Parker David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Parker David: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:661;Page:9504] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I think most people will be surprised when they reflect on the year under review ask which was the most significant thing that the Department of Conservation did this year and find out that it was not anything to help with conservation but was actually the antithesis of conservation. It was mining in inappropriate areas. The Government through the Department of Conservation and the Ministry of Economic Development last year and this year has been investigating opening up more of the conservation estate to mining. I am not someone who says mining is always wrong. I wear a gold ring and I drive a metal car. There is a place for mining; it would be hypocritical for us to say there is not. Indeed there can be times when it is appropriate to mine parts of the land that is in the conservation estate. It happens not infrequently already. But just as it can be appropriate to mine in some parts of the conservation estate it is completely inappropriate to mine in some other parts of it. 
The most notable of the areas that ought not to be mined are of course the national parks. It is many many years since anyone in New Zealand thought it was sensible to mine in national parks. That is until the previous Minister of Conservation Tim Groser got into the portfolio. What was his first act as Minister of Conservation? His first act within days of the election was to amend the boundaries of the Oteake Conservation Park that was being created to exclude an area where there is a lignite resource. We are not talking about gold we are not talking about copper and we are not talking about diamonds. We are talking about brown coal. The Minister altered the boundaries of a conservation park so as to exclude that area from it. Then the next things that the Government did were to start the so-called stocktake of mineral resources in the conservation estate and to look at how it could free up the mining of other parts of the conservation estate. 
There are some parts of the conservation estate which are listed in schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act where mining is prohibited. They are largely national parks. Other than the national parks mining is not prohibited in most conservation areas. But there are some notable exceptions to that. I think the most notable exception to most people is the Coromandel. The Coromandel is close to Auckland. Auckland has a third of the population of New Zealand and it does not have its fair share of national parks. The conservation areas close to Auckland like those in the Coromandel area really do need to have protection. That is why some years ago this Parliament decided that an area north of what is called the green line in the Coromandel should not be opened for mining. This Government is reconsidering that decision. But having done that it found itself in a bit of a muddle so it has tried to obfuscate and say it is doing nothing different from what the previous Labour Government did. 
National says people should look at what happened in Paparoa National Park. The Government says mining by Pike River Coal adjacent to the park is an instance of mining on the national park. Of course when we look at the detail of that mining we see the Government is wrong. The only things in the national park are four emergency exits for the miners each of which has a diameter of 1.5 metres. Mr Key’s saying that that was a precedent for mining in national parks is not correct. It is a precedent for mining in non - national park conservation areas and that can be appropriate if they are not schedule 4 - listed lands. But the Government has been caught misrepresenting that. 
What else is the Government up to? Of course the Minister has already overseen the taking away of ministerial responsibility in respect of decisions on developments in the marine space. There were problems with the timing within which that discretion could be exercised. I think members on both sides of the House would have been very happy to tidy up the timing of it so that people had not spent their money on their resource management applications before the Minister’s decision was made. But that was the law as it stood. That could have been tidied up but instead the Government has removed any political accountability in respect of decisions that there ought to be ministerial accountability for. The Minister is the guardian of public spaces on behalf of the public and the Minister ought to be willing to be judged on the basis of his or her decisions. Instead we see that the Government is trying to avoid political responsibility by taking lands out of schedule 4 and making it easier to develop those areas and others. I think that is wrong. I think it is consistent with what the Government is doing in terms of taking the assets of Auckland City away from the direct control of elected councillors. That is wrong.