Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Forestry: I present a legislative statement on the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Bill be now read a third time.

This bill amends the Forests Act 1949 to establish a new regulatory system that enables the forestry and wood-processing sector to provide domestic consumers and export markets with greater assurance that the New Zealand timber products they are purchasing are from legal sources. It also oversees timber products imported into New Zealand to ensure they are legally harvested.

I wish to begin by thanking those who have worked hard to progress this bill through to this stage. I appreciate the considerable effort from members of the Primary Production Committee. I want to thank my colleagues for their engagement with the bill during the recent committee of the whole House stage. It was a productive debate that demonstrated the robustness of this bill.

I also want to acknowledge the extensive and useful feedback received from stakeholders in the development of this bill over the past three years. It is gratifying to note the support we have had from both sides of the aisle for this legislation, not only here in the House but also throughout the select committee process. This speaks volumes about the need for this legislation. We have delivered a bill that will ensure that New Zealand domestic and export timber products have been sourced from legally harvested timber, and we have reduced the risk of importing timber products that have not been legally harvested.

As has been discussed previously, the intent of the bill is twofold. Firstly, the intention of the bill is to be able to provide assurance that New Zealand is committed to trading only in legally harvested timber. The introduction of a legal harvest assurance system for timber products is a tangible step New Zealand can take to support the international efforts to curb the trade in illegally harvested timber products. At the same time, it provides importers and our domestic processors and exporters with a Government assurance framework to support their businesses that will demonstrate that they have completed due diligence on the legal harvest of the timber products that they are trading.

Secondly, New Zealand exporters need to demonstrate timber legality in an increasing number of export markets. Corporate timber producers can use third-party certification schemes, but these are generally not a cost-effective assurance mechanism for small-scale forest owners, who are providing an increasing portion of the annual harvest. For these owners, it would mean that their export logs would be covered under this bill.

Our major trading partners, including Australia, Indonesia, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, increasingly expect others to have a regulatory system. This bill will bring us in line with these countries to ensure the protection of New Zealand’s forestry sector.

Officials have also moved amendments to the bill through a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) during the committee of the whole House. The Supplementary Order Paper improves the cost-effectiveness of the proposed legal harvest assurance system for regulated parties. The paper further ensures the bill operates well with the new professional registration systems for log traders and forestry advisers that are currently being implemented through Part 2A of the Forests Act. The changes made in the SOP are mainly on technical issues and are aligned with original policy intent. These changes are needed to improve the workability of the new legal harvest assurance system and make sure it complements the existing registration systems for log traders and forestry advisers.

In the months and years to come, it will remain important for Government to continue working with industry to ensure the bill is implemented as intended. This bill allows for up to three years of commencement and a further 12 months for compliance. Although the Ministry for Primary Industries will administer the bill, Te Uru Rākau—New Zealand Forestry Service will be facilitating the implementation of the bill. During this time, officials will consult and engage with industry to develop regulations that are practical yet robust. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

It never ceases to amaze me that yesterday, when we had a lot of National Party members’ bills going through the House, the Government spent 10 minutes speaking on each slot, and today the Minister spent about four speaking on this bill.

💬 Hon Kieran McAnulty: That’s right.

Very good speech, though, Minister. I’ll have to add the fat to the bill. It gives me pleasure to speak on the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill. Interestingly, it amends the Forests Act 1949, so no wonder it needs amending: it’s older than I am. I think that, historically, New Zealand industry has performed pretty well in this respect, because most of our native or indigenous forest is covered by other Acts than this one. So there are pretty strict regulations around a lot of that product.

But this one, as the Minister said, is necessary because it brings us into line with our trading partners and, in fact, with a fair proportion of the rest of the world. It’s certainly necessary because not every country has, I guess, the integrity in their forestry system that we do. So I think it was certainly necessary.

One of the ironies of this bill, of course, is that we export about $6.3 billion worth of wood products from New Zealand. But interestingly, we import about $2.3 billion worth, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. I think that one of the challenges for our industry—which is not quite part of this bill—in the future will be, and it’s moving quite quickly in that respect now, to get our exotic forestry and wood into a state that then we don’t need to import the amount of wood we do.

The reason for it is that we have historically had to treat most of our exotic forestry in New Zealand, and there are now processes that mean we don’t have to use chemicals to treat it and we can produce a product very similar to some of the extraordinary hardwood and some things we import from around the world. So, hopefully, the need to import quite such a large amount of wood product from around the world will diminish as we get better at manufacturing and producing product from our own exotic forestry to fill that need in the New Zealand system.

So the bill’s, basically, there to stop—well, not to stop, so much as to manage—the risk around illegal harvest and what I suppose would be, in many parts of the world, the exploitation of our native wood or forestry systems. So, in New Zealand, of course, we are fortunate that we do have such a large percentage of our forestry as exotic, and it grows very quickly and it’s very easily replenished; in other words, you cut it down and 25 years later you’ve got it back again. And that’s a pretty good system and it’s certainly a sustainable system for the future.

So the bill gives quite a number of powers, as the Minister said. I want to talk about three different issues related to it, but one of the powers it gives is the power of warrantless entry and inspection—and you would hope that that would be used very minimally in New Zealand. On a number of other bills going through the House in the past few years, we’ve had quite large discussions about this very topic, which of course is challenging for many people.

But I want to talk about a couple of other amendments the Primary Production Committee made. One of them: first processing. And when you think about the way we harvest our forestry nowadays, once upon a time we had a whole lot of men—well, they were men in those days—with chainsaws going around in the forest and a couple of massive great big tractors pulling those logs out. It was easy to work out that wasn’t processing. But nowadays, we have these massive machines, effectively, go to the forest, strip the tree, get it ready to put on the truck, and nail it on the truck to do the whole thing. So they had to insert a definition of “first processing” because it could easily be construed that first processing was occurring in the plantations; it’s not, of course—well, you could argue it was. So a definition—this is included in this bill to describe what “first processing” is. So I thought that was quite an interesting little piece of work that had to be done.

The next thing I want to talk about is the definition of “legally harvested”. We had a submitter who felt that in the course of the definition of “legally harvested”, we should be including, I suppose, suspect behaviour by logging contractors and trucking contractors, which I found quite interesting. What that submitter meant by that was where they either don’t pay you or don’t do the job properly or don’t complete the job. That, of course, wasn’t quite appropriate to be put into this bill, but it was an interesting issue and he wanted that included in the definition of “legally harvested”. And I suppose you could argue a case for that, but it would be very difficult to put parameters around that.

There’s also offences for providing false or misleading information, and there are offences related to log traders. Of course, every bill we put in place in New Zealand has to have an offence included in it, so that was part of this bill as well.

So I think, on the whole, the bill achieves what it set out to achieve, which is to put us on an equal footing with our trading partners around the world and to ensure that our wood exports are done with integrity and done what’s termed in here, of course, as “legally”.

One other issue I just want to raise very briefly in respect of this—and it isn’t covered by this because it’s covered by other legislation—is there’s quite a lot of wood exported out of New Zealand, or has been over the years. When you think about what’s been going on with these cyclones in the last few months, there’s an awful lot of native trees lying in our riverbeds and things like that. Historically, some of those sort of trees—and kauri in the North was an example of it—have been dug up at later dates and then exported in various forms.

This bill doesn’t cater to that because it’s catered for elsewhere. But it is an interesting issue when you think about the amount of wood that’s lying around in some of our riverbeds now—and some of that wood will be extremely valuable were it able to be harvested and exported. That will be something we need to watch in the future, but, as I said, there is legislation covering that already and, hopefully, that’s able to continue to be policed.

So we support the bill. We think it’s a good piece of legislation and I think the select committee did a pretty good job of getting to the point it’s got to. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to rise and take a call this afternoon on the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill. Before I begin, I just want to join my colleagues from across the House over the last few days who have expressed their sympathies in acknowledging the family and friends of the student who passed away in the tragedy in Whangārei. I would also like to add to that that my thoughts are with the families who were affected by the tornado that touched down in Awatuna in South Taranaki earlier this week as well. I know that the community is wrapping around them.

With that, I’d like to begin my contribution on the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill today by acknowledging the work of the Minister the Hon Peeni Henare to bring the bill here through Parliament. I want to acknowledge my colleagues on the Primary Production Committee from across the House—we’re a very collegial committee, and that was definitely the case in working through this bill as well. I’d like to thank the submitters who took their time to submit on the bill. As a result of those submissions, we did see improvements in this bill as it was reported back to the House in the second reading. And then further improvements were made at the committee of the whole House stage as well, following further reflection from the select committee on the suggestions made by some of the submitters. So it’s really good to see that the Minister and officials took up the committee’s recommendations, and we’ve seen those improvements made. On that note, I do want to thank the officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries for their work on the bill, and the drafters as well.

So, as the Minister said, this bill is about ensuring that our log traders, our primary processers, importers, and exporters are registered, that they’re doing due diligence on the timber that they’re handling to make sure that it has not been illegally harvested. Why is that important? Because ultimately it’s a reflection on “Brand New Zealand Inc.” We want to make sure that, hand on heart, the timber we are exporting has been legally harvested, that those who are harvesting it and trying to export it have a legal right to do so. Likewise, we want to make sure that the timber that we import and bring into New Zealand to use is also legally harvested. We want to play our part in the international community to reduce the flow of illegally harvested timber throughout the world. This bill is a tangible step that we can take to support those international efforts to reduce the trade of illegally harvested timber and timber products.

It is also a bill that will bring us into line with our trading partners. So several of our trading partners in the APEC communities, including Australia, the US, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and China—they are countries that we trade with; we trade about 85 percent of our timber products with these countries. These countries have either already implemented a similar regime in their respective countries or they’re in the process of doing so. So it’s important that we ensure for our own timber exporters and importers that we are bringing our system into line as well to protect the trade that we have and protect our exporters.

I want to touch on the definition of “legally harvested” because this is something that we as a committee spent a long time considering. It’s also—as we heard from Mr McKelvie across the House there—something that we had a number of submissions on. So the definition of “legally harvested”—it is the core component of the bill, and under the bill it will see that trees or woody plants are legally harvested if they are harvested by a person who has the right to harvest the trees and the person does not contravene the relevant harvest laws that apply in the place where the harvest occurs. So that can either be harvesting here in New Zealand or harvesting overseas. There are two exceptions to that in the legal harvest system: so it doesn’t apply to a person who trades in indigenous timber as that timber is already regulated under Part 3A of the Forests Act. But a person who does deal with indigenous timber may opt in, dealing in the domestic supply chain—they can voluntarily opt in to this legal harvest scheme if they can see commercial benefit to doing so. So I think it’s great that they’ve got that choice.

The other thing that we spent a long time considering as a committee is the harvest information. So the bill has been designed so that harvest information is generated from the person at the source of the harvest, and then it flows the whole way through the supply chain to the exporter to give that certainty that the timber or the wood product is legally harvested. With that, it is my pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. At this relatively late stage in terms of the legislative process for this bill and, indeed, this late stage in the parliamentary week, I have probably only a short contribution to make, and probably a small contribution to make as well. It’s not an area in which I am particularly well versed, but suffice to say, like everyone in this House should, I do recognise the significance of the forestry sector for New Zealand—most obviously we use its products ourselves. Obviously, there is a significant export component. At the heart of this bill is an understanding that, also, we import timber on occasion. Mr McKelvie, my friend and colleague, has given a good explanation of the importance of the local industry in the sense that that will reduce our reliance on overseas-produced timber. Of course, related to that point is that at the heart of the bill is our determination as a House to ensure that the reputation of New Zealand’s forestry sector is protected, it’s upheld, it’s strengthened, because we rely on that as “New Zealand Inc.”, taking that broad view as Steph Lewis has just referenced in her own contribution, which is important for the country as a whole.

So we’ve heard already about how safeguarding market access for New Zealand forestry exports will be improved by the passage of this bill, and the international reputation of New Zealand forestry also strengthened, and, of course, the two are connected, because, as those overseas who might wish to have our products in their various dwellings and other buildings and so forth, they need to be confident of the provenance and have the quality assurance that New Zealand timber is exactly that. If we can do our part in preventing also the international trade in illegally harvested timber, then that’s a very good thing too.

So just thinking about what’s at stake: obviously a large amount of employment—some 35,000 people, I understand, are employed within this country, and some $6.3 billion annually. I’d be remiss if I didn’t note the importance of the forestry sector, particularly for regions that were hit badly by Cyclone Gabrielle. The regions have taken a hit, in that sense, not only because of uncertainty about land use, decision making around what happens next in the cyclone recovery and rebuild and resilience-related decisions that need to be made going forward but particularly in relation to slash or other wood matter that has clearly played its part in accentuating the destruction of—and, indeed, in some cases it seems to have been threatening to life and limb of New Zealanders, or anyone, actually, for that matter; any human being who happened to be in the area at the time and had the misfortune to be swept away, either themselves or physically encumbered or had property destroyed by timber or forestry by-product.

So that is not to tar the whole industry with that brush. It’s important that we understand exactly what has happened. There is a review into this matter ongoing; in fact, it was already to have been completed some 11 days ago, I think, and with the 12-day extension having been granted, it will be as soon as tomorrow, we hope and expect that we will have some findings from that review as commissioned by the Government. So that’s a side note, I suppose, given that this bill is preoccupied with more general matters and the importance of the reputation, and so forth, in that sense of establishing exactly where and what the timber is and where it’s come from, and so forth.

I do note that earlier in the discussion—it would have been at second reading and then in the committee of the whole House stage—the House considered a point that had been made during the select committee process. I understand it was after submissions had formally closed, perhaps for reasons of administrative oversight I don’t understand that well in terms of what had happened process-wise. But, in any case, it appears, though, the New Zealand Law Society made quite an interesting constitutional point, which was eventually considered by the Primary Production Committee and then by the committee of the whole House, and that point was incorporated in the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper which was duly passed. So the bill that we have in front of us reflects that valuable advice that the Law Society had given. Roughly speaking, it was to do with the fact that clause 6 of the bill protects persons outside of the Public Service, and the concern of the Law Society was that Parliament might inadvertently be giving protection from liability that usually attaches to the Crown, rather than to individual persons or actors, whereby that some of those functions were delegated. So I won’t get into the detail of how that was mitigated, suffice to say that was considered, and I think that’s appropriate and useful.

So, having no further concerns or other concerns, or, indeed, any concerns, we continue to support, in this way, the forestry sector, the Government in putting forward the bill, and we commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill. We’ve already heard about the intent of this bill to show that we’re committed to trading only in legally harvested timber.

I need to thank Mr McKelvie for making me feel a little nostalgic and reminding us of the legislation from 1949, when my grandad was a harvester and a miller—not me! The smell of sawdust comes back to my nostrils when I think of him, because I spent many summers as a child in the Marlborough Sounds waiting for him to come down. He’d bring logs down—as Mr McKelvie said, chainsaws and pulleys. I’m not quite sure this would meet health and safety requirements these days, but running around his sawmill where the blades were bigger than I was, and rail tracks—it was a wonderful place to be, and, you know, that long history of forestry is something that I pay homage to today. This is the next step in making sure that our forestry industry is something that is futureproofed and something that we can remain very, very proud of.

One of the things this bill does is it creates a due diligence system that will shut the door on illegally harvested timber. It’ll provide a more productive and integrated and efficient supply chain, one that has integrity that and is critical for our reputation as exporters of trusted high-quality timber products.

It’s really important that we establish this new regulatory system so that our harvesters no longer have to rely on third-party certification schemes. It’s not cost-effective, especially for our smaller operators, and so it was great to be able to recognise that need that they had.

It isn’t just about our exporters; this bill also recognises our contribution to the global situation about making sure that we participate in that global fight against deforestation and illegally harvested timber around the world. Our wonderful ambassadors that I engage with from South America remind us that this legislation will be gratefully received by indigenous populations in South America. And just a reminder of the scale of that is that between 2010 and 2020, there were 2.6 million hectares of deforestation, which directly impacts on our indigenous populations in South America. So this has impacts not just for our small harvesters and producers in New Zealand but globally. It’s a really important thing.

I want to just finish off by thanking those from the sector who really contributed to the work at select committee. I guess that recognises that complexity when you’re trying to support both our local small entities right through to that global fight to stop deforestation and illegal harvesting. I think this is another really good sign to the world that we are leaders: we’re not scared to rise up to the challenges that face our exporters, our timber industry, and our food and fibre sector, and to ensure that we have a just transition to international trade and production that is world leading.

It was a long and complicated process, and I feel very grateful to have been on the select committee, one of the hard-working select committees, that made sure that this bill was as good as it could possibly be. It is a really great sign, I think, that we could work across all of the parties to find something that works, because we all know how important it is that we support our food and fibre producers for domestic production but also for exports. It is because of that that I commend this bill to the House.

This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption on the next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 16 May 2023. Pō mārie.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 4.56 p.m.