Mahuta NanaiaHon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): Tēnā koe and thank you for the opportunity to take a call. Although I do not sit on the Local Government and Environment Committee I have read the report and want to make a number of comments on the annual review of the Department of Conservation (DOC).In 2013 the department undertook a significant reorganisation a restructuring and some time down the track we now have the opportunity to look back and say: Well what was achieved?". There are three areas where we can see there was a certain theme that was led as a result of the restructuring—firstly a greater reliance on private sector investment for some core activities within the department; secondly some delegation of functions to the community for some core responsibilities of the department; and thirdly a lack of strategic oversight on some of the main drivers that will impact on our conservation estate namely tourism.I want to just look at a couple of those themes and make a comment knowing that we can be very proud of our conservation estate and what it means to New Zealand and the identity of our country and the brand proposition it offers in terms of being clean and green and having the plethora of biodiversity that makes us proud to be a little country doing our bit to protect the very special aspects of our natural flora and fauna and the biodiversity that exists therein.On the issue of partnerships I wanted to pull a comment out from the report that highlights the amount of effort that the Department of Conservation is now putting in to partnerships for third-party private sector funding and the types of relationships that are starting to be forged with companies like Air New Zealand and Meridian Energy. Although I applaud the efforts it does concern me that Vote Conservation which is for core activities is being supplemented by this type of approach and we need to consider whether that is achieving—to the best advantage possible for the conservation estate—our aspirations.In the area of Treaty settlements in particular more partnerships are being sought with the Department of Conservation. We can only look positively towards the template that Tūhoe has set with its activities having seconded around about 25 DOC people into its organisation to better manage Te Urewera. But the matter of concern is what innovations have come as a result of that to apply to the rest of the conservation estate knowing that there are around about 58 relationships with iwi and around about 50 settlements that have specific obligations in this space. It seems to me that what can be gained is an improvement of DOC mātauranga ā-iwi in the way that it applies its practices in the area of biodiversity and the protection of the conservation estate and working I think more productively with the community. So one of the areas that Tūhoe will highlight that may be of benefit to us overall is the way in which they want to look at minimising the impact of 1080 in their special areas and lifting the opportunity for local employment and creating a trade out of possum control.Moving on to the issue of managing biodiversity I just note that it is really encouraging to see in the species recovery area the improvement of species such as kākāpō takahē and kokako and the effort that DOC has put in to getting those bird species to a sustainable level and I encourage that. I am concerned however that we are waiting for a report around the protection of the longfin eel. In my electorate there is no customary taking of eel within the Waikato and the Maniapoto parts of our rohe for the very belief that we should be doing as much as we can to protect eel species. However commercial eeling is still taking place. So in my mind the sooner we can get that report through and the sooner that the freshwater fisheries regulations can take a serious look at protecting the eel species and promoting maybe alternatives like aquaculture as a real option then that would be welcome in communities like mine.I note that the chair spoke around Predator Free 2050. The issue there—and it is an ambitious goal and I applaud the fact that it is an ambitious goal—is the fact that DOC itself said that the $28 million that was applied over 4 years is somewhat short; it in fact costed that at $3 billion if we were going to really achieve the obligation of a predator-free New Zealand by 2050.So there are many things yet to be achieved within the DOC portfolio. I have highlighted some of the concerns. I think more can be done."