Simpson Scott; O'Connor GregHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. I've got a degree of sympathy for the Hon Eugenie Sage who is the member that has had this bill drawn from the ballot. She is a committed passionate and principled environmentalist. I don't always agree with everything that she says or does or any of her policies but I admire her passion and her commitment to the cause and our Parliament I think is going to be a lesser place when she leaves at the end of this parliamentary term. She's done an exceptionally good job as the chair of Parliament's Environment Committee particularly her stewardship of the reforms to the Resource Management Act. So when we came to the Speech from the Throne those of us that were there back in 2017 in the full flush of the Ardern Government—I'm sure that the member the Hon Eugenie Sage was as surprised as many of us to hear in the Speech from the Throne that the Prime Minister was making a commitment on behalf of her new ambitious Government to cease mining on the conservation estate. Some of us knew that actually that was a commitment that was going to be much harder to achieve than perhaps the then Prime Minister and her new Government had ever imagined. And so it has come to pass. There are some very big issues around the nearly one-third of the nation's landmass that is administered and looked after by the Department of Conservation. It's 8.5 million hectares. It's a very big piece of territory of dirt if you like and there are different degrees of the conservation estate. Not all of it is pristine. Not all of it is magnificent virgin native bush. Some of it is actually pretty scrubby if I have to describe it in that regard. So when this Speech from the Throne was made and this bold ambitious declaration was made as were so many other bold declarations we knew on this side of the House actually that the Government of that day was going to have enormous difficulty in fulfilling their grand promises. And they true to form simply failed to deliver not only on this promise but on so many of the others. In fact hers was a Government Jacinda Ardern's Government was a—sorry Dame Jacinda Ardern's Government was a Government that was full of promise but woefully inadequate on delivery. And so there's some irony tonight—and this is partly why I have some sympathy for the Hon Eugenie Sage—because here tonight it's actually going to be Labour MPs who vote this bill down.Now on my side of the House we've been consistent. It's not National that's flip-flopped. We've always had the view that mineral extraction on the conservation estate should be addressed case by case. We've always had that view. It's the Labour Government members who have changed their view. What I would like to know from the remaining Labour speakers in this debate is: what has changed from the time when Jacinda Ardern made that grand promise in the Speech from the Throne that was read by the Governor-General of the time? What has changed? Where did they go wrong? Why haven't they been able to fulfil their promise? Now I kind of know the answer. It's kind of a rhetorical question. I know the answer. It's because it's a whole lot more difficult than they had at first imagined. And there's an old saying about the linkage between a strong growing thriving economy that enables good environmental stewardship to take place—because we have the ability to fund the environmental stewardship that is needed. And the old saying goes something like this: It's very difficult to be green when you're in the red."—and we're in the red. We're deeply in the red. We are in recession. And it's very very hard to be green when you're in the red. So our economy and our environment they are inextricably linked together—always have been always will be. In the National Party we take a practical environmentalist view. We take the view that decisions should be made on the basis of not a simple binary decision that it's either good or it's bad. We want to look at the whole range of aspects. We want to consider individual case by case examples relating to the conservation estate and the stewardship land as well. So I'm offering the National Party's point of view which has been consistent all the way through—case by case—unlike the Labour Party who have flip-flopped on this. Debate interrupted.DEPUTY SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House is suspended and I'll resume the Chair at 9 a.m. tomorrow for the extended sitting to consider Government orders of the day. Good evening.Sitting suspended from 9.55 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)"