Sage Eugenie: Conservation (Natural Heritage Protection) Bill — Third ReadingText is subject to correctionSage Eugenie: Conservation (Natural Heritage Protection) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14213. Text is subject to correction.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. The Green Party again is pleased to speak to the Conservation (Natural Heritage Protection) Bill. This will be a short call on its third reading. I have previously described the bill as useful tinkering. It is certainly that because it does seek to improve compliance with conservation legislation. Maryan Street enumerated the Acts that it applies to the Conservation Act the National Parks Act the Reserves Act the Wildlife Act the Wild Animal Control Act and the Marine Mammals Protection Act. It does this in terms of attempting to improve compliance by increasing the penalties in terms of both imprisonment and fines and providing for a more flexible sentencing regime.Certainly there needed to be legislative change because a lot of the penalties in the legislation are quite old. In the Reserves Act for example they had not been changed since 1977. They are inconsistent. The same offence in different types of protected area can end up with different penalties. The penalties are often not proportionate to the significance of the wildlife. People who are smuggling our species like gecko could earn more from selling gecko internationally than they would be penalised under the Wildlife Act.It was quite problematic—these pieces of legislation and the enforcement and penalty regimes they established—so we do congratulate Jacqui Dean on her work in bringing this bill to the House and to the Local Government and Environment Committee and for the very constructive way in which the select committee operated.The legislation is useful also because the department has reported a number of offences in areas as diverse as encroachments on conservation land illegal whitebaiting people taking dogs into areas that are closed to dogs in order to protect the kiwi there and people injuring wildlife. In the case of the bashing of seals that Maryan Street referred to I think it was actually a prosecution under the Animal Welfare Act rather than conservation legislation. But all of these sorts of things happen on conservation lands and to our protected species and people need to know that there are strong penalties and that they will be dealt with appropriately.There are some wider problems with the actual implementation of this bill and that is because of the significant underfunding of the Department of Conservation and the restructuring of the department. It has moved away from being a place-based organisation centred around field centres area offices and conservancies to having much bigger regions. I question whether there will be enough staff on the ground and whether they will have the capacity to actually respond promptly to potential breaches of the legislation. Certainly the Department of Conservation has a hot line that the public can report anything to that looks a bit dubious and to report registration numbers. The public does have a key role in providing the department’s eyes and ears. But when you have a department that has had its funding cut by $54 million under this Government does it have the resources to ensure that staff are out there in the field vigilant about potential offences and that the department then prosecutes those potential offenders? We have seen in the Ruataniwha case the department saying that one of the reasons it did not make a proper submission was that it was concerned about the cost of bringing expert witnesses and others in front of the board of inquiry. So cost is used to undermine the department’s statutory advocacy responsibilities. How do we know that it is not going to do the same here and that there is no risk that it will not be enforcing the legislation and these increased penalties?The other area where there is a major concern is that the Government has not shown itself to be committed to the effective management of our natural heritage. Here in this bill you have new penalties created for offences like affecting the spawning areas of fish and for putting substances or devices in the water that will harm fish. Yet you do not have the same department that is responsible for enforcing this legislation being able to make a substantive submission on the Ruataniwha Dam application that will make the Tukituki River and other tributaries potentially toxic because of elevated nitrate levels and will kill fish. So we have an offence to kill fish and increased penalties under this bill but we have the department not being active to prevent a major irrigation scheme that will kill fish. So there is a double standard there.You have the Ministry for Primary Industries in that same Ruataniwha case making an 18-page submission about how the scheme will benefit agriculture but you do not have the Department of Conservation doing its work. This Government is not interested in the department doing its job properly and we have seen that through the major cuts to funding and through the significant restructuring in the department.Maggie Barry: Rubbish.EUGENIE SAGE: It is true and it is borne out by the department’s annual report which was tabled last week. Under that annual report it highlights that we have got a biodiversity crisis in New Zealand which the Government is blind to. The Department of Conservation gets $157 million annually—that is all—for natural heritage management. It was able to do possum control last year on only 184000 hectares. Yesthis bill is a good one in terms of improving the penalties but the wider issue of effectively managing our conservation lands and adequately funding the department to do comprehensive pest control is not being given the attention it deserves or the funding it deserves by the Government. You have the department haemorrhaging staff as a result of the restructuring so will there be the staff on the ground to recognise when offences are occurring? Will they follow up those offences? We are not sure because of the major loss of expertise and staff numbers the move away from a place-based department and the department’s failure to undertake its statutory responsibilities in terms of statutory advocacy and our freshwater fish management.Yes the bill is a good one but it is a small area that it is dealing with and there may not be the adequate funding for the Department of Conservation to undertake its compliance and enforcement responsibilities effectively.