Turner Judy: Walking Access Bill — Second Reading 
Turner Judy: Walking Access Bill — Second Reading 
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JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I stand on behalf of United Future to speak in support of the second reading of the Walking Access Bill. United Future considered it very worrying that included in the bill that went to the Local Government and Environment Committee was such a large section on the establishment of walkways across public land. This topic was barely touched upon by the Walking Access Consultation Panel. Presently public land has few restrictions. However walkways administered under the New Zealand Walkways Act by local government would be much more restrictive with for example no vehicles guns or dogs being permitted along these walkways—all of which are often used by keen fishermen hunters or trampers. 
The establishment of walkways over public land administered by regional and local councils would have served to displace unformed legal roads as a legal entity. Under the New Zealand Walkways Act a regional council can apply to stop a legal road by selling it and de-gazetting it which means this legislation may well have succeeded in stymieing public access rather than enhancing it. United Future is far happier with this bill now that the select committee has identified that “the power to create walkways over unformed legal road is not critical to the success of the walkways regime” and has since deleted this clause from the bill. 
It is a special and crucially important feature of New Zealand that wildlife freshwater fisheries and natural water do not attach to land title under New Zealand law but rather are part of the public estate owned by everyone in general. As a consequence it is not unreasonable that these notional owners—that is the general public—should be able to expect and have fair and reasonable access to that which is theirs while respecting the property rights of landowners for recreation and for something as basic as food gathering in the case of fishers and hunters but also other forms of food gathering such as shellfish and Maori customary food gathering. 
A future consequence of this is that there are therefore now two sets of property rights in New Zealand—private property rights in land and public property rights in public resources. This is what makes New Zealand special and has its origins in the wishes of early settlers to not see a replication of the landed gentry owning and exclusively controlling the fish and game animal resource. It is therefore good and important that clause 3 specifically refers to these public resources. However the  
Hansard 
 record needs to show that Parliament intended public resources to include wildlife freshwater fisheries and natural water. 
United Future joins with the Green Party in voicing our ongoing concerns over a couple of aspects of this bill. The New Zealand Walking Access Commission established by the bill remains basically toothless. Although it can negotiate with landowners to acquire an easement or lease over the land for use as a walkway it has no formal power to resolve any disputes over access. This is particularly important when negotiating over private land in order to gain access to a public resource such as a lake or a river. We envisage and agree with the National Party that for 90 percent of cases this will not be a problem. The commission will effectively be able to negotiate access across private land with the least bit of hassle to landowners. However in the few cases where access is difficult to negotiate the commission has no formal power to resolve the dispute and provide public access to a public resource by way of a walkway or enforcing access by way of an unformed legal road. It is difficult to understand this aspect of the bill. The intention is there to resolve the issues surrounding the public’s right of access. However the commission that the bill sets up has no formal powers to do that. 
The bill sets out that the Minister after 10 years will consult the Walking Access Commission and review the bill. This will cover whether it is still needed what amendments may be necessary and also a review of its effectiveness and the operation of the commission. United Future supports the reasoning for a review but we are concerned that 10 years is too long to wait. Surely any problems in the implementation of this legislation will be clear after a much shorter time—perhaps 5 years as the Green member suggested. We are worried that a 10-year wait will possibly allow a flawed process ample time to become entrenched and thus very hard to review accurately and amend. 
Finally we want to finish this second reading by recognising the efforts of the Fish and Game people in causing this bill to happen. It began back in 1999 when they convinced the then Labour Opposition which made a manifesto commitment. Fish and Game were able to convince them that there was a growing issue around access and that New Zealand was seeing the beginnings of a privatisation of public resources through the misuse of the Trespass Act to exclusively capture public resources that were on public land—for example rivers running through private land game found on public land and things like that. We congratulate Fish and Game on being so alert to this so many years ago and we are very pleased to support the second reading and progress this bill through the House.