Weenink VanessaDr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's an honour to speak on this bill and I acknowledge James Shaw for bringing this to the House. It is one of those things where sometimes when you are new to things and you look at it you don't understand what it's about when you first read the title. I first thought that it might be that you were bringing the rights of Papatūānuku to have the rights of personhood. That's what I first thought it was which would have been very ambitious. Chlöe Swarbrick: That's next. Dr VANESSA WEENINK: Is that the next one? OK is that your one Chlöe? Yeah that'd be interesting. Unfortunately the National Party doesn't support this bill as you know and it's not because we don't care about the environment. We absolutely are focused on having sustainable environmental objectives as well as having economic development. We think that we can do both. Now Rachel Brooking spoke about the Resource Management Act (RMA) being unwieldy. In fact there's general agreement across the House about the problematic nature of the RMA. I think when it was first introduced the RMA was fewer than about 400 pages and now it is well over 800 pages and all of those insertions of amendments and schedules and additional clarifications over time has led to this kind of legislative quagmire. So I think that we should keep it in mind when we're considering this bill because the National Party has assessed that this bill poses risks of increasing the potential for legal challenges and uncertainties surrounding the interpretation and the application of the bill. So the effect that that would have would be to hinder effective environmental management and decision-making. We think that we can actually have both a better environment and a stronger economy by cutting wasteful compliance not by adding to it and we believe that this bill would be adding to confusion and red tape. My colleague David MacLeod mentioned that he's seen environmental improvements over time without the need to add legislative requirements and to compel people and I've also seen some examples of that in my own electorate. A great example of that is through the Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust and the work that they have done in covenanting areas of land to protect them in perpetuity. That is something that the landowners have done voluntarily. They formed this trust together and worked with the Hon Dr Nick Smith to have the right to grant covenants and then together they have worked through that process and have been extremely successful and over 16000 hectares of land is now under covenant because of that process. So we can see very good examples of where environmental protections happen without the need to compel. As other members have mentioned there is a risk of bringing social rights into the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and there are the implications that that might have. The idea of the right to housing or the right to healthcare are other things that have been previously postulated as things that might be human rights and they're very difficult to then manage and to have oversight of. In summary we think that although there are great intentions and ideas behind this bill that we agree with on some level the problems that can come from good intentions that aren't implemented well should be something that the House is cautious of and that we guard against. So it's useful for us to have considered this and to discuss it I think and like the Hon David Parker mentioned it shows a level of civility in this House that we are able to do that for you in this time Mr Shaw. So I'm glad to have been able to discuss this matter and although I like some of the ideas I do not commend this bill to the House.