Sage Eugenie: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8261. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 The Government is claiming that the Green Party says no to investment and jobs. That is a nonsense; it is this Government that is undermining investment. It is undermining jobs in the long term because it fails to recognise that a healthy economy depends upon a healthy environment. 
The Green Party recognises that the $196 million in economic output that Fiordland National Park generated in 2005 depends on the integrity of that park being maintained and protected. That is why we are concerned about the decisions that the new recycled Minister of Conservation may make about the monorail and the Routeburn tunnel proposals because this Government is toxic to the environment. It is dismantling the Resource Management Act. It is insisting on rapid decision-making rather than on quality decisions where the environmental impacts are properly assessed. It has undercut and undermined water conservation orders in Canterbury. It is handing out large subsidies to irrigation companies so that the state of our rivers gets worse not better. 
It is when you have a pro-development agenda when you have the Minister of Conservation talking about balance—which in this Government’s lexicon means trading away a bit more of nature in order to get a few more short-term jobs—that we worry. It will be a real challenge for this Minister to make the correct decision on the Routeburn Tunnel and the monorail and that is because there are very strong legislative protections for nature in both the Conservation Act and the National Parks Act. There is a very proper process in those Acts. 
When we have seen a Government engage in shonky deals backroom deals like Skycity where it favours its business mates does not put it out to open tender and does not follow due process we do not have very high expectations of this Minister. But he needs to follow due process. He needs to look at what the statute says because thousands of New Zealanders engaged in the campaign to have south-west New Zealand Te Wahipounamu listed as a World Heritage site to recognise its internationally significant landscape and its ecological and geological values through World Heritage listing. Those New Zealanders recognise the importance of our National Parks Act. They understand the meaning of that Act when it says that parks are to be administered so that “they shall be preserved as far as possible in their natural state:” and that they should be preserved “in perpetuity as national parks for their intrinsic worth and for the benefit use and enjoyment of the public” because they contain “scenery of such distinctive quality ecological systems or natural features so beautiful unique or scientifically important that their preservation is in the national interest.” 
National does not understand about preservation and protection of nature. That is why the Minister must talk to those in the tourism industry in Te Anau. They have overwhelmingly said that the Routeburn Tunnel would be bad for tourism. It would undermine local businesses in Te Anau because putting people in a bus underground for 11 kilometres where they see nothing of the national park means they have no immediate experience of the park during that tunnel journey. That is not promoting clean green New Zealand. It is not an experience that is consistent with our international reputation. It is not why visitors come here to go underground. They come here to experience what is distinctive special and unique about New Zealand which is these natural landscapes it is our national parks and yet the Government proposes to undermine this by its so-called balancing act which is not a legal test that is anywhere in either the Conservation Act or the National Parks Act. 
Then we have the monorail. The Conservation Act outlaws logging on conservation land yet the monorail promoter Riverstone Holdings wants to clear and log nearly 20000 trees to create a 30 kilometre scar through the Snowdon Forest conservation area. It is astounding that this proposal has got this far. These values need to be protected in our national parks and conservation areas because they are part of our public conservation estate and our national heritage. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.