Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Just following on from the Hon David Parker we will certainly be supporting that amendment because there has been a 40-day period for the public to make submissions on concession applications since the Conservation Act was introduced and passed in 1987. So it has got a 30-year track record of working and Mr Parker makes very valid points.Conservation land is public land. All New Zealanders have an interest in how it is managed. I take the Minister back to major proposals like the one in Fiordland for a big monorail. Eighteen thousand people made submissions and spoke out to protect Te Wai Pounamu to protect Fiordland's beautiful forest and to protect the Mavora Lakes from that monorail proposal.One of the difficulties with having a 20-day period for making submissions is that the first time the public has an opportunity to actually comment on the proposal—to actually even understand it—is usually when the Department of Conservation notifies the proposal that the applicant has put in. Rarely do applicants go out and actually engage community organisations or environmental organisations like Federated Mountain Clubs or Forest & Bird. It comes to public attention when it is notified when the assessment of effects and the supporting documents actually go into the public domain. So for big complex projects like the monorail and like the bus tunnel—which was an 11-kilometre bus tunnel that had its portal proposed at the start of the Routeburn Track which would have completely ruined that experience—having the public have only 20 working days to get an understanding of that proposal is far too short.If you have a longer submission period it means that submitters can go and talk to engineers as they did in the case of the bus tunnel and to ecologists as they did in the case of the monorail and ensure that submissions are based on good analysis of the proposal and a good understanding of the potential effects. Shutting it down to only a minimum of 20 working days will mean poorly crafted submissions potentially and it just totally overrides the significant public interest in how our conservation lands are managed and overrides the number of people who want to get involved when we have had these big commercial developments like the monorail.The second point is that 50 percent of international visitors come to New Zealand wanting an experience of natural landscapes and wanting to connect with natural areas. If we have poorly planned poorly sited commercial development on our public conservation lands we undermine that experience which attracts so many visitors and which through tourism supports a lot of our local regional and national communities recognising the contribution that tourism makes to our GDP. There are some 4000 concession operations from tourism and guided walking to grazing on conservation land. All of these deserve proper scrutiny. This bill by cutting in half the notification period through clause 181 is consistent with the provisions in the rest of the bill which seek to reduce the public's opportunities to actually engage in decision making.Third point: we have a major problem and I want the Minister to enlighten us here about clause 182. OceaniaGold made a submission and it wanted the time frames for notified access applications for mining on conservation land to be consistent with concession applications. So it wanted a halving in that notification period from 40 days to 20 days as well. The Department of Conservation—because of the political direction of its Minister probably—has gone along with that. This was not in the bill as introduced so what basis does the Minister have for making this change around mining access arrangements and for halving the notification times for them through the consequential amendments around clause 182 when that was not in the bill as introduced and Parliament and the select committee have had no opportunity to get public submissions on this?I would remind the Minister of applications like the access arrangement by Bathurst Resources for mining on the Denniston Plateau. That was the subject of huge public interest and significant ecological values are being damaged by that application and yet we are seeing a law change on which there has been no public consultation because OceaniaGold in its submission—in the departmental report on page 384—said that it sought to align these notification time frames for access arrangements on public conservation land. So it is their submission that is becoming the platform for this law change rather than it being in the bill as introduced. We object to the public not having had an opportunity to have a say because we think people like Forest and Bird Fish & Game Federated Mountain Clubs which defend the public interest in our conservation lands would have actually put in submissions opposing this.Again mining applications are very complex. They have a number of impacts. Mining companies do not tend to consult the public before they lodge their access application so the only time that the public actually gets to see the whole of that is when it is notified. So again it is ridiculous to have a 20 working day period for that not 40 working days. I suspect that the Minister will say: Well it can be more than 20 working days. It doesn't require just 20 working days." But it is still giving the Minister the power to reduce it to that limited period. It is public land. The public should have the maximum opportunity to make submissions on development applications and mining applications that are going to damage conservation values ecological values and recreational values.So this is a bad bit of the bill. It overrides the public interest in conservation lands and it is consistent with other provisions in the bill that seek to reduce the opportunities for public participation. We oppose it."