Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill

Members, we now come to our final debate, clauses 1 to 3. This is the debate on clauses 1, 2, and 3—“Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”.

This is a strange way to characterise this bill in the title, because it is amending an Act that is primarily about the protection of wildlife and is, in fact, widening the powers of the killing of wildlife in what is not only proactive legislation but is retrospective legislation.

It is incumbent on all Ministers to exercise their powers on behalf of the Crown, not of their political party. In this case, it is the Minister of Conservation that is making that change—a Minister who is charged with the conservation not only of our natural flora but also our natural fauna in New Zealand, a Minister who is the only Minister who can make many decisions under this Act for the preservation of those species that we as a country decide are important to preserve.

Unlike the title of this bill, which is pretty bland and pretty standard, these amendments actually make long-reaching decisions about what kind of activity can occur and provide a carte blanche licence to destroy natural species that we say are important, not only to those communities who have important relationships with them but also to all New Zealanders who value that wildlife—species like the mokomoko I spoke of in the committee stage earlier, species like the kiwi and the takahē, which feature very prominently in New Zealand in stories not only of ourselves on the world stage but also of prominent businesses like Air New Zealand, which refers directly to Mt Messenger and its takahē species there in the first greetings that it has for any international visitors here.

These are important species, and they are species that only the Minister of Conservation is charged with the duty of protecting around the Cabinet table. It is unusual that this kind of bill, which provides licences to kill for the purposes of building infrastructure or roads, would be brought by a Minister of Conservation who appears to have discharged himself of that duty to New Zealanders and the people who care about these species.

This bill should be called the “Wildlife (Authorisation to Kill) Amendment Bill”. That would be a clearer way of recognising, on the parliamentary record, what use this Minister is making of his duty to conservation.

Thank you. I would like to speak directly to an amendment proposed. Look, I think the key thing with any legislation is that—it’s been made very clear by the Minister of Conservation today—we want to provide certainty and clarity. As my colleague Arena Williams has pointed out, the authorisations part of this bill, the Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill, does not actually provide that. The tabled amendment in the name of my colleague Steve Abel proposes that we change clause 1: “replace ‘Wildlife (Authorisations Amendment) Bill’ with ‘Wildlife (Authorisation to Kill Wildlife) Amendment Bill’.”

Now, we suggest this not to dramatise this. Literally, the authorisations are in every clause of this. Part 1, clause 4, inserting new sections 53A to 53C—53A, has “killing of wildlife”; new section 53B is about the authority to kill wildlife; and new section 53C authorises the killing of wildlife. Then Part 2 is about the transitional, savings, and related provisions when it comes to validating those certain authorities when it comes to killing wildlife. There is actually nothing in this bill, when it comes to authorisations, that is outside the killing of wildlife.

What we would really like to see here is just a very accurate representation of what the bill really does. I would invite the Minister to consider—particularly when it comes to his intention, which we’ve heard over and over, about providing certainty and clarity—whether this would be an accurate representation of what this bill purports to do. Now, that’s aside from the fact that we believe that this bill is still unnecessary and it’s actually going to cause more confusion and uncertainty for the Department of Conservation, which is, again, as the Minister said, something none of us wants.

I would be really interested in the Minister’s views about, and his acceptance of, these authorisations and the fact that they are simply limited to the killing of wildlife. There is nothing in this bill outside of that. That’s my concern, and that’s our amendment that we’ve put forward today, which we’d like the Minister’s views on. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to start with the commencement: “This Act comes into force on the day after Royal assent.” This would be a good place to make an amendment and say, “This Act comes into force after a review from the Regulations Review Committee on scrutiny.”, and we could have a time period around that. We keep hearing that this is urgent. People are worried that they might be breaching the law because they were reliant on section 53 approval. I get that. I don’t agree that we need all-stages urgency for that point. The way to remedy an all-stages urgency is to do some quick scrutiny, not on the policy settings but on the workability of what the legislation is doing. That is why I think that this should not commence until that workability review has happened. That’s one point.

I would like the Minister of Conservation to comment on that. He said before, in one of my contributions on Part 2, that I was being creative. Unfortunately, I’m not being creative. It would be lovely, when we’re here talking about New Zealand Music Month, to be creative, but, no. I’m actually talking about the types of processes that were used for real emergencies in cyclones, when legislation was passed and it had to have some sort of scrutiny from another body because it was made so fast. That’s not creative; that’s just some good process for when things are being done under urgency. I do not accept that this needs to be done under all-stages urgency at all, but that is a compromised position around the commencement.

Now, looking back to the title, we’ve heard a number of contributions now saying that it should be something about killing. I might differ with my colleagues here, because all I have heard from the Minister is confusion. Maybe it is an authorisation; maybe it’s not an authorisation. Who knows? We’ve got no idea, because these new provisions in new sections 53A, 53B, and 53C, inserted by clause 4, are so convoluted and cannot really be read together. The Minister has given us no insight into what it is that he intends them to do. Maybe nobody’s going to get an authority under section 53.

Another suggestion is that this bill is the “Wildlife (Authorisations but not for Roads) Amendment Bill”. We heard that just before in the Part 2 debate that this is not for roads. I’m sure I heard, in first and second reading speeches, a number of members talking about how this is going to fix the problem with roads. But it’s not, because we heard from the Minister that section 71 still applies to roads. I looked at a press release (PR) from the Beehive website on 28 March, and they said—

Hon Tama Potaka: Great PR.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: The Minister says it’s a great PR. It’s an incorrect PR, because it says, “[This] Government intends to promptly change the law to enable these important activities to go ahead lawfully, including the building of houses and roads for example”. The Minister has just told us that new roads do not apply to these changes, because new roads have to go through section 71. These weird amendments to section 53 that are all in conflict with each other don’t apply to roads, is what he told us. That is why we should be amending it to the “Wildlife (Authorisations but not for Roads) Amendment Bill”.

I think, though, the better title is the “Who Knows?” or the “Maybe”, because we don’t know what we’ll be able to get through this new section 53. If it is to be consistent with the protection of wildlife and individual wildlife, how will anything be able to get through it? Who knows? The Minister hasn’t helped so far. Maybe he’s going to help us now.

As mentioned earlier on—and this is just in passing—section 71 in Schedule 9 of the principal Act intersects with the Government Roading Powers Act. Building a little street, a surfaced road, outside a house is slightly different. In terms of the title matter, it’s not just in relation to the killing of animals. There are also conditions around protecting, translocating, and relocating—there’s a whole range of things. The title of the Act reflects that it’s not just solely about killing wildlife. The purpose of the Act is actually protecting wildlife. We think something simple, such as the Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Act, is very apt, very relevant, and very suitable in this particular circumstance. How many bills are like this? Not any.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to ask the Minister a couple of questions. The first one is around the commencement date. Now, we have seen that the commencement date is the day after Royal assent. I want to see if the Minister would consider pushing it back at least three months so that there is some clarity that is able to be granted to the people who are applying or who have an existing consent on some of the issues that we have heard the previous speaker, the Hon Rachel Brooking, mention. There is confusion around a lot of this because of the fact that we didn’t get sufficient clarity.

Now, the reason I’m suggesting pushing it back by at least three months—just three months; I think that’s sufficient—is that the Minister, throughout this debate, talked about the fact that this is required under urgency, etc. However, what started a lot of this was the High Court ruling, the judgment that was made on 5 March, and it was two months ago. If Cabinet and if the Minister were really serious about the urgency of this situation, this bill would have been brought to the House a lot earlier. It did not need to be brought into the House two months after that particular ruling. Clearly, the backlog that the Minister was referring to is not urgent enough for this bill to be brought to the House earlier. I think another three months is not outside the realm of possibility and probability, over here.

In terms of the title of this bill, I really like the suggestion that the Hon Rachel Brooking has made in terms of “Who Knows”. What about if the Minister considered the “Wildlife [shrug emoji] Amendment Bill”. That is, essentially, what we’ve got out of this entire debate. This has felt like pulling teeth from the Minister to try to get any ounce of any information out of him that we could have gotten quite succinctly and clearly from the officials during the select committee stage. Over here, what we have largely heard throughout the debate is “politicisation” and “back on track”.

In terms of other potential titles, I would actually propose an alternative pathway when we are looking at the title for this, because what we are seeing with this—and this is fundamental to democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand—is a distortion of the separation of powers and the overstepping of that, where the executive has decided to overstep into the judiciary and affect the rulings of the judiciary, and also the principle of comity.

I ask if the Minister would consider the “Wildlife (Distortion of the Separation of Powers) Amendment Bill”. Further on from that, despite the fact that we have been doing this under urgency, we are being criticised for doing our job as the legislature to scrutinise the executive. We have no opportunity, and the New Zealand public has no opportunity, to contribute to this. I would say that this is not actually even about parliamentary supremacy, because we have not been granted the privilege of that supremacy as the legislature, so I would recommend, finally, for the Minister to consider the title “Wildlife (Forget about Parliamentary Supremacy, the Executive Rules Supreme) Amendment Bill.”

Thank you, Mr Chair. Listen, reflecting on this and the span of this term of Parliament, there is a very clear agenda set out by this Government: they were going to prioritise extraction—the 19th century mindset of mining—over the protection of wildlife. We had, at the beginning of this bill, Minister Shane Jones, the proudest advocate for prioritising extraction over nature, explicitly sitting here in the room and making it clear that this bill was a necessity for facilitating his mining agenda.

I just want to remind the committee, because it seems so familiar to us, at the beginning of the term of this Government, of the Minister’s famous words of “Bye, bye, Freddy”—a reference to him being willing to send to extinction those rare and unique frogs that we have in this country, those amphibians: the Archey’s and the Hochstetter’s frogs. This legislation is a specific mechanism, a pathway, by which that vision of Minister Jones—to send species to extinction—can be fulfilled. This is the “(‘Bye, bye, Freddy’) Amendment Bill”. This is the bill that says that the Wildlife Act—the legislation put in place to actually protect our precious and unique indigenous species—is going to be distorted to being a means to permitting and licensing the killing of wildlife. I propose another title for this bill: the “(‘Bye, bye, Freddy’) Amendment Bill”. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ll just note the Minister’s reply to my suggestion about this Act being the “Wildlife (Authorisations but not Roads) Amendment Bill”. He said, “Aha! Little roads aren’t included in Schedule 9. Therefore, section 71 doesn’t apply to them.” I am happy to amend my suggestion to the “Wildlife (Authorisations for Large Government Roads but not Little Roads) Amendment Bill”, or perhaps we should just call it the “Wildlife (Authorisations Really Rushed) Amendment Bill”, because that is what it is. It appears that Ministers have not realised that this whole amendment bill doesn’t apply to those big roads—to the roads that aren’t little roads, as the Minister just called them. That is what all their speeches have been about: these big roads—not little roads; big roads—that they want to do.

It means that we should be looking, at Schedule 9, at the other things where a section 71 authority must be required. That’s the Coal Mines Act. I don’t even know if that’s been repealed or not, but maybe the amendment to the title should be the “Wildlife (Authorisations but not for Big Roads and Coal Mines)”. There’s also the Fisheries Act 1908, then the Forest and Rural Fires Act 1977, and the Government Railways Act 1949. I have not looked up whether these have been repealed or not, but the Minister keeps saying that this is going to put things back on track. Well, it’s not going to make any difference to railways as well as those big roads if that Act is still in force. It’s not at all about “back on track”. We’ll be seeing the Minister back here, perhaps next week with another bill under all-stages urgency, to get things back on track and to build his big roads without needing the concurrence of two Ministers.

Then we’ve got the Mining Act 1971, the National Parks Act 1980, the Peel Forest Act 1926, the Petroleum Act 1937—that might be one that Minister Shane Jones is interested in—the Public Works Act 1928, and the Rabbits Act 1955. We’ve already talked about rats and mustelids during this all-stages urgency, but now we’ve got rabbits in there as well, so this is the “Wildlife (Authorisations but Nothing to do with Rabbits) Amendment Bill”. The Reserves Act 1977—that is an Act that I happen to know quite a bit about—is not repealed. It’s still on the books.

Hon Tama Potaka: It needs review.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I don’t know what the Minister’s saying to me. It is an old bill. It is younger than both the Minister and I but, substantially—[Minister gasps] Ha, ha! And I am older than the Minister. I appreciate that it has some outdated language in it as well, but, again, this Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill will not apply to anything where the Reserves Act applies, because that has to go through, according to the Minister, section 71. There is also the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Act 1941, the Tramways Act—talking, again, about being back on track—the Waitangi Endowment Act, and the Waitangi National Trust Board Act 1932.

What the Minister has told us is that any activity relying on one of those Acts cannot get an authorisation made under this little amendment bill that we are doing under all-stages urgency. The title is wrong, and he should change that title. My last suggestion is the “Wildlife (Authorisations for this Week; I’ll be Coming Back Next Week) Amendment Bill”.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, this is just my brief and very small contribution, but I’m drawn to make a contribution, particularly in terms of the title for this particular piece of nonsense. This is why. Nō Te Aupōuri ko tētahi kōrero mai i a Te Meri Ngāroto: “He aha te mea nui o te ao?” [From Te Aupōuri is a statement from Te Meri Ngāroto: “What is the greatest thing of the world?”] I want to add this into all of the contributions, particularly from this side of the Chamber.

What might we call this bill? My suggestion to the Minister of Conservation—and, please, me ’hakarongo mai koe [you should listen]—is the “(He Aha te Mea Nui o te Ao? Ko te Money me te Mining) Bill” [“(What is the Greatest Thing in the World? It is Money and Mining) Bill”]. Ehara ko te tangata.

[It is not people.]

With all seriousness, this particular bill—well, I don’t know if it’s this particular bill; it’s many bills—disconnects, dismantles, and causes great harm to our people, to our whānau, and to all the things that fly and crawl and swim. Minister, it’s going very badly for us, it’s going very poor for us, and, unfortunately, you’re leading that, Minister.

From Te Aupōuri, who, of course, were raised last night—you all know because Shane Jones and I share that wonderful whakapapa—I am drawn to stand and speak to this new title, which I really want you to consider seriously. He aha te mea nui o te ao?

[What is the greatest thing in the world?]

Money and mining. Kia ora tātou.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to clause 1, to change the title to “Authorisation to Kill Wildlife Amendment Bill”, be agreed to.

The question is that Arena Williams’ amendment to clause 1, inserting the words “to kill” after “authorisations” be agreed to.

I will report this bill with amendment.

House resumed.

Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment.

The question is that the report be adopted.

Report adopted.

This bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Third Reading