Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you. I'm going to return to a question but I just want to acknowledge a couple of people. The first one is the Hon Stuart Nash who I know has deep roots into the forestry sector—very deep roots. Of course I was watching an interchange just before with him and the member for Tukituki Anna Lorck. What just crossed my mind is on one side we've got a Minister who's absolutely an advocate for making sure all our farmland goes into forests—I know he's a very strong advocate—and of course I was thinking about Anna Lorck's electorate and thinking Well you've got a whole lot of farmland going into forestry actually—very productive land." I was just wondering how that interplay was going that interchange. So I'm hoping the Minister the Hon Stuart Nash might take the opportunity to say whether in fact he supports this cutting back this scaling back of forestry investments because I know he is very keen that there's an opportunity for overseas investors to come in and buy lots of land with little controls.So I just want to go back the last time—because this is the third time I've asked the question. As I understand the logic for this come-to-Jesus moment and I hope that expression's OK but if I understand the logic of what the Minister said earlier he said that and he quoted National—but let's just say that because there was no framework for a forestry registration scheme the only option was to go from that point to a situation in 2018 and Winston Peters was somehow involved in it which is described even by your officials Minister as being a very very permissive arrangement for allowing foreigners to come in and buy New Zealand farmland. So my question is: here we are we're going backwards; why did you think it was appropriate in 2018 whether it was your bill or Winston Peters' bill or whoever—but you know the Government of the day of which you were a member—to have such a "permissive environment" and now you think it's appropriate only 4½ years later that it's so desperate we have to scale it back?Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Forestry): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I actually need to respond to that member's comments. I am the Minister of Forestry and I am incredibly passionate about forestry and I believe the right tree in the right place has a huge ability to influence not only our economic but our social and of course our decarbonisation aspirations. My vision is that in a hundred years' time we will have a million hectares of land that is currently bare in indigenous forest. Because the thing about land use is that land use change has not kept up with the economics of farming.The thing that happened in the mid-1980s as we know pre the loss of all the subsidies is farmers were paid on how much land they cleared and therefore how much stock they carried. Of course when that changed there was a whole lot of land that became uneconomic from a farming perspective but what happened to that land is it wasn't planted out. So the Forest Service has actually identified about 1.2 million hectares of land that is only suitable for the permanent forest category. And by the "permanent forest category" I mean land that will probably never be harvested either from an economic perspective—and by that it's too far from a port or not close to a processing facility or too expensive to harvest—or it won't be harvested from a health and safety perspective because again the ability to harvest this in a way that meets the expectations of health and safety in the 21st century just doesn't exist or from a conservation perspective; i.e. harvesting land which is too steep just is unconscionable. If we can get that land planted then we will mitigate for example the 5 million tonnes of silt that goes into Hawke's Bay every single year but we are not talking about the permanent forest category here because this always had to go through the Overseas Investment Act if you were planning primarily for carbon. What we are talking about here is trees that are planting for harvesting. Now the Forest Service apart from that 1.2 million hectares that's been identified for the permanent forest category has also identified about 1.25 million hectares that is only suitable probably for production forestry because it is very very marginal for farming. And keep in mind about 86 percent of all forests in the emissions trading scheme are in classes 6 to 8 land.So we are not taking out huge swathes of productive land. In fact I got my forestry start dealing with a farmer in the Tukituki who won the Farmer of the Year Award. What he did is he won a whole lot of fertiliser and that's why he fertilised his whole farm—it made not much of a difference. So what he did is he took out every part of his farm that didn't carry at least 3.5 stock units per hectare. And you know what? He didn't lose one unit of stock whatsoever. He planted that marginal land in trees. And what he did—he was a guy called John Aitken a very very innovative farmer and he was one of the leaders of the farm forestry movement. So what he did is he took out the uneconomic land for farming and he put it into forestry therefore diversifying his farm and his sources of income. Now I absolutely support this. The last thing I want to see is productive farmland planted in forestry. I want to see our farms our rural landscape a good mixture of farming of production forestry and of carbon farming and it has always been about the right tree in the right place. So if anyone suggests—and to be fair this is the first time actually anyone has suggested certainly to my face anyway—that I want to see swathes of productive farmland planted up that Madam Chair and members of this committee is the last thing I want to see. It's why I support this to the absolute hilt and I reckon the Minister is doing a fantastic job. Thank you very much."