Mahuta NanaiaHon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): Actually a former member of that Government who is now the current Mayor of Thames-Coromandel District Council made her name on chopping down mangroves so it is no surprise that this bill has been brought to the House and it is no surprise in terms of the content of the speech of the local member Scott Simpson that much of the focus was on the efficient allocation of resources—I hear that. Labour will support this bill at its first reading going to the select committee because we know locally this is a contentious issue. No matter what people think about mangroves whether they should be there or not how they enhance the ecological environment—the whole approach to a mangrove management strategy and what that means for parts of the coastline holds quite a deep significance for the people who live along it.I want to focus on a few things. Firstly the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana as it is known to local iwi there covers about 800 kilometres of coastline. There are strong views amongst iwi in terms of the contribution of mangroves to kai that is often secured from around these areas like pūpū. My daughter loves to go and collect pūpū—it is a sea snail - type of creature—and it is something that as a small whānau community they go and gather kai to contribute to certain events. So when I heard comments around the amenity value one of the local concerns is that the amenity value is primarily for recreational purposes. If that is the case the issues around opening up more of the coastline for recreational use without the considered impacts on the coastal environments the birdlife there the kai moana that is there become a challenging issue. But that is exactly why we would want this bill to go to the select committee. If you are not from the coast and do not appreciate some of those strong connections that people have to their part of the rohe and what they feel is important in terms of retaining the type of ecological value then I think people will not really understand how strongly felt some of the concerns are here. The other point that was well made was with regard to the existing regional council process. It has been long and frustrating and very difficult if at a planning level people want to take a more proactive and constructive approach to mangrove management plans. I acknowledge that and again the Waikato Regional Council has done a number of studies on getting the right balance between the various types of amenity values and also the contribution that mangroves make to parts of the coastline where they are suffering greater erosion—that they are a buffer to flooding that they can actually protect the coastline in some valuable ways. I am sure that when all the heads around the table with the best evidence are constructing these plans they are trying to manage the balance of these types of interests. One of the things that the current process affords which this bill does not is that the plans under the regional council process are certified by qualified experts in this area and obviously supported and backed up by a lot of research. So this is an important component of the current process that could be considered within the context of this bill and whether or not it could be a helpful addition to the way in which district councils are intended to create plans in the bill.The other aspect that I want to comment on is local sentiment. It is true that councillors certainly in the Thames-Coromandel District Council—if I recall Councillor Simon Friar was championing an approach here. A local survey that was taken among residents at the time had around about 68 percent of the respondents agree to 73 hectares of mangroves in the Whangamata area being removed. So you know we cannot ignore the fact that there are very strong local opinions both ways. I just want to make sure really for the most part that the select committee process will bring the strongly felt views of the community out into the open and that the way in which the community can participate in the method that the bill is proposing can be a public process that assures the public that they can contribute to the decision making. Whether or not there are current aspects of the way in which management plans are for example certified by qualified experts could be integrated into this bill—also to get that ecological and recreational amenity balance right. For all those reasons the bill should go to the select committee. I wonder whether this bill is being promoted purely for administrative ease rather than looking again at some of the science and the information that are informing the contribution that mangroves make to our marine coastal environment.I did not want to take too long a call because the sooner we can get the bill to the Local Government and Environment Committee that we can call for submissions—I know that there will be quite a large number of submissions for the committee to hear. The other key aspect—which my colleague rightly points out—that is omitted in this process is circumventing the Resource Management Act. That again becomes quite a large area of consideration where local voices again are not taken into account. On those key fronts I believe that I have made a number of important points. Tīkapa Moana is the Firth of Thames. The Māori word for mangrove is mānawa". A mānawa is a heart but in this sense with the ecosystem it acts as a filter and it expresses the role of the heart as a filter of the marine environment. I hope that we can have a pretty sane debate. I know that when the current Mayor of Thames-Coromandel District Council championed this particular issue she was all fired up—on fire and you know red hot in all sorts of ways—about this issue and focused a lot of her efforts and contributions on progressing this debate. She has had her chance now that she is the Mayor of Thames-Coromandel and has taken the opportunity to promote a bill of this sort. I do hope that in calling for submissions the select committee ensures that people get a good hearing and that the public gets a good chance to air its concerns around achieving the right balance in terms of mangrove removal public participation in the decision-making process and also getting the balance between the recreational and the ecological amenity values right. Kia ora koutou."