Annual Review Debate — Natural resources

We now move to the next theme, and the question is that the reports of committees relevant to natural resources—conservation, environment, and lands—be noted.

I move that the reports be noted. I do so in my capacity as chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee. In preparation for this short debate speech this afternoon I went back and had a look at this year’s report of the committee for the Department of Conservation. The committee conducted a very thorough investigation of the financial performance and review of the Department of Conservation only a month or so ago, and I am delighted to report to the Committee that the Department of Conservation appears to be in very good shape under this very effective National-led Government. Lou Sanson and his team are doing a particularly good job on behalf of all New Zealanders in preserving, maintaining, and conserving our natural heritage, our natural domains, and that part of our environment that is so core to our quality of life as New Zealanders.

Our natural environment is an enormously big and important part of our national identity. It is an important part of our competitive advantage internationally, and it is important to all New Zealanders. We enjoy, as Kiwis, some of the most pristine, most beautiful natural environments anywhere in the world. The Government has a very clear blue-green approach to conservation and the environment, and this means that we are able to provide real environmental leadership without the nonsense that goes with, for instance, the Green Party’s view of the environment. We bring support for a sensible approach to the environment, a common-sense approach to protecting, conserving, and ensuring that future generations have the kind of environment that we as all New Zealanders are so proud of.

The Local Government and Environment Committee annual reviews included the Ministry for the Environment, and also a review of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, and her office. They are also agencies of Government that are doing a particularly good job on behalf of all New Zealanders. I want to, in the short time that is available to me this afternoon, just highlight a couple of points from the Department of Conservation’s annual review. In particular, I want to just draw the attention of the Committee to the work that is being done in terms of partnerships that the Department of Conservation has entered into, which are providing much greater support for our natural environment than was previously the case. Fonterra has entered into a partnership relationship with the Department of Conservation, and is participating in a project it refers to as the Living Water project. That involves five wetland projects around the country.

One is of particular interest to me, in the Coromandel electorate, on the Firth of Thames at Miranda Pukorokoro, on the Kaiaua coast, which is affectionately referred to as the Seabird Coast. That is an area that members will know is famous for where, each year, the godwits and the red knots feed up on the wetlands around the Firth of Thames over the summer months. Then, in the autumn, they proceed on one of the most remarkable natural journeys known to the world, where they fly for 8½ solid days without touching ground, without stopping. They then end up at a coastal wetland area on the coast of China. They rest there for a week or so, and then they pause to rejuvenate. And then they head off again, to Siberia or Alaska.

The work that is being done by the Department of Conservation and Fonterra to preserve and maintain the wetland area at Miranda Pukorokoro is very significant, international-quality work. Not just for New Zealanders, because these birds that choose to summer here are in fact not New Zealand birds. They are birds of the world, really. They are birds of the globe. They are not Chinese birds. They are not Alaskan birds. They are not Siberian birds. We have this wonderful opportunity, in fact, to enter into a sense of global bird-diplomacy, if I can put it that way. That means that the people who man the trust at Miranda have been able to go and do work with the North Korean Government. As a non-threatening NGO they are able to establish relationships that mean that the wetland preservation can occur in North Korea, in China, and in other parts of the world just as important as it is in New Zealand.

Another area that is important to me is kauri dieback, but I will not have time to talk about that.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to talk, in large, about the Department of Conservation. Over the rest break, I spent quite a bit of my time actually going around the rural and more provincial areas of New Zealand seeing at first hand the neglect that the Department of Conservation is under. It is not through the neglect of staff; it is through the neglect of resources and support for its staff. We all remember, back in 2013, that we had probably the largest restructure of any public sector ever in the history of New Zealand, when over 100 Department of Conservation staff members lost their jobs. We know that that was an absolute debacle. Restructure, I think, is—

💬 Hon David Parker: Centralised in Wellington.

Centralised in Wellington. That is right—people in Wellington making the decisions for the rural and provincial parts of this country, and not actually thinking about the impact that that is actually having on the rest of the country.

I think that if we use the word “refocus” and then change the letter “o” to a “u”, you might get a feeling for how some of those Department of Conservation staff feel about it. Having seen first-hand what has happened—specifically down in Stewart Island, where I have spent a bit of my time—with the neglect that is taking place there, I will talk specifically around the way in which the permits for those shark-cage diving operators have been put forward. I will talk about the lack of time and effort that has been put into the actual cause and effect that shark-cage diving is having on the residents of Stewart Island. This is the sort of thing that is happening throughout our country—not to mention the neglect that is happening with our Department of Conservation huts, which are in a serious state of disrepair.

Just cast your eyes to the headline here: “DOC retreats from controversial $12.5 million restructure”. The article says: “Only 18 months later, it is about to reinstate some roles and test new ways of working as a result of numerous flaws in the restructuring…” And it says that even last year “DOC did its own extensive review … which concluded its staff lacked clarity about their roles.” There seems to be a real issue in the Department of Conservation. It is underfunded, under-resourced, and clearly understaffed. This goes towards the poor decisions that are being made. It is under-resourced. It has not been able to focus its time on the things that really matter, and the provincial parts of this country are really feeling that.

If I could just give you some facts: the Department of Conservation manages all New Zealand conservation land and waters, comprising about one-third of New Zealand’s area, including national parks, marine reserves, and marine mammal sanctuaries. As of June last year it has 1,950-odd staff. It has an expenditure of $344.8 million put aside for that, with a surplus last year of $1.9 million. I find it surprising that we have got a surplus of $1.9 million. If you actually looked at some of the issues that we are faced with, with regard to the Department of Conservation—and even looked at some of the issues around those huts that are not provisioned and are starting to show signs of neglect—then if we put 27 more staff members out there looking after our environment, looking after the animals, and looking after the things that we need to be showing some serious attention to, that would give us 27 more full-time employees working underneath the Department of Conservation. That is just for the $1.9 million of surplus.

I think that it is also important to note that some areas of work have been affected by staff shortages, including work with protected and threatened species, the processing of permits and concessions, and the management of those huts, which I have already touched on. The people of Stewart Island and the rural parts of New Zealand want to see more money put aside for the Department of Conservation because we understand that to have a vibrant economy we must have a vibrant ecological set-up and, of course, make sure that our conservation is met on a global scale.

The Department of Conservation operates pest-control programmes on 15 percent of conservation land and aims to increase coverage to 50 percent. When asked how this would be funded, it said that science and technology breakthroughs should improve the effectiveness of pest-control programmes—should improve. We absolutely must ensure that we get better outcomes for the money that we are spending, rather than it just being poured down the sink, or, as we see quite often, the 1080 helicopters and planes dropping tens of tonnes of 1080 randomly across our preserved lands and nature around the country. That has got to have some serious implications, particularly with the disappearance of our rock wrens and what goes on around that. I would certainly like to see more funding put aside in the next Budget. Thank you.

First of all, I would like to thank Scott Simpson and his Local Government and Environment Committee for their report on conservation. He is absolutely correct: the Department of Conservation is working hand in hand with iwi, with conservation boards, with community conservation groups, and with the public to deliver successful conservation outcomes right across the country. I have listened carefully to the member Clayton Mitchell, and I do not recognise the Department of Conservation he described at all. I certainly will mention the Battle for our Birds and what we have been doing with 1080, and the very successful results, and the fact that we have found the rock wren.

I was very delighted to read recently in The New Yorker that the author considers that New Zealand may be the most nature-loving nation on the planet, with some 4,000 conservation groups. One of the interesting comments she made was that whereas an amateur naturalist in Oregon or Oklahoma might track butterflies or band birds, in Ōtorohanga he will poison possums and crush the heads of hedgehogs. She also noted that a coordinator of a volunteer group said: “We always say that, for us, conservation [in New Zealand] is all about killing things.” I think that is absolutely true. New Zealanders love to get out in our national parks to enjoy our conservation land, to visit our lakes and rivers, and to spend time on our beaches, but they also volunteer with the Department of Conservation. They volunteer more than 35,000 days a year to work with the Department of Conservation, and so often that work is to do with managing pests, because our plants, our animals, and our birds are totally unique, and we have to protect them.

To be a conservationist, we have to be able to kill, because the biggest threats to our birds and our forests are pests—rats, possums, and mustelids such as stoats and wild cats. It is estimated that 25 million—25 million—birds are killed every year by these pests. We cannot afford to continue with that sort of death rate. Many of our birds are particularly vulnerable because they are flightless, but these predators are efficient killers. They climb trees. They steal eggs. They kill chicks. They attack adult birds sitting on their nests. The Committee will hear later from Minister Barry about the Battle for our Birds, which was the Department of Conservation’s response to the particularly heavy beechmast last season, and about how effective it has been in protecting our bird populations.

The key fact that I like to reflect on is that wherever we have used 1080 protection, we have had the same results. If we go back to 2006 and the mōhua in the Dart Valley, where we had protection, 80 percent of those birds survived. Where we had no protection, it was only 10 percent that survived. In 2005 and 2006, 70 percent of the brown kiwi in Tongariro survived with protection; only 22 percent survived without. The Battle for our Birds has delivered a similar result this year. With the rock wren, 85 percent of them have survived where there was protection; 30 percent without. Again, there is the mōhua. It had 100 percent that survived with protection this time, whereas it was more than 50 percent that survived without. Also, we often forget about our long-tailed bats. The protection has helped them, too. We would often lose between 30 and 40 percent of them during a beechmast, but we have had unprecedented numbers surviving this time.

As I work really closely with environment community groups, I am always impressed by the energy and the ingenious ways they have to kill predators. The Community Conservation Fund supports many of these groups, and many of their volunteers are expert killers. They set and maintain trap lines. They monitor pests and eradication programmes. They support predator-proofed areas. And high numbers of volunteers do this work week after week, year after year. It is a fantastic and wonderful commitment. The Department of Conservation will be supporting them over the next 4 years with an escalated anti-predator campaign.

Recently I visited the goodnature company in Wellington. This is a company that has invented automatic resetting traps for possums, stoats, and rats, which is a fantastic step forward.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a call in the Natural resources section of the debate. We have been hearing a great deal about the Department of Conservation so far in this debate. One would never think that the central piece of environmental legislation, which could be discussed in this section, is, of course, in tatters on the Government’s books. This is a Government that treats the environment with contempt. It has failed to keep our rivers clean and to protect our oceans from oil spills. It is lagging behind on setting climate change targets, and it wants to pull apart the central and fundamental piece of environmental protection legislation that we have in this country, the Resource Management Act.

Let us turn our thoughts briefly to the Department of Conservation, which we have heard so much about from the Government members. The Associate Minister of Conservation, the Hon Nicky Wagner, told us that she does not recognise the Department of Conservation that is being described by the Opposition members in this Committee. Well, I suggest the Minister leave the centralised Wellington offices—where the centralisation of resource into the Department of Conservation is—a little more often and get out to the regions where the cuts really have taken their toll. If we turn our attention to the Department of Conservation report that we are considering here today, we can see that the very report we are considering says that some areas of the department’s work have been affected by staff shortages, including work with threatened species, the processing of permits and concessions, and the management of huts. The report that we are discussing here today even tells us that staff shortages within the Department of Conservation are biting, and that the department has had to increase its spending on travel. That is not surprising, given the concentration and centralisation of resource into Wellington.

We have heard a lot about the Battle for our Birds. I think that, even from the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, we were getting dangerously close to some kind of treatise about “Birds of the World Unite”. That was coming from the chairman there. We have heard a lot about wetlands and the work that the Department of Conservation is doing in wetlands. Well, I implore this Government to use the mechanism of a national policy statement, which is open to it under the Resource Management Act, and actually issue a national policy statement that protects our wetlands—that is, if we really are going to get serious about the protection of these areas, if we are not just going to have easy and empty words offered in the Committee, and if we would actually like to see some action.

Listening to the Government’s words, it would be very hard sometimes to picture the kind of degradation that we are seeing in New Zealand. Two-thirds of our monitored rivers are not swimmable, according to World Health Organization standards. For me, that is not good enough. That is not the New Zealand I grew up in, and it is not the New Zealand that I want to grow old in. I think we all like to imagine that our rivers are there for our enjoyment and that we can swim in them. Having wadable rivers is simply not good enough. It is not something that we should be content to accept in a country that prides itself on its clean, green image. We really do have to get serious.

I want to turn your attention to the Resource Management Act, which is a central part of the Ministry for the Environment report. Of course, the Ministry for the Environment report was produced before the results of the Northland by-election were counted, and in a fit of frenzy, the Prime Minister ripped up all the reforms that the Minister for the Environment had been working on. But we are told that the Minister is getting them in good shape. I have got images of Nick Smith out with his Sellotape, frantically trying to put together what has been ripped up. What everyone is fundamentally scared of is that this Minister will do what the last Minister for the Environment in this Government tried to do, and that is to weaken the core protections for the environment that we have in the Act.

The Resource Management Act needs to cornerstone legislation. The Resource Management Act should not be something that you try to scrape through on one vote. The loss in the Northland by-election showed the tatters that this Government is in—that the loss of one seat means that a central piece of legislation, which they went to the ballot box on last September, is not going to be able to be passed in this House. It requires a fundamental rethink. I believe that when we are talking about cornerstone legislation, when we are talking about the very legislation that is there to offer the fundamental protections for our environment, that we should be looking to get some cross-party dialogue happening. We should be looking to ensure that we are not scraping by with the barest of majorities, that we are having conversations, and that we can actually see where there may be some consensus. I think there would be very few people in this Committee, or indeed in this country—and I know, certainly, in my city of Christchurch—who would not think that, actually, having some consideration within the Resource Management Act for natural hazards might be a good idea. So I implore the Minister to actually show us what it is that he now wants to do with the Resource Management Act. What does he have in mind for section 85, in terms of private property rights? What is it that the Minister now wants to do with the resource management reform that we are told is coming?

I also want to turn my attention to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, which is, of course, another part of the suite of natural resources that are examined by the Local Government and Environment Committee. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has called on the Department of Conservation to speed up its classification of stewardship land, but this Government continues to sit on its hands. The new Minister of Conservation, Maggie Barry, has yet to do anything about this issue. So I would hope that when reading these reports, that is something that Maggie Barry will go and have a look at and see that, actually, she does need to get some urgency behind that piece of work.

We also heard from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment about the very important role that she will undertake under the Environmental Reporting Bill, which is due to come back to this House after being considered by the Local Government and Environment Committee. It was with great sadness that the Labour Party was not able to support that piece of legislation at its first reading, and that was for a very simple reason: it was because we saw that there was too much Government control and not enough independence in deciding the topics that would be under consideration in the bill. We hoped to get some change at the select committee, and that was not there. What was also very disturbing for me when the Parliamentary Commissioner came before us—and it is contained in the report, which is contained in these volumes—is that we know that she has an increased function with this legislation and she has some interim increased funding, but, under questioning, she was able to tell the select committee that she is not going to be able to continue to carry out all that function with the current levels of funding that are there for her. The function that the Parliamentary Commissioner has under this legislation is so critical, and I would hope that this would be listened to and that we would see some increased awareness around the need to properly resource the Parliamentary Commissioner to carry out that role.

The other topic that underwrites all of the natural resources considerations is, of course, the very pressing issue of climate change. We have heard a number of things on this. We know that New Zealand has to go to Paris at the end of this year. We also know that New Zealand, unlike many other countries, has yet to release its new target. We are not sure; the Minister is still playing very coy with when it is that we will see our new target, which we will be taking to the Paris talks in December of this year. We were also told by Treasury, in the briefing to the incoming Minister, of the immense cost that New Zealand is facing by not meeting its emissions targets—that by New Zealand missing its targets we are staring down the barrel of a deficit of anywhere between $3 billion and $52 billion, and that our emissions are rising, not decreasing. We are not going to meet the targets that have been set, and we do not see that there is enough action being taken. We still have a Government that has yet to do anything to fundamentally address the issue around the price of carbon. We know that we are going to be looking at the emissions trading scheme legislation later this year—or so we have been told. Who knows? But something needs to be done, and we need to make sure that we have got the proper mechanisms in place. We need to do something to ensure that we are actually incentivising our foresters to plant forests that can act as carbon sinks and, in terms of carbon sequestration, can play the vital role that needs to occur. But we are not seeing action from the Government that would lead this to happen.

Climate change is real. Just last week 272 workers in my electorate lost their jobs at the Sanford mussel processing plant. The reason that was given was the limited supply of mussel spat, and the company put this down to rising sea temperatures and the inability to get that through. Climate change is not something that is happening in the future and that we can choose to ignore. This is getting real. This is about people’s pay packets. This is about the ability of people to get on and of their families to make ends meet. This is a Government that has been woeful and is neglecting the environment. It needs to do more.

Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call on the Appropriation (2013/14 Confirmation and Validation) Bill, the annual review debate, and on the natural resources theme. I would like to touch on the Department of Conservation annual review. For anyone viewing this broadcast, this is a new debate with a new structure where we have grouped the annual reviews of Crown entities into these various issue themes. To begin my address I would actually like to look at the naming of this section. My understanding of the process is that the Government put out the proposal of what the various issue themes could be. I would actually like to take issue with this theme that is called natural resources. I would like to posit that some of the many issues you are seeing facing the conservation estate and facing natural New Zealand come from a mind-set where we are viewing these things as simply resources to be exploited, when we should actually be thinking about them in terms of natural capital, natural treasures, or taonga, or in terms of natural carbon sinks, not just somewhere we can “drill it, mine it, frack it”.

When we group the Department of Conservation and our natural heritage and special places as natural resources, you are obviously going to think about them simply to be exploited. When you see something simply as a resource, such as the conservation estate, of course you are going to open it up to mining, drilling, and fracking interests. In fact, we can see it. We can see it with the actions of the Government, which sees our natural environment as simply a resource to be exploited. Just a few months ago we saw Simon Bridges open up an area of our oceanic estate larger than the entire landmass of Greenland, more than 400,000 square kilometres. We have seen the Māui’s dolphin sanctuary opened up for oil drilling permits. We have seen Victoria Forest Park, which the Department of Conservation itself describes as being pristine, a home to kiwi, and with some untouched landscapes, opened up for oil drilling.

When you view the natural environment simply as a resource, you are actually going to support those companies that are trying to exploit it. We have seen that. In the last week we have seen the clear hypocrisy of the Government at the international level—and we heard it again in the crowdsourced climate questions—that is railing against fossil fuel subsidies globally. But it is being very nuanced about it. It is saying “consumption subsidies” because, clearly, we do not do that in New Zealand. But when it comes to the production subsidies like the $46 million in annual tax breaks that the taxpayer is paying to big oil, the $20 million in seismic survey subsidies, and the $210,000 spent by Minister Simon Bridges to host only 11 oil executives over 4 days, these are the subsidies that are not being addressed by the Government.

We have seen the Māui’s dolphin sanctuary opened up for oil drilling, and the conservation estate of Victoria Forest Park opened up for oil drilling. We have seen a massive historic amount of New Zealand’s natural environment opened up for oil interests. We should be talking about these not in terms of resources to be exploited but as treasures. The last 55 Māui’s dolphins on the planet—the world’s smallest and most endangered dolphin—are a natural taonga, and we should not be seeing their habitat and environment, their home, simply as a resource. We should be looking at this area and imagine we were debating around natural capital and the ecosystem service benefits of this corner of the country, a significant area of our marine environment, for the New Zealand economy. We have seen an estimate previously that the “clean, green” brand, in which the conservation estate plays such a critical and vital role, has been estimated at $20 billion annually. Obviously, it is a key plank in a more livable New Zealand. My vision of New Zealand is one where talent wants to live, and having beautiful, untouched, unspoilt, unmined, undrilled, and unfracked places is an important part of it.

Finally, we should not be seeing them just as natural resources because, in fact, when you look at the coal, oil, and gas resources, those holes the Government is racing to throw taxpayer subsidies down to exploit, they are actually natural carbon sinks. This is, in fact, sunlight that fell on the Earth more than 100 million years ago. Those plants that decayed formed those fossil fuels. Scientists are advising us that we cannot afford to burn between 70 and 90 percent of all the stuff we have found, let alone throw taxpayers’ money at subsidies, hoping someone finds some more. No matter what you call it, and even if you call it a resource, we have seen Kiwis stand up against it. We have seen groups such as the Dunedin City Council yesterday, the Anglican Church, and the Catholic Church making strong statements. They want to see our natural environment protected, not just natural resources.

I look forward to speaking for a few seconds now and after the break on natural resources. This evening I would like particularly to spend just a bit of time talking about water. This country is blessed with extraordinary natural resources, and it is a privilege to be part of a Government that has provided more fresh thinking around how we manage our natural resources than we have had in a couple of decades. There was not a single major environmental plan from members on the other side of the House in either 2011 or 2014, and some others in this House were more focused on ensuring that—

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

We are talking at the moment in terms of natural resources, and I was discussing water and particularly the leadership that this Government has brought to the management of fresh water. It was effectively outlined in the report that we are reflecting on tonight.

When we came into Government there was not even a scenario in place whereby if you took water you had to measure it. We have obviously turned that round in the last few years, because we held the view, and it is a correct view, that before you can manage something you need to be able to measure it. That came in in 2009.

In particular, tonight I would like to spend just a few moments talking about the national policy statement on freshwater. The debate had been going on in this country since 1995 and essentially had not gone anywhere. We introduced the Land and Water Forum and it helped us to deliver the first national policy statement on freshwater in 2010 and then, as reported on in this report, the limit setting and minimum standards over the course of the last year, in 2014. I think these are profound reforms.

The Land and Water Forum is an example of how this Government works to get enduring outcomes. It brought together a myriad of stakeholders who, quite frankly, had only really met each other either in the courtroom or in the media, taking barbs at each other. We took the approach that you needed these people around the table, and they were persuaded to sit around that table and create a collaborative framework that has enabled communities to have an informed debate on water quality and allocation issues.

These are hard debates. Let us witness, as an example, the Canterbury water zone. Those battles are challenging. I have been in the middle of that myself in a previous life. You have incomplete data and you have a wide range of views amongst the community around how water should be improved and over what time frame. We have absolutely taken the view that a model of collaboration, a model that sees well-informed debates based on good science, is the way to go. That is how you build an enduring solution through a community. This is part of the reform package that we have driven as a Government, particularly in respect of freshwater.

I sat in the Land and Water Forum a couple of times whilst at Fonterra, and I note that those issues are difficult and complex, but through the leadership of Alastair Bisley and our previous Ministers, Amy Adams and Nick Smith, the framework worked because deep down we knew that there is more security and community-endorsed collaboration underpinned by science than in expensive litigation. As noted—and this report covers it—this year we expanded the national policy statement for freshwater with the introduction of our national objectives frameworks and in particular the associated bottom lines for ecosystem health and human health and recreation.

We all know that freshwater management is ultimately the purview of the local council and the local community, but it is significantly assisted with national guidelines to inform and guide debate and deliberation. That is what this Government has been involved with and driven in terms of its reform package over the last couple of years. Again, this is genuine reform.

There are two further policy commitments that we are driving this year in freshwater. One is the $100 million fund on freshwater. That, again, is a significant development. We all know that farming at times has ended up in places where, in retrospect, perhaps it should not still be. This fund is about the community working together, identifying where those buffer zones should be, and being able to work measuredly with the community to be able to restore that back to its previous use, and create a buffer between intensive land use and the water body that is seeking to be protected and enhanced. It is good thinking. It is driven by this Government, and as we work with communities we are seeing some fantastic outcomes throughout the country. For examples of those outcomes, look at the water quality improvement in Rotoiti, in Taupō, and in Waituna. We have backed that with good reform and significant money. We are spending $350 million.

Tonight I thought I would talk about some of the outstanding developments that have occurred in the conservation portfolio, and the gains and achievements made for the natural environment in this country. The first one to talk about is one that cost around $13 million. We called it Battle for our Birds. This was a particularly important thing to do because every 10 or 12 years you get a thing called the beech mast where beech trees, particularly in the South Island, will seed, and seed in extraordinary quantities. Something like a million tonnes of seed was due to be dropped, which means, of course, that you get predators who make a lot of bounty out of this. There were estimated to be something like 25 million extra rats, a plague of rats indeed, and with them come the mice and the stoats. So with this threat—veritably a plague—we decided to intervene.

Controversially, we used 1080 aerial drops, which many people do not approve of, but the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who is independent, has done two particular studies that have shown that 1080 aerial drops are the best weapon that we have these days in trying to ensure that we do not let vast areas of New Zealand turn to waste and be overrun with predators. The trouble with New Zealand is you can have too much of a good thing, and it is such a good environment and such a good place for creatures and plants to grow that some get too good. The 1080 poison drop was entirely successful in that we were able to knock back the predator numbers to the point that, for example, in the Kahurangi National Park, rats were down to near zero levels. What this means, effectively, is that something like 16 species of birds that would otherwise, experts tell us, have been made extinct by this plague of rats, stoats, and possums as well, actually, were then able to be saved. We did that for about 8 months and it was an extremely successful outcome.

The poison 1080 works well in areas where you are unable to do traditional forms of trapping, where hunters and others cannot get in. These are very extreme terrains, and really it was an essential thing and highly successful. We are doing the measurements of it at the moment. The whio, the blue duck, had its most successful breeding programme in 11 years. There are now great numbers of them. The mohua in the Dart and Routeburn valleys has now gone beyond being endangered and is breeding in great numbers. In respect of the Battle for our Birds, over 600,000 hectares of land was a very successful outcome. The Department of Conservation will continue to monitor it. We need to be vigilant.

Kauri die-back is one of the things that, as the incoming Minister of Conservation, I was very concerned about. In last year’s Budget, $26.5 million was allocated to fight this pernicious disease. We do not know what causes it. It attacks in a poison that is soil borne, and it is carried in water. We do not know how it came to New Zealand. We think it was probably here over a very long period of time, maybe around 50 years or so. It is a very slow killer. It affects only Agathis australis, our native kauri tree, and it is incurable. So once a tree is infected, that is the end of it. The money was due to be starting to be spent only in July this year, at the beginning of the financial year, but I felt such was the urgency of the situation, we needed to bring that forward. We have done planning now and are about to execute those plans to have 100 extra kilometres of paths upgraded. That means either in a boardwalk, which is about five kilometres’ worth, or done with gravel. That stops the soil from spreading and that is the way that this kauri die-back disease spreads.

We also have 300 new cleaning stations. These are the kinds of things that we need as a Government to involve the population in, because only by winning hearts and minds and engaging with the public are we able to fight this disease. We need everybody’s cooperation.

Stewardship land is an issue that is about protecting our special places. Our natural environment is under threat by predators, as I have outlined, but it is graded in different layers of protection. Jan Wright, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, had identified that in her view the stewardship land was not being protected to an adequate level, so we have reclassified some of it. About a month ago we finalised plans for the Aotea Conservation Park, which is on Great Barrier Island. I was able to go over there and open that park. It is not contiguous but you have a large area of land. It adds up to about 42 percent of Great Barrier Island. This area of land is in one particular place, and I think it has about eight or nine other parts that are also under that umbrella protection of a conservation park, which affords it a greater level of protection than we would have otherwise been able to do with stewardship land. We are about to do the same with Mount Aspiring. [Bell rung]

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Just before I give the Minister the supplementary call—I will just get her to sit down for a second—and I know there were a lot of members in the Chamber who were not here this afternoon, but I just want to remind members that it is an annual review debate and members must at least give a passing reference to either a report of a select committee on the annual review or the estimates for the year in question, which is not this year but the previous year. Passing reference is fine.

The costings when it comes to “Healthy parks, healthy people” have not yet been done, but what we have been availing ourselves of—and why reinvent the wheel in a country like New Zealand. We have gone to Korea, we have gone to the United States, and we have gone to Australia, and received figures from them that are being considered now in terms of forming some legislation that will be going to a select committee in due course. Again, it is what I was saying about classification and stewardship land: the costs of putting a park together are many and varied. I suppose you could look at it and say some things are priceless, and, certainly, when it comes to the reclassification of stewardship land—the degree of work that was done by our officials and then teased out in the select committee environment. Funds were allocated from within baseline with the Department of Conservation. We were then able to go ahead with the Aotea Conservation Park.

When it comes to the concept of “Healthy parks, healthy people”, we are looking to broaden it out. I have spoken already with my colleague the Minister of Health, Dr Jonathan Coleman, about taking some funds from Vote Health and taking some funds from the disability sector, from conservation, and from education because what we want to do is take a holistic approach, which is what some of these other countries have done to try to combat such difficult issues as obesity. By getting children away from their computers and into parks, and by introducing them to the environment and introducing them to the notions and concepts of conservation, their lives will be considerably enriched. As a Government, and as the Minister of Conservation, those are the sorts of initiatives that I am planning for now.

When it comes to the money that we have allocated—as I said earlier, $26.5 million from kauri die-back, for example—that money needs to be allocated in a way that is in keeping with our policy framework and also the needs of the trees themselves. Often you need to be responsive to what is happening around you in the environment, and the progression of something like kauri die-back disease means the re-prioritisation of the moneys that we were intending to spend—and it probably would have been early in the coming summer—we are now not able to do because we do need to move more quickly and respond in a way that is not predetermined but is determined by the way that this disease has spread.

So with the $26.5 million, for example, about a third of that is going to be put into paths and boardwalks; about another third of that is going to be put into the teams of people who will be delivering the services and the things that we need to do to inform the public—and it is public education, as I have said—and the rest of the money is going to be used for science-based information so that we will be able to work out what causes the disease. It is very important, I think, that we do not go past an evidence base, and from my perspective as the Minister, it is enabling me to reach out further, involving people like Sir Peter Gluckman, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, and Scion research, and directing them to give us the evidence that we need to make the decisions to apportion the funds so that they will be most effective and they will be able to do what needs to be done.

I suppose when it comes to birds, in particular—when you look at what is happening to our iconic kiwi—the funds that have been put forward there are adequate, but we need to do more. I remain hopeful that I will be able to prevail in the Budget round and get some more money to bring together a really strategic plan that will enable our kiwi population to stop the decline. At the moment it is declining at a rate of about minus 2 percent a year. We need to get that up to plus 2 percent a year. We are working with various organisations—the NEXT Foundation, Kiwis for Kiwi, and so forth—as a collaborative process. Partnerships with individuals, with philanthropists, and with others will be the thing that, I think, as a nation will enable us to do what needs to be done. As I have said, it is not just up to a Government; it is not just up to a single department.

Although the Department of Conservation is putting not inconsiderable funds into saving kiwis, for example, we are also putting it into the management of weeds. When it comes to wilding pine control, we are collaborating with regional authorities and with local authorities, as well, to ensure that they match the funding that the Government is putting in to halt the spread of wilding pines, which, if unchecked, in the next 25 years will take up nearly a quarter of our landscape. They are choking productive farmland, they are smothering and suffocating our native plant species, and they need to be stopped. But when we allocate money in a Budget sense, which we have been doing over the years, we recognise that it is not at the level that it needs to be, and so we are working in collaboration.

I am speaking to the annual review of the Department of Conservation—page 41 of reports of select committees, 1.20A. I am pleased to hear the Minister of Conservation suggesting that there may be an increase in funding for the protection of kiwi because, of course, it was the briefing to the incoming Minister that warned that kiwi could potentially be extinct on the mainland within 50 years. We have got a biodiversity crisis in New Zealand and our national icon, the kiwi, is one of those threatened species. Forty percent of our native bird species are threatened with extinction, as are 74 percent of our native freshwater fish species, 85 percent of our native lizards, and nearly 40 percent of our indigenous plants.

We are supposed to be halting the decline in biodiversity, but we are failing to do that, and one of the reasons is this Government’s miserly approach to conservation. We have got the Government being quite extravagant when it spends public money on promoting intensive dairying and irrigation and when it spends to promote deep-sea oil exploration, but it is miserly when it protects nature. We have got a Department of Conservation that is responsible for a third of New Zealand’s land area, yet only $163 million of its $346 million annual budget last year was able to be spent on natural heritage management.

The department is able to control pests on only 15 percent of the conservation estate, and, yes, Battle for Our Birds was a brilliant initiative, but that was funded because the department did not spend quite as much on redundancies in its disastrous restructuring exercise as it had anticipated. There needs to be an increase—a significant increase—in baseline funding for the Department of Conservation so that it can invest in controlling predators over much more of the conservation estate.

Mr Simpson said that the department was in very good shape. He obviously has not been reading any of the reports about what a disaster the restructuring exercise that the department undertook last year was. It was done by the former director-general in response to National’s Budget cuts, back in 2009. Last year 126 Department of Conservation staff were made redundant and, with that, there was a huge loss of technical expertise in the regions—places like the West Coast, where there are major challenges on the ground—and that loss of 126 jobs last year was on top of the 197 jobs that have been cut in the department under this National Government.

So we have seen 323 jobs go in the Department of Conservation. It shows how serious—or not—the Government is about protecting our conservation estate. This was the largest restructuring in the public sector. The Government talks about having better public services, yet the restructuring cost the department $7 million last year. There has been no clear rationale as to why it was needed. It has restructured the department into two silos: operations and services.

I get regular comments about the fact that things are going through the gap in the middle. There is no clear, integrated line of decision making. Has it led to better public services? No. What did the department do last year? It spent $1 million more on travel. Why? Because a lot of the staff are now in offices where their managers are not present in that office. That $1 million extra being spent on travel could have funded aerial predator control over nearly 60,000 hectares, an area almost the size of two Paparoa National Parks. Where did it go? On travel.

The restructuring has increased the number of people on salaries of more than $100,000—another 10 last year. It has meant another 20 staff in the Wellington office of the department, when a lot of the work has actually got to be done in the regions. So the restructuring has been an abysmal failure, and that is just looking at the financial side. It does not include any accounting of the losses in terms of conservation management when staff have been so stressed, concentrating on whether they are going to have a job or not, that they have not been able to get on with the operational programmes that they are responsible for.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: Don’t be so pessimistic.

And not just that $7 million—the Minister says: “Don’t be so pessimistic.” Yes, the new director-general is implementing a new pilot, but that is costing another half a million dollars to try to fix up the utter shambles that the restructuring has created.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: It’s money well spent.

It is not money well spent. Under this Government $17 million has been spent on restructuring the Department of Conservation that could have been spent on pest control.

Reports noted.

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