Parker DavidPart 4 Amendments to Conservation Act 1987Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to explain why the Labour Party will be voting against Part 4. The reason relates to clause 181(2)(b)(ii) which sets the time period within which anyone who wants to object to an application for a concession has to file their objection. My understanding—the Minister can correct me if I have got this wrong—is that presently there is a 40 working-day period for people to put in an objection in respect of a concession application on conservation land and that is being halved to 20 working days. I want to explain why in practice that is going to mean that people who should have a say in this are not going to have a say.Conservation land is public land that is being managed on behalf of the people of New Zealand by the Department of Conservation where civil society generally represents its interests in the conservation estate through groups like Federated Mountain Clubs Forest & Bird and other environmental groups. They might be local tramping clubs or they might be local environmental defence groups. Those groups are groups of volunteers who meet periodically. They do not spend their lives scanning public notices although they probably have a system through which they look periodically at public notices. They do not meet every week; generally they meet monthly. In order to make a decision as to whether they are going to support or oppose something or try to participate in an application for a concession in the area that affects them they have generally got to meet as a committee so that they can take a decision through their rules—which are probably rules for an incorporated society—as to whether they are going to do something. Until they have done that no individual member of that committee can just go off and do something off their own bat. They have got to make a proper decision in accordance with their constitution.Achieving that within 20 working days is often impossible or at least quite inconvenient. So let us take an example. Let us say a group meets on the 20th day of the month. It has to put out an agenda to its members to get its members to come along. It probably has to put that out at least a week before then so that would be on about the 13th day of the month in the week prior. So what happens if something comes to the notice of the Otago Tramping Club down in my patch in Otago. It has just had a meeting so its next meeting is not for another month and yet within 20 working days it has got to make a decision as to whether it should put in an objection or put in a submission so that it is heard—it might not be objecting but it might just want the terms to be changed a little. It has got to do that within 20 working days which may be impractical and I think that is what sits behind the old rule of having 40 working days. It is to make sure that members of civil society as they go about their normal 1-monthly cycle of business can have a bit of time to get the public notice to think about whether they should be putting this before their committee structure to make a decision to prepare their submission and to send it to the director-general. I think 4 weeks is impractical.I would also like to hear the Minister say—and there may be provisions about this already in the Conservation Act but if there are I do not know about them—what happens over the Christmas period. Does that automatically get extended if something is notified during that period? Is there a longer period that applies or do you ignore certain days during that Christmas period when traditionally these organisations do not operate as effectively as they do during the rest of the year? So I am going to be submitting an amendment—unless there is already one on the Table in the name of my more efficient colleagues in the Committee—to put that 20 working days to 40 working days.