Barry MaggieHon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you very much Madam Deputy Speaker. May I begin by congratulating you on your appointment—a very fine one indeed and I look forward to you presiding over this House.It is indeed a great pleasure for me to stand here today to take my call in the Address in Reply debate in this 52nd Parliament. It was an honour to be re-elected to represent the North Shore. I have had the honour of representing that electorate since 2011. It is not one I take for granted and it is one that I take very seriously.We have such an impressive line-up of new MPs and what terrific maiden speeches you gave. I welcome you to this House and to our team and I thank you for being here and adding to the diversity of a very strong line-up in National indeed. Make no mistake about it we are very strong and we are a very focused caucus team. Our 56 National MPs are absolutely determined to hold this three-headed hydra of a coalition to account as my colleague Simon Bridges has said.Yes of course we wanted to be in Government; naturally we would. It is a disappointing outcome for our supporters and for the one million people - plus who cast their party vote for National and secured 44 percent ultimately of the party vote for us. Then to have the outcome—to be anointed at the whim of an MP who was named after a concrete block to quote David Lange certainly was not the outcome that the 32000 voters on the North Shore cast their party vote for. I think New Zealand First attracted around 2000 votes and I know from very unhappy constituents who have contacted me that they share a deep and abiding contempt for that party and its leader.Personally I agree with the Hon Chris Finlayson on this one—a very perceptive individual—that we dodged a bullet by not going into coalition at the price of our souls and our values. Some things are worse than being in Opposition and that's being in coalition with Winston Peters. We have our integrity intact and the same cannot be said for Labour let alone the Greens. More on that later.But that's MMP. We have to live with it. Let me reassure the people of New Zealand though that we are going to give our all to ensure that the country we love and the people of New Zealand and the strong New Zealand economy that National built and that Labour has inherited are not going to be sold down the river by this big spending coalition.Do you know it's already very reminiscent of the last Labour Government. I was in the media for 30 years and I watched their antics. I watched as they got even more nanny State with the size of your light bulbs and the size of your shower heads. You remember that? Those were the glory days of Labour in its last dying throes. And we are seeing it again already—the drilling down into detail the need to control. So they're back to their old tricks and while they have their sixth Labour leader in eight years the song remains the same. They like to control everything.Look at paid parental leave. That is an example that this House has been grappling with over the last couple of days. Labour as they always have presumed to know better than everyone else including new mothers and fathers and Simon Bridges spoke very well about that as did Bill English earlier. Fathers have a huge contribution to make. Labour ignores that. Why? What's their dogma? What's their doctrine? Whoever decided that Labour knew best apart from Labour?What about the women who have premature babies and those who for example have Caesareans or post-natal depression? They need the father there. They need to have that option. They need to decide. But no. Nanny Labour knows best and as usual will continue to try and control everything because the cradle-to-the-grave dependency that has always characterised that side of the House the Labour Governments of old remains very true with this Government.As a lifelong environmentalist I would have to say I was thrilled when Bill English gave me back the conservation portfolio spokesmanship role—it is one I treasure; it is one I take very seriously—and this morning I was elected deputy chair of the Environment Committee which I'm very pleased about. It is my absolute intention to have the commitments that National made in the last Parliament to Predator Free 2050—Hon Simon Bridges: You will do the Kermadecs?Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Do the what?Hon Simon Bridges: Do the Kermadecs?Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Do the Humanecs"?Hon Simon Bridges: The Kermadecs.Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Oh the Kermadecs. I was going to get on to that sorry. I couldn't hear you. I must be a bit deaf in my left ear somewhat similar to another member of this House.Getting back to Predator Free 2050 we launched it in the last Government with a line-up of strong united senior Ministers who were very focused on that outcome. I believe that the people of New Zealand through the Predator Free 2050 initiatives that have sprung up all over New Zealand—and credit to the capital. Wellington was the first to sign on to do it. Dunedin and Auckland had pest-free predator-free envy. They're all signing on and people really believe in this because they like birds more than they like rats. There's a lot of other complexities I could bring into it but frankly songbird or vermin; no contest.So Predator Free 2050—even if the Greens continue to degrade it even if Labour doesn't choose to support it even if New Zealand First tries to subvert it because they don't approve of the use of 1080 it is a naturally occurring compound in plants that is actually extraordinarily effective. In a high landscape area like this in New Zealand with rocky terrain we absolutely require it if we want to win the Battle for our Birds which has been phenomenally successful. Again I will be holding this Opposition to account on all of these things because they're important to New Zealanders.They're important to people like me and members on this side of the House who love nature and respect it and know that the environment in New Zealand is something that we treasure. It's what defines us on the world stage and what makes us different. When we were in Government we were not prepared to see our Kiwi our native plants our kauri all of our treasures our taonga species being run into the ground consumed to the point of extinction and the rest of it. So I'll be making sure that this Government with its strange coalition does adhere to these important things. The War on Weeds is another very important one.But what do we see with Labour? What did they do with conservation? What did they do with the once in a lifetime nuclear-free moment? They consigned climate change and conservation to outside Cabinet with a limping tiny not-even-real partner of a coalition in full control of it. What do we see in the new Minister of Conservation? Well well. Yesterday in the House I asked Eugenie Sage a few questions. She ducked and dived and didn't answer the question. She's already sold out. She is already absolutely consumed with the extreme gratitude of finally being allowed sort of in the tent maybe in the campground—not quite sure. She's not really in the picture. No one listens to her including of course the hapless Minister of Fisheries. I think he has made three strikes now where he has had to be taken aside and given a wee chat.Anyway Stuart Nash opened his beak very wide last week and said that he decided that the electronic surveillance on board commercial fishing vessels was to stop. Now we were going to introduce the electronic surveillance with the e-logbooks and then cameras next year but no. The Minister of Fisheries has decided not. I wonder where the fierce in Opposition on conservation lion of a Eugenie Sage with the Greens was when that decision was made. Did she advocate at all for nature—this fierce individual who is so concerned about Māui's dolphins and Hector's dolphins that she asked regular questions in the last Parliament? On this subject on this particular thing I doubt whether she was even consulted at all—and if she had been would anyone had listened? If she had actually struck out and tried to make the case for protecting our threatened marine species—who cares? What difference does that member make? Not very much.We have a response already from Christine Rose of Māui & Hector's Dolphin Defenders New Zealand who was quick to point out that the decision that was made by the Minister of Fisheries—in complicit I suppose agreement really with the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage—was a huge setback for conservation. Yes indeed the Greens are a big disappointment to environmentalists in the first or second week of their tenure. They are arrogant already. Listen to Eugenie Sage yesterday—that puffed-up sense of entitlement that she must have caught from Labour. But I mean we look at a situation where "Electronic observer coverage"—and I am quoting here from Dolphin Defenders New Zealand—"is essential to properly manage bycatch. Evidence from electronic monitoring trails shows horrific unreported fish dumping and the deaths of Hector's dolphins." Research has shown that more than three times as many fish and non-target species are caught and dumped than are landed and recorded in catch records. That's why we did electronic surveillance. Why the heck didn't they support it? Why didn't they do it? Dolphins will die and it is Eugenie Sage who will have that blood on her hands because she was ineffectual she did nothing and I am afraid she is a huge step back in herself for conservation.You know we need to protect our threatened marine species. We need to protect all our threatened species. We need to be absolutely confident that our guardians and advocates for nature do what their job is and the Greens and Labour do not deliver."