Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I want to pick up on the contribution that my colleague was making just in passing because what I want to really focus my contribution on is clause 182 which has not been discussed much this evening so far and I think it deserves it. The Minister for the Environment has been assuring us throughout this debate that the point of this is to reduce bureaucracy to streamline the process but not to cut out the opportunity for people to have their legitimate say. I believe that he is genuine in his consideration of those facts but I do not believe that it is reflected in the legislation that we are discussing at the moment.The alignment in this Part 4 that we are discussing is between publicly notified concessions to the Department of Conservation and resource consent applications. The new provisions are that the Minister of Conservation has 10 days to decide whether a concession application is compliant or non-compliant. The intent to grant certification is replaced and I appreciate the Minister taking the flak in this debate for the notification of the monorail. It actually was not his error that caused that if my recollection is right; he inherited that from a previous Minister of Conservation and got it sorted out with a very wise decision and I hope he always sticks to that.It also reduces—and this is the bit that has been contentious in the debate so far—the time frame for public notification to receive submissions from 40 days to 20 days. A number of people have contributed to this debate to say how unrealistic that is on matters of such importance. The Minister who has been the Minister for Conservation and the Minister for the Environment understands the complexity of some of the proposals and understands the deep pockets that some of the proponents have compared with the not-for-profit organisations or the communities themselves who are having to rally together evidence expert witnesses and a lot of information in order to be on a level playing field to contest the application if they disagree with it—and 20 days is unrealistic. So I want to challenge the Minister to support the amendment that has been tabled by my colleague the Hon David Parker—I think soon to be supported by a replicate Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) in the name of David Seymour; that seems to be the pattern of SOPs at the moment—and to say that this debate has been right on this single point and 40 days is far more appropriate.As I said though that is not the main point of the contribution that I want to make. I was outraged when I saw a major change that was made to clause 182. A submitter came to the Local Government and Environment Committee and said: By the way we have got a really great idea of how we can make other processes more innovative." The submitter was OceanaGold and it thought that it would be "useful" I think was the word it used in its submission—Grant Robertson: Ha ha!Hon RUTH DYSON: Yes it would be useful. It said that the alignment of notification time frames could usefully be extended to include publicly notified access arrangements under section 61C of the Crown Minerals Act and mining activities on conservation land notified under section 49 of the Conservation Act.Minister you know—I know that the Minister is well aware—how people view mining applications on conservation land. The Minister has been at the receiving end of that response but he has allowed this amendment to be made to clause 182 of the bill which enacts OceanaGold's submission without any public input at all. Nobody knew that that submission was being made until it was made public by which time the submissions had closed. OceanaGold's submission was not made public as the Minister is well aware—he has been in this Parliament a long time and follows the rules carefully—until after all submissions had closed and nobody had an opportunity to cross-submit if you like on it. Nobody had an opportunity to make a contribution. That is cheating the public's right to have a say in a fundamental policy position such as this.I think OceanaGold has got every right to make a submission. The Minister has got every right to agree with its submission. But to have it sneaked in as a change at the select committee and then notified to the House only once this bill had been reported back with no chance other than through the Committee of the whole House to debate this very point I think is—the Minister is better than that actually would be my frank assessment. There is no need to have this change made. It was not part of the alignments that are sensible in principle and some of the detail is wrong in this particular area particularly the reduction of public input from 40 days to 20 days.I would urge the Minister to consider over the dinner break if we have not voted on this part before then that OceanaGold decided that this change was useful—not in the public interest not in the interests of having less bureaucracy and more efficiency but in the interests of them being able to access Crown land for mining. That was not the point of the resource management legislation. If that is a Minister's decision—if a Minister in the National Government says: "We've decided that conservation land is no longer to be protected for future generations and we're happy to open it up for mining in much bigger areas than it currently is." that is a debate the public can have. It can go through a proper process. This does not do that. It goes through quite a weak process.I am really pleased with the way that the debate has been going so far because it has covered a number of different provisions. For those of us who are not on the select committee this is the only opportunity that we get to hear the details that the select committee has been going over for some time. Each of these parts has got major changes to different pieces of legislation. That is quite a bold move for a Minister to take. I do not think that in the previous part he got it right. I was very disappointed that the Minister did not take an opportunity to answer the question that I raised. But I certainly hope that he will better reflect on the contribution that has been made on Part 4 in regard to changes to the Conservation Act that he supports the amendment from David Parker and also looks at a change to clause 182 so that that submission from OceanaGold either is able to be debated publicly or is just put to the side. It is cheating the public's right to have a say by including it in the bill in this way."