Turei Metiria: Walking Access Bill — First Reading 
Turei Metiria: Walking Access Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:646;Page:15648] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party agrees with some aspects of this Walking Access Bill. It is good to have a code of conduct to have a focus on building relationships and to have financial support for signage. That is all good stuff. What we are most concerned about is that in this bill Labour has significantly weakened on its promise to restore what New Zealanders generally think of as the Queen’s Chain. This is a major backtrack by Labour on its election promises and it has been done with another strange little coalition between National and Labour. 
The Greens were very disappointed with the report the Minister referred to when it first came out. The purpose of that report was to address how New Zealanders might have walking access to the great outdoors—access that is free certain enduring and practical. We agree that negotiations are always best and always the thing one does first but the problem that the report was supposed to address and that this bill was supposed to address was that negotiations are not always effective. They do not always work and when that happens we need to have some way of making some progress. Unfortunately the majority of the report gave no direction for what to do where progress could not be made and negotiations had failed and classically this bill fails to provide any direction in that regard as well. Basically this is a Labour “Do Nothing Spend Lots Bill”. It creates a toothless bureaucracy. It can do nothing when the very real issue of unreasonable restrictions on access arise. This bill is classic Labour classic National. We already have an example of the miserable public outcomes from the high country tenure review. That process shows very clearly how easily Government agencies will trade off public and ecological benefits for quick yet useless solutions that benefit the landowner and tend to short-change the public. 
I was pretty disgusted to hear the Foreshore and Seabed Act being mentioned in the opening remarks on this legislation. The Foreshore and Seabed Act was where the legitimate customary rights held by hapu whanau and iwi were destroyed by this Government—destroyed over the fallacy of securing public access to the foreshore and seabed. In fact that legislation was specifically designed to strip Maori of their right to go to court to have their land rights identified and their right to their customary ownership because of the commercial interests of both the Government and private companies in the exploitation of the foreshore and seabed. We need only to see how many applications for exploration of the seabed and foreshore happened immediately after that legislation was passed to know that. So how grotesque it is then for us to have to sit here and listen to the Minister defending the property rights of a few—and only a few—intransigent unreasonable farmers who refuse to provide rational and reasonable public access to public land when the Minister’s Government just a few short years ago refused to protect the customary rights of hapu and whanau using the fallacy of public access as the excuse. It is a grotesque example to be made in these circumstances. 
The Greens continue to be shocked to see National and Labour colluding to keep New Zealanders from having the free and reasonable access to the conservation and public land that they are entitled to—to New Zealand’s public land. There is a significant waste of resources here. The money spent on this bureaucracy could well be spent—and better spent in our view—on purchasing areas for access where landowners become unreasonable. At least then the money would actually do something. It would achieve something because the commission will not be able to achieve anything. As I say we should negotiate first but there has to be a system for arbitration in order to enable public access. This is public land; the public have a right to access it. 
Even the offence provisions set up in the bill favour landowners and farmers over members of the public. Obstructing a walkway is what is called a mens rea offence. It requires someone to have knowledge intent or recklessness to do it in order for that person potentially to be convicted of it. But the public offences—where members of the public are on such land—are all strict liability offences and it does not matter whether a person intended to cause harm or made a mistake. If a person did it then he or she could be held liable for it. Essentially that means that the burden of the offence provisions of the criminal law if you like are placed on members of the public but not on the landowner. Again it comes down to the Government defending the rights of private property owners—and it is only a few private property owners—over the rights of the public. Why has Labour promoted a bill that places such a burden fully on members of the public? This bill is supposed to be about securing the public’s rights. This is not a compromise. The public bear the burden and get very little benefit. 
One of the other issues is around transferring the legislation and responsibilities if you like of the New Zealand Walkways Act to the commission from the Department of Conservation. We acknowledge that the department and the New Zealand Conservation Authority have done a somewhat mediocre job of looking after walkways and the department acknowledges this apparently by wanting to shed the responsibility for walkways to this new commission despite the provision of recreational tracks and huts being one of the department’s core mandates. There is little evidence of that situation improving but I must admit that this is possibly because of the department’s current funding crisis where despite having more and more land to manage it is faced with having to shave $8 million off its expenditure because this Government has continually underfunded our primary Government agency for protecting conservation land public land and the public rights to it. The transferral of the New Zealand Walkways Act provisions to a new Crown entity this new commission simply distracts from the core issue that arises here—that is finding solutions to local public access issues. 
The bill is classic Labour and National “greenwash”. By creating a commission with no teeth and no power to protect the public’s rights they are engaged in a ridiculous waste of money especially at a time when the Department of Conservation is shedding crucial staff because of a major funding shortage. In fact the department loses its responsibility around walkways and the whole issue of the commission comes under the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The ministry is an advocate for the farming community not for public access. It is not an advocate for the public interest. That is the role of the Department of Conservation. Yet the whole responsibility for the commission which is supposed to be protecting public rights is going to an organisation whose job is to advocate for the farming community. Labour and National have this fabulous grand coalition which is designed to lock out the public and protect some farmers so I guess that it must be election year.