Fitzsimons Jeanette: Overseas Investment (Queen’s Chain Extension) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Overseas Investment (Queen’s Chain Extension) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:14652] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 It is helpful that Nick Smith has brought this issue to the House because it certainly needs addressing. Whether the bill is the best way to address it is a matter that can be dealt with at a select committee and I hope that will happen. 
As New Zealand’s population grows and town settlements spread increased tension is arising over lack of access to places that we have all traditionally believed were the public’s right to enjoy. Landowners do not actually own the lakes rivers seashore and wildlife that border their land but they do control access to them and that is what leads to the problems. New Zealand has a long tradition that rural people have typically allowed access under reasonable conditions to enjoy those places and that is how we have got by for more than a century and a half with relatively little friction over those things. However changes are happening both with overseas people who do not respect those traditions coming in and acquiring land and also I have to say I have observed that some city people acquiring land in the country are not familiar with those traditions either. So there is a need to address those matters. 
Of some of the particular examples I know there is a place in the Coromandel called New Chums Beach which is one of the most superb totally undeveloped beaches remaining in the country with nothing but bush cliffs a bit of farmland and the beach. Part of that land which has riparian rights as far as the mean high water. The landis owned by a landowner who has put up signs denying the public the right even to walk along the sand. It is all quite illegal of course. As it happens he is not an overseas person but he has put up signs trying to persuade the public that they do not have the right even to walk along the beach from outside his property and to walk along the beach in front of his property. The locals keep pulling the signs down because they know quite well that he is wrong. So those frictions are starting to happen. 
When the Crown Pastoral Land Bill went through—one of the earlier bills on which I sat on the select committee after I came to Parliament—I urged for better provision to be made for public access when those lands were privatised. In fact that was not done in the bill and we are feeling some effects from that now. 
So there is a need to address those issues. However we do have some concerns about the matters in Dr Smith’s bill and we do think that they will need to be considered carefully at the select committee. I did not know what he meant by the reserves fund so I asked the Minister of Finance. I thought that he would be able to tell me. He was sitting in the House so I went over and I said to Michael Cullen: “Hey Michael what’s the reserves fund?” and he said: “I don’t know.” I was hoping that the answer was not going to be the Nature Heritage Fund which is a Department of Conservation fund set up specifically for biodiversity protection for acquiring land in order to protect biodiversity values. 
Another of our concerns is that none of the criteria set out in the bill for setting up such Queen’s Chains—and I do not see why we should not use the term even if it is not provided for in legislation—include ecological protection biodiversity or environmental reasons. It is all about public interest access and good will. That is fine. It is a recreational approach rather than a biodiversity protection approach. The very last thing we would want to do is to use money that is set aside for biodiversity protection to provide that compensation. In fact I still do not know what the reserves fund is whether it is a Department of Conservation fund but it is not the Nature Heritage Fund— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: It’s in the Reserves Act. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: Under the Reserves Act it is very unlikely it will be able to fund the level of access strips that are envisaged under this bill but that is another matter that can be considered in the select committee. The whole principle of compensation is a somewhat vexed one.