say to United Future do not be duped again. Mr Baldock has definitely been sprung. If Mr Baldock were sincere in not wanting nonsense terms like “cultural landscape” “spiritual landscape” and “ancestral landscape” melded into the Resource Management Act—and they are terms that can only compound it and make it worse—he could stop the commencement date from being what it now is in this bill. In effect he is the author of this legislation. He is the instrument for it being passed into law. 
The Greens knew how to play the game—they are quite canny. I disagree with them philosophically but I have a sneaky respect for them.