SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. I'm pleased to take a call on the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill and it is what it says on the tin. It provides a legal harvest assurance system for forestry and the wood-processing sector and it's supposed to strengthen the integrity and resilience of the commercial supply chain. The Green Party is supporting it but as I said in the first reading the bill is a lost opportunity because of its very limited scope its narrow focus on timber products and its lack of ambition in protecting the diversity of life in our forests from the scourge of deforestation and illegal logging whether that is for timber or for other products like palm kernel expeller or to convert those tropical forests into palm oil plantations or whether it is to deforest to convert them into soya plantations. The Green Party is not represented on the Primary Production Committee and this bill is a real representation of why we need more Green MPs so that we can cover all select committees fully and so that we can improve on legislation because this bill is outdated. It was first promoted by a former Labour Minister—Pete Hodgson—18 years ago under the fifth Labour Government. The world has moved on since then and both the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and the Government policy which is expressed in this bill haven't caught up. It is far too timid given the huge scale of deforestation in tropical and temperate forests and the urgent need for action. As in 2021 a mere 9 percent of the world's forests remained intact—just 9 percent. So as others have said the scale of illegal logging is enormous and it's doing immense harm to the lungs of the planet in places like the Amazon to forests themselves to plants to wildlife and to the indigenous communities that depend on forests for food and for their livelihoods and as their home. It's destroying the planet's lungs and it's destabilising our climate and illegal logging contributes to corruption and criminal activity it helps support corrupt Governments and it means humans suffer and nature suffers. We have in Aotearoa a history of forest destruction and loss and maybe because of that we are late to regulate illegal logging. In terms of the United States it has had law banning illegal timber and the trading in it since 1900. This bill could have looked at what the European Union is doing. The European Union has recently had its environment Ministers pass regulation which both prohibits the placing of illegally logged timber products in the market and is much more extensive in addressing legal and illegal deforestation and is much more expansive in the scope of the product that it requires to be legally harvested. This bill should include things like soya cocoa chocolate beef leather—all commodities which can lead to deforestation. The departmental disclosure statement said that MPI consulted with environmental NGOs. They raised these concerns. The Green Party raised these concerns last term in 2019-20 when the bill and legislation was being discussed. Those concerns and the need to widen it to these other products which cause deforestation were not heeded nor were they heeded in submissions. We had submissions from Environment and Conservation Organisations of Aotearoa Greenpeace and our Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society all highlighting the need for having a more expansive bill for it to do anything serious about deforestation. While the select committee did make a number of changes it has kept the bill firmly focused on timber products. One of the other issues with the bill is that the definition of legality is too narrow. There is no recognition and requirement in terms of the definition of legality that the indigenous people and local communities should have provided free and prior informed consent to any logging. It does refer to property rights in clause 77 I think but it doesn't provide that assurance that there has been consent by indigenous peoples and local communities.The bill relies quite heavily on a due diligence system for an assurance that timber has been legally logged. One of the issues with these due diligence systems and requiring those that are doing the logging to have such a system in place is that they often rely on certification systems such as the Forest Stewardship Council system—they potentially allow illegal timber to be mixed with timber that's been legally logged. So it's not going to be totally watertight in that regard.But one of the big issues is that the variety of life on the planet depends on healthy nature. Healthy forests are our lungs and yet this bill is only focusing on timber not the variety of other commodities—palm oil soya beans cocoa chocolate coffee rubber—that we need to regulate to ensure that they are being legally managed and that they are not coming from areas that have been deforested. So yes it's good that Pete Hodgson's original ideas are finally being implemented but we could have followed international practice in the EU could have been much more expansive and could have done something serious to really restrain and prevent deforestation of our tropical and temperate forests. This bill also covers log exports. How can we when we've had such extensive damage being caused by forestry in Aotearoa in Tai Rāwhiti with all of that slash that has ended up on beaches on farms and crops that at this moment is legally allowed—this bill doesn't do anything to actually improve the regulation of forest management.Hon Todd McClay: It's not meant to. Hon EUGENIE SAGE: Mr McClay says it's not meant to but it's just showing how weak the legislation is that we can export those logs. The system can provide an assurance to importers overseas like China where the bulk of our export logs go that they've all been legally harvested. Yet there is huge devastation that has been caused to communities throughout Tairāwhiti from poorly managed harvested logs where you've had whole hillsides that are cleared slash left behind in huge quantities and that is still legal and they can be exported with the assurance that this is all being done legally.So there's an urgent need to improve our own forest management and regulation under the National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry and under the Resource Management Act because at the moment the damage that that slash causes is legal and it doesn't face any penalties under this proposed regime. So the bill is a slight improvement on the status quo but it won't do anything serious to actually prevent deforestation. Kia ora.