Jones says he wants to break up DoC

Newsroom

6 days ago

Twice in the last week, minister Shane Jones has said he'd like to 'break up' the Department of Conservation.
He said so once during Scrutiny Week hearings, and again at a local government conference in Wellington when he said he wanted 'all of that gone'.
Now, the pro-mining, 'Make New Zealand Great Again'-wearing resources minister says there will always be a place for conservation in the government, but he wants to see the department's extensive land estate dismantled and opened for development.
Jones' support for mining projects has been constant and consistent. During an appearance at Scrutiny Week, the minister once again donned his 'Make New Zealand Great Again' cap with 'Drill Baby Drill' written below the slogan.
When asked by National's Vanessa Weenink about the prospects of future gold mining in the South Island, Jones lamented that the Department of Conservation had 'weoponised and catastrophised' preservation and endangered species. This focus on preservationism had cost the country whatever profit it might have made mining its mineral wealth, including from gold.
Earlier in the week Jones presented at Wellington's Local Government New Zealand conference, where he told a room of regional government representatives that his party didn't see the need for local government as we know it. Incoming changes to the Resource Management Act meant the justification for local government would not 'continue to exist', said Jones.
The minister then took aim at the Department of Conservation. Because the Wildlife Act enabled it to be a 'major impediment' to development, Jones said 'I want all of that gone'.
But speaking to Newsroom, Jones clarifies that what he really means is the department's land holdings.
In his eyes, Jones is actually seeking to liberate the department 'from the statutory riddle they're having to live in' as a consequence of being made responsible for stewardship land – land he says was put under their care decades ago because it simply had nowhere else to go.
Jones does not think the department is capable of – nor should even be responsible for – legislative matters like 'making expeditious decisions that open up the DoC estate to a variety of other uses'.
With legal responsibility for nearly a third of the country's land, the conservation estate includes areas containing gold and rare minerals like antimony. Jones says New Zealand 'cannot afford' not to mine these resources.
Even so, Jones does not believe the department should go the way of the Archey's Frog – a native, endangered New Zealand species found atop a rich gold deposit, to which the minister was willing to say 'goodbye, Freddie' last year.
'There will always be a need for an agency that represents conservation and national parks and other rare blocks of land,' Jones says. 'But we cannot have a situation where nearly a third of the country's landscape is managed for preservation purposes. New Zealand cannot afford that.'
Jones feels 'some sympathy for the DoC workers', as he sees them pulled in opposite directions by the dual agendas of economic development and preservationism.
The Department of Conservation has faced litigation from 'a whole variety of stakeholders, including hapū', says Jones, which does nothing to increase its efficiency.
The department is best-suited to looking after national park land and 'catching rats and killing cats and stray dogs and various other critters that are undermining biodiversity'.
Much of the tension hinges on the status of stewardship and conservation land, technically under the department's purview but never intended to be permanently so. Jones says it was just 'parked there as a part of Rogernomics'.
'There's nothing to stop us from exploring the creation of a Public Lands Commission, and that commission can hold land that isn't actually required for Department of Conservation purposes,' Jones says.
Green MP Steve Abel, who followed Jones' original remarks in the select committee hearing, disagrees.
Abel says stewardship land ought to be gazetted as conservation estate. Among it is 'some of the most extraordinary ecological values, of the highest ecological worth that we have in the whole conservation estate – it just hasn't been designated yet as that'.
Jones' description of stewardship land as unworthy of conservation 'misleads people to think that stewardship land hasn't got huge ecological value, which much of it does'.
Jones' remarks probably wouldn't wash with majority sentiment, Abel says. 'I don't believe New Zealanders want to see our environment pressed for the profits of some Aussie gold miners.'