Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister for Rural Affairs) Link to this
I move, That the Walking Access Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Local Government and Environment Committee, and that the committee report finally to the House on or before 31 July 2008.
The bill establishes a Walking Access Commission and defines its powers and functions. The need for such an organisation has been well established, from the public concern that has been expressed about the availability of public walking access to the outdoors, especially access around the coast, around lakes, and along rivers. The bill is one of the measures that this Government has initiated to reflect the importance of preserving in perpetuity access to, and enjoyment of, the great outdoors that is so important for our national identity.
We have already secured the public right of access over our beaches through the Foreshore and Seabed Act, and concerns about the impact of overseas purchases of rural land on outdoor recreational activities are dealt with in the new Overseas Investment Act. My colleague the Minister for Land Information has made significant changes in the implementation of the 10-year review process under the Crown Pastoral Land Act to ensure that the public interest in the iconic South Island high country is not compromised. This bill is part of that wider vision for the preservation of the heritage of all New Zealanders.
There has been a popular conception that there is a public reservation along water margins—known as the Queen’s Chain. Although there are many public reservations of this kind, they are by no means universal, and frequently their precise location is not well known or easy to locate. It has been estimated that water margin reservations around the coast may amount to perhaps 70 percent of the available coastline, and for rivers and lakes the reservations probably amount to about only 50 percent. In addition, the practical availability of much of this reserved land has been affected by erosion.
Of course, access over our beaches has already been secured, but access along the coast above the foreshore can still be an issue. In addition to concerns about public access along water margins there is also concern about public access to water margins and access to other public land such as national parks. One of the widely expressed concerns about access to the countryside has been the lack of clear and authoritative information about the location of existing access, especially water margin reservations and unformed legal roads. Although most of this information is in the records held by Land Information New Zealand, it is not readily available to the public in a form useful for walking access purposes. An important function of the commission will be to enable information useful for walking access to be made available to the public in a user-friendly form.
The bill implements recommendations made by the Walking Access Consultation Panel in its report to me of February 2007. The panel was set up following the Government’s decision in 2005 that it would not proceed with legislation providing for deemed water margin access. That proposal was strongly opposed by farming and other landowning interests, on the grounds that it interfered unjustifiably with property rights. The Government heard those concerns. In response, the panel was charged with finding a consensus among stakeholder groups on walking access issues. It consulted widely with stakeholder groups and the public about walking access to rural New Zealand. I acknowledge the hard work and expertise of members on the panel who considered various stakeholder interests. I was especially grateful for the work of the chair of the panel, John Acland. The panel was set a very difficult task—that is, to find a way forward in a highly complex area.
The one thing that can be learnt from any issue that polarises people is that there is usually wisdom on both sides. Walking access is one such issue. There is no easy answer. The public expects access to significant areas of the coast and to rivers, lakes, and other public land that is surrounded by private land, and landowners naturally expect to be able to decide for themselves who comes on to their property. The issue brings into focus two fundamental values that underpin our New Zealand character and lifestyle: access to our many natural recreational resources and having our very own piece of dirt. We have to work to solve any incompatibility between these two important values. There is need for a degree of public education on both relevant objectives. Such education would include imparting information about the incomplete and inconsistent nature of the Queen’s Chain, the lack of clarity about existing public access rights, and the need for standards of conduct when members of the public have been granted access to private land.
Among the issues identified by the panel, which this bill seeks to remedy, are the problems of access across country to and along water margins and other public land and the lack of authoritative and readily available information about the location of public access arrangements and voluntary access arrangements, which lack endurance and certainty.
The panel conducted a very open and lengthy consultation process. The key findings of the panel, which this bill reflects, were the need for an independent organisation to lead and coordinate walking access issues, the need for the provision of information about access, the need for the promotion of a code of responsible conduct, and that need for new access over private land that should be achieved either by existing statutory mechanisms or by negotiation and agreement with the landholders. The panel also found that the functions of the New Zealand Walkways Act 1990 should transfer from the Department of Conservation to the new organisation.
The Walking Access Bill reflects the recommendations of the panel and, in summary, it creates a new Crown entity, the New Zealand Walking Access Commission. The bill defines the functions of the commission and transfers responsibility for the creation of walkways and the overall supervision of existing walkways to the commission by amending the New Zealand Walkways Act 1990.
The bill does not go as far as some recreational interests propose. They wanted to confer on the commission a power to impose access across private land to public resources—such as for sporting and fishing—that do not have practical or convenient public access. The majority of the panel rejected this approach as it would have amounted to an unjustifiable interference with private property rights. I fully support the view of the majority of the panel on this point. On this particular issue I recall and commend the wonderful tradition in this country of rural landholders allowing and, in many instances, encouraging access to their land for recreational purposes on a purely voluntary basis. It is a tradition that should be encouraged, preserved, and, of course, respected. I also accept, however, that traditions and attitudes change and that this reality needs to be recognised and the consequences addressed. I believe that this bill will achieve a proper balance between the rights and aspirations of the public in terms of access to the countryside, the property rights of landowners, and the practical needs of farmers and other land users to carry out their business without undue hindrance.
This bill is a fairly short and focused bill and apart from the provisions relating to the proposed new agency it largely re-enacts the New Zealand Walkways Act 1990. I reiterate that the bill does not undermine private property rights. Public access to private land, including Māori land, remains subject to negotiation and agreement with landholders. For this reason alone I expect that the bill will receive favourable consideration by the committee. I note that the panel’s report received widespread public comment and was welcomed by many stakeholders, including parties in this House, Federated Farmers, and recreational groups. The New Zealand Walkways Act has had a long history, having been first enacted in 1975 with support from the farming community, local government, and recreational groups. In one sense this bill seeks to rebuild and renew the close links, relationships, and respect between stakeholders that was the foundation of the original legislation. The Government has also agreed that the monitoring department for the commission will be the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
This bill reflects the Government’s goal of national identity. It further demonstrates this Government’s commitment to rebuilding the connections between urban and rural New Zealand.
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) Link to this
For well over 100 years the rural landowners of this country have willingly provided public access over their land. The farmers throughout the country have enjoyed having their land utilised by recreationalists, but the Labour Government and Helen Clark, particularly, put all this cooperation at risk when 5 years ago they proposed to legislate over private property rights to deliver public access over private farmland.
That has been the history of this legislation.
The Walking Access Bill now comes back to the House in a very much watered-down fashion compared with the Labour Government’s original plans, and therefore the National Party will cautiously support it going to the Local Government and Environment Committee. I say “cautiously”, because immediately three things raise concern for me. The first is the creation of yet another level of bureaucracy to monitor something that I do not think needs to be fixed. I am staggered at the Minister’s announcement today that this legislation will not go to the Primary Production Committee. He concluded his speech by acknowledging that the legislation will be monitored by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, yet he has quite deliberately avoided sending it to the Primary Production Committee where, as most parliamentarians would agree, there is the expertise to examine this issue quickly.
Mark BlumskyI hear from my colleague Mark Blumsky that his select committee is very heavily worked, and in fact the Primary Production Committee has quite a lot of spare capacity. So the Minister might like to explain.
The second thing that concerns me is that the legislation sets out to fix a problem that has never existed. As I said earlier, for hundreds of years public access has been provided willingly, but 5 years ago Helen Clark, with the help of Mr Bryce Johnson, and certainly with the help of Gottlieb Braun-Elwert, proposed to put into legislation the ability of the public to march unfettered over privately owned rural land. There was outrage immediately from the farming sector, as one would expect, but the Labour Government was caught by surprise that many urban people also knew it was wrong and joined in supporting farmers, to the extent that prior to the last election Helen Clark backed down completely and set up a panel to examine the issue. After a long period of examination by a hard-working commission we now have this proposal before us today. So the Government backed down at the last election, but this was not before the Minister who was then in charge of this legislation, the Hon Jim Sutton, lost his seat of Aoraki over the issue. I guarantee that at the next election, soon to be held, the Minister now in charge of this legislation, the Hon Damien O’Connor, will also lose his ever-safe seat of West Coast - Tasman, because the farmers know that he has behaved appallingly over this issue.
As I said, it is ironic that the Walking Access Bill actually achieves what National members have said was always the solution to the public access debate, and that is around using the large amount of public access that is already available to our rivers, our lakes, and our coastline. In the very, very odd case where there is a difficulty around getting access to a coastline, a lake shore, or a river, then people should enter into negotiation with the private landowner and find a solution. From the very start of this debate in 2003, the National Party said to the Government that this was the solution. Finally, after years of commission hearings, submissions from people throughout the country, and expenditure in total of around half a million dollars, the Labour Government has licked its wounds and introduced to the House legislation that contains the very solution that National said was always the solution.
So we cautiously support the referral of this legislation to the select committee. We do want to see a serious investigation around issues such as whether this access negotiation is better handled with a national entity, or whether we can use the conservation boards. I assure the Minister that the message that will be received at the select committee is that these problems tend to be very, very localised. If the Minister had known his portfolio area, he would also know that because such problems are localised, they are better solved by local people having an input rather than a national body.
We look forward to the progression of the legislation to the select committee. I will attempt to see whether I can get some space to be on that committee and offer my considerable knowledge in this area. Mr O’Connor could have saved all that difficulty if he had referred the legislation to the Primary Production Committee, where he knows it would have received a very, very fair hearing by the very good members on the committee. Those members know the issue intimately, and certainly they do not have a heavy workload ahead of them.
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) Link to this
I am happy to stand and talk to the first reading of the Walking Access Bill, and, of course, the bill will be coming to the Local Government and Environment Committee. Speaking for Labour members on that committee, we are not afraid of a bit of hard work. Yes, we are a busy committee because we have a group of people who have exceptional expertise. I see Mr Blumsky sitting across the Chamber, and he joins us whenever we discuss local government issues. I am sure we would enjoy having Mr David Carter on the committee. He may not hold it in such high regard as he holds his own select committee—the Primary Production Committee—but I can assure him that we take this issue very seriously. The Local Government and Environment Committee is indeed an appropriate committee to be considering this issue. It is a busy committee, but Labour members are often the only members to turn up to every single meeting for the entire time. Speaking for those Labour members, I can say that we are very much looking forward to the select committee process and will be able to fit the bill into our work programme. We welcome any members from the Primary Production Committee who want to join us, as we do acknowledge the expertise that exists on that committee, too. As a former member of that committee I can vouch for that.
This is a very important bill that had a very long gestation before being introduced into the House. I acknowledge the work of the former Minister of Agriculture, the Hon Jim Sutton, and the work that he did. It certainly was an issue that he held very dear to his heart and he spoke of it in his valedictory. I thought that he spoke very eloquently about needing to remember some of the values and some of the principles that we hold very dear in New Zealand, and about how aligned those are with being able to access our waterways, whether that be the ocean, rivers, lakes, etc.
I endorse the comments of Minister O’Connor that many New Zealanders do not really appreciate the reality out there when it comes to the legal status of many of these waterside tracks and the access of them across private land. At present there is no public agency that is responsible for the provision of this information, whether it is to landowners or whether it is to members of the general public who want to access waterways. There is no one place that they can go to get this information. There may be some people out there who say that this is not an issue, but maybe they are not talking to the people who think it is an issue. Maybe the people who think it is an issue just are not coming to see them. I have had people come to see me—more often from the general public—who want to get to waterways, and who are concerned that more and more private land is blocking access to the foreshore, for example. That is not deliberate; it is just the fact that the private land is there and it is privately owned.
The general public are uncertain about what they need to do. They say that they go to see the private landowner but sometimes the landowners are absentee landlords, so the person who is in charge of running the farm or the lifestyle block does not know whether they can give permission to someone to cross that land, especially because they know that it may create a precedent. They know that that person may tell someone who tells all these other people, and all of a sudden we have a quasi-public walkway across private land, approved by someone who does not own that land. So one can understand the reticence of some of these station or farm managers to give that permission.
I think this is becoming more and more of an issue. I welcome a body that would be set up primarily to deal with this. Some people have suggested that maybe Land Information New Zealand could already carry this out, but it is primarily responsible for the maintenance of legal records about land ownership, not so much about public access across it. Land Information New Zealand produces topographical maps that people can look at but, again, it focuses on the physical characteristics of the land; it does not focus on the legal status of where any public walkways might be. We know there is an issue with the unformed legal roads; people can see them on a map. A lot of local authorities do not know what they are meant to do with them when people come to them and say: “I want to get access through this unformed legal road to the beach but there is something blocking the way.” Often councils do not feel that they necessarily have the tools to be able to deal with those issues, and this bill addresses that issue as well.
As the Minister pointed out, there is a popular belief in New Zealand that a Queen’s Chain exists around our coastline, around our lakes, and along our rivers. In reality that is not the case, not because there has been any concerted effort to stop people getting there but because over time the Queen’s Chain has been eroded—sometimes that is literally the case, sometimes erosion and accretion have meant that what was formerly the Queen’s Chain now is not really appropriate to be called so. Again I come back to the fact that we have no one agency, board, or whatever, that someone can go to, to get clarity on this. This is just as important for landowners as it is for the general public. I know that a lot of landowners have concerns about any liability they might come under if people are crossing their land—be it illegally or be it on the legal unformed roads—when they are not aware that those people are there, and when there are things being carried out on that land that are potentially dangerous for anyone who is not aware of them.
All those things require clarification, and I congratulate the Minister on bringing this bill to the House, because, as the speaker before me acknowledged, this has not been an easy issue. There has not been an easy pathway towards this legislation; it has been an exercise in finding a compromise and a way through. This Labour-led Government believed that this issue was important enough that we wanted to find a way through and we wanted to find a way to make it happen. Finally we got to a point where we acknowledged—and can I say the Labour-led Government acknowledged all along—that there is a lot of goodwill out there amongst landowners. There is an awful lot of goodwill amongst landowners to allow people access across their land. But we are kidding ourselves if we think that landownership in rural areas is not changing, because it is changing. We need to make sure that we are ahead of that change and that we take this issue firmly by the horns to create some kind of legal environment where landowners and the general public can know where to get advice, where the general public can know where they are entitled to cross land, and where councils can know what their legal rights are when it comes to legal unformed roads and what kind of things they can put in place.
I think that in terms of members of the general public in New Zealand who value our outdoors highly and want to be able to use it and enjoy it, this bill, going into the future, will be seen to be an incredibly important bill for the national identity of this country. We value our waterways, but, increasingly New Zealanders are finding that they are having less and less access to them—as I said, not for only one reason but for a number of reasons.
I welcome National supporting the bill to the select committee. I am a bit confused by the fact that its members say it was their idea all along, yet they are giving it only tentative support. I am not quite sure what that means. One would think that if it is what they wanted us to do all along, they would be endorsing it wholeheartedly. But I guess they are not quite sure—maybe from day to day—what their position will be on this bill. I welcome the input from all members across this House, particularly at the select committee. Obviously this is a bill that has been contentious in the past. I think we have made a very good compromise here.
I too would like to acknowledge the work that has been done in producing this bill—particularly Mr John Acland and his team for getting us to this point. This bill shows what kind of good legislation can come from working through a process, from working with all stakeholders, from keeping cool heads, and from not just picking a political advantage and going through and taking advantage of that in a cynical way. I look forward to the support of members in this House. As I said, the Local Government and Environment Committee will consider this bill very carefully—as we do all bills that come before us—and I commend the bill to the House.
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) Link to this
I am quite pleased to have an opportunity to make a few comments on the Walking Access Bill. I do not really want to claim a pedigree in this regard, but I am a property owner and I understand property rights. On my property I have both paper roads and marginal strips. I am also a hunter-gatherer, and a large part of my recreation is involved in doing that. I also spent some time on the first access panel with John Acland about 5 years ago. So I think I can make some sort of a contribution on this bill.
In my view, the bill is a bit of a curate’s egg; it is both good and bad. I think there are issues that need to be dealt with, and they have been becoming increasingly common in recent times as a number of issues have come up. I hope that members who have an interest in this topic will look at the history of New Zealand—it is unique in the world. We have enshrined, in a whole lot of ways, property rights, and that is the basis upon which business operates and we have to understand all of that. Yet in New Zealand we also have a public right, in terms of access for recreation, that is quite different from the situation in most other countries. A whole lot of riparian strips are not laid down; there are not the sorts of regulations that there are in other places. So New Zealand is quite distinct in the world.
The first attempt at providing for public access was made even prior to the Treaty of Waitangi. That fell over, and it was in 1841 when it happened. Another effort was made in the 1850s, and then Ballance in the 1890s again tidied the situation up. A range of things has occurred, and I think the comment has already been made in this debate that it is virtually impossible to find out very easily, where there is a marginal strip, whether that marginal strip is actually in the right place. There is a whole lot of reasons why people have certain expectations, both as property owners and as recreationalists. So there is a bit of interface about this situation and it needs to be tidied up. That is why National is supporting the bill; we recognised the issues that are there.
I just say that my major concern about this bill, which David Carter has already commented on, is the question of where it might lead us to, in terms of bureaucracy, with the establishment of a Walkways Commission. Yes, in this bill we are going to create a commission with a membership of five to eight members. But it certainly does not stop there. Brian Hayes, in determining what actually existed on some properties on the Banks Peninsula, found that per property it took up to 2 hours to determine that. The chairman of the access panel, John Acland, had lived for a number of years on the Rangitata River, believing it was a marginal strip on his property. He found out subsequently there was no marginal strip because when each one of the provisions was put in, if there was a fee simple freehold landholding before that happened, that access provision was not recognised. We have an absolute mixture in terms of what is out there, so it will be no simple thing to resolve.
I want to make a couple of comments about setting up the commission. I see Part 4 of the bill talks about enforcement officers. They are not numbered, we do not know what their role is—that is not specifically defined—
Nathan GuyHa, ha! Nor are there penalty provisions laid down in relation to what they may or may not do. Then there will be a whole raft of people out there doing up to 2 hours research per property in order to find out where the access is all going to go. This is just terrifying in terms of what it might all cost. It is just a great shame that we cannot rely on the goodwill of both parties to get through this issue. I think the comment has been made that the nature of their relationship is changing. Certainly our exclusive fisheries, our high country fisheries, are under more pressure than they ever have been under, so there is an opportunity to make money like never before by a bit of capture. That has occurred with a bit of pressure on those landholders to turn a dollar by just being a bit difficult about access. There is a whole range of issues out there.
It also worries me a little about this bill that designated walkways may become the only form of access. We have to be very, very careful that we do not destroy whatever fabric of goodwill is actually there. I also concur with David Carter when he said that when the word came out that the access panel was to look at “wander at will”, it was a way just to slap property owners in the face by saying: “We don’t trust what you are doing. We might just want to assume some rights that no one ever really wanted.” That is what raised the hackles. So we are not starting from a good point, in terms of the goodwill aspect. For example, we are going to put down designated walkways, which is a great opportunity. In my view there can be some trading between a paper road and what is an easement, in a place where it is suitable to the landholder and to the recreationalist. There are those opportunities to make some good progress there, but we need to protect the goodwill; that is an important point.
I think that structures exist now that could actually do that without setting up another commission, and the conservation boards would be one example of such a structure. I say that because it will be very important to have local knowledge in each area as to what the issues are. For example, on the Southland plains the local authority—and I do not know which authority it was—in 1890 went out and physically surveyed every single river. The only place where the marginal strip is beside the rivers now is where there is a bridge and the river has been contained. In some places on the Ōreti River, the marginal strip is up to 1½ kilometres away from where the river actually is. So there will be a distinct set of problems there. In terms of actually giving access, what would a commission—based somewhere in the country—know about the times and behaviour that are pertinent on farms? Lambing in Northland will be at a different time from lambing in Southland. So I think that the logical thing to do is to engage the great deal of knowledge that exists on the conservation boards that are already there.
The other thing is that I am pleased this bill is basically about walkways, because I think that the behaviour of motorcyclists and of some other four-wheel drive people has done a lot to damage the relationship that existed before, when people just walked. Now, every second person who is a recreationalist has a powerful cross-country machine in one form or another—a quad bike, motorbike, four-wheel drive from Japan, or whatever—which has damaged the relationship. So that is important. But, again, there is no mention in this bill of provisions for dogs and guns; in fact, it is mentioned that they are excluded. So, by omission, that might rule out any kind of negotiation with landholders and, again, that fabric of understanding between the participants is an important factor.
I could say a number of things, but I look forward to this bill going through the select committee process. I look forward to reading the submissions, and I look forward to making a contribution at various times, too. I think there are some common-sense answers we can adopt on this issue and, let me repeat again, we should look after those things that are enshrined and important in New Zealand: property rights and public rights, in terms of where they match together. I will support the bill to go to the select committee.
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) Link to this
New Zealand First will support the Walking Access Bill to go to the Local Government and Environment Committee, and we will be pleased to hear about the discussion that takes place at the select committee. I think it is absolutely essential that we have a Walking Access Commission—
I am not sure what that intervention meant. We think that this legislation is very important for the workability of walking tracks and access throughout the country. We cannot see that it can be done by any of the other agencies, because those agencies are not independent, and it is the independence of this commission that is the important thing. I personally hope that in the future this commission will have some power, will ensure that the decisions and the negotiations made on people’s behalf will have some ability to stick, and will go forward to answer all of those questions that have been raised, in the main, by National Party speakers.
In this country we have a changing environment as far as land ownership goes. My own brother, my dearly beloved brother, has a farm that encompassed 10 farms when I was young. It is all very well to talk about access and going to him, the local cocky, to ask “Can I go down to the lake at the back of your farm—or to the river or whatever?”. He is not at the farm most of the time; it is run by managers on various properties, and so on and so forth. The National Party, more than any other party in this Parliament, will understand that. Those managers in many cases do not have authority to grant access for people to come over the property, and in many cases they are unwilling to, because why should they shoulder some responsibility if they do not have to?
I will talk about a situation in Hamilton. In Hamilton we have a little peat lake called Lake Rotoroa. It was a lake of which only half of it could be accessed. There were parks around half of it, and the other half, to the lake itself, was land owned by people. Well, it was not actually owned right to the lake itself, in most cases. In a few cases it was, but in many cases owners owned land to the edge of the lake but not to the water. It was proposed, I think by Margaret Evans, the then Mayor of Hamilton, that there should be a walking boardwalk right around the lake. And there was hell to pay.
And proposed by the deputy mayor, indeed. Martin Gallagher was the deputy mayor, a very forward-looking deputy mayor, I must say, who went through fire and brimstone for the people of Hamilton, including myself, for which I am everlastingly grateful to him. Anyhow, there was hell to pay in Hamilton during those days, and I hope Martin Gallagher will talk about that to us. There was infringement of property rights, and barbed wire put up, if I remember. All sorts of things were put in the way. And to this day there is still a little bit where the council could not negotiate with one owner—I ask Mr Gallagher whether I am right—and that little boardwalk had to go out on the water around that person’s property and then go on.
Suffice to say, that is one of the most popular walking places in Hamilton City. I do not know of landowners suffering any harm to their properties; I do not know of any trespass by people. There might have been some, but by and large the boardwalk has worked very, very well and to the advancement of Hamilton City and its environs.
I think that that is where we are going with this bill into the future. We in New Zealand must preserve one thing above all else in this country, and that thing is not even money. We have never been the highest-salaried country in the world, we have never been the richest citizens in the world, and we have never been able to keep all of the people in New Zealand. If someone wanted to be a rocket scientist, it would not be much use that person trying to find work in Hamilton. But what we have, and what we must retain for evermore, is a lifestyle—a lifestyle that is the envy of the world. We must retain that at all costs, and I believe that this bill goes some way towards ensuring that.
It is no use saying that things are the same as they were 30 years ago, or even 20, or 10 years ago. More and more people are concentrating in the cities, and farms are becoming bigger and more remotely controlled, if I can put it that way. But everybody knows the benefits of taking a walk. In many cases they are not even fishing or hunting; people just want to get out and exercise, walk, and enjoy their country. I believe they should be able to do that in the safety of knowing they are not doing it at the grace and favour of a landowner such as we have read about in the old country from where many of us came.
Nobody in this country should be doing things at the grace and favour of another, and I will fight to my dying day to ensure that that does not happen. So we need walkways. We need walkways that are marked on the map, and we need walkways that are marked physically. We need walkways that have conditions and rules around them, so that farmers are not under any obligation as to trespass, liability, or any of those things. We need those things set out clearly so that farmers know where people are supposed to be and where they are not.
We also, in my view, need to pay farmers some sort of small recompense for the very fact that these paths may go across their land, because one of the other things I believe in is that we should not be asking private individuals to pay for public good. We cannot have people out there wrecking fences and making nuisances of themselves, and this is one way to ensure that the interests of those in the city who want to access our beautiful countryside are not impinged upon and that there are no arguments with those who hold property rights and, in many cases, have paid excessive prices to be able to farm the land.
I know that this can be accomplished, but it cannot be accomplished by having an add-on to some other department. I think some long-sighted people have been looking into this and I commend the Labour Government most highly for not going any further with this bill. It has set up a commission and it is now up to the commission to negotiate and to see how these things can be done. And they will be done, district by district, around the country. I think that in this way many of the things that have been pointed out as being weaknesses will be in fact the strengths of this bill. The process should evolve over time. It should go slowly at first. It should encourage landowners to participate and it will give them some sort of comfort, if not a guarantee, that they will not be put out by this move with regard to either their farming operations or their property right.
All of these things can be done. I look forward to the wonderful day when we can roam across dedicated paths around this country, keep ourselves in trim, and enjoy the benefits that this beautiful country provides. We look forward to seeing this bill come out of the select committee, and to voting for it in the future.
METIRIA TUREI (Green) Link to this
The Green Party agrees with some aspects of this Walking Access Bill. It is good to have a code of conduct, to have a focus on building relationships, and to have financial support for signage. That is all good stuff. What we are most concerned about is that in this bill Labour has significantly weakened on its promise to restore what New Zealanders generally think of as the Queen’s Chain. This is a major backtrack by Labour on its election promises, and it has been done with another strange little coalition between National and Labour.
The Greens were very disappointed with the report the Minister referred to when it first came out. The purpose of that report was to address how New Zealanders might have walking access to the great outdoors—access that is free, certain, enduring, and practical. We agree that negotiations are always best and always the thing one does first, but the problem that the report was supposed to address, and that this bill was supposed to address, was that negotiations are not always effective. They do not always work, and when that happens, we need to have some way of making some progress. Unfortunately, the majority of the report gave no direction for what to do where progress could not be made and negotiations had failed, and, classically, this bill fails to provide any direction in that regard as well. Basically, this is a Labour “Do Nothing, Spend Lots Bill”. It creates a toothless bureaucracy. It can do nothing when the very real issue of unreasonable restrictions on access arise. This bill is classic Labour, classic National. We already have an example of the miserable public outcomes from the high country tenure review. That process shows very clearly how easily Government agencies will trade off public and ecological benefits for quick, yet useless, solutions that benefit the landowner and tend to short-change the public.
I was pretty disgusted to hear the Foreshore and Seabed Act being mentioned in the opening remarks on this legislation. The Foreshore and Seabed Act was where the legitimate customary rights held by hapū, whānau, and iwi were destroyed by this Government—destroyed over the fallacy of securing public access to the foreshore and seabed. In fact, that legislation was specifically designed to strip Māori of their right to go to court to have their land rights identified and their right to their customary ownership because of the commercial interests of both the Government and private companies in the exploitation of the foreshore and seabed. We need only to see how many applications for exploration of the seabed and foreshore happened immediately after that legislation was passed to know that. So how grotesque it is, then, for us to have to sit here and listen to the Minister defending the property rights of a few—and only a few—intransigent, unreasonable farmers who refuse to provide rational and reasonable public access to public land, when the Minister’s Government, just a few short years ago, refused to protect the customary rights of hapū and whānau, using the fallacy of public access as the excuse. It is a grotesque example to be made in these circumstances.
The Greens continue to be shocked to see National and Labour colluding to keep New Zealanders from having the free and reasonable access to the conservation and public land that they are entitled to—to New Zealand’s public land. There is a significant waste of resources here. The money spent on this bureaucracy could well be spent—and better spent, in our view—on purchasing areas for access where landowners become unreasonable. At least then the money would actually do something. It would achieve something, because the commission will not be able to achieve anything. As I say, we should negotiate first, but there has to be a system for arbitration in order to enable public access. This is public land; the public have a right to access it.
Even the offence provisions set up in the bill favour landowners and farmers over members of the public. Obstructing a walkway is what is called a mens rea offence. It requires someone to have knowledge, intent, or recklessness to do it in order for that person potentially to be convicted of it. But the public offences—where members of the public are on such land—are all strict liability offences, and it does not matter whether a person intended to cause harm or made a mistake. If a person did it, then he or she could be held liable for it. Essentially, that means that the burden of the offence provisions of the criminal law, if you like, are placed on members of the public, but not on the landowner. Again, it comes down to the Government defending the rights of private property owners—and it is only a few private property owners—over the rights of the public. Why has Labour promoted a bill that places such a burden fully on members of the public? This bill is supposed to be about securing the public’s rights. This is not a compromise. The public bear the burden and get very little benefit.
One of the other issues is around transferring the legislation and responsibilities, if you like, of the New Zealand Walkways Act to the commission from the Department of Conservation. We acknowledge that the department and the New Zealand Conservation Authority have done a somewhat mediocre job of looking after walkways, and the department acknowledges this, apparently, by wanting to shed the responsibility for walkways to this new commission, despite the provision of recreational tracks and huts being one of the department’s core mandates. There is little evidence of that situation improving, but I must admit that this is possibly because of the department’s current funding crisis where, despite having more and more land to manage, it is faced with having to shave $8 million off its expenditure because this Government has continually underfunded our primary Government agency for protecting conservation land, public land, and the public rights to it. The transferral of the New Zealand Walkways Act provisions to a new Crown entity, this new commission, simply distracts from the core issue that arises here—that is, finding solutions to local public access issues.
The bill is classic Labour and National “greenwash”. By creating a commission with no teeth and no power to protect the public’s rights, they are engaged in a ridiculous waste of money, especially at a time when the Department of Conservation is shedding crucial staff because of a major funding shortage. In fact, the department loses its responsibility around walkways, and the whole issue of the commission comes under the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The ministry is an advocate for the farming community, not for public access. It is not an advocate for the public interest. That is the role of the Department of Conservation. Yet the whole responsibility for the commission, which is supposed to be protecting public rights, is going to an organisation whose job is to advocate for the farming community. Labour and National have this fabulous grand coalition, which is designed to lock out the public and protect some farmers, so I guess that it must be election year.
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) Link to this
Tēnā koe. Kia ora tātou e te Whare, i tēnei pō. It should be no surprise that the Māori Party takes an active interest in any legislative change proposed around the concept of safe, unimpeded walking access to the outdoors—to our coasts, our lakes, and our rivers. We do so driven by the knowledge that the Crown, as a Treaty partner, has an obligation to actively protect the interests of Māori in land. This is a historic partnership relationship that is unique and involves the Crown and its agents giving full recognition to the Crown’s duty of active protection. We note that the Federation of Māori Authorities articulated that view clearly in its submission on the Government’s outdoor walking access consultation document: “Article two of the Treaty granted ‘te tino rangatiratanga … o ratou whenua o ratou kainga me o ratou taonga katoa’, or the ‘full and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates fisheries and other properties’. This article therefore guarantees Maori the right to determine access to their land.”
So when the Hon Parekura Horomia, the current Minister of Māori Affairs, announced in March 2007 that: “Maori land was special and it was important to note that the proposals would not threaten the existing rights of owners of Maori land, or individual Maori who hold land in general title.”, we were pleased—if a little cautious. It seemed as though, in direct contrast to the Foreshore and Seabed Act, Māori landowners were to be afforded protections alongside private owners. Mr Horomia went on to say that public walking tracks across Māori land will be created only if Māori landowners agree and follow a process of negotiation. So that was pretty pleasing.
Clause 30 of the bill deals specifically with Māori freehold land. It requires that the New Zealand Walking Access Commission negotiate with the appropriate landowners, whether they are trustees, a Māori corporation, a sole owner, joint tenants, or owners in common. There are two key words here: “agree” and “negotiate”. Let us remember that Mr Horomia had said that public walking tracks across Māori land will be created only if Māori landowners agree. That was spelt out with unmistakable clarity again by the Federation of Māori Authorities when it said: “The Federation wishes to make it clear that we oppose land access across Maori land and general land owned by Maori including the extension of the Queens chain to the coastline and waterways on Maori land or general land owned by Maori without negotiation and agreement from the landowners concerned.” The federation concluded its submission by reinforcing the view that “access should be negotiated and agreed upon by owners or managers and that the access is only for recreational purposes.”
The catch for us is that we do not see very much evidence of the word “agree” in the bill, until we get to the references related to public access over private land. The bill proposes that “Public access should be enhanced where private land is involved through voluntary negotiation and agreement with landholders.”
A key point raised in the consultation was the proposal that iwi or hapū should be empowered to authorise rights of access. The hapū or iwi will protect its own rights and hold those rights, and they must be made clear in any guidance to the public. I return again to the Minister of Māori Affairs’ words: “public walking tracks across Maori land will be created only if Maori landowners agree.” In order that the House understands just how strongly tangata whenua, the people of the land, feel about this issue, let me share two further comments from the submissions: “It is most important that this principle be carried over in relation to any public access to our waterways. Any legislative access without our consent would cause massive damage to our relationship and we cannot imagine that the Crown would contemplate such a course.” The following comment reminds us of some history. “I suspect and hope that the authoritarian socialist confiscatory approach is no longer acceptable to New Zealanders. When carried out against Maori land in the 19th century this caused grievances which still persist and show little signs of going away.”
TE URUROA FLAVELL Link to this
I hope not.
The word “consent”, of course, implies that which is freely given and not coerced. But the bill’s purpose to open up all lands for public access raises the very real and serious concern that, once again, a Government’s plan will be pursued in such a way as to obliterate any opposition. We have been there before, as my bill to amend the Public Works Act reminds us. We are also extremely concerned about any proposal to amend the Resource Management Act to establish esplanade strips over Māori land or general land held by Māori. Unmanaged strips and esplanades may increase pests and diseases, and may consequently create additional costs and concerns for Māori landowners.
Māori landowners have never denied access to the public without good cause. I say that again, because, as was raised by Metiria Turei, this was a cause of great concern in the past. Māori landowners have never denied access to the public without good concern. That was at the hub of the issue around the foreshore and seabed legislation. The hysteria that was whipped up around access to the foreshore and seabed presupposed the existence of a mythical time in which Māori were denying Pākehā access to the beaches. The reality, of course, was quite different from that.
If there have been prohibitions on access to areas for any New Zealanders, it has actually been because mana whenua will have had good cause or good reason to prohibit access. That good reason may be the result of access having been abused in the past or of concerns over safety or the protection of the environment. There may well have been cultural reasons for the protection of taonga, wāhi tapu, wāhi tūpuna, urupā, pā, marae, and papakāinga sites. Those sites are of cultural significance for Māori as part of our heritage, ngā taonga tuku iho. The sites are associated with important events that give meaning to our status as whānau, hapū, and iwi, and they are literally windows to the past. Access may have been prohibited in keeping with the kaitiaki roles of tangata whenua to be custodians, protectors, and guardians of the taonga associated with our area. The practice of rāhui to conserve or replenish a resource will be relevant here. When a rāhui is placed upon an area, it means that people are effectively banned from taking or using any resource in that area. Those are the things that tangata whenua take into consideration when considering the issues of access.
One of the concepts we support in this bill is the development of a code of responsible conduct for users and landholders. Most of the submitters to the outdoor walking access panel agreed that a code of responsible conduct should apply to both public and private land. The code of conduct should address issues specific to Māori land, including provisions relating to respect for sacred land and compliance with local rāhui. It should give a standard to provide guidance to people, and also to return to as a basis for clarification if the code is breached in any access situation.
The key to the successful implementation of the bill will be the way in which communication opportunities are taken up. There is inevitably, and this has already been mentioned, the concern that the proposed commission will compel Māori landowners to negotiate access, despite any opposition that may be raised to that. The Māori Party also has concerns about the negotiation of walking access over land subject to Treaty claims. What say will mana whenua have over those lands, and what provisions will be made for that communication to take place?
The bill establishes the commission as a Crown entity with the status of a Crown agent. The commission will be responsible for declaring and administering walkways, and for encouraging and coordinating the improvement of walking access. The bill recommends that at least one of the five to eight board members of the commission is to have knowledge of tikanga Māori. On the current walking advisory board, Peter Brown is affiliated with Tūranganui a Kiwa, Ngāti Porou, Te Arawa, and Tūwharetoa. The difficulty, of course, with having one Māori member on the commission is that enormous expectations are always placed upon his or her shoulders in terms of being able to carry the aspirations of whānau, hapū, and iwi into all decision-making matters. It is also very easy to be marginalised. It is obviously helpful, therefore, that the views expressed in the submissions, such as the one from the Federation of Māori Authorities, are able to be accessed in order to gauge views widely held in the Māori community, as well as by a majority of the Māori landowners within the federation’s membership.
In order to assist the process for Māori to be heard, we will allow this bill to go to the select committee so that we receive feedback on some of the outstanding and persistent concerns about Māori land. Those concerns are about issues such as what is to happen in the case of the 16,000 unmanaged titles—Māori land with no legal management structure in place—or how Māori economic development, such as tourism ventures, will be affected by public access. There is one word that we say that might sum up our reaction to this bill, and that is “caution”. We look forward to the debate on the bill. Kia ora tātou.
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) Link to this
United Future is pleased to support the Walking Access Bill to select committee, and we are very grateful to the walking access panel for the work its members have done in preparing the report that has led to this bill. United Future can take some satisfaction out of the process, as we lobbied very hard for Mr Bryce Johnson from the New Zealand Fish and Game Council to be included on the panel as a representative of the recreational community. We support many of the comments that he made in his minority report.
There are some very positive aspects to this bill. We are pleased to see the issue of public access finally addressed. A lot of misinformation and antagonism exists surrounding the rights of the public to access public resources versus the property rights of landowners. An important feature of the bill is that the New Zealand Walking Access Commission is established. This will be a Crown entity with the status of a Crown agent under the Crown Entities Act 2004. This will allow it to report directly to Parliament, as well as being subject to the Official Information Act.
We are pleased to see a provision included for the development of a code of responsible conduct. United Future proposed the development of the code in its submission to the panel, and also proposed the establishment of the Walking Access Commission. We are glad that this code will focus on standards of behaviours for both users of walking access areas and for landowners. Throughout this whole process, it has become clear to us that many disputes between landowners and those who wish to walk over private land to access public resources or public land arise because of a lack of information and guidelines. We believe a code of responsible conduct will go some way to mitigating this.
It is also positive that stated in the purpose of the bill is that it is to provide access to public resources. However, there seems to be no definition of what public resources are. One assumes that the definition is the same as is found in chapter 6 of the panel’s report, where public land and public resources are both defined. The bill’s purpose does not mention access to public land, and in our view public resources and public land are two very different things; both demand inclusion, but a clear distinction needs to be made between them.
There are some things in the bill that concern us. We are concerned that the New Zealand Walking Access Commission to be established by the legislation is, as the Green member previously mentioned, basically toothless. Although it can negotiate with landowners to acquire an easement or lease over the land for use as a walkway, it has no formal power to actually resolve any disputes over access, which is particularly important when negotiating over private land in order to gain access to a public resource, such as a lake or river. We envisage that for 90 percent of cases, this will not be a problem. The commission will effectively be able to negotiate access across private land with the least bit of hassle to landowners. However, in the few cases where access is difficult to negotiate, the commission has no formal power to resolve the dispute and provide public access to a public resource by way of a walkway or through enforcing access by way of an unformed legal road.
The regulatory impact statement within the explanatory note for the bill states that “Changes in land ownership and accompanying changes in landowner attitude have meant that there has been a trend away from the tradition of landowners permitting or tolerating public access across their land. There is a concern that this trend will continue and result in long-term deterioration in recreational access opportunities.” It is difficult to understand this aspect of the bill, because the intention is there to resolve the issue surrounding the public’s right of access. However, the commission that this bill sets up has no powers to actually do this. The whole bill is built around new access being implemented by negotiation and agreement, rather than access actually being resolved.
Another disappointing aspect to this bill is the lack of urgency given to securing better, more accessible mapping information to the public and to landowners about the location and scope of public walking access. United Future sees this as a fundamental flaw in the present system. It is very difficult for people to get geographical information linking legal information, land ownership, and unformed legal roads with topographical maps and aerial photography. In our opinion, this should be the first and most important step in the whole process. Providing people with better information is crucial to resolving disputes over access and it may also prevent many misunderstandings over certain access issues, especially across private land.
It is very curious that included in this legislation is such a large section on the establishment of walkways across public land, which is a topic barely touched on by the walking access panel. We ask whether the establishment of such walkways downgrades the public’s right to use unformed legal roads. Presently, public land has few restrictions. However, walkways administered by local government under the Walkways Act are much more restrictive. For example, there are no vehicles, guns, or dogs permitted along those walkways—all of which are the equipment of fishermen, hunters, and trampers at some time. The fact that there is an inflexible provision with the Walkways Act is of concern to us. We understand the worries that that can provide if it is allowed in a free and unfettered way, but we are concerned that that is a very tight provision. The establishment of walkways over public land administered by regional and local councils could serve to displace unformed legal roads as a legal entity. Under the Walkways Act, a regional council can apply to stop a legal road by selling it and de-gazetting it, which means that this legislation may well succeed in stymying public access rather than enhancing it.
Finally, the bill sets out that after 10 years the Minister will consult with the Walking Access Commission and review the legislation. This will cover whether it is still needed, what amendments might be necessary, and also a review of its effectiveness and the operation of the commission. United Future supports the reason for a review, but we are concerned that 10 years is too long to wait. Surely any problems in the implementation of this legislation will be clear after a much shorter time—perhaps 5 years. We are worried that a 10-year wait will possibly allow a flawed process ample time to become entrenched and thus very hard to accurately review and amend. This is a point that is crucial for the select committee to consider.
United Future will support this bill to select committee, but we believe the committee will have its work cut out to amend the bill sufficiently to protect and, indeed, enhance the public’s right to access. We are happy to support this first reading.
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) Link to this
It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to talk to the Walking Access Bill. I take the opportunity in this short call to address the second Labour speaker’s comment about why National is supporting this bill but supporting it with caution. One only has to go back to 2002 and see the absolute reckless shambles that Labour made of the first attempt to force right-to-roam legislation through this Parliament. It would be naive of us to forget the animosity that was whipped up by trying to impose that.
I just point out to the Labour members on the other side of the House that the general public does not trust them. It was very interesting to see that. When we got to a situation where there was an issue over it, I could drive the full length of my electorate and see every gate tied with an orange ribbon. That was because of the Government’s mentality that one size fitted all, and it was going to impose a right to roam over the freehold property rights of New Zealand people. It was also very interesting that at the time there was quite a reaction amongst average Kiwis that it was not the way to go.
The member for Waimakariri should remember that that was not the way to go. In actual fact, those people who lived along the waterway called the Avon River were likewise wound up, got very angry, and sent a very clear signal through to the Government. We had the gates tied in 2004 and 2005. We have subsequently had a back-down by the Labour Government because it could not make a way forward in that direction. What we will find, and what we must be very aware of when we get to the select committee with this bill, is that the public will be very, very sceptical indeed. I feel that it is my responsibility to alert my constituents to the risks that could potentially exist in this bill.
One of the things that has happened since pastoral farming has become very, very difficult to make pay is that a number of farmers have actually developed their own walkways and businesses. One of those people is Kevin Loe, out at Ward, who has developed a wonderful 3-day walkway out along the coast there. It is helping to keep him and his family on the land. I just hope, as we go through this process, that when this potential Trojan Horse bill is sent to the select committee it is examined thoroughly, and that the Local Government and Environment Committee actually gives it the due consideration it deserves.
This is a very, very serious matter. We have had the Labour Party here trying to say that it has sorted its way through this matter in a very, very amicable way. We have United Future there saying that access will be greater. We have the Greens thinking that they will have the right to roam and to go everywhere. It will not be as simple as that. We have to separate out the rhetoric and get down to the substance, because after 10 years, when we have the Minister reporting back to Parliament about what needs to be done, we can just imagine the massive bureaucracy that will be involved. This bill will be just another one.
We should always remember that whilst it may be difficult it is still the Kiwi way to seek permission. We should also remember the original issues when Labour tried to bring to the House its bill for a right to roam. We have hunting, fire potential, lambing, calving, forestry, and a whole lot of rural activities going on. More often than not—I say to my learned friend over there, Doug Woolerton—it is not about wandering over dairy farms where they have electric fences; it is about wandering over pastoral land where there are some beautiful vistas. We appreciate that those areas are very, very significant and important.
I just want to leave the House with a final thought: we should not forget about the bad blood that the Government created around its intention of a right to roam. The Local Government and Environment Committee should be very aware that it will have to do its work thoroughly. It is an affront to the committee to where this bill rightfully should have gone: the Primary Production Committee. I invite everybody who is interested and who is going to be involved, to put forward their submissions. Let us get this bill right. It is only a shell and a framework, and it is a long, long way from what is doable.
MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) Link to this
It is with immense pleasure that I rise to speak with regard to the first reading of the Walking Access Bill. Unlike the Opposition speakers, who, as the saying goes, look in their glasses and find them half empty, like my good friend Doug Woolerton and other speakers also from this side of the House, I see this bill as a glass that is not just full but is brimming over with potential. I do not think we should underestimate the historic significance of the bill we are debating in the Chamber today. I do not think we should do that at all. When we reflect back on history, we will reflect back on an Opposition that was mischievous, opportunist, and very slippery. We know that there is a huge difference between the notion of a right to roam anywhere versus a right of negotiated access for future generations of our country.
Charles ChauvelIndeed, as my good colleague Charles Chauvel said, Rome was certainly not built in a day. The previous speaker said “10 years this” or “10 years that”. Well, obviously, the immediate question is what National’s record was when it was in Government in the 1990s. Having said that, I will not waste any more time on the negative, glass-half-empty aspects of the contributions of some members of the Opposition. Some of the contributions were OK. In that regard, I have had very interesting and good debates and discussions with people like Eric Roy, who I acknowledge has in the whole process made some constructive contributions.
I will focus on some of the really positive aspects of the bill. Indeed, it is part of a wonderful plan for the future for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, to ensure that the thing that is special and precious about New Zealand—our great outdoors—can be enjoyed. It is part of the Government’s plan—and should be part of our plan as a country—to reflect the importance of preserving in perpetuity access to and enjoyment of the great outdoors, which is so important to our national identity. This bill is about preserving our national heritage.
Doug Woolerton gave a very, very good address. I thank him for the very nice comments he made about me when I was deputy mayor of Hamilton. I praise Doug Woolerton too. He gave a very good example. Even in the urban area—albeit it was a Hamilton City Council matter—there were two issues. One was in regard to the Awatere Avenue section of the Waikato River walkway and the other was in regard to the Lake Rotoroa section of the walkway, which completed it. In both cases, those walkways met with strong opposition from property owners. I remember with great affection and fondness—and Doug will know him—our councillor Ted Armstrong.
Does the member remember when someone had illegally put up a fence right down to the river edge? Good old Ted as a councillor took the old snippers and cut. Dare I say it, he cut the fence. I think, frankly, he made a very valid point. We talk about the protection of private property rights, but this situation was where a private property owner was taking over, usurping public access rights, and going on to public land. Ted made a stand. From that, we now have the completed section of the Awatere Avenue section of the river walkway, which was negotiated in the end by a bit of give and take between property owners. We also have the completion of the Lake Rotoroa section of the walkway. These are urban examples. Did those walkways have a dramatic negative impact on the property values of those surrounding properties? Absolutely not; it was quite the opposite. That was an issue when a council, by negotiation, avoided landing in the courts, if you like, and preserved and enhanced land. Again, it is for future generations to enjoy.
What is really good about this bill—and I have listened very closely to some of the comments by Metiria Turei, in terms of her contributions; I do not quite agree with her perspectives, I have to say—is that it achieves a proper balance between the rights and aspirations of the public, in terms of access to the countryside, the property rights of landowners, and the practical needs of farmers and other land users to carry out their businesses without undue hindrance.
I also pay a huge tribute—certainly on behalf of my Waikato Labour colleagues—to our rural community and to people like Bill Garland. We have had some very positive input also from members of Federated Farmers. Certainly, there have been some reservations previously, but we have some wonderful examples of farmers who allow reasonable access and want to see a process of negotiation. I also pay a big tribute to John Acland of the Land Access Ministerial Reference Group, who went around the country and came to Hamilton. I went to the meeting in Hamilton the other year and I was very impressed with the measured and mannered way in which he conducted that particular exercise, and very depressed at certain forces affiliated with the National Party who tried to hijack the issue and use it for blatantly political opportunist ends and blatantly to sow fear and misinformation.
In the end, this issue is about the right of our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to enjoy their heritage, but it is also about the way New Zealand does it, and that is by negotiations amongst fellow Kiwis to get a fair and reasonable outcome. Representing as I do the Waikato region, I want to ensure that landowners are protected and that there is proper indemnity, etc.
There is one thing I want to focus on in the time I have left. I think that the select committee process will be a real opportunity to get into the detail of the bill and to improve it by amending it where need be. One of the things I am very enthusiastic about in terms of a Walking Access Commission is that it will have a strategic and policy focus that will look at, if you like, the patchwork quilt of the many walkways around our country and at walking access issues, and, hopefully, it will take a strategic future view, because, for example, north of Lake Taupō there are significant population pressures. Within 50 years there will be significant population increases in the Auckland, Waikato, and Bay of Plenty regions. There will be more and more pressure to have reasonable access to countryside, waterways, and lakes, etc. Rather than wait for that pressure to build up and up in the years to come, the Walking Access Commission will work with local government, the Department of Conservation, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, etc, and look at some sort of “greenprint” for the future to ensure that we can get a win-win situation.
I believe that the roles of the proposed agency will be very important. It will coordinate and involve the key stakeholders, including local and central government agencies, help local groups with access issues, and indeed be responsible for the mediation—I stress “mediation”—of disputes over access issues. A code of conduct will be introduced, and it will build up a mapping database and develop a broad national access strategy. Those are very important tasks for this new agency. Also, there is the contestable fund in terms of funding, and that is also very important.
Finally, we have had the debate here today, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed with some of the negative contributions I have heard in the House, with the exception of the honourable Doug Woolerton, and other members on this side, such as Judy Turner. I acknowledge her contribution. I envy the Local Government and Environment Committee, because its members will roll up their sleeves, hear submissions on the bill, and get into the minute detail of the bill. Believe you me, when the history books are written, this legislation will be of profound importance and significance to our great country.
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) Link to this
I stand on behalf of ACT New Zealand to speak in the first reading debate on the Walking Access Bill. I intend to take a fairly short call, because the issues around this bill are very simple. There has been some talk of complexity, but I think the matter is very simple. It can be summed up in two words: property rights. ACT will be opposing this bill for that very reason. We heard from the National Party speaker Colin King that it is the Kiwi way to seek permission, and that is absolutely correct.
Mr Woolerton has been very vocal in this debate, chipping in here and there, and sitting beside his new-found friend in the Labour Party, whose only chance of sitting in a front-bench seat is today. Neither of them is standing up and having his say. But, anyway, we are here to talk about property rights, which are much more important than the opinions of Mr Clayton Cosgrove.
It is the Kiwi way to seek permission. This society is founded on the basis of property rights. People own property, and they have the ability to do what they like with that property, and, by and large, people take very good care of their own property—better care in fact than they take of anybody else’s.
I grew up in a small rural community in Otago, the township of Palmerston, where my parents still live. They have a small 10-acre block that sits at the base of the hill that people see as they come into Palmerston both from north and south. It is called Puketapu Hill. On top is a monument to Sir John McKenzie, who was responsible for the divvying up of large property rights so that locals were all able to afford a much smaller landholding but become owners of property themselves. Every day during the war the local constable, Constable Kelly, used to run up to the top of Puketapu Hill and look out from the monument to see whether any warships were coming. Fortunately, they never did, but that was a daily routine. Now, once a year at Labour weekend, there is a race up Puketapu Hill. People can get up and down within 20 minutes.
My parents have a small 10-acre block that sits at the base of that hill. Running to the top and down is a popular thing to do not just at Labour weekend. People frequently climb to the top of Puketapu to get a very good view of the local area. I used to do that all the time as a child, and I now enjoy taking my children up when we visit my parents.
I know; I was saying thank you very much. People frequently knock on my parents’ door at home and ask whether they can wander through their property so that they can climb that hill. We always say yes, as most farmers do when they are asked, and my colleague from the Māori Party said that Māori very rarely refuse people access to Māori land when permission is sought. We always said yes when people came and knocked on the door. We would ask them, of course, to be wary of any stock that happened to be in the paddocks they would be going through, and we would ask them to leave open the gates that were open, and close behind them gates that were already closed. We would also give them directions as to the best way up to the top. There was a very steep route and a much more gentle one, and we would point those out to people. That is the Kiwi way. We were property owners. We welcomed people on to our property, as did the owner of Puketapu, and people were given very good instructions about the best way to go, and I would contend that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Mr Martin Gallagher said in his speech that this issue is about the financial value of property, and the fact that people worry that if they have walking tracks through their properties, they lose value. He has completely missed the point. The whole point of this bill is property rights. Those members on the other side of the House have a different view. They include Mr Woolerton, who now sits with his Labour Party colleagues, who had a very different view of these issues when he was in the National Party. He would be standing on this side of the House and vigorously opposing this legislation if he were still a member of the National Party.
This issue is about property rights. It is about the fact that people have the ability to own property and they have the say over what happens on that property and who goes on to it. The people on the other side of the House think that private property belongs to everybody and that everybody should have access no matter what they want to do with it. They think that everybody should have to share. I have news for those members. People are very genuine and very good-natured about the fact that they will allow people to go across their land as long as due respect is paid to that land and to the stock or the crops that are on it. That is the Kiwi way.
I am pleased to see that ACT members are not alone. All too often we are alone in this Parliament when we oppose bills, but we are not alone this time. The Green Party is also opposing this bill. We have heard very little about that from the other side of the House. Green members made some very pertinent points as well about this legislation. It sees the development of a commission, which, they pointed out, will be a complete waste of money, and I could not agree more. If we had the Regulatory Responsibility Bill in place now—ACT’s bill—then certain questions would have to be asked about this bill. What will it achieve? How much will it cost? What will the cost of this commission be? Have we heard any talk at all today, apart from the Green Party’s, about the cost of this commission that will be put in place? No.
What will the commission achieve? The Green Party said that it will be a bureaucratic monster with absolutely no teeth. I have to agree with that, and, actually, thank goodness for that. There is no need for this bill, which is why the ACT party is opposing it. If ACT’s bill, the Regulatory Responsibility Bill, had been passed, those questions would have to be asked and answered. If it could not be proven that it achieved anything, or that it was value for money, the bill would not be able to proceed, and that would be right and proper in this House today. But only two parties in this Parliament are prepared to say so in this election year. The other parties think that this bill is a good idea—that everybody who wants to should have the right to roam through land and that people should not have to seek permission from anybody to do so.
I am proud to stand here today beside my Green Party colleagues, because they are doing the right thing for the right reasons. ACT is opposing this bill because, as I said at the outset, this issue is a very simple one—it is about property rights. People have significant property rights and they should be adhered to. People should have to ask permission of the landowner before they wander across land, and in most instances the landowner will give it as long as people treat that land with respect. That is the Kiwi way.
SUE MORONEY (Labour) Link to this
It is my pleasure to speak on the first reading of the Walking Access Bill. It is good to see this bill come before this House. This legislation backs up the public debate that has occurred for quite a number of years now over this issue, which is closely felt by a range of people. It relates to the ability of all of us to have access to the very wonderful parts of our precious country.
I found it very interesting to listen to the contribution made by Heather Roy on this legislation. She was clearly bothered about which members from particular parties should sit on front benches and in front seats. Perhaps it was a bid to see herself on the front bench of a potential National Government. However, there is a bit of a problem there. There is just a wee democratic thing called an election in the way that will mean there is no possibility or opportunity for that to happen. However, another problem for the member is that Sir Roger Douglas thinks that he would like to be in a potential National Government Cabinet, and I think the member will have a battle on her hands to convince him otherwise. Of course, we know what Sir Roger Douglas would feel about this bill. I note that currently the National Party is supporting this bill at its first reading. However, were National to fall under the spell and influence of the likes of Sir Roger Douglas then we know that it would not be able to go forward and support such a good and honest bill as this one.
When looking to the future for New Zealand it is easy to see, by looking at this bill, which party truly understands how to have a future for New Zealand that is full of peace and harmony, and negotiates win-win situations. I think that this legislation demonstrates Labour’s ability in this field. It is disappointing to hear the Green Party’s opposition to this bill, because I think it demonstrates again that it does not understand the ability of this country to work together in peace and harmony to ensure that parties can negotiate and work through issues. All too often for the Green Party it is about having winners and losers, that only one side can win, and, therefore, the rest have to lose. However, the purpose of this bill is to make sure that we can all have a say over walking access and that it is done in a negotiated way.
The bill establishes a Walking Access Commission and defines its powers and functions. The commission will be a Crown entity, with the status of a Crown agent under the Crown Entities Act 2004. The bill implements recommendations made by the walking access consultation panel in its report in February 2007. So this bill has not just been plucked out of the air. There has been a full and thorough consultation process that involved every part of New Zealand. My colleague Martin Gallagher talked before about the panel’s visit to Hamilton and how thorough and well-managed that process was. That process was repeated up and down all parts of this country. The panel was set up following the Government’s decision in 2005 not to proceed with legislation that provided for deemed water-margin access. It arises from public concern about the availability of public walking access to the outdoors, especially around our fabulous coastline.
It is appropriate that this legislation will shortly be referred by the Minister to the Local Government and Environment Committee. I know there has been some comment on that from Opposition members, who for some reason think that this legislation ought to go to a select committee that concerns itself with primary production. However, this legislation bears very little resemblance to producing in the primary sector. It is actually about land access and walking access rights for the public of New Zealand. Therefore, the Local Government and Environment Committee is absolutely the right committee to consider this bill. I wish the select committee well in its deliberations. I know that it will receive many submissions on this bill and I feel that its members will be well informed because I believe that many of the submitters will have participated in the consultation undertaken by the walking access consultation panel. I join my fellow members of Parliament in congratulating Mr Acland on his fine management of that process.
This bill is part of Labour’s plan for the future to ensure the enjoyment of the great outdoors for all Kiwis. It is part of our plan to reflect the importance of preserving in perpetuity access to, and enjoyment of, the great outdoors, which is so important to our national identity. Labour has a wide vision for the preservation of the heritage of all Kiwi families young and old. It also reflects two fundamental values that underpin our New Zealand character and lifestyle—access to our many natural recreational resources, and having our very own piece of dirt. It encompasses both of those fundamental visions of New Zealand. We have to work together to solve any incompatibility between these two important values. It is not about one side winning and the other side losing. This is something we have to walk through together—if members will excuse the pun.
This bill will achieve a proper balance between the rights and aspirations of the public in terms of access to the countryside, the property rights of landowners, and the practical needs of farmers and other land users to carry out their business without undue hindrance. The bill does not undermine private property rights. Public access to private land, including Māori land, remains subject to negotiation and agreement with landholders.
I am pleased to stand in support of this type of vision for New Zealand that Labour has. It is one that involves everyone. It is a process of working through difficult and important issues together; it is not about the winner takes all. We must continue to have a balance in the equation on issues as important as walking access. I commend the bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question,
That the Walking Access Bill be now read a first time.
Ayes 112
- New Zealand Labour 49
- New Zealand National 48
- New Zealand First 7
- Māori Party 4
- United Future 2
- Progressive 1
- Independent 1 (Copeland)
Noes 8
Bill read a first time.
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Minister of Immigration) Link to this
I move, That the Walking Access Bill be considered by the Local Government and Environment Committee , and that the committee report finally to the House on or before 31 July 2008.