Barry Maggie: Riccarton Bush Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Barry Maggie: Riccarton Bush Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 07 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6395. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I rise with pleasure to speak to the third reading of the Riccarton Bush Amendment Bill. I have spoken in both the other readings on this bill and I would like to add to some of the things that I have said and to add to some of the speakers. The sponsoring member Gerry Brownlee has so eloquently set the scene detailing the colonial history of this family and I would like to concentrate more on the natural heritage that this gives us in terms of a link to Gondwanaland which is our link with the ancient past. It is a way of preserving as an open-air plant museum if you like a piece of our vegetation and our native heritage that no longer exists anywhere else in this country let alone in the world so it must be preserved. I think that the board in the way that this bill has been drafted and put together will be able to its job properly. 
To me Riccarton Bush represents the very best of what the original colonial conservators did. These conservators were well ahead of their time. These were people—the Deans family and in particular the widow Jane—who showed a leadership around plants and conservation that we can all learn from still to this day. They decided that they would use in a prudent fashion not only what was available to them to build their houses to build the buildings that they needed to run a farm but also to leave the remnants because this area as has been said is a swampy area. It had podocarps in it. The predominant tree was the kahikatea and there was also the mighty totara. These are trees that were felled. They were cut down. Kahikatea itself which is called the white pine a  
Dacrycarpus 
 was used primarily and felled in the tens of thousands of hectares to make butter boxes to send our butter to Europe. Although that might have been useful at the time it was a pretty short-sighted thing to do. 
The kahikatea to many of us is one of the most accessible I suppose of our native trees. They retain a beauty and a majesty that is perhaps more accessible than some of the kauri for example. So when we look at the swampy land in Riccarton Bush we look at kahikatea which was one of the few species that would survive in such conditions. Perhaps because it was swampy the land was left with those trees on it but that again is the cleverness and the forward thinking of the family. The Deans family decided that this was something that needed to be preserved because it was of the land. I would remind people that we have seen in this country of ours a lot of trees and a lot of our native vegetation devastated. 
Others have spoken about the colonial heritage and I am not going to dwell on that but I am going to talk about the fossil remains of the trees in Riccarton Bush—remains that date back 130 million years. This is an open-air museum that gives us a direct link to our past. It is not very big. It is only 15 acres and it is the sole remnant of kahikatea flood plain forest so it is a very significant piece of vegetation not only for the people of Canterbury but also in the wider context and indeed in the world context. David Bellamy who had a series of television shows through the 1980s and 1990s came and filmed in Riccarton Bush. He said that this was a living link with our past that must be preserved in perpetuity. 
It is not that we need people to visit us from overseas to tell us how well we are doing but in that instance I think it did give a lot of confidence to the people of Canterbury that what they were doing and what Riccarton Bush represented was entirely significant and not just to the people of Canterbury in their own area as the people who visited there since they were children who had enjoyed going and playing on the trunks of the trees that had been felled and who had had a good time. Children were allowed to wander there free. It was one of the original parks that was enjoyed by people on their Sunday outings in Christchurch. But further to that it is an entirely significant piece of vegetation in the international sense. On a programme I used to front  
Maggie’s Garden Show 
 we went back and filmed in Riccarton Bush on many occasions. Again when you are looking for a place in New Zealand that represents something that we have lost we come back time and again to Riccarton Bush because it is such a precious place. 
I would have to say that the governance structure of the board does need assistance and again I commend the sponsor of this bill the Hon Gerry Brownlee. To update the governance arrangements is to carry on that wisdom that leadership that foresight that was shown by the original Deans family. These are people who are visionaries but they need assistance. 
I think this cuts across four other bills. It actually brings together and vests in the land at 30 Kahu Road Christchurch a very significant group of powers. There are challenges that exist really for this board. What this bill would enable it to do is actually make some decisions about how to preserve it in the future to safeguard it with management practices that are bold and forward thinking. 
Removing native plant species that are not endemic to that piece of land is something that people in Christchurch have struggled with but Diane Lucas and a lot of other landscape designers have led the charge on this and at Riccarton Bush they are contemplating it. It would mean the removal of exotic conifers. That is a pretty contentious and controversial thing to do and many say that it should not be done. But others say it needs to be a pristine piece of bush. So really native plant species need to be protected. This legislation will allow that to occur and I commend it to the House. 
I know that it will be passed despite some of the cheaper pot-shots from the people on the other side who of course cannot resist such a thing. But basically in the Local Government and Environment Committee there was a unanimous purpose around this bill— 
Phil Twyford 
: Can you blame us? It’s a hell of a target. 
MAGGIE BARRY 
: —which is not really echoed by the people who comment now like Mr Twyford who was never there. He knows nothing about it but blathers on as is his wont. I commend this bill to the House.