Sage Eugenie: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is subject to correctionSage Eugenie: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 June 2014. Volume:702;Page:18941. Text is subject to correction.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):This is a very dismal process. We have got a bill the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill being put forward by the Minister of Conservation that attacks the very integrity of conservation land. We have had a process that is totally anti-democratic. There has not been any opportunity for the public to have say and in the Committee stage we had the Minister in the chair Nick Smith sitting there and not answering a single question posed by Labour members New Zealand First members or Green members. We have had Government members not engaging with the debate to defend the bill because they know that it is indefensible yet we have got this bill which should really be called the “Logging of Conservation Land (Opening Up Conservation Land to the Worst Sort of Damage from Chainsaws Haulers Skidders and the Removal of Trees that are Part of the Whole Forest Ecology) Bill”. It is a very sad day for conservation when we have this bill being passed without the public having the ability to have a say on what happens on public conservation land.The Minister by not answering shows that there are objectives here that he is not being honest about. It is very interesting reading through the departmental disclosure statement and seeing what consultation—or lack of consultation—there has been in developing the bill. There is no reference in that disclosure statement that I can see to the Minister seeking any advice from the bodies that are charged under the Conservation Act with providing advice the New Zealand Conservation Authority and the West Coast Conservation Board. If he was not going to subject the bill to public consultation at the very least he could have requested advice from these authorities. Yes it was considered at a meeting but it was just rammed through. He did not ask for their advice. So again Minister you had the opportunity to respond to the questions and you have not done that. You have highlighted that we have not closed off the likelihood that this will be applied to other conservation land. What is the agenda here?The very dismissive way that you have treated the amendments that were proposed by Opposition members—my amendments were suggesting that there be a ban on heavy machinery such as skidders and haulers and that there be a prohibition on new roads and vehicle access tracks being constructed—and the fact that you dismissed them without any comment means that the Government is not serious about minimising the damage from these logging operations. There has been no consideration of other amendments to prevent the spread of weeds. With the introduction of skidders and haulers and with new roads being constructed we are going to be damaging the integrity of areas that at the moment have very few exotic plants and little weed spread but the Minister will not even consider a small amendment to make sure that there is little or no risk of exotic plants being introduced.That shows the contempt with which the Government is treating our conservation lands—that it does not even see it as important to minimise the impacts that logging will cause and that it is just prepared to go ahead with the bill as introduced without any public process and without recognising the work that Opposition members have done to try to make a bad bill a little bit less bad by putting in a few more controls on the way in which logging can occur. As Mr Prosser from New Zealand First noted the way in which the bill allows the export of sawn timber means that it will not minimise the amount of timber that is taken off these conservation lands and that it will be creating a big market overseas for our treasured native trees.This is a very bad bill. From Mr Brownlee’s comments when he led off the speeches in the first reading it is all about resuscitating an industry that should have died properly last century. But that is typical of this Government’s economic policies. It is not interested in sustainability and it is not interested in long-term well-paid jobs. It wants a short – term boom-and-bust industry that perpetuates those cycles that we have seen on the West Coast of extracting resources whether they be trees coal or gold—a boom-and-bust industry. That is what this bill will do by resuscitating an industry that we closed off on public land and that people thought our conservation lands were protected from in 1999 when the Timberlands beech scheme was wound up and when those forests were subsequently added to the conservation estate. This Government is looking backwards in allowing native forest logging to restart.