Eckhoff Gerrard: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Eckhoff Gerrard: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5533] 
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT NZ) 
: 
 It has been pointed out in the debate already that the Minister in charge of this bill Minister Hobbs is regretfully rather poorly. She has contracted a flu-type virus and is relatively sick. I cannot help but reflect on the fact that most landowners in this country when they look at what is happening in this bill will be as physically ill as the Minister is. 
The impact of this bill is huge. I ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Damian O’Connor what price a spiritual value? How much is a spiritual value worth? I ask the Minister whether a spiritual value can be traded. I am not getting any answers here. Can a spiritual value be bought? These are terribly important questions. Can a spiritual value be bought? I am not getting an answer from the Minister in the chair. The reality is that the answer is yes it can. Ngai Tahu put a value on its spiritual values by accepting $1.5 million when it came to ensuring water rights on the Clutha River. It said: “Our spiritual values are worth $1.5 million.” They can be quantified. 
So what then is the worth of the spiritual value of a river to a fisher and his family who have fished that river for sometimes as long as Maori have been associated with it? I have people in my area down in Ettrick and beyond who have huge historical and spiritual association with the river but according to this bill their spiritual attachment is worth absolutely nothing. I ask the Minister to explain why there is a difference. From the way that the bill reads it is only Maori who have spiritual values and Pakeha people from Europe Chinese—wherever people may come from—do not have spiritual values. 
A spiritual value comes from within an individual. It is not found in a river. A spiritual value is not found in a mountain. Society in this day does not believe in the animist belief. We do not worship mountains; we do not worship rivers. Perhaps we understand the life-giving forces within them but they do not possess a spiritual value. The spiritual value comes from within the individual who has the capacity to understand the importance and the significance of those things that are important to us. We each of us have our own value whether we live in the town or the country. At my own property in Roxburgh I have special spiritual attachment to certain areas that I find have a quality that cannot be defined. But that ability comes from within me. It is not recognised by other people. It is not recognised in statute nor can it ever be. It is something that comes from deep within the individual. How then can this bill attempt to quantify a spiritual value? 
I want to shift to a slight different tack. Members have talked about the energy crisis. This bill talks about landscape values. It was not so very long ago that one could not—and one still cannot in many areas—build a shed or plant a block of trees because it would upset the landscape value. According to the Minister of Energy we will now have massive wind turbines placed on ridgelines. That will totally destroy the aesthetic values of scenic corridors such as those on the Old Man Range for example. I cannot put a shed or build anything—