SpeechHon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'll ensure that I don't put you to sleep with my contribution. Regardless of that this is a very—SPEAKER: Don't indicate to your colleague who just spoke that she did because she certainly didn't. Hon NATHAN GUY: This is a very important bill and it's worthy of a good robust third reading speech which I'm going to do. But I don't have a lot of time to deliver a good robust speech so I'm just going to run through the highlights for me. I sat on the Environment Committee and heard this bill; it was very rushed. Erica Stanford did a great job of covering that off so I won't go through that process. But I think what we can glean is that the Minister of Forestry started at a point where he wanted to create an export levy on logs leaving the country. He couldn't get that through Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) officials or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). They all went ballistic—hated the idea of it. It was all redacted in the regulatory impact statement. So he did a workaround with his officials and he came up with this. We still have concerns about this bill and what this does is it means that it will restrict export logs and mean that a portion of those have to go into the domestic mills in New Zealand and we don't think that that is fair and proper. I heard Stuart Nash in his contribution say that the market's broken and it isn't working. Well that's not what I've heard from my mates in the industry. So it's interesting that he is referring to that. I'm not sure where Stuart Nash is getting his information from because he does have a lot of large foresters in his electorate. The other aspect that this does is it forms a regulatory body to oversee the forestry advisers and that will create red tape and costs and I don't think that there's a massive issue for them to necessarily be regulated. The other aspect that I have real concerns about—and we unfortunately got blocked in the select committee from getting MFAT officials in to interrogate them on whether this bill could have consequences for the New Zealand Government—i.e. MFAT—negotiating a free-trade agreement (FTA) in the future whether it's the EU whether it's the UK or other countries that we're working collaboratively with to try and get FTA agreements. What we do know post-COVID is that there is more protectionism coming in around the world. It was the worst prior to COVID in the last 23 years. So we know now it's probably up to being the worst in 30 years. We know from all of the evidence from the Government that currently agriculture exporters face non-tariff barriers that cost them about $6 billion a year. That is a huge amount that's not flowing through back to the farm gate back to growers back to foresters and the like. So my concern is that—and I know that MFAT officials share this concern but I've got that second- and third-hand because we weren't unfortunately given our right to have them in front of the select committee. So we only got advice from MPI trade officials and I wanted to hear it from MFAT. So what I have heard second- or third-hand is that MFAT are really worried about this bill and it could cause complications with us negotiating free-trade agreements in the future. We'll wait and see on that one. The other one that I asked the Minister about was the ability to effectively set up a code or standards in the future. That all sounds fine doesn't it? But there's an aspect in this bill that really concerns me and that is around the sustainable land use where potentially forestry advisers will be the ones that could get caught in the crossfire for saying This block of land is appropriate for trees." and in due course it may not be. The real rub—not in this bill but generally in forestry in the primary sector and rural heartland New Zealand right now—is that they see literally a sea of trees coming at them hard and fast. That means potentially there's the hollowing out of rural communities: rural schools closed because the teachers might be hooked up with the farm manager the shepherd who has to leave because their farm has been sold to forestry the rugby club goes the veterinary club goes and it's a downhill spiral. By the way the roads get smashed in 25 to 30 years' time. So we've got a real concern about the aspect of the sea of trees that is actually hitting rural communities quite hard right now. But the reason I raised that aspect about the sustainable land use and forestry advisers is that I have a concern that the Minister of the day could bring in standards or a code that then puts those forestry advisers in the line of fire. The way that in the future I could see there being a real balance where we plant trees in the right place at the right time etc. etc. is to ensure that steeper hill country is planted but then there's a real issue about harvesting those trees in the future—and we see right now a live example of slash on the beaches at Tolaga Bay. The forestry sector will say "Oh yes well that's under the old rules. We've ship-shaped up and we're a lot better dressed now." But the reality is we're still going to have massive weather bombs in this country significant rain events and that means that slash which is basically unwanted trees comes down the river channels and ends up on the beaches. I'm horrified to think that the forestry industry is saying "Oh yeah we'll get on to it and we'll clear that particular beach at Tolaga Bay leading into the summer." I would have thought that their social licensing would have meant that they wanted to get the loaders and the trucks down there and clean it up now.Anyway in summary I said Mr Speaker I wouldn't put you to sleep and I hope I haven't. This bill is something that we can't support. There's a few aspect in the bill that we think are worthy of us supporting. But in summary the aspects that I've outlined mean that we can't support this bill."