Forests Amendment Bill

In speaking again on the Forests Amendment Bill, because I was interrupted I would like to recap and reacquaint everybody with the situation with regard to it. I was actually extolling the extraordinary nature of this current Government, in that it supports this bill in its entirety. Yet when the Labour members were in Opposition in 1999 they opposed the bill, and Mark Peck himself called it “this grubby little Bill”.

💬 Mark Peck: I didn’t!

You did, and I have—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate. The member will refer to “the member” or use the member’s name.

The member did. He very much did so, and I have those words right in front of me. I will go so far as to recall some other words spoken by some other members of this current Government when they were in Opposition. In fact, on reading Hansard, I saw that the Hon Jim Sutton actually called the Hons David Carter and Nick Smith “twerps” for having spoken in favour of this bill. Now the members of this Government who made those sorts of comments, which are really rather unacceptable in the House—I hope they were made to withdraw and apologise for them; perhaps we could do that retrospectively—are supporting this bill. They spoke incessantly against it then, and lambasted the people who had presented the bill and who had gone and negotiated the whole situation over some considerable time. It was quite a complicated situation, which had never been able to be dealt with by the previous Government. Even though that Government had attempted to deal with the situation, it had not managed to, yet the Hon Nick Smith did manage that. He succeeded in coming to a workable solution, but that was lambasted by the Opposition of the time.

Here are the members of that Opposition, now in Government, supporting the passage of this bill through the House, with a ban on the export of wood-chip. It is quite a significant part of the bill that this Government has sought to ban the export of wood-chip, but yes, there is an exemption for somebody exporting wood-chip under another name. That exporter has an exemption, so that is one particular situation where there is one exemption, but there is no exemption for anybody else. We hear from the Green Party that, well, there is no market for the export of wood-chip, so the ban does not really matter—as if that could possibly justify the ban. That is hardly a credible reason for supporting a ban on exporting wood-chip. So here we are, having sustainable forestry and being required to meet all the same sorts of requirements governed by the Forests Act, yet still being denied the opportunity to export wood-chip. We would like the Minister to take a call to explain the reasoning behind that, and to expand on it.

Although this is a difficult area, it is great to see that the work by my learned colleague the Hon Nick Smith has been carried forward and is being undertaken, although, sadly, not to the degree he would have envisaged. We pay tribute to the Hon Nick Smith for his work in that regard, and to the Hon David Carter as well, because he ably supported Mr Smith when he presented this legislation to the House. I have here the results of the vote taken against the bill at the time of the second reading: Labour, 37, and the Alliance, 11, and there was also one independent vote against it. Quite clearly, those members all voted against this bill. The bill’s aim was to enable the inclusion of certain forests under the indigenous forestry management milling and export controls contained in the Forests Act, as amended in 1993. Those forests were the West Coast indigenous production forests and other indigenous forests reserved for Māori under the South Island Landless Natives Act and under other legislation. The bill sought also to protect the Crown from claims for compensation, and to validate any decisions made by the Minister of Forestry under the Customs Export Prohibition Order 1996.

We have here the recommendations from the Local Government and Environment Committee. Although the export controls under the principal Act are retained, this legislation expands on, and makes changes to, those export provisions, and that is the most significant amendment affecting the South Island Landless Native Act forest owners. It affects those who choose the sustainable forest management option under the Act’s forest policy, and many submitters were concerned about the loss of export markets, especially from non-sawlog hardwood that has been previously exported as wood-chip, as I have said. Others saw the re-imposition of export controls as counter to the principle of unrestricted economic benefit from the South Island Landless Natives Act land, and that is the case. We understand that the forests on that land are often of poor quality, and note that some submitters consider chipping a necessity in order to receive a viable economic return from the land. Those submitters believe that in spite of the issue of whether or not there is a market for wood-chip, they should have the ability to export it. That is something we would like the Minister to take a call on; we would be very interested in his response around that matter. We will certainly be looking for that in the Committee stage.

I reiterate the fact that the members of this Government opposed this bill when they were in Opposition, and here they are now supporting it in its passage through the House. We would hope that the sorts of comments Labour members made during the bill’s origins in 1999 will not be repeated here during this phase.

I am delighted to confirm that I called the bill a “grubby little Bill” on the last occasion we spoke about it in 1999, because it was. As I say now, and as the Minister outlined—and if Ms Goudie had been in the House and heard the Minister’s speech, she would know this—the bill has been cleaned up and modified by the Government, and also by the select committee process in the Local Government and Environment Committee. It is now very good legislation, and should be supported. Having had—

💬 Jim Peters: How about the SILNA owners?

Well, those people are far happier than they were, I say to that member, when the bill was first introduced. Indeed, that was the basis of much of my comments on that occasion—the effect on the South Island Landless Natives Act landowners. I do understand that that particular issue caused some controversy. The bill has been tidied up very nicely, indeed. I do not propose to take up any further time in the House, and I ask that members progress the bill as quickly as they can.

It is interesting that this bill had its genesis back in 1999. At that time a number of submissions were heard by the Transport and Environment Committee. When we read through the bill it is interesting to see that many of the same issues that were identified in 1999 have resurfaced again in 2004. While the Labour member can say that this situation came about only because Labour made amendments to the bill, it was National that actually set this thing up, in order to give an opportunity. We now have the Government claiming credit for that. The Government could have kicked this legislation out for touch, but it realised how important the bill is. That is why we are debating it today. We could have debated the bill 4 years ago, when it first came to the select committee. What has happened over the last 4 years? I read here on the front page of the commentary on the bill that the Forests Amendment Bill was referred to the Transport and Environment Committee on 13 July 1999, and here we are nearly 5 years later tidying up legislation that could have been tidied up over the last 4 years, at least.

It is important to identify what the bill does. The impact of policy decisions since its introduction is that the Crown’s West Coast indigenous production forests were transferred from Timberlands West Coast Limited to the Department of Conservation in 2001-02. Also, the South Island Landless Natives Act policy package, which is commonly referred to as the “SILNA” policy, was announced, and the Cabinet decided to drop a proposed amendment that would have widened the list of products that could be exported to include sustainably produced wood-chips and other sawn timber from species other than rimu and beech.

It is appropriate at this time to look at the area the indigenous forests actually cover, because it is not until we understand how significant a contributor they are to the economy that we realise how important this bill is. The commentary on the bill states that about 24 percent of New Zealand remains covered with indigenous forest. That is quite a huge area. Of that area, 83 percent is held in Crown-owned national parks and reserves, and 17 percent is privately owned. Land covered in the South Island Landless Natives Act totals about 57,000 hectares. That is a huge area, of which 35,000 hectares is forested. If we look at the total forests that we have in New Zealand, we see that the 35,000 hectares of forest covered by this legislation is a very significant land area. Although there were some exemptions made earlier on, it is interesting to note that the previously exempted forests are brought under Part 3A of the principal Act by this bill. The bill removes the exemptions, but provides for specific controls and exemptions for specific categories of forests, and has various other clauses.

The bill seeks to ensure that the export and milling of indigenous timber will continue to be linked with sustainable forest management practices. The Government member stood up and said that that was the sort of amendment that the Government was looking for to improve this bill, yet those were the sorts of things that in 1999 the committee would have been very much focusing on. To claim credit for something 4½ years later is an absolute nonsense, when the Government could have expedited the passage of this bill over the last 4 years. I want to comment on the customs regulations. They were found to be unlawful, so it is interesting that that remedy has been tidied up. The bill re-establishes export controls over indigenous timber and wood-chips from South Island Landless Natives Act land, making those lands subject to the same export provisions as all other indigenous forests.

There was a question about compensation, which is always a very important point for the submitters on this legislation. One felt that they may be disadvantaged by it. Many submitters were concerned about clauses 25 and 26. When the Committee of the House starts to look at this legislation, no doubt those clauses will be debated here, and the rationale behind them will be thrashed out. Some people felt that to rule out compensation was an appropriation of existing property rights. It will be interesting to see how that progresses. In relation to the South Island Landless Natives Act forests, some submitters were concerned that the bill does not provide for compensation for loss in forest value as a consequence of the removal of the general exemption for their lands. We will be interested, in the Committee stage, to see what transpires.

Some amendments have certainly been favourable, and we have supported them. The commentary on the bill states that the export controls under the principal Act are retained. I think that that is significant. If we were to look further down in the commentary we can see that changing international markets, the scale of operations, and the prospects for changing domestic markets and values all affect current and future prospects for commercial forestry. The interesting point that is not mentioned is the changing exchange rates. Over recent times one would have had to consider what impact the changing exchange rate of the dollar would have had, because forestry companies, not only in this realm but forestry companies in general, have found it extremely difficult to compete internationally, given the changing exchange rates. We see that at the moment the New Zealand dollar is dropping against the US dollar and other currencies, which will certainly help the export sector.

National did not have a minority report on this bill, but along with New Zealand First, ACT, and United Future we believe that export controls are not needed, given the standards that apply under the existing legislation to promote sustainable forest management, as well as the increasing worldwide recognition of the move towards third-party forest certification requirements.

To summarise the points from National’s point of view, the genesis of this debate goes back to 1999, when National was in Government—

💬 Hon Ken Shirley: It goes back much earlier than that.

Mr Shirley knows that it goes much further back, but I am just referring to what is in this bill. He may have already taken a call on this bill already, but certainly in the Committee stage he can enlighten us on how far back it does go. However, if we look at the submissions that were made back in 1999 and the submissions that came through in 2003, we can see the same arguments being progressed. The point that we make here is that it is important that we tidy this issue up and that we get on with it. However, I say to the Government that it has had over 4 years in which to progress this bill, and here we are in the fifth month of 2004 tidying up legislation that had its genesis as a bill back in 1999.

National will support this bill. We are interested in what will happen as the bill progresses through the House, but at this stage we are happy that it proceed on that basis.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Amendments recommended by the Local Government and Environment Committee by majority agreed to.