Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill.

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

I move, That the Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

The Government has introduced this bill today because we need to fix an issue with the operation of the Wildlife Act 1953. The Act is an important piece of legislation, but it’s old and creaking. The Act provides for the protection of wildlife through Aotearoa New Zealand, including some of New Zealand’s most at-risk species. It protects our precious wildlife, and it also recognises the need to regulate human interactions with them so that our actions do not negatively affect protected species in the long run. However, an urgent issue has arisen as a consequence of a High Court decision in March that significantly limits the ability of the Department of Conservation (DOC)—Te Papa Atawhai—to authorise and regulate the incidental killing of protected wildlife under the Wildlife Act. The issue is preventing people and organisations from having the confidence to continue with their mahi, their developments, and their infrastructure projects because of concerns that they may be inadvertently breaking the law. It’s also affecting important conservation activities.

Incidental killing can occur during many a lawful activity, such as housing, transportation, energy, infrastructure, and pest control. The harming or killing of wildlife while doing these activities is unintended but foreseeable. It’s also often unaffordable. Without a Wildlife Act permit, it’s illegal to harm protected wildlife. Prior to the court’s decision, DOC regularly provided wildlife permits that authorised incidental killings so long as permitholders met the conditions in their permit. These conditions were designed to maintain the viability of effective wildlife populations and to protect individual animals as much as possible. Through these conditions, infrastructure providers, developers, and others could ensure that their mahi proceeded responsibly while supporting the long-term viability of wildlife populations. This bill addresses the impacts of the recent High Court decision and will enable projects to happen while protecting our precious wildlife.

The High Court ruling in March this year deemed the authorisation of incidental killing of protected wildlife during construction of the Mt Messenger highway in Taranaki to be unlawful. The decision has two significant implications: (1) it means that DOC are now unable to authorise and manage incidental harm to wildlife that is likely to occur during various activities; and (2) it creates significant uncertainty for those with existing Wildlife Act permits. They are now unsure if they can continue their activities lawfully. Without a lawful permit, harming protected wildlife is an offence. This is problematic for managing risks to threatened wildlife, because it prevents new wildlife permits from being issued, and these permits would normally include requirements to protect wildlife during their mahi. It’s also problematic for infrastructure providers and developers who are supporting our growing economy. They need assurance that they can carry out their activities lawfully. And it negatively impacts crucial conservation work, such as pest control and wildlife research. These activities may sometimes harm individual animals, but they are important as they benefit native species and ecosystems as a whole.

The bill is needed under urgency to restore certainty and confidence. Those who have been granted an authorisation in the past have relied on those authorisations to undertake their activities in good faith. We need to fix this problem, this raruraru, so that they can quickly continue their activities lawfully and limit any flow-on impacts on wildlife and, ultimately, our economy. There are over a hundred active authorisations that could be affected. These authorisations apply to developments and infrastructure activities such as subdivisions, construction projects, solar and wind farms, and road and rail projects, to name a few. Other types of projects could also be influenced and affected by this situation, such as pest control to control bovine tuberculosis, also known as the TBfree programme. On top of this, many applications for planned future activities that may require wildlife permits are currently stored. We urgently need to enable those applications to be processed so activities can go ahead with appropriate safeguards to protect wildlife. The bill makes specific targeted, focused changes to fix this problem.

The Government’s intent with the bill is very, very focused: (1) to restore people’s confidence that they can carry out their activities lawfully; and (2) to enable the Department of Conservation—Te Papa Atawhai—to regulate incidental harm to wildlife so that activities do not cause permanent harm to the viability of protected wildlife. The bill does not make fundamental changes to the Wildlife Act. As I’ve said, the Wildlife Act has a very important role. It protects almost all our native birds, native reptiles, mokomoko, frogs, whiti poraka, and bats, pekapeka-tau-poto, also known as Mystacina tuberculata—the short-tailed bat—and a few specified native invertebrates and marine fish. Many of these animals, these kararehe, are at risk. It ensures wildlife cannot be lawfully taken, harmed, or killed without a permit, and these permits in turn protect the wildlife by including requirements designed to minimise adverse effects to individual animals and their species.

This bill addresses the issues at hand, following the court decision, while maintaining the existing foundations of the Act. It does not change the purpose of the Wildlife Act or water it down. It does not affect all decisions and permits under the Act but focuses solely on permits for incidental harm. Instead, the bill, essentially, restores the understanding to be the status quo prior to the court’s decision. The court’s decision that authorising incidental harm is unlawful under the Wildlife Act was based on the view that every act of killing individual animals must be consistent with the Act’s purpose of protecting wildlife. However, prior to the court’s decision, DOC had interpreted the Act to mean that a permit could meet the Act’s protective purpose by addressing effects at a population level—for example, a wildlife permit might allow an activity to harm some individual animals but require the permitholder to undertake activities such as habitat improvements or pest control that supported the population of that wildlife. The bill clarifies the ability to authorise incidental killing. It now clearly allows DOC—Te Papa Atawhai—to authorise an activity to incidentally kill some animals if the wider affected population is protected. This will remove the block preventing applications for activities being processed.

But let me be clear: these changes do not change or lower the bar for the protection of wildlife. The bill still requires that making and authorising wildlife permits be consistent with protecting wildlife. Permitholders must still take reasonable steps to avoid, minimise, and mitigate harm to wildlife. The bill also provides some clear guidance on how decisions should be made—for example, it requires DOC—Te Papa Atawhai—to consider what potential impacts the activity might have on the effect of wildlife populations and, of course, the viability of their species and the extent to which the permit will manage these effects. The bill also validates authorisations that have been previously granted for incidental killing. These validations will give those who already hold wildlife permits the confidence and the assurance that they can carry out their activities lawfully. It will not be an offence to incidentally kill wildlife during these activities, this mahi, provided that the permitholders comply with the conditions that are part of their permit. So if you’ve been given a wildlife permit already, ka pai; as long as you’re following its conditions, you do not need to do anything differently.

There’s more work to be done on the Wildlife Act, as my colleague Minister Jones has irregularly mentioned. This bill deals with an immediate problem, a key focus, but there’s much more work to be done. The legal problem this bill deals with has arisen in part because the Wildlife Act is over 70 years old. It’s older than nearly everybody who sits in this House. We know that there are many issues with this legislation, and with age comes wisdom. We need to modernise the Act and ensure it is robust and fit for purpose. I’m not proposing to make fundamental changes to the Act in an ad hoc way right now—no. This would risk making the Act even less coherent, less effective, and more difficult to work with. It’s not a replacement for a full review of the Wildlife Act. A full review remains a priority—I expect it will start very, very soon—but it will be complex and take a little bit of time. In the meantime, this bill is a first step. It fixes the current issue, a very narrow issue we have, while maintaining appropriate safeguards to protect wildlife and, of course, to enable people to travel throughout the country, for the TBfree programme to continue, and a number of other important infrastructure projects, such as renewable energies, to carry on doing what they’re doing. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

It does give me a little bit of comfort to hear the Minister saying that it is still a priority to rejig the Wildlife Act. It is from 1953; it is outdated. It would have been good, given this Government has had a year and a half—they’ve gotten started on it—and given that our Government did a fair bit of legwork in terms of looking at what a review could entail and what it needs to consider. So all they needed to do was to pick that up and run with it. But, sadly, that hasn’t happened.

What we see today with the Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill is a knee-jerk reaction to a High Court decision. It has been introduced to Parliament today with no accompanying RIS—there is no regulatory impact statement. It’s being passed through all stages under urgency. The Minister has not laid out why there’s such a huge rush for this bill under urgency. He has been quoted in the media as saying that the economic development needs to continue. No one was actually questioning that. What everyone’s questioning—those who are opposing this bill—is the way in which this is being done. As the Minister said, in a decision that was released just in March this year, the High Court set aside an authority that was granted by Te Papa Atawhai—the Department of Conservation—under section 53 of the Wildlife Act to Waka Kotahi—the New Zealand Transport Agency—for its Mt Messenger Bypass in Taranaki.

The issue that many have is with the way that this bill is being shepherded through the House under urgency, but also the fact that it tweaks a couple of sections—well, basically, section 53. As the Minister said, to go back to what was happening prior to the High Court decision is disappointing. As the World Wide Fund for Nature New Zealand has laid out really well and really clearly, “These changes are the antithesis of good lawmaking. It is abundantly clear that the Conservation Minister has no genuine interest in conservation, or New Zealand’s unique and threatened biodiversity - despite it being the bedrock of our economy, wellbeing, national identity, and way of life.”

She then goes on to say that all of us understand the legal uncertainty that the High Court decision had presented. But what really needed to change was that new legislation. As I mentioned, there’s already been a review of that. The Minister just needed to implement changes and to, potentially, do a little bit more work to finesse it, but that could have been done in the last one and a half years.

Also, if targeted amendments are to be progressed, the Government could have included, or chosen to include, nature-positive changes that would require any activities for which section 53 permissions are issued, to have an overall positive impact on New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity. But it doesn’t really do that. I go back to the Environmental Law Initiative’s submission on this as well—or it would have been a submission if we’d had a select committee process, but, unfortunately, we don’t. Basically, their win in the High Court meant that developers needed to take reasonable steps to avoid killing wildlife, rather than simply being permitted to kill wildlife. Now, this piece of legislation, shepherded through the House by the conservation Minister, actually goes against the purpose of the bill. That is basically what the High Court ruling was. The primary purpose of this bill is to protect wildlife and to regulate human interactions with wildlife, not just to carte blanche allow the various developments this Minister wants to push through to allow them to do whatever they want. That is not the point of the Wildlife Act. Unfortunately, it is a shame that this piece of legislation, rather than making any meaningful change that would protect our biodiversity, just allows what was happening before, that the High Court has pointed out was unlawful, to be lawful by changing the law. It is a sloppy piece of legislation.

But, again and again, this Government has shown us that they are committed to waging a war on nature. Biodiversity and climate change are the two biggest issues that affect our environment and us as a country. Now, whether it’s through repeals and deferrals of regulation that protects fresh water and native species, their proposed repeal of the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration, setting climate targets so low that they violate our commitments under the Paris Agreement, not to mention this conservation Minister’s priorities, as he himself has laid out. He says, in his Cabinet paper, and I quote: “My vision for conservation is to encourage more visits by tourists and New Zealanders to our iconic landscapes, to activate more commercial opportunities on public conservation land, and to ultimately enhance biodiversity across our country.” Says it all—I don’t commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a dark day in the Parliament, I would say. There are two pieces of law going through the House that will have the effect over the course of yesterday, today, and—if we get through to it—tomorrow, in the words of Strictly Obiter on Bluesky, who tweeted expressing the Government’s view that they “wanna kill Kiwi and pay women less for doing it”. That’s basically what the Government will achieve today. They will take the extraordinary step of, while we have an underfunded Department of Conservation—in the words of the World Wildlife Fund, “New Zealand has the highest species extinction rate in the world, with more than 4,000 of our native species at risk or threatened with extinction”. And they want to reorient the Department of Conservation’s focus from protecting wildlife to killing wildlife, literally issuing permits and authorities for developers to kill wildlife. Well, in the headline of the Newsroom article, “Law change protects vulnerable roads and mines from skinks, geckos and frogs”. That’s what this does.

Except, I would say it actually has this kind of Orwellian, dystopian effect—you know, we seem to be living in this new-reality world where you might think you’ve walked into a Franz Kafka novel, you might think you’ve walked into the Margaret Atwood novel The Handmaid’s Tale, because we seem to be being convinced that destroying the American economy makes America great again, and that you need to commit genocide in an act of self-defence, and here in Aotearoa New Zealand you need to kill kiwi to protect Kiwi. Wow. I mean, honestly, it is discombobulating.

💬 Dan Bidois: Very easy if you’re a Green.

“Very easy if you’re a Green.” Interesting. That’s an interesting thing to say. One thing I think is fascinating about this Government, as my colleague just across mentioned, is they do seem hell-bent on destroying nature. Their priority in the time of a biodiversity crisis and a climate crisis is not to take into account the existential necessity of a healthy ecosphere for all of us. Their priority seems to be to take us back to a 19th century extractive mentality, where nature is expendable, and the only way for us to have a meaningful existence is by destroying it.

There’s a saying that when a clown enters the palace, he does not become a king; rather, the palace becomes a circus. We have a Government led by three clowns. This is truly a circus Government, and this piece of legislation is one of the strongest examples of what a circus it is, because it may well be that, extraordinarily, this legislation actually makes it more complex. It actually may have the effect of increasing blue and yellow tape in terms of people doing developments—because who is going to assess all of these instances of incidental killing and when it’s acceptable and when it’s not? Actually, if you read the existing Wildlife Act, you will find that section 68AB says that reasonable steps taken to protect wildlife are a sufficient defence against incidental killing. So this legislation actually could well be creating a heck of a lot more bureaucracy for our underfunded Department of Conservation, that we want to be focused on actually protecting wildlife, and now it’s going to be focused on providing “permits to kill” to developers. It seems like an extraordinary twisting of the purpose of this legislation.

This is a strange day, and indeed, it’s going to be an interesting evening, as we ask a lot of questions about this quite clumsily written piece of legislation. Honestly, I’ve read it over and over, over the course of the day, and it is really messily drafted; it is very confusing and tautological. I suspect the Government might well find that it is making a bigger mess than the one it is trying to solve. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak on behalf of the ACT Party on the Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill. I think the Minister summed up very well the situation he’s trying to amend and repair. An event happened in March, earlier this year, where a court decided, as is its right, to make it clear the way these laws are interpreted. But it’s not really going in the way this country needs to go, where we can build infrastructure and manage our pest eradication in a way that is in a legal framework. So the Minister of Conservation has done the right thing. He’s brought something along to repair this piece of legislation. It’s a fix. It’s going to allow the active authorisations to continue. Basically, the court said something was illegal. We’re changing the law back to February 2025, not the 19th century, as the previous Green speaker, Steve Abel, said.

I won’t take too long on this call. I just want to add a little story. In select committee the week when the court decision came down, we were assessing some renewable energy. People were coming and submitting on renewable energy. The member Stuart Smith did some very astute questioning of these submitters, just to ask how they thought this change was going to affect them. I hope Stuart Smith is going to take a call and explain the shock that these submitters had at the situation that was developing in New Zealand. Thankfully, this Government and this Parliament are taking steps to address it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

These changes—the Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill—remind the decision makers and other stakeholders in the world of infrastructure that there’s a rare mammal that must not be overlooked, known as a human being. This actually allows human productivity—the quality of our life, the ability of our economy to flourish—not to play second fiddle to a set of narrow considerations where legislation has been weaponised by shadowy groups, including the environmental entity funded by we don’t know who, wandering around the country littering the courts.

That is why this piece of legislation shows the sovereignty of Parliament in our constitution is paramount. Yes, you may have a random decision come from the judiciary, but this Parliament is empowered to restore clarity, certainty, and order, because there has been an immense level of disorder due to the weaponisation of an outdated piece of legislation.

We need, obviously, to have guardrails around the protection and the safeguarding of various species, but don’t for a moment think that in the development of our country we have not dislocated species, we have not incidentally killed species. Sure, providing the overarching population has expanded in wellbeing, which is still possible—all this piece of legislation does is restore to those entities who believed that they had legal authorisations the ability to get on with their projects.

Roading is essential for the development and the productivity of New Zealand. Economic development, including my beloved industry known as the mining industry: I want to see a growth in mining that is not hobbled or held hostage by foolish, unworkable interpretations under this statute, which is why this statute by and large should be stripped away with. Most of it should be dealt with under the Resource Management Act, but that’s for the future.

I do want to say that with development comes certainty; with certainty comes investment and the surplus to look after the features of our environment that are important, including the iconic species known as the kiwi. So no more catastrophisation; no more moral hysteria from the other side of the House. These are modest improvements. All this does is restore a level of lucidity to the law that we have always known should’ve been there in the first place, and that will ensure the agenda of the Government, shared by the community, to go ahead and invest and create jobs.

Look, in terms of jobs, I used to say I wanted the nephs off the couch. Well, I want the nephs off the meth, and that’s not going to happen until we have clarity and certainty for more ongoing growth, and a surplus will be available in a sensible way now that we are able to validate authorisations, clarify the confusion which emerged as a consequence of the High Court decision driven by a shadowy, unaccountable unknown. I call upon the media to actually investigate who this environmental group is. Who’s funding it? Are they even New Zealanders? They, in my view, represent a major threat. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Me pēhea nei te whakautu i ngā kōrero kua horahia ki mua ki te aroaro o te Whare? Ngā mema o te Whare e noho whakapapa Māori ana e kōrero ana mō te muku i te wāhi ki te ia, te tātai whakaheke o ngā uri a Tāne. Āe, he manu ētahi, ka mutu ko tāua te tangata ētahi.

Engari pēnei anō i ngā karawhiunga o tēnei Whare, kāre he wāhi tō te whakaaro Māori, ahakoa te māngai nui o tērā taha me ōna e pahupahu nei mō te iwi Māori me ōna mōhiotanga. E kore ana kōrero e whai kiko taketake ki te ūnga mai o te iwi Māori i roto i ēnei tū āhuatanga.

[How is one to respond to the statements that have been laid before the House? The members of the House that have Māori genealogy are speaking about deleting the role of the procession, the line of descent of the descendants of Tāne. Yes, some of them are birds, but also some of them are us people.

But this is similar to the vigorous activity of this House: there is no place for Māori ideas, despite the big mouth and company on that side droning on about the Māori people and their knowledge. His comments will have no real substance to them regarding the engagement of the Māori people with this domain.]

So, just where to start? Killing the kiwis. I mean, get real. Get real. There was clear decision from a court, and so we just bust a sidestep and go around it; we’ll just make it OK. But we’re talking about killing a kiwi. I mean, it’s got to be one of the most stupid things I’ve heard this House consider to date.

💬 Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: There’s more to come.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: There’s more to come, no doubt. But—

💬 Cameron Luxton: Four kiwi died in the Bay of Plenty this year.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kiwis die all over the place. Endangered animals. We’re really getting to the place of biodiversity. The place of biodiversity—let’s talk about that. Let’s not put a mine or a road in front of the value of biodiversity. What comes from biodiversity? Everything you rely on. What comes from biodiversity? Every medical advancement that’s ever happened. What comes from biodiversity? Our national identity. All of these things are folded into this convo, but the Government’s happy to just say, “Whack! Nope, we’ve just got to get around this so we can build mines and roads.” How much care do you think those road builders and those mine diggers will take?

💬 Andy Foster: Quite a lot.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: None—oh, quite a lot, quite a lot. I think they were taking a lot while they killed those other kiwis. So, I mean, we’ve got Ministers over here who are complete natural-world denialists. You’ve got a Minister of Fisheries who denies that the Māui dolphin exists. We’ve got a Minister of Te Papa Atawhai—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Hector.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Oh, yeah, “Hector”, he calls it. Te Papa Atawhai is OK for kiwis to be incidentally killed along with pekapeka, along with poraka, along with ngata—all of the taonga species protected by Waitangi claims. No, no, it’s all right!

💬 Andy Foster: Oh no, they’re not.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Oh, that tells me how much you know.

💬 Andy Foster: A lot more than you do, mate. You haven’t got a clue.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: You might want to catch up. You might want to learn what taonga species are. But I guess all the kōhanga reo all around the country one day will have a new book called Tama the Kiwi Killer.

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Relevance?

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Oh, it’s relevant all right. Ngā mokopuna. Ngā mokopuna. Pēhea nei ō mokopuna, e te uri o Te Aupōuri, i te korenga o te kiwi, i te korenga o te pekapeka, o te ngata rānei? Ēnei ngā mokopuna i heke mai i ngā tātai a Tāne.

Ēnei tū kōrero e kaha nei tēnei tokorua ki te karawhiu ki runga i te mata o te motu, engari ki konei, huri tuarā atu ai.

Nō reira kei te pai, haere me tō tuarā. Ko tō iwi Māori tērā e nohonoho nei i roto i ngā wā kāinga o tēnei whenua e tohe ana kia mau, kia pupuri te mauri o te whenua. Āe.

Haria ērā whakaaro ki te moe, e Shane, kōrua ko Tama. Kōrua ko Tama. Kāre anō kia pau taku hau, tāria te wā kia heke ki te kore, kātahi ka heke.

[The grandchildren. The grandchildren. What about your grandchildren, to the descendant of Te Aupōuri, without the kiwi, without the bat or the snail? These grandchildren that descend from the lines of Tāne.

These types of statements that these two so often throw around over the face of the nation, but here, they turn their back.

Anyway that’s OK, carry on with your back. It will be your Māori people that are living in the settlements of this country that fight to preserve and hold on to the life-force of the land. Yes.

Take those concepts with you to sleep, Shane, you and Tama. Both yourself and Tama. I have not run out of wind just yet, wait for that time that drops to zero and I will sit down.]

Heoi anō rā, heoi anō rā, ahakoa ngā hiahia [However, however, despite the desires], and despite what your hopes for development might be, if you just leave the door open to eradication, that’s what your whakapapa will—

The member’s time has expired.

Look, I rise to support this bill. It’s a practical bill. It’s common sense. It fixes an urgent issue which we have, a technical flaw in the Wildlife Act, and a technical flaw which is preventing already authorised projects like solar farms and wind farms from going ahead. We need this development. We need to be progressive while also protecting the environment. So I absolutely commend this bill to the House.

Thank you. I’m interested in that last comment about protecting the environment, because that does not seem to be what this bill is doing.

I want to start by responding to the Minister for Resources—which I presume is why he was speaking on this bill—the Hon Shane Jones. He told us what he really wants in his speech, and that is one of the reasons why we will be opposing this bill tonight on what is 6 May, according to the parliamentary calendar, even though in other parts of the town it’s 7 May. But we’re in urgency here because this Government has decided that two bills need to go through all-stages urgency. That is a despicable thing to do when there is no emergency or real reason to do so.

💬 Hon Shane Jones: What about COVID?

It would be—oh, “What about COVID?” the Minister says. I think COVID might have been an emergency, and that is quite different. But I’m glad that the Minister has brought up COVID, because I will have questions in the committee of the whole House stage about review of these changes. Because there’s nothing in the commencement of this bill, nor the one that’s just been through, about a requirement for a review of the legislation—which can actually take some proper time and have some proper consideration rather than us getting the bill just before we have to speak to it. In this case, we did get it a whole day ago, so we’ve had a little bit more time with it, and it is shorter than the last one. But this is very bad process, and it is not necessary.

This bill is about a court case—a decision that was made in March, and it is now May. So there has been a couple of months that have passed since this decision was made, and the world has not ended. Another week—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Parliament is sovereign; Parliament’s in charge. Not the courts—Parliament.

Well, I would say to the Minister, who’s saying that Parliament is sovereign and it’s not the courts that are in charge, that it would be good if Parliament had a chance to properly examine the legislation, because what is happening here is the executive is in charge. That is all that this Government does, is make the executive in charge, and it makes—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Democracy.

The Minister says it’s democracy. They are breaking constitutional conventions day after day, and it is putting our democracy in real jeopardy. They should take this matter a whole—

💬 Grant McCallum: Look in the mirror.

—lot more seriously. Oh, I’m told now to look in the mirror. Well, I’m going to give that member from Northland an example of what you can do if there is a real emergency. We’ve worked out that there’s not an emergency here. We’ve worked out that there’s not an emergency because this decision was made two months ago—it is not an emergency.

This bill could be sent to a select committee for a week—for a week. It could have been sent for two weeks. That is a short amount of time, and we know that it is a small bill that a lot of people are very interested in. When I say, “a lot of people”, there are a number of people—we can probably name most of them. There will be environmental groups, there are developer groups, there are people who work with the Department of Conservation, who would be able to submit on this bill and give some thoughtful analysis, and the members on that select committee could ask some questions of officials.

We do not have that opportunity with all-stages urgency, and so that is why this bill is a disgrace. Again—again—we have a disgraceful bill from this Government, and it does not need to be, if you follow the logic of their arguments.

Now, going to that logic, there’s a complaint about the High Court case. The High Court case was implementing the precedence from the Supreme Court in the case about the sharks. So, again, this is not an issue in terms of needing to pass this bill today; it could be passed next week. What we’ve heard the Minister Shane Jones say is he’s called the group that took the case a “shadowy group”, that they’re unknown. We don’t know where their funding has come from. Well, I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that this group did not donate to my campaign.

The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s interesting, as I sit and listen to the Opposition’s views on this very important and urgent bill, and a couple of names spring to mind. One of them is Eugenie Sage, a former Minister of Conservation from the Green Party. And guess what! She was a Minister of Conservation and oversaw the use of just these instruments to allow people to do things—just to do things. And, then, interestingly enough, I’ll give you another name: the Hon Kiri Allan, another member from the other side of the House, who was a member of the Labour Party and a Labour Party conservation Minister. It’s interesting, isn’t it? So they suddenly forget about all the things they did, and they think, “Oh, well, here we go; let’s have a crack at these guys.” I certainly think that they need to think about what they’re doing, and I commend this bill to the House.

I just want to start by pointing out the irony: today, little spotted kiwi are being translocated from Kāpiti Island tonight to the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary in Nelson Whakatū—and I congratulate the Brook—the very same day we’re passing legislation that makes it easier to kill them. It’s just so ironic, on a day that we’re celebrating such a momentous occasion for such a precious taonga in our motu.

I just want to reflect on some comments made by my colleague Rachel Brooking but also the member opposite who’s just sat down, Grant McCallum, to whom I’m just going to give a little bit of education around process here and then talk a little bit to the bill. We had an emergency, members of the House will recall, in 2023, which was Cyclone Gabrielle. It created a massive mess on the East Coast. Following that, we had to put special legislation in place to ensure that agencies could act. We needed them to be able to act quickly, to be able to make decisions quickly. We put it through a shortened select committee. So even though it was an emergency, even though it was urgent, we sent the bill to a select committee, which I sat on, and we reached out to stakeholders and we heard from them in a shortened select committee process.

The issue with this bill is that it’s going through all stages tonight, under urgency. As my colleague Rachel Brooking has so correctly pointed out, if it is so urgent, why wasn’t it brought to the House back in March? Why wasn’t it brought back to the House in March? Now, we in the Opposition do agree there are some issues that need to be addressed as a result of—[Interruption] Absolutely, but with a proper process. With a proper process—this is not a proper process. The High Court ruling does need to be examined by the Parliament at select committee, with input from officials, with input from stakeholders. We don’t even have a regulatory impact statement (RIS). We don’t—again, the second bill during urgency—have a RIS in front of us to be able to consider.

💬 Tangi Utikere: Process, process!

Process matters. It is important that on matters like this, we’re able to actually properly examine the bill, actually write to the relevant stakeholders, and seek advice and suggestions from officials.

Now, I do want to talk a little bit about the bill, specifically around the Act because, as I’ve said—and I know they’ll yell across the House back at me—the Labour Party does believe that there needs to be wholesale reform of this Act. It is 70 years old. In fact, I’m looking here at a press release from one of our former Ministers, my colleague Willow-Jean Prime, in 2023, saying that the Wildlife Act will be replaced with modern, fit for purpose legislation to better protect native species and improve biodiversity. So when we were in Government, Labour had actually begun this work, but we haven’t seen that put under urgency, we haven’t seen that work continued.

💬 Hon Rachel Brooking: Shane Jones wants to get rid of the whole Act.

Oh, he does want to get rid of the whole Act. OK.

💬 Hon Rachel Brooking: That’s what Tama said.

Oh, that’d be interesting, to find out about conversations between the two Ministers there, because, actually, New Zealanders do believe in protecting our wildlife—

💬 Hon Member: We do.

They do, and it’s important that they do. But the situation with this particular bill is it does respond to a High Court ruling, which has found that the Department of Conservation has been using the wrong permits. I accept that that is the ruling and that it has gone on for some time; that is what the court has found. It does need to be addressed—I’m not going to stand here, as animal welfare spokesperson, and say that it doesn’t need to be addressed. But this is not the way to address it. The way to address it is to actually send it to a select committee—[Interruption]

💬 Hon Member: Process?

I know! Process, process—I know. We know that when transport projects are being put in place, there actually is a significant amount of surveying that goes on. I’ve even spoken to one of the people who does it, recently, who lives in my electorate, who goes out and does surveying of lizards before roading projects go ahead. I accept—I’ve spoken to him about it—it can actually be a time-consuming process, and it does need to be looked at to ensure it’s fit for purpose. But what this bill is doing is, basically, saying the lowest standards that we require are actually going to be OK going forward. We need to examine this properly and thoroughly at a select committee. I do not commend this bill to the House.

More than 300 applications are currently with the Department of Conservation, around half of which involve incidental harm. Without this fix, they are in limbo. We’re tired of New Zealand being in limbo. We’re here to fix it. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is set down for second reading immediately.

Second Reading