Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill

I want to take just a brief call in relation to Part 5 and actually ask the Minister to put on record the answer to one question that I have. I know that the Minister in the chair, Amy Adams, is not the Minister who is primarily responsible for the legislation, but I assume, because of her background, that she is competent to actually answer it, so I would really appreciate an answer to that.

In the Chamber last night we had one question to the Minister of Energy and Resources, who is responsible for the legislation, which was in relation to whether or not he had a legal opinion about the potential breach, in relation to this bill, of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in Supplementary Order Paper 205, which he dumped on the country on Easter Sunday. If the Minister in the chair wants to answer that question as well, that would be fantastic, but that is not the one I want her to answer.

Almost the total purpose of Part 5—almost the entire part—of the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill is related to a simple change, which is to change the Order in Council provisions and regime, or on the recommendation of the Minister. The change is to replace “by Proclamation” with the new term: “by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister”. My question to the Minister is twofold. Firstly, why is that considered to be more appropriate in this legislation? Why is it more appropriate to have an Order in Council or the recommendation of the Minister, rather than the current regime, which I assume has been in place since 1953 and which is by proclamation? And the second part of that question, which is directly related, asks whether this is going to be the regime from now on. Are we going to see this sort of change in other legislation? Obviously, if that is the case, what is the driver for it? What is the benefit that we will see as a result of that change in procedure?

As I said, I understand that Minister Adams is not the Minister who is primarily responsible for it, but I also know her background and consider that she would be able to answer that question quite easily, and, therefore, I would greatly appreciate it if she did. If she has any information to share with the Committee that neither the Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson, nor the Minister primarily responsible for this legislation, the Hon Simon Bridges, were able or willing to share with the Committee in relation to the legal opinion on Supplementary Order Paper 205 in the name of Simon Bridges, then that would be even more greatly appreciated.

That is the only question I want to ask, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

I support my colleague Ruth Dyson’s call for clarity. I think Part 5 of the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill is another example of changes that are allegedly technical, but the submitters really struggled with those changes. For them, there was a fear that, once again, changes were being made in order to privilege Cabinet over the Minister, or Order in Council over proclamation. Again, people did not know why. There was not a rationale for changing this. The Wildlife Act 1953, which was passed the year I was born, has been functioning for a very long time. It is there to protect some of the most amazing wildlife in the world. If you look at the Auckland Islands, Zealandia, Kāpiti Island, Hauturu—some of these places are not Wildlife Act reserves, but some of them are. What people want to know is what is going on, why we are changing this, what the point is, and how we can trust it.

The whole issue with the Crown Minerals Act is because of the purpose—other parts being so clearly about privileging one industry. People at the Commerce Committee hearings were deeply distrustful of other changes. They were not satisfied with superficial rationales about Part 5. They were not convinced that wildlife would be protected any more than reserves or other parts of the Department of Conservation estate—other areas that have been set aside before, by the years of hard work of many, many people to protect them. The people at the hearings were not satisfied and they were not clear about it. I do not think that the select committee process made it any clearer. It is unfortunate that my colleague’s questions were not answered. We do not have clarity. No one seems prepared to say why it is better to treat the Wildlife Act provisions in this way, and why it is better to change the provisions in Parts 4 and 5.

People could argue that we should just trust that the Government knows what it is doing, but given Supplementary Order Paper 210, given the rest of this bill, and given this week in Parliament, I do not think that anybody feels like trusting that the best is being done. I think that if legislation is obscure, arcane, difficult to understand, and unclear to people, including those of us who were there, after the select committee process, and if we still do not see why and we have been through this process—because with officials doing their best, the Government did not come clean about its agenda—we get this kind of confusion, and we get this kind of concern. I just wanted to stand up and say that this bill has been dogged by the myth that it contains just technical and administrative changes, when it is a fundamental shift in values. The Government has misread the values of this country. We do not privilege minerals over all else. We want proper law and proper regimes that actually create fairness and protection for sustainable things. That has not happened. This bill has gone the other way, and so there is no trust around Part 5. There is no trust around any of the rest of it. I think that Supplementary Order Paper 205, which was produced on Easter Sunday—the Petrobras burning of the bridges—was a classic example. Thank you very much.

I want to take just a brief call on this part of the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill and the amendments to the Wildlife Act, because that piece of legislation is not a widely known—or wildly known—piece of legislation, and it has been around for a long time. It is an important piece of legislation and goes hand in hand—or hand in glove, or hand in paw, perhaps—with many other important conservation and environmental pieces of legislation that we have in this country. It has served us well, without too much fiddling around, for a long time. So when we are presented with amendments to the Wildlife Act in the context of legislation covering mining, minerals, exploration, and the production processes associated with them, we need to look carefully and somewhat askance, I would have thought, at the measures before we blindly go ahead and support them.

I note that the principal amendment being made, which is to section 9 of the Wildlife Act, is to change the references to “by Proclamation” to the term “by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister”. And herein lies the very same problem we have seen in other parts of the bill, which my colleagues Ruth Dyson and Moana Mackey have spoken about eloquently and with conviction, I might add, in a way that we do not often see in speeches about the Wildlife Act.

I just want to reiterate the concern that we have that is about the traducing of the rights of the Minister of Conservation, which is redolent throughout this bill at a time when our country—we talked in the House only earlier this afternoon about the prospect of a million Chinese tourists coming down here—is marketing itself as a clean, green nation, and a nation that presents to the world its conservation estate, its flora, and its fauna as a selling point. That has historically been protected by the Minister of Conservation with the powers that that Minister has, but those powers are being undermined by so many parts of this legislation and in no less a way than in Part 5, with the amendments to the Wildlife Act. It is for that reason that, as with the other parts of the bill, when it comes to Part 5, we express great concern about that and advise to the Committee great caution when proceeding with changes of this nature. So it is for that reason that we are opposing not just the other parts of this bill but Part 5 in particular, and the unnecessary fiddling around with the Wildlife Act 1953, which I know has been very important not just to many New Zealanders but to the Department of Conservation rangers, even with their remodelled department now, their revised job descriptions, and the change processes that they will be undergoing. So on that basis we express great caution and, reluctantly, opposition to these particular changes to the otherwise innocuous piece of legislation that is the Wildlife Act 1953.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 210 in the name of the Hon Simon Bridges to Part 5 be agreed to.