Delahunty Catherine: Conservation (Natural Heritage Protection) Bill — Third ReadingText is subject to correctionDelahunty Catherine: Conservation (Natural Heritage Protection) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14224. Text is subject to correction.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I will take just a brief call on the Conservation (Natural Heritage Protection) Bill which the Green Party is happy to be supporting. I understand that Jacqui Dean has worked hard to get it to this point and I know that that is an excellent effort. I would agree with Eugenie Sage that useful tinkering is one description. If we put it in the context of conservation as a whole it is more like dancing on the deck of theTitanic in terms of the effects ofthe cuts that have taken place in conservation. So with those provisos we do support this particular and very specific and valuable effort.I looked up how people do some of the smuggling. It is quite fascinating. There are people who strap iguanas to their legs and people who are stopped at customs and asked: “Is that a snake in your pants or are you just pleased to see me?”. There are people who are running baby shark smuggling rings out of churches. There are birds of paradise that have leapt out of suitcases at customs. There are leopards found in people’s backpacks and monkeys down people’s trousers. I mean this is the international scene of $10 billion worth of endangered species smuggling. It is pretty bizarre stuff. Added to it our own precious taonga and our own endangered species are also smuggled in bizarre and interesting ways. It is clearly a very bizarre group of people who make a lot of money out of ripping off our unique taonga. Our country being even more unique in many ways is vulnerable to those kinds of very strange and depressing behaviours which do need penalties and we support the increase in penalties.In my first reading speech I talked about the sanctioned theft of the taonga of Aotearoa which the member Claudette Hauiti also referred to and some of the historically sanctioned rip-offs that took place and that fill the museums of the world. I will not go on about that again. But I think it is important to remember that the greatest threat to our endangered species in Aotearoa is not smuggling but pests and the loss of habitat. The conservation estate is clearly under great stress. So we welcome this measure to protect individuals but like much of the Government’s programmes dealing with individual violations does not change structural and systemic violations. It does not change structural risks and collapses of species. When you cut 400 jobs and rely on the market to do conservation—sorry not you Mr Assistant Speaker; when the Government does—there is a real problem because the market is not consistent and the market is going to do what it feels like when it feels like it.The corporatisation of the Department of Conservation will result in even less rigorous and consistent pest control. The finest example of a bad policy is the proposal to mine the Denniston Plateau where the two wonderful endangered species that are at risk from smuggling—the green gecko and the great spotted kiwi to name just two—are at risk. They are at risk not because smugglers are rushing down there to find them—and one of these species was found only during a Forest and Bird bio-blitz last year—but because this place is going to be turned into an open-cast mine. That is conservation and heritage destruction. It is not going to be saved because we have put some penalties on smugglers. It is going to be lost because of the Government’s economic policy and because it refuses to acknowledge the broader context in which this bill sits. That is very very disappointing.Smuggling is directly evil but greenwashing is no better. Let us not pretend what is really going on when we talk about the biosecurity cuts and when we talk about the cuts to the Resource Management Act and the Crown Minerals Act which as Moana Mackey said has created joint decision-making on the Department of Conservation estate putting more species at risk—all of those changes that the Government has brought in in the last few years that put endangered species at high risk. So we cannot replace a commitment to conservation at Government State and community level with the prioritisation of the Department of Conservation estate and expect that we will actually protect these species.However we are happy to support the bill. We are glad that we have got to this point. I think that it is really important. These species are intrinsic to our identity—the mokomoko the gecko the ngārara the reptiles the manu and the marine life. We should be protecting them at every level. This bill does take a tiny little step forward. Iwelcome every step but I would like to see the Government drop its belief system that destroying the environment will support the economy. It is simply not true. Our environment is our economy as indeed are endangered species.I would just like to say that we support this bill in any way that it makes good progress. We will support good things. We have always voted for things that are worthwhile but we will not pretend that this solves the problem of the conservation crisis that faces Aotearoa New Zealand right now. Thank you.