Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill

on behalf of the Minister for Land Information: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill.

💬 SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill be now read a third time.

The Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill amends the Crown Pastoral Land Act 1998 and the Land Act 1948. It aims to deliver improved outcomes for Crown pastoral land and to end the tenure review process. The bill aims to ensure that Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) will administer Crown pastoral land in a way that maintains or enhances the inherent values of the land. Inherent values are defined as the ecological, landscape, cultural, heritage, and scientific values of the natural character of the land. These values are to be protected for present and future generations while providing for ongoing pastoral farming of the land.

The changes include introducing a clear purpose and outcomes that all persons exercising powers under the Crown Pastoral Land Act 1998 and the Land Act 1948 must seek to achieve, supporting strong and enduring Crown-Māori relationships and recognising the relationship of mana whenua with their ancestral lands, and providing a clear, more transparent statutory decision-making process with stronger accountability mechanisms and more opportunity for public input. The bill underpins the Government’s view that ongoing, sustainable, and responsible pastoral farming is the best way for this land to be managed. It acknowledges the value and the role of leaseholders in the stewardship of these iconic properties.

The bill also recognises how valued the high country is by iwi and all New Zealanders, and this is reflected in the Government’s decision to end tenure review. Tenure review was brought in as a voluntary process for both leaseholders and the Crown. It has resulted in 136 farm properties being able to freehold a total of 382,624 hectares of Crown land. On the other hand, it resulted in 340,887 hectares joining the Crown’s conservation estate. There has been public concern that farming intensification on some of that freehold land has resulted in a loss of indigenous biodiversity and a reduction in the inherent value of the landscape. By ending tenure review, this Government is affirming the Crown’s ownership and stewardship responsibilities with regard to this land. Doing this helps protect the inherent value of the landscapes. It also means that Crown pastoral leases will be available for future generations of farmers.

The Environment Committee considered the bill. It received 161 submissions. The committee held six hearings in the first half of last year and reported back to Parliament on 6 July 2021.

A number of valuable changes to the bill were made by the committee. The bill now provides more appropriate recognition of the Crown’s obligations to its Treaty partners and mana whenua interests. Some important provisions were added by the select committee to make operating under a high-country lease more practical. Two examples are broader provision for commercial recreation permits and clarifying what can be done in emergency situations. In addition, the Commissioner of Crown Lands can consider the economic benefits associated with a proposed pastoral activity in cases where the financial viability of the pastoral farming enterprise is at risk.

I acknowledge the conflict between allowing public access in a lessee’s land and enabling that lessee to have the right to farm that land in the way that they want and run their businesses as needed. Following feedback that the proposed public access provision could impact on a leaseholder’s property rights, an amendment to this provision was included in the Government Supplementary Order Paper 129 tabled in the House in February 2022. The amendment provision will require the Commissioner of Crown Lands to consider public access when determining whether to consent to the sale or subleasing of a Crown pastoral lease. If the commissioner determines that access requests have been unreasonably refused in the past, the lease transfer may be made subject to the condition that the current and incoming lessees must enter a negotiation process with the commissioner with the intention that access requests will not be unreasonably refused after the first transfer. This provision is intended to strike a balance between promoting reasonable access on to Crown pastoral lease land while respecting leaseholders’ property rights.

LINZ has recently taken a more hands-on approach to administering Crown pastoral land. This has involved increasing visits to pastoral lessees to maintain a strong and effective connection with them. I’m confident LINZ will continue to work hard to build close and constructive working relationships with leaseholders, iwi, and stakeholders. This will be an important part of implementing the proposed changes in the bill.

Specifically, I’m aware of the work being done in the development of the regulations and standards that are needed to give effect to certain provisions in the bill. I’m expecting that consultation material will be available soon after the bill is passed into law.

I want to conclude by expressing my appreciation for the time and effort by everyone who provided input into this bill in its initial development and gave feedback on the bill through the parliamentary process. I want to thank members of the Environment Committee for their diligence and ability to work through some challenging issues and tensions. I also thank officials for their servicing of the policy development and parliamentary processes.

These spectacular South Island properties are special places for all New Zealanders. This bill recognises the place of pastoral farming as a legitimate use of the land while protecting the importance of the unique values of our high country to New Zealand and all New Zealanders. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party as our party spokesperson for Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), and also rural communities, to put for the record our continued opposition to this utterly, utterly ridiculous bill. This Government seemingly has no idea or, indeed, little care for the consequences that these changes will mean to these leaseholders. These are real people with real businesses and real families. These will bring real consequences.

Since the introduction of this bill, many, many members of the National Party have made a real effort to get out and visit as many of these high country leaseholders as possible. Just to name a few, I’ve been to Ben Lomond Station, Lake Heron Station, Muller Station, St James, and Lakes Station. What we see time and time again is sophisticated farming operations that put the ecology and preservation of the natural environment first and foremost. What we also saw was evidence of decades and decades, often generations, of hard work, care, and attention. This is a deeply traditional way of life, and the land is all the better for it.

What we also saw was neighbouring Department of Conservation (DOC) land run rabid with gorse, broom, wilding pines, rabbits, feral goats, and deer, and here is the rub: this bill has been very clearly written by bureaucracy that does not understand this very specialised system of hill country and high country management and the preservation of those local ecologies. This is a bill that is ideologically driven. It is devoid of any understanding of any practical, pragmatic implementation whatsoever. It is, as usual, a top-down approach, rather than grassroots driven.

On this side of the House, we pride ourselves in taking a real effort to apply a factual, scientific, evidence-based approach to policy. We are not caught up in maintaining tradition for tradition’s sake. We are not opposed to change for opposition’s sake, but in this case, this change will result in worse outcomes for everyone and everything, not least the land and the leaseholders involved.

While the bill does have heroic intentions—it seeks to provide “Stronger and clearer accountability and transparency of DOC’s administration of Crown pastoral land”—we on this side of the House agree with the leaseholders that these changes will actually lead to worse environmental outcomes to these precious parts of New Zealand—for example, this ridiculous new notion that a leaseholder would require consent to eradicate pest plants and noxious exotic weeds such as the likes of gorse, broom, wilding pines, crack willows, grey willows, but it would need to take up “no less than 90% of vegetation cover;”. How does anyone interpret that—90 percent of what? If we start to look at the average sizes of these stations—let’s say a 10,000 hectare property, for example—under this new rule, a farmer can control only 25 hectares of that 10,000 hectares in any five-year period. This is utterly nonsensical.

There’s also a new invocation that farmers can no longer maintain roads and tracks without consent. Well, let’s bear in mind that some of these roads and tracks were built by early settlers a century ago. They don’t appear on any LINZ record, so now a farmer cannot maintain them due to natural slippages, erosion, floods, high winds, and all of these severe weather systems that these parts of the land bring. Despite, though, the goodwill from the leaseholders and the evidence-based submissions they made, this Government seems determined to ride roughshod over their generations of knowledge and know-how.

The National Party opposes this bill because we do not believe it will in any way enhance or improve pastoral farming in the high country. We also believe that the provisions in it will fundamentally change the relationship that has existed between the pastoral leaseholder and the Crown for decades. It will change it from one of working partnership to one based on regulation and policing. It is punitive, it is pernicious, and it will bring an infringement regime that will do nothing but erode generations of goodwill between the two parties. Despite their best attempts, the Government has totally ignored submissions from the likes of the High Country Accord, which has said, “This law will create an adversarial system of management with rigid rules and complex processes that will increase costs, undermine the security of tenure granted by the 1948 Land Act, and will consequently undermine the incentives for enhanced stewardship of the land.” That is in direct contrast and contradiction to the intention of the bill.

On this side of the House, we have long advocated that the bill’s objectives would be better achieved by the Commissioner of Crown Lands and LINZ working collaboratively with the leaseholders—with the 150 contractual partners on legally binding farm environmental plans. This would be built on the current regime that is, unfortunately, being replaced today, and the many environmental benefits that have been delivered over the past 70 years.

It is clear to anyone that these rules are attempting to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, which fails to recognise the diversity, it fails to recognise different ecologies, different ecosystems, different topographies, and different weather patterns, and it will do nothing to deliver better environmental outcomes. It needs to take into account the inherent values in the diverse landscapes of this high country.

To finish my comments this afternoon, I say that the National Party strongly opposes in the most strident terms the introduction of a new infringement regime. We believe it is not only unnecessary but that it will significantly erode the trust and goodwill and the working relationship that has been enjoyed by all parties for decades. As one lessee said to us, “A Crown pastoral lease is a treaty between two partners which is now, under these amendments, being dishonoured.” Can you imagine the public outcry if the Crown were to continue dishonouring various other treaties?

I really do feel for the farmers we’ve met in recent months and, indeed, the past year. This is not how we do things in New Zealand, and New Zealanders will be worse for it.

This is the kind of bill that has become so typical of this Government. It is ignorant. It is arrogant. We oppose it in its entirety, and we will repeal it when we next form a Government.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to speak in the third reading of the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill. As we heard in the Minister’s speech before—and the way I would see this bill—obviously, it’s amending a number of pieces of legislation, and there are two main issues here in relation to what are commonly referred to as high country farms.

One is that the rules and methods that the Crown has as landowner are being amended. We do have an unusual situation here, a system where the Crown is the owner of the land, but the lessee does have 33-year rights of renewal and rights to exclusive occupation. So part of what this reform is trying to do is really say what can be done as of right and where some sort of approval is needed from the landowner, being Land Information New Zealand (LINZ).

The second piece of this legislation is the removal of tenure review. So tenure review was a system created in the 1990s, where the lessee could gain some freehold title of some of the land and then some land might be released from the lease for conservation purposes. Now, there were some, I would like to think, unintended consequences from tenure review that led to intensification of some areas that led to a significant reduction in biodiversity. The previous speaker seemed to imply that all Crown pastoral leases benefited the environment, but we have seen that this has not been the case with tenure review.

The part of the bill that removes that tenure review is in clause 9, and it simply says that Part 2 is repealed. So that was the 1990s’ addition.

I’d like to, though, focus on this first issue of land management, and I’d like to spend a little bit of time talking about inherent values because, I think, we’ve heard from them in previous debates; we’ll hear from them in other speeches as well. Inherent values are a critical concept in this bill. They are defined in clause 6 in a new definition: “ ‘inherent value’, … (a) means a value that arises from an ecological, a landscape, a cultural, a heritage, or a scientific attribute or characteristic of a natural resource that—(i) is in or forms part of the land or exists by virtue of the natural character of the land; or (ii) relates to a historic place on or forming part of that land; but (b) does not include a pastoral farming activity”. Why there is that separation in the definition is important when you go back to the purpose of the amendment.

So the purpose, at new section 1A in clause 5, will be “(a) maintaining or enhancing inherent values across the Crown pastoral estate for present and future generations, while”—and I want to emphasise the “while” in that sentence; it’s an important legislative word, particularly for a former resource management lawyer—“providing for ongoing pastoral farming of pastoral land:”. So the purpose here is doing these two things: we’re wanting to enhance those inherent values while having the pastoral farming continue. That continues over into the outcomes that are sought by the legislation in clause 8, at new section 4, “Outcomes for decision makers”—that “while” is a key point.

Another important term in this legislation is that of “pastoral activity”, and, again, the scheme of the legislation is that there are schedules to this which say what sorts of pastoral activity require some consent and which are permitted. So if we go now in the bill to new Schedule 1AB in Schedule 2 of the bill, this is the classification of pastoral activities on pastoral land, and at clause 1 in Part 1 of Schedule 1AB, it’s those activities that are permitted.

There’s been some discussion on controlling invasive exotic pest plants. Now, we on the Environment Committee—a number of the speakers today—have heard from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment on his recent weeds report, and I think we’re all very interested in the importance of controlling exotic pest plants. Many of the submitters that we heard from as well who are the farmers, the leaseholders, of these high country farms also are very committed to this control of invasive exotic pest plants. So, at clause 1, there are some rules that the previous speaker referred to, and they are really around where there might be a by-kill, and the by-kill is of indigenous vegetation. So there are some rules in clause 1 there. So controlling invasive exotic pest plants is permitted where “any associated by-kill does not exceed 200 m2/ha; and”—and there are some other factors in there as well.

But then when you look down to clause 2 in Part 1, what is also permitted is “Any other invasive exotic piece plant control that does not involve associated by-kill.” So what that means is that if a farmer sees a wilding pine and they’re not going to touch any indigenous biodiversity by taking out that wilding pine, then that is a permitted activity under this schedule, and I think that’s worth clarifying.

In conclusion, these changes to the legislative framework should enable better relations between the Crown and those leaseholder farmers to manage this land. We heard submissions from many farmers who care very deeply about their environment and also the related economics. We know that a lot of these farmers have fine merino wool that they export to the world. A lot of that is based on New Zealand’s clean, green image, and they certainly really felt very deeply about that and put a lot of work into improving their environments.

We heard from daughters in submissions. We heard from Jess Cox, who is still at primary school, and we heard from another Jess, the daughter at Branch Creek Station—not in formal submissions, but when we went on site visits—and we heard about the diversification, because of course not all these environments are easy to make lots of money out of and the farmers do have to diversify into other things. We also heard from the Kates—Kate Cocks and Kate Scott—who both are very committed to environmental protection of indigenous vegetation, particularly the beech forests, or Nothofagus.

So we’ve heard just now, as well from the Minister, that there will be a more hands-on approach from LINZ to help with the management of this land, and also the emphasis on the importance of improving that relationship. We’ve also heard that consultation is coming soon on the regulations and standards that go with this legislative piece. So, for all those reasons, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, we finally got to the end of that last presentation, from Rachel Brooking, and we did start to hear that farmers were people with names, with families. For the first part of that presentation it just seemed to be black and white documentation, as if farmers didn’t have any ability to control their own land and everything had to be black and white and on paper and we needed to do this to them. So thank you for at least admitting that there were families and farmers involved in this process.

Now, again, my colleague Nicola Grigg talked about evidence-based submissions, and too many times in the House this week we have seen evidence of people bringing evidence-based submissions to select committees that, at the end of the day, counts for nothing. People come along with ways of showing what they’re doing. They bring a human factor to the select committee, but at the end of the day, it seems to go back down to what’s on the paper and what’s black and white, and there is no trust by this Government of farmers.

It’s really interesting for me, because I was here for the first reading of this piece of legislation, which was started by a previous Minister, Eugenie Sage, and it is now being undertaken by Minister Damien O’Connor. When I heard the speeches in the first reading, you would have thought that those two Ministers, one who was the Minister at the time and the now current Minister, were coming from two different places. I was waiting at the time for New Zealand First to put their presentation up to see where they were going to go and to see if we would get three different answers, because it was done in the last Parliament.

It’s very clear that members on the other side of the House should understand that under Crown ownership back in the day, this land was neglected and it consequently eroded. Through permanent tenures on this land, farmers have been repairing it and tending it for generations and the Crown is repaying the farmers’ caretaking of this land now by eroding their property rights of the Crown pastoral leases, and this will not benefit environmental outcomes. It won’t enhance pastoral farming in the South Island high country.

It’s very interesting to me that when we were down there—and, as Nicola Grigg said, many of us have been down there to a number of these properties across a period of a number of years, led, particularly in the first instance, by the Hon Jacqui Dean when she held the portfolio—all we’ve seen is farmers and leaseholders doing their best. They are actually getting rid of exotic pest plants, and they know where indigenous species live next to those exotic plants. They’re not out to destroy everything around them; they’re actually out to get rid of those wilding pines that are getting in the way of nature, of their farming operation, of tourism, and of all of those things that have gone on down there.

The bill changes the relationship with the lessees, and the Crown, through Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), rather than having it being on mutual trust, partnership, and respect, it is going from one of trust to one of monitoring and policing. What I do notice in the legislation—and it’s something that I think is totally unnecessary—is that it is as if the Government and the Cabinet almost don’t trust LINZ. They have injected Cabinet into the legislation. Now, why would Cabinet need to be having a say on what goes on on these farms? Surely, there are enough Resource Management Act commitments and there are enough current rules around what people can and can’t do with their farms without having Cabinet injected. It’s just another piece of control—Cabinet seems to want to own the control and say over everything in New Zealand, as if they don’t trust anybody else.

There’s been no effort by this Government to work proactively with the leaseholders; instead, it has just chosen to put this bill through the House. In the last couple of years, while we’ve been under COVID, there have been programmes set out under Jobs for Nature to find jobs for people who have been displaced from their other employment. That’s OK in terms of keeping people employed, but what we’ve seen is evidence that these farmers have been doing jobs for nature for years and years and years, and that money’s been coming out of their own pockets. They’ve been looking after the land and they’ve been looking after the properties. They’ve had open access, they’ve had tourists coming through, and the last thing you would do if you didn’t have good intentions around a piece of land would be to open it up and let the tourists come through.

The tourists that actually come to New Zealand—these farms are used in publicity. Nobody coming to New Zealand from overseas loves a picture more than that of a high country farm, with beautiful merino sheep on it. They’re actually coming to New Zealand to experience what it is all about. We’ve seen some pretty exemplary examples of what goes on on these farms and so have the tourists, and these farmers have been a showcase window for our country. Unfortunately, under COVID that has slowed down, and that has also affected the income of these farmers along with various areas of the country, including Queenstown and other tourist populations.

There’s been really no consideration by the Government of these leaseholders. We’ve heard from others on the other side of the House that they are multigenerational. They are children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who have been guardians of the land for a period of time, and somehow this Government seems to think that the Department of Conservation or LINZ or someone else who can put a heavy hand over these generational farmers is going to come to a better outcome than what those people have already come to. It’s clearly an ideological move by the Government. It’s just a further grab of power—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Oh, rubbish.

Those farmers—it’s not rubbish, Dr Duncan Webb. It is not rubbish. We’ve seen the evidence of how these farmers are looking after their land, and they certainly are, so why would the Government—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: They’re leaseholders—read the lease.

—want to then go and inject—they might be leaseholders, but leaseholders look after land just like farm owners do. When those farms, Dr Webb, have been in those families for a period of time, a leasehold is not just a document, and I think that’s the thing that this Government needs to wake up to. So thank you for injecting that comment into the argument, because to those people, the leasehold is not a document and a piece of paper in a contract; it is a lifetime of what their parents and grandchildren have done and what their children and grandchildren are expected to do, and this Government tends to want to pull the rug out from under these people.

So we’re really disappointed with this process. National does not support this piece of legislation. As has been said, we will actually be withdrawing it in 2023 when we get back into Government and we’ll be putting things back to how they should be and how they were, because there’s one difference between the National Party, who will be the Government next year, and the current Government, which is that we trust businesses and people to get on with it and to make a far better job of doing what they’re doing than any Government regulation can enforce people to do. They only need enforcement at times when it’s essential.

These people actually have the vision, they have the heart, they have the generosity, and they have the family fortitude to do the right thing. It’s something they’ve been doing for generations and generations and generations, and all of a sudden we get a second-term Government in here—and I suspect the first-term Government wasn’t able to do this because they had a coalition partner that wouldn’t let them. Now they’re running loose and they’re putting in all sorts of bad pieces of legislation, including this. So you could say that a one-term Government of three years thinks that they can do this job better than multigenerational farming families who have been doing it for a century, and they are thinking that they know best. If that’s not arrogance, then someone needs to tell me what is. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on this, the third reading of the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill. Whilst some might think there’s not too much farmland in the Rongotai electorate, there’s plenty for my Barbour gumboots on the Chatham Islands, and so it’s good to just be taking a short call on this and I’ve been listening closely. I want to thank the Environment Committee and those who have done the consultation with the farmers and those families impacted.

There are a couple of points that I wanted to just pull out, and that was this review carried out by Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) in 2018 which attributed much of the concerns to—and, look, I’ll just read it out: “unclear system outcomes, a lack of transparency and accountability, and a limited understanding about the cumulative impacts of the Commissioner’s decision-making over time.” So, look, I think these are a valid concerns, and 2018—that’s some years ago. The heart of this has been the concerns about the process of tenure review—and that’s been talked about—which has resulted in much of the former Crown pastoral land being freehold and then often subject to more intensive farming.

So I wanted to pick some of this up because I thought, OK, what does this bill do in terms of then clarifying things like LINZ’s responsibility to ensure that the goals are met and to make explicit those responsibilities in terms of recognising the relationship between ourselves as the Crown and tangata whenua, for example, and the need to provide for that in the relationship, picking up those transparency and accountability issues and then ensuring that decision making alongside increased public participation. So there’s been a review, or there’s been some issues that have been identified five years ago now. This process has come in and picked up some of those things, so that process has, therefore, pulled together this resulting bill.

I’ve talked to members on the select committee who said that these are small in numbers, but those families who are impacted have been there for a very, very long time—“intergenerational” is the term that has been used. But I know that this Government’s firmly held belief is that that ongoing and sustainable and responsible pastoral farming is the best way for Crown pastoral land to be managed and I’ve picked this up from the reading and from what others have told me in terms of talking to it. So I don’t think this is just any piece of legislation, as has been said, but it does seek to protect our whenua for those future generations. It’s doing things differently but recognising and enabling the need for ongoing pastoral farming.

I’m going to just say that there seems to be some legitimacy here. It’s been pulled through a process. Not everyone will always be happy, but I think the outcome based on what this Government’s beliefs are is commendable, and I commend this bill to the House.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. I’m very pleased to take a final call on the third reading of the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill.

I think there’s been some fundamental misinformation offered by National MPs in speaking to this bill. They seem to be based in the 19th century rather than the 21st. They don’t seem to recognise that the Land Act 1948 is overdue for reform and that the Crown Pastoral Land Act was introduced and passed in 1998, and so the primary reason for this bill is to actually modernise the Act in relation to Crown pastoral leases.

Opposition MPs also don’t seem to recognise that the Crown actually owns these lands: 1.2 million hectares of, largely, the eastern South Island, which is 5 percent of Aotearoa New Zealand. As landowner, the Crown wants to protect its interests in these lands, for all New Zealanders. As the late Dr John Hayward noted, they have many interests. It’s not just their landscape values, their astonishing array of vegetation, the landscapes from the big river valleys of the Rangitata and the Rakaia, the matagouri shrublands—the much depleted habitat—but, as Dr Hayward noted, they’ve got huge economic value, particularly for water for downstream use, because it’s tussock grasslands, which are really good at harvesting fog and water. That water goes downstream. It’s used in horticulture and agriculture to provide drinking water. That and tourism are perhaps their greatest economic value. So the Government, in introducing this legislation, is modernising the regime to provide for better recognition and protection of the land’s inherent values—its scientific, ecological, cultural values—while providing for sustainable farming on an ongoing basis.

It’s partly because these lands in the high country have been subject to quite rapid and dramatic change over the last 60 years, and, again, Opposition members don’t seem to be aware of this significant change in areas like Lake Station, where aerial spraying of herbicide resulted in large areas of 200-year-old matagouri being killed in a second. Once that centuries-old vegetation is destroyed by spraying, it’s impossible to regenerate. So this major change that has occurred in the high country, the number of threatened and indigenous species—the massive change that’s occurred with agricultural intensification is one reason, and those forward-looking leaseholders do recognise the value of protecting indigenous shrublands and the remaining areas of tussock grasslands.

You only have to look at the Mackenzie Basin, where 22 percent of the indigenous vegetation on the basin floor has been destroyed in recent years—massive landscape change as that became more like the Canterbury Plains. That is what this bill is about—setting some very clear outcomes. It’s responding to the review that Paul Eagle noted was done in 2018, which highlighted some of the problems in the existing legislation: the fact that the outcomes weren’t clear, the criteria for decision making wasn’t clear, there wasn’t a lot of guidance, and there wasn’t accountability and transparency. So the bill actually looks to resolve those issues. It makes it clear how the Commissioner of Crown Lands will decide on applications for discretionary consents in terms of the process used. It supports a much stronger relationship between Māori and the Crown, and it recognises the relationship of tangata whenua with their ancestral lands.

The bill ends tenure review, because that had a very mixed bag in terms of its results. The public and the Crown did not always get a fair return when land was freeholded through that process. The Minister noted the figures: over 436,000 hectares of pastoral lease were freeholded and some 380,000 hectares became conservation land. But yet, by 2017, the Crown had paid out a net $57 million to leaseholders while disposing of more land than actually became conservation land, and some of those lands that were freeholded were around the margins of lakes like Wakatipu, Wānaka, Pūkaki, and Tekapō, and those lands were then onsold by their new freehold owners for considerably more than they had paid the Crown to purchase them. There was about a $275 million capital gain involved in that, so that’s one of the reasons that tenure review had to end—because of the major public concern about that.

Leaseholders had 20 years. If they wanted to go through tenure review, they could have done it. Those leaseholders that decided not to recognise that they would be staying with pastoral leases. There would be a change to the regime, it was likely to be modernised, and they recognised that it was a sound business decision for it to stay as a pastoral lease because of the very low rental that pastoral leaseholders pay to the Crown.

National MPs have also totally ignored the Government’s investment in the high country and in neighbouring conservation land in terms of pest and weed control. We’ve seen $100 million go into wilding pine control over four years—that’s much greater than the $16 million that the National Government put in—$27 million for wallaby control; innovative projects like Te Manahuna o Aoraki, where you’ve got leaseholders in the Mackenzie Basin working with Ngāi Tahu and working with Te Papa Atawhai on common goals of controlling weeds and pests and protecting those landscapes.

This Government and the previous one—the previous Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government—has invested in biosecurity, in pest and weed control, and in biodiversity protection. The major changes that the bill implements are all about ensuring that we have a much more sustainable regime in the high country. I would encourage National members to really read and to understand what the ecological loss has been in our high country over the last 30 years and what the benefit to indigenous species and habitat would be if we were to have a greater recognition of inherent values, and to read the Schedule of the bill and the long list of permitted activities there to enable leaseholders to get permission for things like post drilling to controlling pest plants and weeds when they don’t kill off a whole lot of native vegetation in the process, because it’s very easy with aerial spraying and saying that you’re targeting broom or gorse to also then clear matagouri, kānuka, mānuka, and associated native vegetation. That’s why there are some criteria around those activities.

So the bill is a modernisation. It sets clearer outcomes. It makes the Commissioner of Crown Lands more accountable with the statement of outcomes and through the monitoring strategy that has to be developed. Land Information New Zealand is more actively involved with leaseholders through visits on-farm. There are a lot of other economic activities that are happening now on pastoral leases, not just pastoral farming, but this bill does seek to protect the Crown’s interests as landowner in these lands and protect the public’s interest in them in terms of their values as landscape for supporting our indigenous species, for tourism, for water harvesting, and for that panoply of values that Māori hold in terms of their ancestral lands. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. ACT opposes this bill, and should we have the privilege of becoming part of the next Government, we will work to repeal it. So we want the pastoral farmers of the high country to know that the ACT Party has got their back, and that goes for all farmers in New Zealand.

We have significant concerns about this bill. This is an erosion of property rights. Advice was tended—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: It’s a leasehold.

—to the committee—Dr Duncan Webb. Advice on property rights was tended to the committee that a 33-year perpetual lease is akin to the right of freehold tenure—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Oh, go back and read your law book.

—whether it’s Crown land or not, and Dr Duncan Webb is not a legal expert in property rights, so we will defer to those who are.

We also recognise that even though there is a Resource Management Act, as flawed as it may be, there is still a pathway which requires pastoral farmers in the high country who want to carry out activities that require consents under regional plans or district plans to go and obtain those consents and demonstrate to the environmental specialists at their local council exactly how they’re going to mitigate the effects of pastoral farming activities that might cause erosion, for example, or they might be putting in a road and cause a bit of dust during construction phase. There is already a well-understood way that we address those effects: we write a management plan and then demonstrate to our communities and to local regulators that we can meet those environmental tests. That is why it is completely unnecessary to have the same set of tests vested in the Commissioner of Crown Lands and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), who are not people who are environmental specialists; they are simply administrators. They run spreadsheets and they manage property for the Crown.

So let’s have a bit of a think about what the Minister said. The Minister said that there’s going to be a more hands-on approach from LINZ. Well, I can tell pastoral farmers in the high country and any other farmers who are interested in what this Government intends for them that there is nothing more terrifying than these nine words: “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” If you’ve heard that before, that was from Ronald Reagan, a former US President, and it applies as much today in New Zealand to pastoral farming and to people who own property—landlords, or anyone who owns anything in New Zealand, the Government is coming for you.

Then we hear about the public interest. Well, there is a public interest in how land is managed effectively, but the public doesn’t own this land; the Crown does, and the Crown has an obligation to the leaseholders it is in a contract with to actually respect the conditions of the lease and to make sure that where the leaseholders have an obligation to the Crown, they meet it. But the leaseholders can’t possibly have an obligation to the public. This is a fiction created by this Government, created by the Minister and the former Minister responsible for introducing this bill to the House. There is no public interest in how these lands are managed. In fact, the interest is that the pastoral lessees—the farmers—obtain an economic return and that they can make sufficient profit—sufficient profit; it’s a remarkable concept to the current Government and to the Labour Party and the Green Party—to pay for those things like pest control and weed control and fencing and enhancing the natural environment.

Then we come to decision making, and this is where it really gets concerning, because not only do we have unelected officials with a complete deficit of understanding of environmental management, who sit in the department, and the Commissioner of Crown Lands but this bill also gives decision making through sleight of hand to unelected iwi Māori representatives. There is a provision in this bill which says the Crown must give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi when making decisions about farmers’ consent applications, about commercial activity applications, and about the number of stock that can be carried on the land.

Well, let’s be clear: the Crown does have a contract with iwi Māori; it’s called the Treaty of Waitangi. But there’s nowhere in the Treaty of Waitangi that talks about principles. In fact, what the Treaty of Waitangi says is that every New Zealander is equal before the law. Queen Victoria was the ruler then and Queen Elizabeth is our ruler now—that’s the law; “the Crown”—and if anyone tries to take your stuff, the Queen or her agents would guarantee your property rights. Now, what iwi Māori in 1840 and what the Crown pastoral lessees have in common is that they never realised that it would actually be the Crown coming to take their property rights—to take their stuff. But that’s what we’re seeing here today.

Look, evidence was tendered that Ngāi Tahu and other iwi sold their land, or divested it to the Crown, and they were paid for it. Now, whether that was an appropriate level of compensation is dealt with through a Treaty of Waitangi process, and the ACT Party supports that process. We understand that Ngāi Tahu and other iwi have had the benefit of a settlement and that was intended at the time to be full and final with of course progressive uplift based on other settlements that have followed, and that’s entirely fair.

So the effect of this decision-making intent in the bill which is allocated to iwi Māori in the specific clause is that it’s created a sense of anxiety for families and pastoral farm operators that unelected people from iwi Māori organisations may have a right of veto over consent applications and over commercial activities and the number of cows or stock units they might run. That’s completely unacceptable and it’s completely unnecessary.

Then the legislation talks about inherent values: scientific, cultural, and environmental values, as we heard from the former Minister who introduced the bill and the chair of the Environment Committee, the Hon Eugenie Sage. Well, look, cultural values, or what someone thinks of the land that you farm because of their culture, their background, or how they were brought up, is completely irrelevant to the relationship between the Crown as landowner and the pastoral farmers. This should have nothing to do with decision making about how the land is used. What we should focus on are the scientific reasons why you observe different land management practices.

We heard about the water supply; in fact, it was quite helpful hearing from the Hon Eugenie Sage in her description of how tussock catches rainwater and fog, and how that water ends up in the ground, and then how it becomes available through aquifers and rivers downstream. Well, that’s a really important problem to solve—how we allocate water efficiently and to the highest value use—but that’s not a problem this bill tries to solve except by reducing the rights of pastoral farmers, lessees of high country farmland from the Crown, by reducing their rights to do stuff with their land and the water that comes with their land.

Then we heard about pest and weed control. Well, we’ve heard evidence from environmental scientists and farmers about the Mackenzie Basin. Part of the Mackenzie Basin, after a tenure review process, was handed back to the Crown and given to the Department of Conservation (DOC) to manage. They excluded farm animals—ruminant animals—that chew the grass from the DOC land. They thought that would allow the tussock to recover, but it turns out there’s some invasive weed species that have been introduced to New Zealand in the past couple of hundred years, and we can’t go back in time. There is no TARDIS that allows us to put all of these weeds back into a phone box and ask Doctor Who to take them back to another galaxy, another dimension. They’re here to stay, and the problem is if you try to take the land that has weeds and pests on it and return it back to a pre-human condition, you’re going to fail.

What happened in the Mackenzie Basin was that instead of the tussock recovering, a whole lot of different weed species outgrew the native tussock, and, in fact, the only way to manage it without application of all kinds of horrendous sprays was to allow the stock to graze. That was a great surprise to LINZ officials, and it was a great surprise to the Government majority. It was such a surprise they’ve conveniently forgotten that.

So there is a reason why ACT opposes this bill: we believe in listening to the farmers who live on the land and love their land. We trust farming families who live on that land and love that land, and that’s why we will repeal this bill should ACT have the opportunity to form part of the next Government. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m actually very happy to be speaking on the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill, with my reason being that I found this a fascinating piece of legislation to work on. It took quite an amount of time to work through the select committee process.

I want to just acknowledge and recognise High Country Accord and the visits that we attended. We did our very best as a select committee to go to the community. We went to Christchurch and then we went down to Queenstown to directly connect with them, and then we were hosted by High Country Accord during the roar last year—was it last year? I think it was—yes, the roar last year. It was a magnificent time to be in the high country—an absolutely magnificent time. We had the most beautiful weather and we got to spend some really quality time listening directly to the farmers who had farmed intergenerationally, and we got to engage with them and spend real, meaningful time listening to their concerns.

So I’m really pleased to stand here and speak. Having come from the West Coast of the South Island and having also grown up in the North Island in Northland in a farming family, farming with beef and lamb, it was a lovely reminder of my childhood—even though, of course, not as grand.

So what we know about this bill is that the bill was managed in quite a good way, I must say. So I want to acknowledge Eugenie Sage, the chair, who was the chair for deliberations but she most certainly was not the chair for submissions. Rachel Brooking, the deputy chair, took over to do that, and that is in recognition of the transfer, with the Hon Eugenie Sage having been the Minister who first looked to introduce this legislation. I think that that was very sensitively managed and appropriately so, and I want to acknowledge the former Minister for that.

Clause 9 of this bill repeals the transfer of land that occurs, or the selling of land, that occurs under tenure review. So, essentially, tenure review is looking at land and almost doing a swap. It’s putting some land into freehold and other land going into the Department of Conservation estate. But the thing that’s really important to remember is that the existing land that we currently have in the tenure leasehold process is, essentially, owned by the Crown, and the leasehold relationship—the 33-year leasehold in perpetuity—is indeed a right. It is a right held by those farmers, but it isn’t the only right that sits on that land. So I just want to acknowledge that, and also acknowledge the kaitiakitanga, or the care, that those farmers bring to that land. Of course there are some leaseholds that are not owned by intergenerational families, and I also want to acknowledge those businesses, which do their very best as well.

So, finally, I think that this bill does a really clever thing, and part of the changes in this bill which I really like is the clarification that this legislation brings. So there are sort of three things: there are consented or permitted activities and there are those that are absolutely prohibited, and the bill outlines those. It’s really useful to have this. It makes things a lot more streamlined and a lot more useful for those on farm needing to know what to do. There’s a carve-out for emergency situations, because we’ve heard about emergency situations.

So I think this bill lands in the right place. It is going to ensure that we continue to protect Crown land and also work in partnership alongside these leaseholders. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition to the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill in this, its third reading.

This spectacular part of our country—1.2 million hectares of our land—is 5 percent of New Zealand’s total land area. Under Crown ownership, we know that historically this land was neglected and eroded. It’s only been under permanent tenures on the land that our high country farmers have been able to repair it and tend to it over generations. Contrary to what this Government promotes about farming, farmers are conservationists, farmers are environmentalists, and farmers are genuine in their concern for animal welfare, but this Government does not trust farmers.

When we started looking at this legislation, as my colleague Nicola Grigg said, many of us went to visit several high country farms. One area that I’ve been familiar with for many years is around Tekapō. I spent a lot of time there when I was in the territorial army, and so I was pleased go back and visit the station around there.

This is magnificent land and we were there on a magnificent day, with the big blue sky and the bright sunshine and the crisp air. We were shown the wonderful vista of the stations along this high country area, and, as we were looking, my eye was drawn to the left of the vista and I thought, “Oh, my goodness, here’s one of our high country farmers letting us down badly.” Here was land covered in wilding pines, with gorse and broom next to this pristine farmed and well-managed pastoral land. I asked, “Whose station is that to our left?” The answer was “That’s DOC land.”, and the contrast could not have been more stark. The boundary was where it went from being well-managed, sensibly stocked carefully managed farming pastoral land to land that was being left to wilding pines, to gorse, and to broom, and it was an absolute eyesore.

This bill is about an ideology of whether the Crown knows best how to look after this important part of our country or whether it’s experienced intergenerational farmers who have looked after this country, and I can tell you that as I stood there, the answer was clear. These precious parts of our country are, by far, better being looking after by farmers who understand the nature of how to look after these pastoral areas.

The Crown is repaying farmers for their hard work and their caretaking of this precious land by eroding the property rights of their pastoral leases. They will not improve environmental outcomes and they will not enhance pastoral farming through this legislation, but as I listened to our Green Party MP speak about this, I don’t think she mentioned farming. She mentioned tourism and she mentioned water, and so, ideologically, it is very clear that she does not see a future for farming on this land. That is a sad day for New Zealand, because anyone who has driven through our central South Island will know how—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Fãiåk se’ea. Noa‘ia, te Mana Whakawā. It is a privilege and it’s an honour on this Thursday afternoon to make a short contribution to the debate on the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill. As a committee, we examined this bill and recommended by majority that this bill be passed.

I want to acknowledge the Ministers that have shepherded this bill through the House. As the Minister has said, the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill amends the Crown Land Act 1998, which is 24 years old, and the Land Act 1948, which is 74 years old.

As the Minister said, the bill aims to ensure that Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) will administer Crown pastoral land in a way that maintains or enhances the inherent value of the land. The Minister further defined that inherent values are to be the ecological, landscape, cultural, heritage, and scientific values of the natural character of the land. I learnt, as a person who is not a farmer and who does not associate with farmers that much—unless, of course, I’m watching Country Calendar—that the Crown owns approximately 1.2 million hectares of Crown pastoral land. That’s about 5 percent of New Zealand’s total land. This land is primarily in Te Wai Pounamu—the South Island high country—and most of this land is leased by the Crown to farmers for pastoral farming.

I want to acknowledge that the farmers hosted us in the high country, but I wasn’t there—that’s why I made reference to Country Calendar. It’s a beautiful place to be, and one day I hope to visit it.

I would like to acknowledge the chair of the Environment Committee, the Hon Eugenie Sage, and the partnership and the leadership of the committee in that she handed some of their roles and tasks to the deputy chair, Rachel Brooking. I would like to acknowledge the 161 submitters, made up of groups and individuals, who have made submissions to the committee. I want to acknowledge the stories I heard from farmers of decades of their connection to the land, and I want to acknowledge the passion and the emotion shown by the many farmers from whom I was privileged enough to hear their story.

I want to refer to the submission of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. What I remember from their submissions: (1) they wanted Ngāi Tahu to engage in communications about pastoral land in the area; (2) they wanted the Treaty principles to be included in any plans or frameworks that were there for kaitiaki of the land; and, (3), Ngāi Tahu also stressed the fact that they would like the reference to iwi removed and they would like Ngāi Tahu to be considered as a Treaty partner, not a stakeholder. So those submissions are reflected on page 7 of Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 129 in new section 5(2) in clause 8.

In terms of the reference to iwi, I learnt that Ngāi Tahu is the iwi of majority of Te Wai Pounamu. The relevant iwi in that area—I want to read it out just for the record—are: “(a) Ngāi Tahu Whānui as represented by Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu in accordance with Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu Act 1996: (b) Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō: (c) Ngāti Kōata: (d) Ngāti Kuia: (e) Ngāti Rārua: (f) Ngāti Tama ki Te Tau Ihu: (g) Ngāti Toa Rangātira: (h) Rangitāne o Wairau: (i) Te Ātiawa o Te Waka-a-Māui.” The reason why I make reference to that is that this bill is different from any other bill. It makes that reference so that when we speak about iwi, we know who they are and they are named in this bill.

To conclude my contribution, I want to go back to what some of the changes were. Most of the submissions that I have heard, I’ve seen in the SOP, so I understand some contributions weren’t reflected in the SOP, but some of them have been, and I want to just remind the House that what this bill does is it protects the unique values of our high country to New Zealand and all New Zealanders. The bill is extended to enshrine best practice and to streamline some day-to-day farming activities, and it clarifies what activities are permitted, discretionary, and prohibited, and who the iwi, Treaty partners, and stakeholders are. On that note, I commend this bill to the House. Mālō.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise as the member of Parliament for Southland to oppose the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill at this third reading. National opposes the bill in its entirety. It is our view that the provisions contained in this bill fundamentally change the approximately 73-year-old unique contractual relationship between the Crown pastoral leaseholders and the Crown through Land Information New Zealand (LINZ). This is becoming a pattern for this Government. It is undermining confidence in the farming sector. It is undermining confidence in property law rights.

There are currently 171 Crown pastoral leases covering around 1.2 million hectares of the South Island. The majority are located across Canterbury, Otago, Marlborough, Southland, and Westland. The leases are located in the South Island high country.

In my electorate of Southland, I have high country stations in northern Southland, Glenorchy, Queenstown Lakes District, and Central Otago. They are all different. One size does not fit all, and this is an example of an unworkable piece of legislation that the Government is becoming known for in rural New Zealand. This proposed reform of the law overseeing South Island high country pastoral leases will not lead to better environmental outcomes.

New Zealand has a proud farming history, and the farmers of the alpine regions of the South Island occupy a special place in New Zealand’s heritage. These beautiful alpine lands known as the high country are a unique landscape of expansive grassland plains, river valleys, and mountains. The land is generally prone to climatic extremes of hot, dry summers and winters that bring heavy snowfalls. It takes a special kind of person to live and make this their home, and it’s our high country farmers—approximately 150 to 160 families—that protect these regions for all of New Zealand.

The high country is, typically, a much more extreme environment than the general farmland of wider New Zealand. The land is diverse, it’s remote, and it’s challenging. Many aspects of the high country are not tameable because of the scale, topography, altitude, and weather realities that all frustrate domestication. A management style has arisen within the high country that adopts strategies for dealing with snow and droughts and that has an overall attitude of resilience.

High country farmers are very aware that a balance must be maintained with the landscape and the biodiversity of the landscape to ensure the survival of ecosystems and to produce high-quality stock. There is a need to ensure adaptability and diversification of current farming practices in response to changing climatic conditions, markets, and consumer demands.

Through living and working in the high country, farming families have developed a deep attachment and sense a belonging to the land that often stretches across many generations. The unique culture and senses of identity of high country farmers is derived from that deep attachment to the land.

Within the high country, there’s almost a spiritual affinity with the land, the mountains, the rivers, and the lakes. High country farmers’ attachment to the land is both physical, material, conceptual, and emotional, and it is certainly something that I and other members saw when we visited many high country farms and farmers. We saw the deep emotional connection that they had to this and the genuine emotional difficulty that this bill was posing to them. Some, in fact, were almost in tears discussing this.

The Crown pastoral lease lands at the heart of the process have been leased from the Government and used for grazing by farmers since the mid - 19th century. Prior to the 1948 Land Act, there was a deterioration in the lands—a tragedy of the commons, in effect—as leaseholders had not been provided with sufficient security of tenure to justify their continued investment in the long-term infrastructure and environmental management required. Rabbits, feral pigs, goats, deer, and weed plants such as gorse had become an issue, and it was acknowledged that a long-term solution was needed.

I note that the Crown purchased the high country from Ngāi Tahu in the 1840s and 1850s, in the time of early European settlement. By the time of purchase, extensive deforestation had already occurred due to earlier fires, and with the exception of high-altitude tussock areas, the vast majority of the land remained impenetrable and unsuitable for even minimal pastoralism. Some hardy folk made this their home and worked the land, but over a period of time it became clear that the existing framework did not work effectively and there was, in effect, a race to the bottom as a number of farmers sought to exploit the land, in effect. This led to some serious environmental problems that the Governments of the day recognised and it led to the Land Act of 1948 some 73 years ago that formed this contractual relationship that is being changed today by this Government.

The Land Act 1948 brought about significant change to the management of Crown land. It abolished the distinctions between different land classifications and reduced the number of tenures in which Crown land could be held from approximately 40 to four standard tenures—namely freehold, renewable lease, pastoral occupation licence, and pastoral lease. This, effectively, gave leaseholders a degree of certainty of tenure and, therefore, the incentive to invest in the future protection of the land, and this is exactly what has happened over generations. Families have invested in the land and they have improved the environmental outcomes very significantly. In fact, if I turn to one station in my electorate across the Wakatipu lake, Mount Nicholas Station has over 160 years of farming history, but only 16 percent of that land has introduced pasture and regular fertiliser applications—83.9 percent of the station is in indigenous vegetation.

This is actually quite common among many high country stations, in fact, across the South Island. A lot of the land cannot be farmed and, in fact, it must be conserved and protected. As farmers have this deep connect where they remove the exotic plants, they remove the noxious animals, and they’re motivated to do so because they have that security of tenure and that incentive to invest.

A submitter who made a powerful impression on members of the Environment Committee last year in Queenstown was a young 11-year-old, Jess Cocks, from Mount Nicholas Station, who really highlighted the multigenerational connection to the land. She spoke of how much she loved it and loved going camping on it, and talked about going spraying with dad to kill bad weeds like gorse and nodding thistles and catching possums to help look after our native birds and forests. She said, “One day, I really hope to be able to run this farm and I hope that it stays in family for ever so we can keep looking after this beautiful station.” Her mum, Kate Cocks, also articulated how deeply committed she was to providing environmental protection, and I think the statistics speak for themselves: 83.9 percent of that station is in indigenous vegetation.

I also visited Muller Station up in the Marlborough region and saw the work that’s been done there over many, many years since 1965, and there are no noxious plants to be seen. Molesworth Station, which is Crown-owned and Crown-managed next door, has some different conditions but, nevertheless, has a serious wilding pine problem.

An issue that was raised by a number of submitters—and, unfortunately, we heard last night from the Minister for Land Information that he wasn’t aware of it, but it was certainly in submissions to the select committee and was raised numerous times—was the requirement that farmers will need a consent, unless 90 percent or more of the land area is covered in exotic pest plants, to remove those plants, and I’ll show a photograph to the House of one those submissions. There’s a photograph of tussock area and one gorse bush in the middle of it, and that will, effectively, be protected by this legislation. It’s just an example of unworkable regulation that, unfortunately, this Government does time and time again, and it does not listen to those who know their land best and how to protect it best.

I also note that there has not been a real effort by the Government to proactively work with leaseholders, and they’ve instead chosen to ram this bill through the House. We heard from the Minister that farmers were going to welcome lots more visits from the Crown agents. That was in direct contradiction to the submissions from Federated Farmers and High Country Accord, who said that given the nature of the penalty regime in this bill, they will look upon a visit from the Crown agents as, effectively, mounting to a visit from the police. That is not something that most people welcome when they are doing their very best to protect the land for their families and for the environment and for New Zealand.

By setting up an adversarial system of management with rigid rules and complex processes, which will increase costs for high country farmers, this bill undermines the security of tenure granted by the Land Act 1948 some 73 years ago in the pastoral lease tenure, and it will consequently undermine the incentives for enhanced stewardship of the land which that security of tenure has delivered over the past 73 years. There has been no real consideration by this Government that leaseholders, who are often multigenerational guardians of the land, might be better than the Department of Conservation or LINZ, something that anyone who has visited these properties—as I have—would know to be true.

I will speak to two other stations that I visited. Branch Creek Station is in the Cardrona Valley, and a mother and daughter who have done an incredible job—

Order! The member has run out of time.

Mr Speaker, thank you. It’s a pleasure to rise to take the last call on the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill. This bill underpins the Government’s view that ongoing sustainable and responsible pastoral farming is the best way for this land to be managed. This bill also recognises the place of pastoral farming as a legitimate use of the land while protecting the unique importance and the value of our high country to New Zealand and all New Zealanders.

This bill is part of measures this Government is taking to keep Aotearoa New Zealand clean and green. While this list is big, I’d like to highlight some of these measures. Our Jobs for Nature fund, which is helping to drive our economic recovery to revitalise our regions and restore our environments—the package is set to create thousands of jobs in our regions, while improving fresh water and enhancing biodiversity on public and private land. We are making sure future generations can enjoy our native species and scenery by taking action to protect endangered species such as Māui dolphins and Hector’s dolphins. We also do this by combatting kauri dieback disease, expanding predator control to make Aotearoa predator-free by 2050, and cleaning up our rivers and lakes. We have banned single-use plastic bags, and are committed to phasing out more single-use plastics. The list goes on, but these are exciting measures being taken to preserve the beauty of our country and make it livable for future generations.

We are a farming nation. Opposite to what the Opposition claims, we actually do care about our farmers and we highly value them accordingly. They are the backbone of our economy and our nation—hence we are making sure that climate change is a priority.

Actually, I want to remind the House that not acting on the environment and climate change is not—I just want to give them an example. For example, in East Africa, climate change was never a priority. Now we’ve got drought for the last three years with very limited rain, and, as a result, millions of livestock have died and the people are suffering and entirely depending on aid. So not acting is not a solution.

But, luckily, on this side of the House, we are responsible, we are sensible, and we are working to futureproof our pastoral land. Simply, we are putting our environment at the centre of our thinking—it’s the asset that underpins our wellbeing, identity, livestock, and livelihoods. Our farmers and our land—New Zealand—deserve better, and I commend this bill to the House.