Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has twice offered to change the Conservation Amendment Bill in response to criticism.
Public outcry against the bill rose after maps published by environmental group Forest & Bird showed 60 percent of New Zealand’s conservation estate would technically be available for sale under the new law.
Critics asked the Government to amend the bill to limit sales to low- or no-value conservation land; in Parliament on Tuesday Luxon said he was “very happy” to make an alteration, but was speaking in the context of National Parks and high-value land, areas already off the table under the new bill.
Conservation Minister Tama Potaka’s week has been defined by the “bits and bobs” comments he made – at least a dozen times – in a select committee last week. He made the comments while fielding questions from opposition MPs about what areas of public conservation land his coalition Government was planning to sell or develop under the new Conservation Amendment Bill, which technically opens two thirds of the conservation estate to sale or exchange.
Potaka insists this is not the plan and asks for some trust, but his opponents don’t have much faith in the Government. Opposition MPs and environmental groups point to the coalition’s actions elsewhere – including changing the Department of Conservation’s mandate to develop its estate to the “greatest extent practicable” – as evidence of a wider push to monetise and develop the conservation estate.
According to Potaka and Luxon, the only areas targeted for sale are valueless “bits and bobs” like Belvedere Hall in Carterton, the borstal in Levin, some gravel pits in Selwyn and the MetService building in Wellington.
Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking asked Potaka why the Government wouldn’t simply reclassify these parcels as sellable and be done with it, rather than open the entire estate to development or sale. Potaka said the current system was too “clunky”.
As it happens, the Belvedere Hall is already up for sale under the current law, and the MetService building appears to be eligible for sale as well.
Shay Schlaepfer of the Environmental Defence Society says Luxon needs to explain why the current law needs to be replaced when it seems to allow for the types of sales he’s referred to.
Critics want the new bill – if it proceeds, which they prefer it doesn’t – to have specific provisions around what type of land can be sold, limiting sale to low- and no-value parcels.
Answering a line of questioning from Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson on Tuesday, Luxon offered a promise: National Parks and high-value land were off the table, and if anyone was still worried, “I’m very happy to make an alteration to make that clear to everybody involved”.
This is not far off what Davidson and other critics have been asking for. Despite Luxon’s claims that media coverage of the bill’s effects amounts to “scaremongering”, critics maintain that 60 percent of the conservation land is technically on the sale table, even if the Government swears it won’t sell it.
Luxon also told Parliament: “We’ll go through a select committee process and if there’s any way I can strengthen that or we can strengthen that to make it clearer, happy to do so.”
Later that afternoon, Davidson said a law change was what she’d been asking for. “If the Government members think that people and agencies are scaremongering, then they should rule it out, amend the law, and put them in a safe basket in the legislation,” she said.
Now, Davidson says if the Prime Minister has committed to proper protections, “he should go all the way”.
She says exempting a few categories doesn’t fix the underlying problems with the bill. As long as it rewrites the purpose statement of the Conservation Act to put economic development first, “conservation will always be at risk”. She wants to see the entire bill wound back and restarted.
So does Richard Capie, head of policy at Forest & Bird.
Capie thinks Luxon’s offer amounts to nothing, as National Parks and high-value conservation land – the context in which he made his remarks – were already off the table under the current bill. This is by virtue of being in Schedule 5 of the Conservation Act: a category unable to be sold even with the proposed amendments.
“All he’s done is restate what the Act currently says. If the Prime Minister and Government want to protect public conservation land then the Act needs to be withdrawn and fundamentally overhauled.”
Capie isn’t satisfied, and says the problem goes beyond potential land sales, with an overarching pivot towards economic development of conservation land. The new purpose of the Conservation Act would be to “enable economic use and development to the greatest extent practicable”: a mission assigned to the entire estate, including National Parks and high-value areas, even if they can’t be sold.
Capie and other critics aren’t sure exactly what the term “economic use and development” implies, but worry that any form of it imposed on New Zealand’s most valuable parcels of public conservation land would come at the cost of nature.
