Sage Eugenie: Crown Minerals (Protection of Public Conservation Land Listed in the Fourth Schedule) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: Crown Minerals (Protection of Public Conservation Land Listed in the Fourth Schedule) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 April 2012. Volume:679;Page:1704. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 I thank members of the Labour Party and the New Zealand First Party for their very considered and comprehensive contributions to the debate on the Crown Minerals (Protection of Public Conservation Land Listed in the Fourth Schedule) Amendment Bill. I thank New Zealand First for outlining the defects of the consultation process in the current Crown Minerals Act and thank the Labour members for their quite incisive speeches.  
Tonight National has cemented its reputation as the Government of environmental destruction. Despite the protestations of the supposed Bluegreens this Government has done virtually nothing about environmental protection. We have got the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environment Effects) Bill which members have referred to yet the defects in that bill are glaringly obvious from the whole raft of submissions that have come in shredding the bill as it is currently drafted. We have got a review of the Crown Minerals Act which is promoting the use of New Zealand lands for mineral development. We have got a Government that is bombarding our wild places and natural areas with plans for more resource extraction more environmental damage the destruction of whole habitats and the loss of our children’s and great-grandchildren’s inheritance.  
I feel sorry for those members of the Bluegreens who are watching around the country who have to watch their National MPs embarrass them with their attacks on sound legislation and their attacks on nature—members who do not even know what is in schedule 4 and the fact that it is restricted to our most special natural areas: national parks marine reserves wetlands under the Ramsar Convention some of the Coromandel and some of our wilderness areas. We live in a smaller and smaller world a global community where we depend absolutely and utterly on nature for our economies for our wealth for our health and for our very lives and yet this Government on the benches opposite fails to recognise that. We must be much more careful about how our human activity impacts on nature and this bill is an effort to secure proper protection for our most precious natural areas so that they have some kind of future. That is what it is all about—whether we devastate and destroy our precious public lands and our marine reserves to allow often multinational companies such as De Beers and such as Newmont Waihi Gold to enrich their shareholders and to impoverish present and future generations.  
Tonight we are considering whether to strengthen the legal protection over our greatest natural treasures: our national parks wilderness areas forest parks marine reserves and Ramsar wetlands. It is these areas that provide us with clean fresh water with healthy soils with flood protection with food production with unique biodiversity and with a flourishing tourism industry. It is this environment that drives our economy so why not protect our greatest natural resources and also our greatest economic resources? The Greens will Labour will and New Zealand First will; this Government will not. This Government fails to understand that New Zealand Aotearoa is a biodiversity hot spot and that it is one of the world’s greatest treasure chests of unusual and fascinating life forms. We have got species that we know and love—the kiwi the kauri  
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 the pekapeka the native bat the tuna and all sorts of animals that this Government is keen to see mined. We have got magnificent landscapes rich forests and a unique marine environment. We want to protect these precious places. Over many generations New Zealanders have fought to have them in national parks and protected lands. I commend this bill to the House for the strengthened protection that it will give to those precious places.