Brooking RachelRACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker for this opportunity to speak in the third reading of the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill. As we heard in the Minister's speech before—and the way I would see this bill—obviously it's amending a number of pieces of legislation and there are two main issues here in relation to what are commonly referred to as high country farms. One is that the rules and methods that the Crown has as landowner are being amended. We do have an unusual situation here a system where the Crown is the owner of the land but the lessee does have 33-year rights of renewal and rights to exclusive occupation. So part of what this reform is trying to do is really say what can be done as of right and where some sort of approval is needed from the landowner being Land Information New Zealand (LINZ). The second piece of this legislation is the removal of tenure review. So tenure review was a system created in the 1990s where the lessee could gain some freehold title of some of the land and then some land might be released from the lease for conservation purposes. Now there were some I would like to think unintended consequences from tenure review that led to intensification of some areas that led to a significant reduction in biodiversity. The previous speaker seemed to imply that all Crown pastoral leases benefited the environment but we have seen that this has not been the case with tenure review. The part of the bill that removes that tenure review is in clause 9 and it simply says that Part 2 is repealed. So that was the 1990s' addition. I'd like to though focus on this first issue of land management and I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about inherent values because I think we've heard from them in previous debates; we'll hear from them in other speeches as well. Inherent values are a critical concept in this bill. They are defined in clause 6 in a new definition:  'inherent value' … (a) means a value that arises from an ecological a landscape a cultural a heritage or a scientific attribute or characteristic of a natural resource that—(i) is in or forms part of the land or exists by virtue of the natural character of the land; or (ii) relates to a historic place on or forming part of that land; but (b) does not include a pastoral farming activity". Why there is that separation in the definition is important when you go back to the purpose of the amendment. So the purpose at new section 1A in clause 5 will be "(a) maintaining or enhancing inherent values across the Crown pastoral estate for present and future generations while"—and I want to emphasise the "while" in that sentence; it's an important legislative word particularly for a former resource management lawyer—"providing for ongoing pastoral farming of pastoral land:". So the purpose here is doing these two things: we're wanting to enhance those inherent values while having the pastoral farming continue. That continues over into the outcomes that are sought by the legislation in clause 8 at new section 4 "Outcomes for decision makers"—that "while" is a key point.Another important term in this legislation is that of "pastoral activity" and again the scheme of the legislation is that there are schedules to this which say what sorts of pastoral activity require some consent and which are permitted. So if we go now in the bill to new Schedule 1AB in Schedule 2 of the bill this is the classification of pastoral activities on pastoral land and at clause 1 in Part 1 of Schedule 1AB it's those activities that are permitted. There's been some discussion on controlling invasive exotic pest plants. Now we on the Environment Committee—a number of the speakers today—have heard from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment on his recent weeds report and I think we're all very interested in the importance of controlling exotic pest plants. Many of the submitters that we heard from as well who are the farmers the leaseholders of these high country farms also are very committed to this control of invasive exotic pest plants. So at clause 1 there are some rules that the previous speaker referred to and they are really around where there might be a by-kill and the by-kill is of indigenous vegetation. So there are some rules in clause 1 there. So controlling invasive exotic pest plants is permitted where "any associated by-kill does not exceed 200 m2/ha; and"—and there are some other factors in there as well. But then when you look down to clause 2 in Part 1 what is also permitted is "Any other invasive exotic piece plant control that does not involve associated by-kill." So what that means is that if a farmer sees a wilding pine and they're not going to touch any indigenous biodiversity by taking out that wilding pine then that is a permitted activity under this schedule and I think that's worth clarifying. In conclusion these changes to the legislative framework should enable better relations between the Crown and those leaseholder farmers to manage this land. We heard submissions from many farmers who care very deeply about their environment and also the related economics. We know that a lot of these farmers have fine merino wool that they export to the world. A lot of that is based on New Zealand's clean green image and they certainly really felt very deeply about that and put a lot of work into improving their environments. We heard from daughters in submissions. We heard from Jess Cox who is still at primary school and we heard from another Jess the daughter at Branch Creek Station—not in formal submissions but when we went on site visits—and we heard about the diversification because of course not all these environments are easy to make lots of money out of and the farmers do have to diversify into other things. We also heard from the Kates—Kate Cocks and Kate Scott—who both are very committed to environmental protection of indigenous vegetation particularly the beech forests or Nothofagus. So we've heard just now as well from the Minister that there will be a more hands-on approach from LINZ to help with the management of this land and also the emphasis on the importance of improving that relationship. We've also heard that consultation is coming soon on the regulations and standards that go with this legislative piece. So for all those reasons I commend this bill to the House."