Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well we finally got to the end of that last presentation from Rachel Brooking and we did start to hear that farmers were people with names with families. For the first part of that presentation it just seemed to be black and white documentation as if farmers didn't have any ability to control their own land and everything had to be black and white and on paper and we needed to do this to them. So thank you for at least admitting that there were families and farmers involved in this process. Now again my colleague Nicola Grigg talked about evidence-based submissions and too many times in the House this week we have seen evidence of people bringing evidence-based submissions to select committees that at the end of the day counts for nothing. People come along with ways of showing what they're doing. They bring a human factor to the select committee but at the end of the day it seems to go back down to what's on the paper and what's black and white and there is no trust by this Government of farmers. It's really interesting for me because I was here for the first reading of this piece of legislation which was started by a previous Minister Eugenie Sage and it is now being undertaken by Minister Damien O'Connor. When I heard the speeches in the first reading you would have thought that those two Ministers one who was the Minister at the time and the now current Minister were coming from two different places. I was waiting at the time for New Zealand First to put their presentation up to see where they were going to go and to see if we would get three different answers because it was done in the last Parliament. It's very clear that members on the other side of the House should understand that under Crown ownership back in the day this land was neglected and it consequently eroded. Through permanent tenures on this land farmers have been repairing it and tending it for generations and the Crown is repaying the farmers' caretaking of this land now by eroding their property rights of the Crown pastoral leases and this will not benefit environmental outcomes. It won't enhance pastoral farming in the South Island high country. It's very interesting to me that when we were down there—and as Nicola Grigg said many of us have been down there to a number of these properties across a period of a number of years led particularly in the first instance by the Hon Jacqui Dean when she held the portfolio—all we've seen is farmers and leaseholders doing their best. They are actually getting rid of exotic pest plants and they know where indigenous species live next to those exotic plants. They're not out to destroy everything around them; they're actually out to get rid of those wilding pines that are getting in the way of nature of their farming operation of tourism and of all of those things that have gone on down there. The bill changes the relationship with the lessees and the Crown through Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) rather than having it being on mutual trust partnership and respect it is going from one of trust to one of monitoring and policing. What I do notice in the legislation—and it's something that I think is totally unnecessary—is that it is as if the Government and the Cabinet almost don't trust LINZ. They have injected Cabinet into the legislation. Now why would Cabinet need to be having a say on what goes on on these farms? Surely there are enough Resource Management Act commitments and there are enough current rules around what people can and can't do with their farms without having Cabinet injected. It's just another piece of control—Cabinet seems to want to own the control and say over everything in New Zealand as if they don't trust anybody else. There's been no effort by this Government to work proactively with the leaseholders; instead it has just chosen to put this bill through the House. In the last couple of years while we've been under COVID there have been programmes set out under Jobs for Nature to find jobs for people who have been displaced from their other employment. That's OK in terms of keeping people employed but what we've seen is evidence that these farmers have been doing jobs for nature for years and years and years and that money's been coming out of their own pockets. They've been looking after the land and they've been looking after the properties. They've had open access they've had tourists coming through and the last thing you would do if you didn't have good intentions around a piece of land would be to open it up and let the tourists come through. The tourists that actually come to New Zealand—these farms are used in publicity. Nobody coming to New Zealand from overseas loves a picture more than that of a high country farm with beautiful merino sheep on it. They're actually coming to New Zealand to experience what it is all about. We've seen some pretty exemplary examples of what goes on on these farms and so have the tourists and these farmers have been a showcase window for our country. Unfortunately under COVID that has slowed down and that has also affected the income of these farmers along with various areas of the country including Queenstown and other tourist populations.There's been really no consideration by the Government of these leaseholders. We've heard from others on the other side of the House that they are multigenerational. They are children grandchildren and great-grandchildren who have been guardians of the land for a period of time and somehow this Government seems to think that the Department of Conservation or LINZ or someone else who can put a heavy hand over these generational farmers is going to come to a better outcome than what those people have already come to. It's clearly an ideological move by the Government. It's just a further grab of power—Dr Duncan Webb: Oh rubbish.BARBARA KURIGER: Those farmers—it's not rubbish Dr Duncan Webb. It is not rubbish. We've seen the evidence of how these farmers are looking after their land and they certainly are so why would the Government—Dr Duncan Webb: They're leaseholders—read the lease.BARBARA KURIGER: —want to then go and inject—they might be leaseholders but leaseholders look after land just like farm owners do. When those farms Dr Webb have been in those families for a period of time a leasehold is not just a document and I think that's the thing that this Government needs to wake up to. So thank you for injecting that comment into the argument because to those people the leasehold is not a document and a piece of paper in a contract; it is a lifetime of what their parents and grandchildren have done and what their children and grandchildren are expected to do and this Government tends to want to pull the rug out from under these people.So we're really disappointed with this process. National does not support this piece of legislation. As has been said we will actually be withdrawing it in 2023 when we get back into Government and we'll be putting things back to how they should be and how they were because there's one difference between the National Party who will be the Government next year and the current Government which is that we trust businesses and people to get on with it and to make a far better job of doing what they're doing than any Government regulation can enforce people to do. They only need enforcement at times when it's essential. These people actually have the vision they have the heart they have the generosity and they have the family fortitude to do the right thing. It's something they've been doing for generations and generations and generations and all of a sudden we get a second-term Government in here—and I suspect the first-term Government wasn't able to do this because they had a coalition partner that wouldn't let them. Now they're running loose and they're putting in all sorts of bad pieces of legislation including this. So you could say that a one-term Government of three years thinks that they can do this job better than multigenerational farming families who have been doing it for a century and they are thinking that they know best. If that's not arrogance then someone needs to tell me what is. Thank you Madam Speaker.