Adverse Weather-affected Timber Recovery on Conservation Lands Bill

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Adverse Weather-affected Timber Recovery on Conservation Lands Bill, and I am grateful to my Labour colleague Rachel Brooking for her very careful legal analysis and dissection of the many failings of this bill from a legal point of view. But I want to focus on why the Green Party is opposing this bill and will be voting against it.

This bill represents a fundamental attack on conservation values, on nature, on our public protected lands and our indigenous forests, nature’s cathedrals: our kauri, rimu, beech, kahikatea, mataī, and podocarp forests. The Green Party opposed the bill on which this is based—the Hon Nick Smith’s West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill—in June 2014, which was pushed through the House under urgency with no chance for select committee consideration and no chance for public submissions, even though it affected public land.

This bill fails to recognise the history of forest clearance in Aotearoa New Zealand. Forest once covered 85 percent of our country, some 23 million hectares, and yet in 25 to 30 generations, we have reduced the extent of that forest cover to around 20 percent of our land area. We’ve converted it to pasture. We need to protect what remains. We need to protect these magnificent forests on conservation lands and the homes that they provide for our distinctive indigenous plants and wildlife, yet this bill goes back to the 19th century with its desire to see logging on conservation land, authorised by the Director-General of Conservation, which would see the Department of Conservation collect fees for that logging.

The National Party and the member are grounded in the 19th century, not the 21st century. They fail to recognise the key ecosystem services that these forests provide and their importance as habitat for wildlife. It’s opportunistic plundering of conservation land that this bill is promoting rather than safeguarding its indigenous biodiversity.

The bill also fails to recognise that for over 30 years, there has been strong public support for the prohibition on logging in section 30 of the Conservation Act 1987. That prohibition on logging was put in place for very good reasons, because when Te Papa Atawhai—the Department of Conservation—was established in 1987, it brought all of the “green dots” that were spread throughout the Forest Service, Department of Lands and Survey, and the Wildlife Service together into one agency. We had had the Forest Service, which was trying to be a multiple-use agency. On the one hand, its environmental forestry arm was encouraging recreation on public land, and, on the other, it was napalming indigenous forests, rimu forests, in the Buller and elsewhere and converting those into pine plantation. That was enormously destructive.

The Labour Government phased out the Forest Service in that restructuring in the 1980s. It created Te Papa Atawhai, which has the Conservation Act, which prohibits logging. This bill also fails to recognise the history of the huge effort that the conservation movement—New Zealanders, iwi; all of us—have made to protect these forests on public land from logging. We had the big campaigns in Orikaka, in Ōkārito, in Waikukupa, Whirinaki, Pureora, and the Longwoods and Rowallan forests in Western Southland to stop logging on public land. The dying days of logging were under the former National Government. A newly elected Labour Government stopped the beech scheme that Timberlands West Coast wanted to proceed with, which would have resulted in pock-marking the forest with a whole lot of clear-cut and saw 120,000 hectares of West Coast forest then added to the conservation estate.

This bill would take us back to that era of logging, destruction of biodiversity, and destruction of nature. It fails to recognise the key role that wind-blown timber and fallen trees have in recycling nutrients in the forest, that dead trees have in providing nest holes for birds like kākā and kākāriki, and that fallen trees have in providing a seed-bed for regenerating forest and regrowth of the forest. This bill is just opportunistic. It seeks to plunder conservation land and the Green Party is opposing it.

Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker. Thank you. I rise to take a call on this, the Adverse Weather-affected Timber Recovery on Conservation Lands Bill. In doing so, I note that this piece of proposed legislation, essentially, was prompted by the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Act 2014, which I think I will just refer to as the WBT Act, moving forward. But I note actually what’s proposed is quite different from that piece of legislation.

There are two points of difference that I can take from it. The first is that it’s not limited to a specific area geographically in its sense, such as the West Coast.

💬 Maureen Pugh: Weather happens all over the place.

And for the benefit of the member whose bill this is, reviewing the Hansard, I noted that she asked my colleague previously what the conservation land had to do with it when she was identifying the list—Rachel Brooking, who did a very good job of doing that in the last call. So for the benefit of the member—I mean, it’s her bill. I would have thought she would know, but I will just reiterate that this would, essentially, identify conservation areas under the Conservation Act and also under the Reserves Act. When it looks at the Conservation Act, we are specifically looking, as I understand it, to conservation parks, wilderness areas, sanctuary areas, water course areas, amenity areas, wildlife management areas, and other conservation areas being that of stewardship. But also it would apply to land that falls under the Reserves Act, and four of those sit comfortably: recreation, historic, scenic, and Government purpose reserves. So we are not talking about just a specific locality or locale; it’s much broader than that. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is that it’s actually not limited to time. The WBT Act does have a time frame of five years; this doesn’t. So I think it’s really important that we do acknowledge the context within which the proposed bill would lie.

So what then does the bill seek to do? Well, it would kick in, related to an adverse weather event, and that’s not defined, but I accept the member whose bill this is did suggest in her opening remarks in the first introductory speech that the select committee process would be one where that could be sort of looked into. But it does none the less still raise a number of concerns, because when you look at the relevant clauses within it, I turn my mind to issues around the process of removal. So, OK, it’s clear in the bill that items must be authorised by the Director-General of the Department of Conservation, and when I have a look at clause 8(4), there are, essentially, four things that the director-general could do in his or her absolute discretion. The first is they could accept an application, the second is they could decline one, the third is they could enter into some sort of private negotiation to try and get some agreement, and the fourth one is to reject all applications.

But what’s interesting is that if we go on further and have a look, the discretion of the director-general seems to be rather loose, because he or she may have regard to the interests, even including the financial interests, of the Crown in relation to the specified piece of land but also any other matters the director-general considers relevant. So, in essence, it is a catch-all, that et al: anything else that he or she may consider relevant.

When you look at the regulatory impact statement that accompanied the former Act, what it did actually note was that dead, standing, and fallen trees are an essential or favoured habitat and food source for many species, a normal part of nutrient cycling and forests, and beneficial to regeneration. In that sense, the timber component for which this bill is primarily related to does have a purpose. So it really does, I guess, come down to a balancing act, and the concern that the Government has is that there is simply too much uncertainty. It’s too loose, and therefore we simply cannot support it.

There is uncertainty in the provisions that I have just touched on. There is uncertainty in that there is a real risk to local in situ ecology, because there is a biodiversity value proposition at play there. Finally, there really is uncertainty in the long-term impacts of the removal of the timber. So when we look at all of those aspects, the common-sense approach is not to support the bill in its current form because of the huge level of uncertainty, and that’s something that we are not prepared to support at this stage. So, obviously, we will be voting against it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I take this opportunity to rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak on the adverse weather-affected timber recovery bill. Adverse weather events in New Zealand are quite common. We certainly do have a few of them occur here, and I commend Maureen Pugh on her foresight to look at how she can look after the area that she resides after we have some of these adverse weather events.

I mean, the West Coast is quite notorious for getting the brunt of extreme weather, let alone adverse weather. In March 2019, for example, we saw the remnants of Cyclone Trevor wreak havoc on the West Coast. There was the destruction of the Waiho River bridge and the closure of major roads and schools, and people were forced to evacuate. In December 2019, we saw a storm that left a thousand people stranded in Franz Josef. There were slips, there were closed highways, and there were food parcels that needed to be sent into that area, and that’s just two events in the one year.

On the pre-election campaign last year, the ACT Party went down to Hokitika, and after a weather event that occurred there, we actually had a delay in people turning up, with one guy telling us that he had to get the chainsaw out to remove the fallen trees that had come down upon his driveway. In fact, it’s so bad that the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has actually written a book specifically on the weather events of the West Coast, explaining that it is the wettest region in New Zealand. There’s a table within NIWA’s book which tells you about the wind gusts that the West Coast experiences, mostly in Greymouth, Westport, and Hokitika. Having the alps situated along the West Coast ridgeline means that a good proportion of the rivers in that area will flow towards the West Coast, and with extreme rainfall and a rising river, it can take with it vegetation as it moves quickly towards the sea, leaving those towns on the Coast with flooding issues.

But the events themselves are not the issue in this bill. I’m merely pointing out the large number of adverse weather events that occur on the West Coast. It’s the clean up after the events, and my colleague from the Greens suggested it’s logging. It’s not logging; it’s rotting, and what we want to do is utilise the by-product and not waste a thing. We want to be able to remove some of these trees so that we can promote new growth in the area. If the trees fall down on your own property, you can get someone to remove them. If they fall on conservation land, you can’t. The West Coast region has the largest proportion of land and conservation estate. Contrast that with the 20 percent that’s in the North Island, 40 percent of the South Island is legally protected, and 10.7 percent of New Zealand is covered in 3 million hectares of national parks.

So what happens when we have an adverse weather or extreme event leaving fallen trees? As I said earlier, if it was on your own property, you would have them removed, but, legally, we cannot do that on Crown-managed land. We cannot remove the irreversibly damaged trees. This bill will allow the Department of Conservation to authorise the removal of damaged timber, and the people who want to remove it must be invited to apply to remove it. They can’t just rock on up and take it out of the bush. They’ve got to pay royalties, they’ve got to pay fees, and they’ve got to pay any charges that are required, as well.

Importantly, it also allows for the root system of the tree and the tops of the trees to stay there, which is helping the biodiversity that is occurring in our natural environment. We are only looking at needing to take away the main trunk of the tree, not disrupting the bugs and the insects that are dependent on that coverage. It will not have a major effect on our ecosystem.

The ACT Party are in support of this bill, and while Labour sit across the room and say they don’t support it, Tangi Utikere, the previous speaker across the way there, has just said across the way there that he thought that there would be some good aspects that could be brought up in select committee. I think this bill is worth looking at for what can be done in select committee, but it needs your support to get there. So while ACT support this bill, I hope Labour change their mind and do the same. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I have some sympathy for what the member Maureen Pugh has tried to do with this bill. The intent of it is really about scaling up something that has been shown to work before, and it is trying to get some economic benefit for people where she lives. So while the intention is pure, I’m afraid I can’t support it, because the scale-up element of it simply doesn’t work, and that’s for three reasons: firstly, it’s just simply not ecologically working in the same direction that we’re going as a Government and that we know that we need to go with climate change; secondly, the economic arguments don’t stack up; and, thirdly, it’s simply not needed.

Look, if we go back to what the original Act was, which was alluded to by my colleague Tangi Utikere, the Act that was brought in, the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Act of 2014, came at the tail end of Cyclone Ita, and that was on 17 April 2014. There was wind damage to over 40,000 hectares of indigenous forest. There was severe damage, and there were mature beech trees near Westport, and there was tōtara and mataī in Whataroa. But, as has been pointed out, the Act that worked in that case was very limited. It was confined to the events of Cyclone Ita. It excluded World Heritage areas, national parks, and the white heron sanctuary, and it expired on 1 July 2019.

It’s true that Forest and Bird in Canterbury and the West Coast are opposing—very strongly opposing—the proposed scale-up of that bill because of what it would mean for the protection of conservation forests from logging, which has already been traversed by the Greens. We know that wind-blown trees are some of the most difficult to remove, they’re hazardous, they’re dangerous, and they provide ecological support for the forests that they fall in. That has all been covered.

But perhaps looking at the economic case that has been put forward for this, the approved operators spoken to for the report done by the ministry of conservation didn’t identify any particular new business opportunities that came from that West Coast scenario. They also pointed out that adverse weather events are unlikely to supply the consistency that would be needed to make the economic case for a scale-up like this. It could also create winners and losers as an effect in the timber industry, benefiting those that have an adverse weather event at a point in time.

Also, there are risks that aren’t present when considering only West Coast forests. There’s likely to be pressure and demand for access to other woods in Whirinaki, Warawara, and Trounson Kauri Park, for example, with kauri a particular target. There are biosecurity risks that would be harder to manage or control for potential impact in areas such as these, especially where kauri dieback is concerned. There is also a risk that the bill would support the harvesting of swamp kauri.

So, in summary, the Government could consider special legislation if a very significant weather event happened, such as what happened in 2014. We could do that in a way where timber recovery was economically and ecologically viable. There is no need for a large scale-up of a piece of legislation that responded to a very specific event. We’ve traversed the arguments around the ecology, around the economy, and we don’t need to take it to a select committee when, in fact, there is a much simpler mechanism which could respond to a severe weather event, which would be to introduce a very specific and focused piece of legislation to deal with that. For all these reasons—while I have some sympathy for what the member is hoping to achieve, and I commend her for working for her constituents to do that—unfortunately, the logic doesn’t stack up, and I simply cannot support this bill.

I’d just like to start by congratulating the member Maureen Pugh for having this drawn out of the ballot. I know she’s from a longstanding West Coast family and this is the type of thing, when one does grow up on the West Coast, as have I—in fact, my family have been involved in, initially, gold, subsequently coalmining, and, ultimately, in timber recovery through the Īnangahua area and through much of the northern part of the Buller. So foresting is very much—like the member—part of my DNA. However, I also grew up as a lad on the West Coast doing a lot of hunting and some of the best hunting areas, of course, were the areas that had been well forested, where you had the access of timber trails going and often where a heck of a lot of forest had been knocked down to get to one very nice-looking rimu or even tōtara in there, and the damage that had been done—as I say, it was great for us as young blokes heading up there with our old World War II three-os looking to get access to some very nice venison.

But, looking back on it, that very same access—and I think of up around the Ōparara area. When you get to Karamea and someone tells you there’s a very good place to go and see about an hour’s drive from Karamea, you think, “Where can you drive for an hour from Karamea?”, but if you ever get a chance to, go in and see the Ōparara arches, a wonderful area. If you were to have a look in there and see what happens as a result of the afforestation in there, probably you’d say it’s a good thing, because you wouldn’t get an access there had it not been for those good timber trails in there. That really comes to the point that getting the timber out is not that easy a job, and in doing so, from my experience of what I’ve seen over the years, there’s considerable damage caused.

This is where I can see where this bill will actually fall down, to a large degree. I know it is not West Coast - specific, and I can see that the bill, looking through it, clearly is designed for weather events throughout New Zealand. Not knowing other parts of New Zealand quite as intimately, although I do have to say I currently live out in the Ōhāriu Valley area of my electorate—a beautiful area. Most of you get to fly over it as you come into Wellington, into a southerly. One thing, if you look out the plane window, you’ll see is there are not too many trees out there. Mr Luxon, I see you’re smiling there. You will have done that route many times.

From having grown up on the West Coast, like the member over there, I’ve grown to understand that we do need trees and I know what trees add to our ambience, add to our lives, and I certainly would like to see a lot more trees around. So, particularly in an area where we do end up with so little land left to actually—there’s so much of it we can drive, basically, from Wellington to Auckland, virtually going through several of the many farms owned by the member opposite, and you’ll see there’s not too many trees left on too many of them.

So as a society and in the time we’ve come to, we’ve just really got to come to the stage where we do understand that trees, re-afforestation, is a very, very important part of a legacy which we do want to leave to the next generations. So, again, I’m not standing here, I don’t carry—I’m Catholic. I can be guilty about many things, but I don’t need to be guilty about my ancestors in the forest and what they did. They did what they do on the West Coast, that extractive industry that’s been part of the West Coast for many, many generations. But time does march on and, really, what I would say is that in a time—and I think some of the previous speakers have talked about it. We are in a sort of an era of probably re-afforestation whether it be re-afforestation—just last night, I was listening to a briefing from foresters who are looking at getting that balance right between exotic trees and native trees. So I think we’re sort of in an era where re-afforestation is probably the best legacy we’ll leave for those that do come after us.

So when I look at this bill, it probably does sort of go against some of that whole, I suppose, philosophy we have now in our life when our generation will be looked at as a time we sort of reversed that trend of extractive industry and of making sure that we use trees that are going to be an important part of getting our world back in order for our grandkids. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Listening to O’Connor speak is a bit like watching him bowl—you never know what’s coming next.

Before I start, I just want to mention the Hon Kiri Allan. She’s one of the toughest people I’ve ever come across in my life, and if anyone can get through the challenges she’s got in front of her, I think Kiri will certainly do that, and I’d just like to wish her all the best because she is a special person.

This bill is also the product of a special person, from the West Coast, interestingly: Maureen Pugh. I think it’s a great credit that she’s brought this bill to the House as the previous legislation, which Maureen Pugh agitated for at length and was put through by Nick Smith, has expired. Interestingly, despite what we’ve heard in the House tonight, in the course of that legislation and actions as a result of that legislation, there was no damage done to the conservation land at all. I think some 30,000 or 40,000 cubic metres of damaged native timber was brought out of those forests with absolutely no damage and no costs, I guess, to the conservation estate.

I just want to make the point that when you stand in this House, all you can see in here is exactly the sort of timber we’re talking about, and timber that if we’re not careful will be lost to future generations for them to use other than to recycle. I was privileged enough to live in a house with not one single treated board in it, and nowadays, of course, we use pine trees which entirely have to be treated, and I’m not criticising that. That’s the type of forestry sector we’ve got now. So I want to congratulate Maureen Pugh on bringing this bill to the House.

I want to comment quickly on a couple of comments, one from Eugenie Sage who thinks it’s—in her unfortunate terminology—opportunistic and plundering of the conservation estate. Well, of course, it’s not. What happens with this bill is that the conservator has got the sole right to decide whether or not this gets used at all. In fact, it can’t be implemented if not for the Director-General of Conservation. I think that’s an eminently sound start.

The other thing that my friend Tangi Utikere from across the boundary—in fact, I’m surrounded in Palmerston North—talked about was the fact that the bill doesn’t really stack up at the moment. Well, that’s why we have a select committee process, and, of course, this Government has tended to forget the need for a select committee process in most of the legislation they’ve put through in the last four months. So perhaps they don’t realise what a select committee actually does. [Interruption] It fixes things, doesn’t it, McAnulty? It fixes things. So I think that to have sent this bill to a select committee, irrespective of what it came out looking like, would’ve been a great advance for the Parliament and certainly would be worthwhile.

My interest in the bill, aside from the fact that I think it’s a very good bill, is really the result of my role as the Opposition spokesperson for forestry, and subsequently that stretches into the manufacturing sector and all things associated with use of wood in New Zealand. To have the opportunity to bring our wind-damaged or storm-damaged timber for specific use in New Zealand, I think, would’ve been well worthwhile. It would’ve added value to that sector, and despite what Ingrid Leary said a minute ago, it won’t pick winners and losers. It will give opportunity wherever the opportunity occurs, if in fact it does occur, for that timber, or that wood, to be used and used specifically for special projects in New Zealand. I think it would be quite an exciting opportunity for the sector to be able to do that.

I do have some sympathy for a lot of the views, and in the north of Rangitīkei, you walk through what once must have been beautiful native bush which no longer is because the best bits are all picked off and the rest was left behind.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: That’s the member’s farm!

No farmer would ever treat anything like that. So I think there is reason for us to protect our native bush that’s left, and protect it as best we can. Certainly, this bill would have added to the protection of it because it would give people the opportunity, provided the director-general agreed with it, to go in and pick the wind-damaged trees out and leave a very clear and much better environment for new plants to regenerate. So I think there is good reason for this bill to have be pushed through, but it wasn’t.

One other point I wanted to make about this is that having altered nature over the last 180 years or 300 years or whatever in New Zealand, we’re never going to rectify it without human intervention. One of the very quick examples I’ll give you of that is where we’ve got native wilding pines creeping into all of our North Island national parks—Whanganui National Park is a great example of that—and that’s going to have to be removed. It’s going to be a very interesting debate in this House when we have to go in there and get them out, because the same thing’s going to happen as when we go in and get wind-damaged stuff out. That’s my lot.

Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It’s an honour and a privilege to speak on anything to do with conservation here in Aotearoa. I want to acknowledge the member Maureen Pugh and congratulate her on the amount of work that she’s done to get her bill to this stage. But before I talk about the reasons why I join my colleagues and our party in opposing this bill, I want to acknowledge the Minister of Conservation. I want to acknowledge the sister the Hon Kiritapu Allan: kia kaha, wahine toa, and much arohanui from us here—all of us here in the Whare.

I’ve gone through the pages of this bill, and we’re in the 21st century, and there’s nowhere—I don’t know; maybe I’ve missed it—that refers to being a Treaty partner. There’s nowhere that refers to consulting or working with tangata whenua. We recently had the annual review of the Department of Conservation. They came through, and the thing that I liked about their presentation was about the principles—the principles of conservation, which was about elevating principles of the Treaty and fulfilling Treaty partnership. I looked at the bill; I couldn’t find that anywhere. It’s about holding wellbeing and safety within conservation—I couldn’t find that here, either.

What I found was a bill that just looked at the tree; it didn’t look at the whole forest. It looked at the trees—didn’t look at the whole forest. So I’m really concerned—I’m really concerned. I think that this bill is about the slippery slope. I am concerned about the forest—the kauri. I am concerned about the kauri. It’s a slippery slope into swamp harvesting—kauri swamp harvesting. This is opening the door to that.

So I’m really concerned about that, and before the Department of Conservation—let’s just say, adverse weather effect, a tree falls on somewhere where humans walk. Part of the conservation is to get rid of that risk, not to go into the forest. So I would say, adverse—what is it? Adverse weather - affected timber recovery—timber recovery. It’s just looking at the timber; it’s not looking at Papatūānuku and the forest and what we are conserving. It’s time that we stop being siloed—that we stop just looking at the West Coast. I hear that the Hon Eugenie Sage in her contribution spoke about that bill that was passed in—I’ve forgotten what year it was. That Act was passed through urgency of the House. It didn’t go to a select committee, didn’t have a tangata whenua contribution to it—it didn’t, didn’t—and here we are. We are here today, in 2021, and we know that in this House, diversity makes it better. It adds value, yet this bill, it is siloed. It is only looking at what’s happening in their backyard.

The reason I am concerned is because we are not just talking about the West Coast. This bill is not just talking about the West Coast. We are talking about all of New Zealand. Our borders are going to open up to Australia. What are they going to come to look at? I bet that some of them will come to look at the forests, who have been conserved by the Department of Conservation. They will be looking at that—they’re coming to that. So, financially, that’s coming through the border. It is coming through the border because conservation does good work.

The principle of the Department of Conservation, it’s about a healthy nature. We’ve heard everyone talk about it: healthy nature. Trees would fall and rot, a lot of diversity in the ecology system would feed from that, and that is because we have learnt from years and years of siloed looking at the forest that we are destroying the forest.

I stand in unison with our deputy chair of our Environment Committee, Rachel Brooking, and the awesome contribution by Tangi Utikere today—oh, Greg O’Connor, too. I stand in unison with them and I oppose this bill. I oppose the Adverse Weather-affected Timber Recovery on Conservation Lands Bill.

On that note, I oppose this bill to the House. Mālō.

This debate is interrupted. The House is suspended until 7 p.m. this evening.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The House is resumed. When the House rose for the dinner break, we were considering the Adverse Weather-affected Timber Recovery on Conservation Lands Bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, it is a real pleasure to rise and speak on this—long name—Adverse Weather-affected Timber Recovery on Conservation Lands Bill. I want to acknowledge and congratulate my colleague across the floor—Maureen Pugh—for bringing this bill through the House. I think I’d really like to acknowledge you for the thought and the effort in bringing this bill. However, I think you’ve probably come now to realise that Labour does not support this bill to select committee.

I do want to acknowledge the advocacy for your community that you have put in place. I guess, for me, that is perhaps one of the faults with the bill, in that you talked about conservation land in the context of the entire country. What I really feel you were focusing on here—perhaps, if I may suggest—is the community of the West Coast of the South Island.

Now, Maureen Pugh, the member Greg O’Connor has spoken of his community connection and I too will speak of my community connection to the West Coast of the South Island. So my family comes from the West Coast of the South Island, both sides of the family. So we were miners, we were publicans—you’ll like that, Kieran McAnulty: we were publicans—and we were millers, so we owned mills. So forestry and the milling of the beautiful beach forests, etc., is something that has a long history in my family. I think the member Greg O’Connor also said this: that we don’t need to be ashamed of where we’ve come from, even if we ourselves would not make those choices going forward now.

So the bill itself is specifically for the entire conservation estate in this country. I’ve heard lots of arguments—and I particularly want to acknowledge the member the Hon Eugenie Sage for her statements—but I want to talk a little bit about the fact that New Zealand had a really long period of geological isolation. So 80 percent of New Zealand plant species are endemic or only found in New Zealand.

I also want to talk about the ecology of the forest and what happens when a tree falls in the forest, and if no one’s there to—no, I’m not going to say that joke—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Go on, just say it!

Ha, ha! I’m not going to say that joke. So, essentially, we have heard arguments that talk about trees as being an economic unit, something to be taken from and taken across and made into an economic unit and supporting industry. However, what hasn’t been talked about is the flora and fauna that a fallen tree creates and the cycle of life that the trees, when they fall—even in a large adverse weather event—create for the regrowth of the environment. If we take away those systems and those structures, what happens is that we lose the biodiversity, we lose the fungi, the animals, the plants that grow on that rotten log. So the ecology of the environment is so very important. So by taking these logs out of these areas, we cause a change to the environment and the ecology that we are not sure is a positive thing—in fact, science is telling us that it is less and less positive.

There is also the opportunity, should we have a massive adverse weather event—winds, etc.—that we can actually do a small, time-limited, area-specific bill which will enable and support the clearing of some of this land. It really does support a better ecology and a moving forward.

The Labour Party is trying to fight climate change and the adverse weather events; we’re not trying to make money out of those events. So, as a consequence, we won’t be supporting this bill. But I do want to acknowledge the member for bringing it up to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand to take the final call on the first reading of the Adverse Weather-affected Timber Recovery on Conservation Lands Bill. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be the last reading—full stop. And I’ll talk a little bit about what has been said in some of the other speeches. One of the main issues is around the terminology of “logging”. This is a huge mischaracterisation of what actually goes on in one of these weather events—and I will come back to that a little bit later, with some stats around that.

This bill was never proposing anything that hasn’t already happened, that hasn’t already been tested in both the administration and the practical application, the operations that happen on the ground and within the Department of Conservation (DOC). This bill is simply a continuation of the legislation that was passed back in 2014, and that’s been mentioned a lot in this House. But what’s also been mentioned is that this is a scale-up. This is not a scale-up. The reality is that this legislation parks the authorisation with the Director-General of Conservation for when, or if, there is another event. Many members on the other side—it must have been in their speech notes—have all said, “We can pass special legislation for specific events.” This is exactly what this bill sets out to achieve. It creates the template so that the Director-General of Conservation can, at any time, if there is a scaled event, re-enact this authorisation that he will have to maybe go into the forest and take some of that timber out. It puts a huge amount of methodology into the system that we’ve already got, because, as I’ve said, it’s been tested over the Cyclone Ita experience that we had.

The members on the other side are also very confused about the types of land that we are talking about. This bill does not go near any of the nature reserves. It doesn’t go near the scientific reserves, ecological areas, or national parks. So we are not talking about pristine environments. Mainly what we talk about with this bill is stewardship land or land that has very low conservation values. So it’s important to note that during the implementation of the 2014 event, there were no lost time injuries or events for the workers on the ground or the public that was involved in the forest. It was an extremely dangerous situation, and I give full credit to DOC and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) for working together to manage the health and safety aspects of it. But we also saw ecologists and resource managers from Landcare Research, Lincoln University, MPI, and DOC all work closely together to ensure that the timber was removed safely and that there was minimal impact on the environment.

Now, I just want to explain, too, about the scale of the operations. So, for instance, if there were several hectares of windthrow timber, only half of that was able to be used—so, if you had one hectare here, one hectare here had to be preserved. Inside that one hectare, you could salvage only a minimal amount—50 percent of the trees that came down in this one hectare. So we’re talking about 50 percent of 50 percent. Then you could take only 10 percent of the biomass of each tree. So there was a minimal amount of extraction that went on in the forest.

I wanted to go back to talking about some of the comments that were made, about the mischaracterisation of what this bill sets out to achieve. It is not plundering. The trees that were flattened in Cyclone Ita covered an area the size of all of Samoa, and out of that we got a minimal amount of material. We got 8,000 cubic metres of timber that came out of there. There were millions of cubic metres of fallen trees that have remained in the forest. This bill talks about giving authority to the Director-General of Conservation. The problem on that side of the House is that none of them can see the wood for the trees. This was a practical solution.