West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill

I move, That the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill be now read a second time. I want to thank members for their contributions during the first reading of this bill. It comes down to a very simple question: whether we should allow timber that was blown down in huge quantities in Cyclone Ita to be recovered. That is the issue. What I have found extraordinary—particularly in the contributions from the Opposition—is that I have heard a whole lot of personal abuse, I have been called every name under the sun, and I have heard all sorts of comments about Solid Energy and all sorts of things, but what members did not fundamentally address was whether it make senses to recover the wood that has fallen over in great volume in Cyclone Ita. Members on this side of the House are absolutely clear—

💬 Andrew Little: That’s not the issue, and the Minister’s knows it.

—in our position that it is sensible. The member is interjecting. I have to say that I have been in this House for 24 years and what we have just witnessed was something quite extraordinary: not one, but two members voting against their own party. What that shows is the level of dysfunctionality and the extent of division within a party that in just 3 months’ time seeks to be the Government of this country.

If they cannot resolve their position on something as simple as being able to use dead trees on the West Coast for some jobs, how on earth are they going to be able to resolve the complex issues involved in the governance of this country? They are in disarray. They are in a mess. They do not have a bolter’s hope of being able to run a sensible Government.

I do want to note, and comment on, a few of the issues of substance. The first of those is why it is necessary for Parliament to move at pace if we are to sensibly recover this wood. Well, it is very simple. It is called sap stain and it is called borer. It starts in spring. That is just 8 weeks away. Equally so, every member of this House would know that the recovery of wind-blown logs is an exercise that needs to be done with care and with safety, and every day that this House delays, it halts the work that needs to be got on with and done around how this timber can be sensibly recovered, and recovered before it deteriorates. That is why this House is dealing with this matter, quite properly, under urgency.

I quite deliberately provided a termination clause. This is not a permanent change to the Conservation Act—it is not. What I have said is that we are going to commission research as a consequence of this extraordinary event—independent research—to enable us to compare those areas that timber is recovered from with those areas that timber is not recovered from, and on the basis of that we may make a better-informed decision about whether, on a long-term basis, we should allow such recovery.

One of the most extraordinary features of the debate is an amendment that has been tabled by the member for West Coast - Tasman.

💬 Chris Auchinvole: What does it say?

The amendment says that only companies from the West Coast - registered area should be allowed to have access to the timber.

💬 Chris Auchinvole: That’s odd.

That is odd. There is a large company—in fact, the largest sawmill is owned by a company called Westco Lagan. Its registered office is in Christchurch—

💬 Chris Auchinvole: Always has been.

—and always has been, as my colleague from the West Coast says. Well, what an extraordinary law to get into the business of saying: “Oh, well, that company”—which has backed the Coast and has employed people on the Coast—“is going to be discriminated against on where Labour stands.” I am just gobsmacked. Are we really going to have members saying that the natural gas that comes out of Taranaki can be used only in Taranaki, or that we cannot dare move the dairy products that are produced in one district to another district? Are we going to be telling the people of Nelson that the apples that are produced in Nelson can be used only in Nelson? If you want to wreak havoc on the economy—

💬 Andrew Little: That would work if the apple-pickers were spread around the countryside, but they work in one area. This is about sending the work out of the region

If you want to wreak havoc on the economy, Mr Little, that is the sort of loopy parochialism and protectionism that you would put into law. I cannot believe—I cannot believe—that a party that seriously wants to be considered for the governance of this country would even table such a foolish amendment.

I want to deal specifically with the Resource Management Act provisions in the bill. What we could do is pass this bill, allow the Director-General of Conservation to be able to give authorisations, then require those participants that want to recover the timber to then have to go to both the regional council and the district council to get a resource consent, and then they would have to publicly notify those consents. They would be subject to appeals to the Environment Court.

Let me give a simple example. We know that a member of the Greens opposed the Bathurst Resources mine. For how long, under the Resource Management Act, have they been able to slow down consents? Well, I will tell you how many times. There have been 32 court hearings—

💬 Hon Chris Tremain: 32?

—32 court hearings—over the application by Bathurst Resources to mine on conservation land on the West Coast. Are members on this side of the House prepared to allow that sort of circus to occur in respect of the recovery of this timber?

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: You were the Minister. What did you do about it?

The member Mr Damien O’Connor says that I was the Minister. Well, let me remind him. The application for Bathurst Resources to mine the Denniston Plateau was lodged prior to our becoming the Government, and this Government has repeatedly tried to amend the Resource Management Act—

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: Five years as Minister—nothing.

—and the member who is screaming, who pretends to stand up for the West Coast, has opposed every single one of those Resource Management Act reforms. I am not prepared to make a joke of this legislation by misleading the people of the West Coast, saying that they are going to be able to recover this timber, and then have them tied up in months of bureaucracy and red tape because of the Resource Management Act.

I have confidence that the Department of Conservation, as it is required to do under this bill, will ensure that the recovery of that timber is done by minimising those environmental effects. Those who oppose these provisions are effectively saying that they have no confidence in the Department of Conservation staff. They are wrong—they are wrong. It will be done well. This is a sensible bill. This is a sensible response to an urgent situation, and again I commend the bill to the House.

Before I call the next member, I wish to draw the House’s attention to a correction on the announcement of the vote on the first reading. On a recheck of the numbers, I will be clear that the result is Ayes 72, Noes 46. The record will show that correction.

The Minister of Conservation, as always, cannot even get the facts straight. My amendment, to clarify the facts for the people who are listening to the debate, says that the Westco Lagan situation—yes, it is registered in Christchurch, but it is operating south of Hokitika. The amendment says that a person applying for authorisation “is a West Coast registered company or operation;”. This amendment is to ensure that people operating in our region employing West Coasters get a fair shot and the first opportunity to access these logs. It is as simple as that, and I will not sit here and listen to the Minister mislead New Zealand. That is why my colleagues are so suspicious of the legislation. That is why they cannot trust Nick Smith or any of his colleagues to indeed carry out what they say in this legislation.

If the bill does, as the Minister states, just deal with the logs from the particular event, and if the Government was to support our amendments—to tighten it up, to have opportunities for West Coasters, to reduce the impact or possible impact, and to not widen the scope of this legislation—we would support the legislation. But you cannot trust the Tories—that is the problem. So I and my colleague Moana Mackey have put forward amendments to tighten up the bill, to try to get it to do what the Minister says it does, but, unfortunately, that is not happening.

The question of why this is being done is certainly the first one that I ask. Why? Is it because the trees are there? Well, I guess if that was the answer, we would say “Well, there were trees standing there and because they are there we should utilise them, and because they are on the ground we should utilise them.” It is not a good answer.

The answer I would like to hear is that there are benefits from this and there are no adverse consequences, which I personally believe is the possibility. The problem is on the benefit side. They do not necessarily accrue to the West Coast. On the other side, the impacts, my colleagues are suspicious and want changes made in order to do what the Minister says—that is, to minimise the impacts—and it is possible through helicopter logging and through minimal soil disturbance. You can do this as long as it is safe, and the legislation makes reference to safety, but then it includes exemptions from the Resource Management Act. So my colleagues are wary, suspicious, and do not trust the Tory Government to protect the conservation estate.

On balance, I think there are potential benefits from this, but without my amendments being passed, there are no guarantees for the West Coast. Indeed, is that not what the Minister and his colleague said when they spent $6,000 to fly down in a helicopter and get the photo opportunity there, for the West Coast papers in particular? They said “Oh, this is all about the West Coast. This is all about job opportunities.” Never mind the fact that you have taken 1,000 well-paid jobs from the West Coast through Solid Energy mismanagement. Never mind the fact that the legislation does not guarantee any jobs for West Coasters at all. No wonder my colleagues are suspicious.

On balance, I have to err on the side of hope. You might say that I am a little naive. You can say that because I am a Catholic, I rely too much on my faith. Well, yes, I do. Yes, I do. So along with my colleague, Rino Tirikatene—and I appreciate that Rino also represents the good people in our region—we have to rely on our faith. It is a bit risky, but I live in hope as well. What I would prefer to do, and rather than the Minister misleading the House and New Zealand over—

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

Oh yes, misleading the House and the country over what my amendment said and what it meant. Anyone who has an operation in our region or anyone who has registered a company on the West Coast should have preferential access. That is what it says. The economic benefits from this are possible given proper harvesting methods and given the attempt to prevent the collapse of the price in the market place, which is the second part of my Supplementary Order Paper. It is possible to have economic benefits from this, and I believe it is sustainable in that the bugs and birds and bees will still have sufficient on which to survive, but the benefits to the West Coast are still just possibilities and hope, and based on my faith.

I was trying to think of an analogy for Mr Brownlee, who, as I say, lives in Christchurch, and the one that would pop up would be the fact that there is a reclamation in the Lyttelton Harbour for Lyttelton, we are told, and for the Lyttelton port company. And the question would be: should the Tauranga port company do that reclamation? If we are indeed to implement the Tory ideology of anyone being able to do anything, then why would we not open up the option for the Tauranga port to redevelop and reclaim Lyttelton Harbour—because they might be able to do it more efficiently?

What I am saying is that we expect locals to firstly get the benefits of these one-off events. I am hoping that the National Government will see its way clear and will actually start to deliver on what it has promised, because if the Supplementary Order Paper does not pass, then I fear that we will have the same old colonial, arrogant, pompous, dictatorial approach that has happened so often on the West Coast—

This member needs to go to confession.

—from people like the member at the back there, sitting on his chuff in Auckland or in Hamilton, telling the West Coast what to do. I fear that we will end up with the same thing. The helicopters will come from Rotorua. We know that, but we do not know where the logging gangs or where the trucks or where the sawmills will come from, because National refuses to put in place a measure that will guarantee benefits for the West Coast—

💬 Chris Auchinvole: Oh, sorry—sorry.

Mr Auchinvole sits on his haunches at the back there. He is too scared to speak out against his colleague Mr Smith and say “We need to guarantee West Coast jobs first.” He is always making noises about it. Here is the opportunity, Mr Auchinvole. Back my amendment. Back my amendment that says there should be jobs first for West Coasters and protection for the market, which is small and fragile at the moment for indigenous timber across this country.

I will leave it at that, and I will leave the challenge to the National Government to try to prove its so-called loyalty. I just once again remind the House that all too often we get misled by statements by Nick Smith and by National about what really happens here.

I could speak at length in response to—not to what was said by the previous speaker, Damien O’Connor, because very little was said, but the way it was said; the injured child, trying to cover up one’s nakedness with a fig leaf. As it is, the fact has to be faced: Labour has done nothing over the wind-thrown trees. There have been no suggestions from that side of the House, and no initiatives proposed. When a sound proposal from this side of the House—from an extraordinarily experienced and gifted Minister of Conservation working with team National from the Coast—comes forward, suddenly there is a restrictive series of words hastily shoved together. We watched Damien O’Connor writing them, scribbling away, during the debates—but now he says it is a challenge. It is a challenge. It will guarantee Coast jobs.

I will tell you what. When we were looking at doing the hospital, to guarantee Coast jobs, to guarantee some expenditure on the Coast, to guarantee some development, to give them a hospital, it was: “Don’t do it. Have a survey. Ask people what they want. What sort of a hospital do they want? Where do they want it?”. He wanted it stopped—he wanted it stopped. This one, he wants it stopped or, if he does not want it stopped, he wants it put in such a position that he is able to say he would not have done it that way, or it should have been differently. I think, to use a sporting phrase, it is the story of a Monday quarterback. He comes along on Monday, not having played the game on Saturday, to say that if he had played it would have been so much better.

💬 Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Monday morning quarterback.

Monday morning quarterback—that is the phrase. Thank you, Sam. That is the phrase there.

But for all that, the Labour Party is obviously riven—riven—with dispute over whether its members should support this or whether they should not. Should they support the urgency, or should they support the bill at all? We would really like you to. We heard Andrew Little—a man whom I have considerable respect for at select committee level—suddenly saying: “I actually support it. I think it’s quite a good idea.” Is he going to vote for it? Apparently not. Someone from over there has voted for it.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: He’s been knobbled.

Knobbled—gagged, I believe, is the expression for Mr O’Connor.

I think the bill will go fairly well. It is an embarrassment for Mr O’Connor, but he is practised. He has done this before, when Labour stopped all native logging completely. He has done this before, this business of: “Oh gosh, I didn’t really want to but I had to because the party made me, but they will let me cross the floor.” So we will go through this fan dance again. It will not effectively make much difference, but it will, I think, with the wonderful support of National-led Government and the direction that it is going in, see the recovery of this timber.

For all that they go on about party leaders and Dr Smith going down to the Coast, I would encourage people to go down there. I know that Minister Goodhew has been down there. [Interruption] This will interest you. I forewent the opportunity to go duck shooting, so that I could go with the Minister to look at the squashed forest. It is a horrendous sight to see the native forests laid so low—it is; it really is. We heard a very interesting perspective from the Māori Party, which I personally found very interesting and quite moving. It is quite moving to see these trees. I have got a really interesting paper here from a scientist, and we have heard much from Mr O’Connor about people sitting in Fendalton. He seems to forget that the Brownlee family were very, very efficient loggers on the West Coast—very efficient. There was no clear felling—all beautifully selected timbers.

We have heard how, apparently, we sit in city places, not knowing what we are talking about. But I do have a paper here from a forester, from a scientist, who spent 40 years on the Coast and is very, very familiar with the forests there. As he says, the benefit of leaving timber there is all in the bark and in the sap and in the leaves. The trunks, the butts of, say, a rimu, will probably last 100 years. They will just slowly decay, so they might as well come out and be used. They will not be contributing a great deal to the flora and fauna. It is beautiful wood. I have some experience of pulling logs, working with the people who pulled logs out of Lake Brunner. They had been in there for 60 years, and the timber was in perfect condition—perfect condition. I fully support this bill. Thank you.

I am not quite sure what the member who has just resumed his seat, Chris Auchinvole, was trying to say, but I think it is probably better just to give him the charity of my silence in response to the contribution he made. Perhaps by the third reading of this West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill he will have organised his thoughts with a better structure.

I was quite disturbed to hear the contribution to this debate earlier by the Minister of Conservation when I was speaking. I said that the conservation accord, if you like—an interesting term to use in this context, perhaps—between particularly Labour and National, because it was prior to other parties coming into the House, was forged in 1987 when the Conservation Act was first passed and native logging on all but the Timberlands area was stopped. That has carried on ever since. Then in 2000, 14 years ago, when the next round of decisions was made, the extraction and logging of native timber was stopped. When I said that that first happened 27 years ago, and it was a bipartisan agreement, the Minister said to his colleagues: “So it’s 27 years old. Does that mean we shouldn’t change it?”. I was a little concerned about that because I did not think that this was a proposal to fundamentally change the Conservation Act. I thought it was a response to a one-off event.

I will tell you what; I do not share Damien O’Connor’s view of trusting. I think that the Minister may well be using this bill as a stalking horse for opening up the extraction of native timber in the future, and that would be such a massive step backwards. Cyclone Ita was something that was very hard on the West Coast. I lived there for over a decade. I understand the views of those communities—not nearly as well as people who have lived there their entire life, but I lived there for long enough to get to know the place well. I understand the thinking about the resources that are within their own community. But it does not always mean that it is going to be the right thing for the future of New Zealand. If this is a step towards opening up extraction as the basis of sustainable employment on the West Coast, then I think it is the wrong move.

There have been a few gibes thrown at the Labour Party. I think that is a bit rich, frankly, given what is going on within some sections of the National Party at the moment. I just want to make it clear about our position on this bill. I did in the first reading, actually, but I will do it again because some members may not have had the opportunity to hear it. We put up a series of proposals to the Government in relation to our concerns about the process and the content of this legislation. The first was that there was no need for it to go through all stages under urgency. I heard the contribution that Gareth Hughes from the Greens made earlier in his point of order, and I absolutely agree. It was our proposal to the Government that instead of having all stages go through under urgency that there be a truncated period of time for select committee consideration. It would be a little nonsensical for us to try to drag out this debate if we understood it was going to be passed anyway.

But that was not the point. It was not to drag it out, and it was not to have more beech getting beyond a usable position; it was because in a reasonably robust democracy the right for people to have their say should always be exercised unless there is some extreme situation where it need not be. In this case, it would have been very easy to refer this bill to the Local Government and Environment Committee—or the Primary Production Committee; apparently, they run not a bad little ship at that select committee, I have heard—say, for a period of 2 weeks, and then require it to come back, and then it could proceed at pace. It is not a very large bill. The debate is not going to go on for too long. That was the first request that we made to the Government—a truncated period, not to delay the progress of the bill but to give New Zealanders a right to have a say, including people from the West Coast. And we had a series of other proposals that we made, which are outlined in our Supplementary Order Papers 475 and 476.

I do think there is a greater concern at the heart of this legislation. Having listened to the contribution from the National Party members, particularly the Minister of Conservation, I no longer believe that this is an opportunity for West Coasters to have jobs. It is clear they have turned down Supplementary Order Paper 476, which is in the name of Damien O’Connor and makes sure that West Coasters get any jobs first. That is not of interest to National. I do think the disdain in which they have been regarding the Conservation Act and our significant step then as a Government requiring protection of our native trees gives great alarm to members of the public around the country. This is more likely to be a stalking horse for the future logging of our native trees.

It is really frustrating—particularly in the week that we have had, I suppose—that the Minister of Conservation can show such passion and concern for dead trees at the same time as he shows little regard for the 55 remaining Māui’s dolphins that we have. We have the International Whaling Commission’s scientific committee saying for the third year in a row: “This Government is not doing enough. That species will be extinct unless they take better measures.” Nothing has happened as a result of that. For 3 years in a row it has been just tinkering at the edges—not making substantive protections, and certainly not enough to save the species. At the same time, we have legislation going through all stages under urgency to do something that this House has said no to for nearly three decades.

This bill is a puzzle. I think it is a stalking horse. It offers no hope of guaranteed jobs, let alone sustainable jobs for West Coasters. That is why I will be voting against it.

I would just like to explain to any of the New Zealanders who are listening to or watching this debate that normally by its second reading a bill would have gone to a select committee. The select committee would have invited public submissions. The select committee would then have heard those submissions. Submitters normally make quite constructive comments on the policy in the bill and on any of the deficiencies in it, and suggest amendments and how it could be improved. It is a place too where you pick up any major defects in the drafting. We have not had that opportunity with this bill, the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill. That is another of the reasons that the Green Party is opposing it. It is being forced through under urgency, yet it concerns public protected lands—forests that New Zealanders campaigned about for 30 years or more to protect from native forest logging.

The public is being given absolutely no say in letting loggers, chainsaws, haulers, and skidders back on to what is supposed to be protected conservation land. The Department of Conservation is supposed to hold those lands in trust for all New Zealanders and manage them on all of our behalf. Yet by pushing this through under urgency and denying the public a say, it is highlighting again just how anti-democratic this Government is. One of the reasons I think that the Government wants to push it through under urgency is that it knows that when New Zealanders wake up to the major assault on our protected areas, they will oppose this law. The select committee, if we had had a public process, would have been inundated with submissions against the bill.

The Green Party wants more jobs on the Coast, but we want them to be well-paid, long-term jobs; not boom-and-bust ones as these logging ones will be. When Nick Smith was asked today what he would do to ensure that jobs stayed on the Coast, he would not commit to that. In fact, he has made it very clear that he is not interested in that. It is a very cynical manipulation for the Minister of Conservation to promise that this bill is about jobs.

I certainly agree with the scenario that Richard Prosser outlined in the first reading. That is because this bill cuts across the Forests Act 1949 and the restrictions that the Forests Act puts on the export of unprocessed timber. This bill allows the export of sawn timber and of stumps and roots and tree ferns. The timber use will not be restricted to New Zealand. Again, it was misleading of Minister Brownlee to claim that the bill is about allowing New Zealanders to enjoy the ambience of native timber. These logs will be exported with very little processing. The export of unprocessed timber will not create jobs in New Zealand. It will simply increase the market for native timber and that will increase the pressure on private forests on private land.

We have been here before, when we had the export of native woodchips. That led to huge forest destruction in Southland and elsewhere—in Nelson. This bill will not only see the market flooded with native timber; it will also undermine the prices that those private landowners are receiving for forests that they are allowed to log by what was the Ministry of Forestry under the Forests Act. If the Minister was really serious about restarting the native forest logging industry, then those loggers would need more than the 5 years they are going to get under this bill.

So I agree with Ruth Dyson that this is potentially a Trojan Horse for changing the law to allow much greater access to our protected areas to log them. So, Minister, come clean. What is it? Is it a quick and dirty law to allow loggers to opportunistically plunder West Coast forests or is this the first step in allowing logging across all of our conservation lands?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: The storm did the damage.

The storm has done the damage. You are doing more damage now by allowing the loggers in, the skidders in, and the haulers in to create those destructive practices where you mess up quite large areas in order to extract the timber.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Has the member been there and seen it?

Yes, Minister, I have. One of the most disappointing times I have ever had is walking through logged forest and seeing areas that have been cleared.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Have you seen the storm damage?

The storm damage is natural. As the forest rots, those rotting logs are a natural part of the forest system. At the moment there are about 50,000 hectares of native forest that can be logged on private and Māori land and managed for sustainable management under the Forests Act. Before Cyclone Ita the logging of those areas on private forests generated about $5 million annually. It provided about 6,500 cubic metres of rimu timber. But those 6,400 cubic metres were just 30 percent of the volume of rimu that the Ministry for Primary Industries had approved for logging. The existing market had not even been able to absorb 70 percent of the timber that the ministry had approved for logging, so what this bill will do, by opening up conservation land, is flood the market with native timber. Where will it go? It will not be used in New Zealand, because it cannot be taken up by the market. It will be exported. Why are we exporting our forests—our cathedrals—offshore to be used however?

The Ministry for Primary Industries had KPMG do a value analysis of privately owned indigenous forests last year. It did not look at the forest value for ecosystem services, for preventing soil erosion, for regulating water flow, but it did look at the annual value for logging. KPMG said that for the logging industry to expand there needed to be a significant investment in kiln drying, because beech is useless as a timber unless it is properly dry, and there needed to be a significant investment in heavy-lift helicopters. The kiln drying was estimated to cost $1 million and the heavy-lift helicopters $4 million to $5 million. So what is this Government going to do? Is it going to hand out subsidies to the native forest logging industry in the way that it is doing to irrigators, to allow us to go back to the future, back to the 1950s, when native forest logging was expanding in New Zealand? Or is this, Minister, just a dirty little bill to allow the loggers to opportunistically plunder conservation land?

By promoting native forest logging on the West Coast the Minister is effectively saying that he has absolutely no confidence in the work of the West Coast Development Trust. The West Coast got $120 million in 2001 when native forest logging ceased, in order to invest in alternative employment and look at adjusting to the end of native forest logging. The trust has handed out over $56 million to 109 different commercial development opportunities, yet the Minister is saying no, that is not enough, we have to allow more logging.

So this is a very dirty little bill, but I suspect that it is a Trojan Horse for allowing much more logging on much wider areas of conservation land. Because, as I said in the first reading, it does not restrict the logging to helicopters, we will see highly damaging skidders and haulers. They will introduce weeds, they will damage existing healthy timber, and they will compromise the forest for further regeneration because they are heavy—they compact the soils, they prevent seedlings regenerating. One of the problems is that there are no heavy-lift helicopters operating in New Zealand at the moment, as I understand it. That means that with this bill the Minister is opening up conservation lands not to sensitive helicopter extraction but to the highly damaging traditional methods of logging extraction with haulers and skidders and the like.

This is a very bad bill because of the process that has been used to force it through under urgency with no opportunity for the public to have a say, and thereby opening up lands that are supposed to be protected to logging. It turns the Department of Conservation from an agency that was supposed to preserve and protect our natural resources into one that is about regulating logging, learning how forestry works, and giving approval to all of these skidders and all of these chainsaws to damage and desecrate our protected areas.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill. Can I say that it was interesting to listen to the Hon Ruth Dyson and then Eugenie Sage putting forward their views, particularly Ruth, who raised the issue of the accord between Labour and National in 1987, pre-MMP days, when it was agreed that the West Coast was able to continue logging in a sustainable way. What she did not say about that was that the Clark Government, after it moved away from its traditional Labour roots, which were steeped in working class people who ran sawmills and had a pragmatic and sensible approach to life, to the ideology of the Auckland-based Helen Clark, and trampled right over the top of the West Coast Accord in the early 2000s, all forestry milling on the West Coast virtually came to a standstill. I am reminded of a chap by the name of Kit Richards. Anyone remember Kit Richards? He was quite a popular name at the time and is someone who potentially may have a view on this; I am not sure.

Let us just have a look at what happened. Cyclone Ita came through the West Coast on 17 April 2014. It completely bowled over 20,000 hectares of native forest—20,000 hectares—and it damaged a further 200,000 hectares. I can understand that the members opposite who live within the beltway would not know how big an area that is—I can understand that. It is an enormous amount of destruction by a single weather event. So to suggest that that timber, beautiful podocarp—look at the building we are standing in. Look around you. I wonder what the timber on the walls in this building is. I wonder whether any of them on that side know what this is—what our desks are made of, what our chairs are made of, and what the wall panels are made of. I wonder whether they know. I bet they do not, and I bet they do not know where it was milled. I bet they do not know where it came from. So look at where we are.

All of that beautiful podocarp timber is lying there, and they would suggest it is better to let that rot on the ground than to provide opportunity for employment, for construction, and, actually, for the timber to be used in a way that it will be there for generations to come. It is a beautiful, beautiful asset and it would just be ridiculous, stupid, and absolutely ideologically driven to let it rot on the ground.

So what is the purpose of doing this now? The Minister of Conservation, the Hon Nick Smith, who has a huge amount of experience in this area, has clearly articulated why. It is because a large amount of that timber will waste if we do not get on with the job of its extraction—huge amounts of it. The value is unknown, I suspect, at this stage, but for sure it will have a substantial value. To suggest that extracting it and using it in a sensible way is somehow going to distort the market to an extent that that will cause all sorts of different behaviours is about as ill-informed as can be. Once you have extracted it, stabilised it, and processed it into a product that is usable, it is not necessary that that timber goes straight into the market. In fact, anyone who was sensible in managing this would put the timber into the market over the next few years, as and when the market could stand that being done. And, obviously, that is how you would get the highest commercial return from it. To suggest otherwise is to mislead about what is going on.

It has been interesting to watch the member for the West Coast, or the two members who represent the area, dancing on the head of a pin here over this issue, up until now. I know that the member for West Coast - Tasman was, last time round, dubbed the name “Chainsaw” in his own caucus because, of course, he supported sustainable milling on the West Coast. It is interesting to see the position he takes. So it is my pleasure to speak in support of this sensible piece of legislation and strengthen the arm of those who are going to salvage this wonderful asset. Thank you.

There is no need for the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill to be passed under urgency. The excuse that it must be enacted before the beech trees that were blown down in the cyclone start to rot or the sap starts to run or whatever else is just that—an excuse. It is already too late for that. Those trees have been down for a couple of months already, and in another couple of months the rot will have already set in. There are, according to surveys from the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for Primary Industries, something north of 10,000 hectares of beech forest affected, and it will all be next to useless before even a tenth of it has been harvested. But beech is not the target here. Everyone knows that. No one is going after the beech, because it will be too difficult to get enough of it out quickly enough for it to be worth anything.

The real prize here is rimu—better than 5,000 hectares of it, including a massive block north of Karamea containing an estimated 105,000 cubic metres of recoverable rimu. At an average of $250 per cube, that is more than $26 million. You can take it to the bank, but as soon as they get boots on the ground up there, they will find there is twice that much—100,000 cubic metres, and maybe twice that. New Zealand currently manages to extract and process around 6,000 cubes annually. So straight away we have 15 years’ worth of rimu up for grabs and ready to hit the market. It is a market that cannot possibly hope to absorb it. It will not all arrive at once, of course, but that does not matter. There is no real urgency. Rimu does not go off that quickly. The biggest trees can lie on the ground for up to 5 years without being measurably degraded. Curiously enough, 5 years is the prescribed lifespan of this bill. What a mighty coincidence!

We are all for the extraction and recovery of this windfall timber resource. New Zealand First believes in the extractive industries. We believe in the clever use of selected resources. We believe in New Zealand sawmills milling timber such as this, creating jobs, and providing a source of export earnings. We believe in the West Coast, the people of the West Coast, and the businesses of the West Coast. We want to see them profit from this tragedy, and we know that if it is done right, the whole of New Zealand will profit, as well. But if it is not, then no one here will get anything out of this business, and all the profits will go overseas, as usual, and the environment will suffer into the bargain.

What will happen if this bill goes ahead in its present form is this. Fifteen years’ worth of rimu will hit the New Zealand market over the space of 5 years. It will drop the price through the floor and put the local processors out of business. The people who have been granted extraction permits behind closed doors by the Director-General of Conservation will hire the local mills to turn the trunks into sawn timber because that is all they are required to do, and the mills will take that business because they have no other option. The timber will be sent to furniture factories in China, and it will be sold all around the world, here and overseas, as New Zealand native timber furniture, and some foreign company will pocket the cash. There will be no additional jobs here for furniture factory workers, precious few for sawmill workers, and no guarantee of any more for forestry workers, because the overseas companies that get the job will be able to bring in their own specialists.

I hear the Minister of Conservation fearmongering about fungus and how the timber is going to rot, and that being why we must act quickly. Well, that is beech, Ministers. No one is interested in the beech. Everyone knows that the beech is going to rot, and no one is very interested, because it is worth only 60 bucks a metre. The El Dorado here is the rimu, and it is not going off any time soon. The beech going rotten is a red herring. What this is really about is red pine. It is about possibly 200,000 cubic metres of recoverable rimu, worth possibly $50 million. New Zealand First believes that it should be recovered and utilised, and that it should be a source of jobs, wealth, and export receipts for New Zealand and for the West Coast.

We believe that, but we do not believe that the protection we have in place around our rivers and streams should be chucked away to make way for bulldozers and logging roads. We do not believe that this justifies poisoning the rivers and the whitebait or cleaning out greenstone boulders with diggers to make culverts, because we do not believe that that is necessary. We do believe that roads and culverts should be able to be used if they can be put in, in accordance with existing protocols. If they cannot, then helicopters should be used—and they can be used, because this resource is worth enough to justify their use.

We do not believe that it serves the West Coast or New Zealand to allow no royalties to be paid and for nothing to come back to the Coast and for there to be no guarantees of jobs and businesses on the Coast. If the Government will agree to address these concerns, then we will support the bill, but if it will not, then we will oppose it. There is no reason for the Government not to agree, because all of this is in the best interests of New Zealand and of the Coast. If the Government will not agree, it is because it has another agenda and is being disingenuous. Let us extract this timber, let us harvest this resource, but let us do it in a way that profits New Zealand. To not do so would be to compound waste upon waste, and to turn one catastrophe into an ongoing series of them. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to speak at the second reading of the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill. I will not take a lot of time, because I think it has all been said. I have heard some very strange things tonight. It is always a bit of pleasure to follow the member for New Zealand First Richard Prosser, who speaks so fast I cannot keep up with him at times. None the less, he does speak a bit of sense at times.

I just want to talk very briefly about this Government and the National Party’s blue-greens policy and the way we deal with environmental issues. I think that this bill is just an extension of the way this party and this Government has looked at the environmental issues confronting New Zealand. I think that there are always opportunities for us to use different solutions to solve problems that come upon us.

I think that the tragedy that has befallen the West Coast forests is an opportunity for us to make use of that huge resource by applying some common sense to it. Everybody knows that you can store native timber in a sawn form for generations. Of course, in New Zealand we have got buildings built of that native timber that have certainly lasted for generations and generations and will continue to do so. I agree with the comments of Mr Ardern earlier on, who talked about the value of our native wood and the fact that we do not have the opportunity to access it as we did in the old days, primarily because there is not as much left as there should be and also because we have taken a large number of steps to protect it for future generations—not necessarily for their use but for their observation. This is an opportunity for us to utilise a huge resource for the benefit of future generations of New Zealanders. It will create opportunities for people on the West Coast. It will create opportunities for all sorts of people in New Zealand to have access to some of this timber. There is no reason why it cannot be stored, as I said earlier, for some generations.

I have a great deal of pleasure in supporting this bill. I think it is a hugely pragmatic and common-sense solution to a pretty significant issue that has befallen the West Coast. I support this bill.

This is the second reading of the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill. This would be the moment at which I would be picking up the select committee’s report to see what the people of New Zealand—and, in particular, the people of the West Coast—might have thought of this proposal. We would be getting interesting feedback from people on the West Coast within the timber industry, and those from regional government on the West Coast. I am sure Damien O’Connor and Rino Tirikatene, the members who represent the area, would have put their submissions in as well, asking what this bill means. We would have had Forest and Bird, and we would have had all the conservation groups.

This would have been the opportunity for New Zealanders to have their say. But the arrogant, out-of-touch National Government does not want New Zealanders to have a say on this. It does not want submissions that will say actually this will flood the market; it will depress the price. It does not want the private foresters to come in and ask how it is that timber from public lands is coming in and flooding the market and depressing the prices they get. The Government does not want the regional leaders on the West Coast to come up and say that the National Party has ignored them; the National Party has come in and told them what to do, one more time.

The Government does not want to hear that, and that is why there has not been a select committee process. It is quite clear that the Government does not want this, because David Cunliffe wrote to John Key and said: “Here are the conditions for the Labour Party’s support of this bill.” The first of those was a 2-week select committee process. It was not a long process. It still would enable the bill to return to this House before we rise for the election, but it was completely ignored and dismissed by a Government that does not want to hear from New Zealanders and does not want to hear from the people of the West Coast.

The people of the West Coast will see this bill for what it is—pure politics from the National Party. This is not about West Coast jobs. If it was about West Coast jobs, then Nick Smith would have come back to us and he would have said: “I support Damien O’Connor’s Supplementary Order Paper.” That is what he would have said, because that is what Damien O’Connor’s Supplementary Order Paper 476 does. It says West Coast people will benefit from this, and there will be jobs on the West Coast. That is what the Government tells us it is about, and it is not. It has got nothing to do with that, and everything to do with playing politics in the period just before the election.

This bill would have gone to a select committee. What is that Government so scared of that it would not send this bill to a select committee for 2 weeks, so that the people of the West Coast could have a say? It is a disgrace that it has not done that.

We are sitting here under urgency to debate this bill. Nobody on the Government side of the House has been able to explain to us why it is, with urgent legislation—it has got problems at either end. It has been 3 months since the storm, but suddenly it is urgent now. At the other end, it wants 5 years to be able to extract the timber. The Government cannot quite make its mind up. The bill is either urgent, or it is not. It either needs a lot of time, or the timber has to be taken out immediately. Again, if this was really about this one-off operation, then the Government would accept another amendment from the Labour Party, to give a 2-year window, not a 5-year window. But, again, it was arrogantly dismissed by the National Government because it does not want that.

I have to say that on this side of the House we do not trust Nick Smith. We do not trust Nick Smith. Nick Smith stands up and says: “Oh, no, this is just about this single event.” Well, if it is just about this single event, why are there 5 years? Why is there a dismissal of the Resource Management Act? Chris Auchinvole got up and began his first reading contribution on the basis of talking about 2006 and still carrying all the scars of the fact that he is really upset that they cannot do logging of native timber on the conservation estate. That is what he is really upset about. That is why on this side of the House we have no confidence that a bill brought forward to this House by Nick Smith, supported by Chris Auchinvole, is about just this event, because the way the bill is drafted it is clearly not just about this event. The way that it has been talked about in the House shows it is clearly not about just this event.

We have amendments on the table that, if they were supported by the Government, would allow the Labour Party to support this bill. We understand the issues on the West Coast. We have great representatives of the West Coast within our caucus, in terms of Damien O’Connor and Rino Tirikatene. As local representatives in the Labour Party, we support their right to vote the way they are. But what we on this side of the House will not do is allow Nick Smith to get away with pulling the wool over the eyes of the people of the West Coast and the people of the rest of New Zealand.

There is an opportunity for the National Party to show that this piece of legislation is actually founded in some real desire to support the people of the West Coast. That comes in supporting Damien O’Connor’s amendments. If they do not do that, then this bill is as disingenuous as it looks.

I commend the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill to the House.

A 5-minute call—Hon Clayton Cosgrove.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: He’s voting against it! Why don’t you stand by your mate?

It is all right. The one who flew over the cuckoo’s nest over there, Nick Smith—who frequently, actually, flies over the cuckoo’s nest—needs to tell this House why he will not support Damien O’Connor’s Supplementary Order Paper 476. I have got to say that Gerry Brownlee led off this debate, but Gerry Brownlee forgot to tell the House a few things, because the old Brownlee family on the West Coast has some very, very interesting heritage. I did not know this. I knew he was a member of a band called the Minetti Brothers. I did not know that he was a sawmiller. Oh yes—a big-time sawmiller. He went from sawmiller to woodwork teacher. He is probably the most qualified person in this House to talk about rimu, cutting boards, and things like that.

What I did not know was the Brownlee heritage of being a big sawmiller on the West Coast, and that they took the money and ran. Oh, yes! They took the money and ran and they whipped straight over to Canterbury. I am told the only thing left of the Brownlee sawmilling heritage for economic growth on the Coast is a flash bach near Mr Auchinvole in Māpua. Oh, yes! Is it Māpua?

💬 Hon Member: No, Brunner.

Brunner—I apologise; they all look a bit the same. It is Brunner. But I have to say that Nick Smith stood in the House and insulted West Coasters, and told them they were basically amateurs because they could not cut the logs themselves. The challenge for Nick Smith is that Damien O’Connor put up an amendment to say: “OK, if you are going to do this, and if the objective is to help out the West Coast”—and help them out, do they need it, after this crowd over there with Solid Energy ran it into the ground.

Members opposite talk about jobs. Nearly 1,000 workers have gone, but not the white-collar boys in the offices with the $23 million worth of bonuses. No, it was the people who were in the pit, in the mine, in the shaft actually keeping the company going. Mr Auchinvole over there—Captain Mainwaring and his ilk—stood there with the Minister for State Owned Enterprises and did absolutely nothing as 1,000 jobs went down the river and as $400 million of losses and debt went out. Mr Finlayson and every member over there just stood there and said: “Hear no evil, see no evil—we will do nothing.” But when there is a bit of opportunist stuff, and the logs go over, they say that they will do what they can to try to create some politics.

Again, when challenged by the member for the West Coast saying that if they are going to do it, they should accept his amendment that says jobs, economic growth, and the benefit are meted out and left in the West Coast, so that West Coasters get that economic benefit, the National Government says no. It is the Gerry Brownlee principle of take the money and run. Take the dough and run, as he did when he was a sawmiller. He is now a woodwork teacher, but you know; oh, how the mighty have fallen. They run from it.

So I challenge those members over there—including the new member beside Mr Finlayson whose name I cannot remember—that if this is all about helping the West Coast out, the challenge for them is to accept the Damien O’Connor amendment and say: “OK, we are going to do it. We’re going to mill it, and we’re going to make sure that that economic benefit is not trucked over to Canterbury, fair go, or helicoptered out to Rotorua.” Because that is where the guys will come from with the big helicopter, heavy lifting stuff, and the economic benefit will go elsewhere. If they are really serious—Mr Lotu Iiga knows I am right—they will accept the amendment. They will say that the economic benefit will reside where the benefit should be, and that is on the West Coast. Or they will adopt the Brownlee principle of a dash for cash. I have not seen Gerry dash many places, but it will be a dash for cash. He is a sawmiller who went over the hill, and all the economic benefit went over there. So that is the challenge. That is the challenge for these guys.

Damien O’Connor does reserve the right to vote the way he does, because on this side of the House we are not led by the nose like the lions and lambs over there. Mr Auchinvole talks tough about the West Coast but when it comes to the crunch, he is nowhere to be seen. Damien O’Connor reserves the right to stick up for his local area, because what he is actually sticking up for is an amendment that says that the economic benefit should reside within the West Coast. These guys on the other side have no credibility, as they let 1,000 coalmining jobs go down the pit. They backed the guys who were wasting money—23 million bucks—and the National members have the guts to come in here and talk about jobs, when they let a company that was an export award-winning company, which put masses of millions of dollars into the West Coast—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired. [Interruption] Order!

In the short time left before dinner, I would just like to pay tribute to some people: the people in this country who, 27 years ago and since, stood up after many a battle to protect the trees on the West Coast so that they would not be logged. They stood up against logging—climbed trees, lobbied, wrote bills, submitted, educated others—and said that there was something more valuable for the future of this country than the commercial logging of those trees. The conservation estate did not set aside all the trees but it set aside enough. In that space, those trees rely on us. They rely on us to do the right thing tonight and make sure that that forest can regenerate—not through some bizarre manufactured scheme where we say “Let’s remove the wind-blown timber and then it will all be so much better.”, which is an ecological absurdity, but by allowing nature to take her course. I would like to thank Rod Donald, Jeanette Fitzsimons, and other giants of the conservation movement, including my colleague Eugenie Sage, for their principled and consistent stand that said that we actually need to protect the forests. This is an issue for the whole planet.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Why are we here? Why are we here on a Thursday night watching the Government pretending to be acting in the interests of people and the environment? This West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill is a game bill masquerading as economic pragmatism, unattractive as that would be on its own. So read it and weep. We could be having an authentic and genuine conversation about the West Coast forests. We could be having an authentic and genuine debate about windfalls and about the use of those trees in relation to conservation and in relation to their role in the natural cycle. We could be debating that properly. We could be talking about the state of the native timber sawmill industry, which the Government has never cared about. But all of a sudden, under urgency, it cares about that industry so desperately, even though this bill will distort the market considerably.

We could talk about the place of the West Coast forests in the conservation of the planet. It seems to me that we have forgotten where we are in the 21st century and we have just leapt back to the 19th century. But the people of this country are not leaping back with the Government. We will not be able to destroy what people know and care about with some cheap pragmatic shot. It is not possible for people to forget what they have learnt after 27 years of the conservation consensus around not logging on conservation land. It will not be possible to persuade the people of this country that there are no values to protect on the conservation lands except expediency. It will not be possible to persuade people that, storm after storm, the job is for humans to intervene in the natural process and clean it up, somehow miraculously assisting the forests, which cannot do it on their own. Nature, of course, does not know what she is doing, but God and the Government do—let us intervene and let us make an industry out of a so-called disaster!

The planet is changing and we are in the face of the greatest threat to the planet we have ever seen: climate change. There will be ongoing storms. My own area has just experienced one. Is that an argument for greater exploitation of the forests that protect us from climate change? That logic is not going to wash. It did not wash years ago, which is why the people won the argument. It was not won in this Parliament; it was won by the people of this country. In the end we have to win these arguments. We have to recognise yet again that there are still people for whom money is the only motivation—that and political gain. This is not really about the money. This is not really about jobs. This is not really about making change. What this is really about is that this is an election year. If you wanted to drive a wedge between people, this was a good manoeuvre, but it does nothing for the status of the Department of Conservation or the status of the agreement that was made in this country to protect the conservation lands. It does not add up and people are not going to forget what happened here and in whose name and why. There is much more to say, but for now I would just like to acknowledge, as I did at the beginning, that many people fought to protect these forests and many people still remember and will fight again.

I am very proud to stand and speak in the second reading debate on the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill. I commend this bill to the House.