Source: Greenpeace
Greenpeace Aotearoa says the Government has made an absolute “dog’s breakfast” of the Conservation Amendment Bill consultation and there remains no clarity as to what exact changes are being made to the contentious Bill.
The Environment Committee today announced an extension to submissions on the Bill until 12pm (midday) on Monday 13 July 2026. The extension follows widespread confusion after the Conservation Minister announced he intended to remove the Bill’s land sale and exchange provisions. Those comments were widely reported as though the Bill itself had already changed.
But Greenpeace campaigner Gen Toop says that was never the case and the public has no reason to trust promises coming from the Government over it.
“The Environment Committee has now agreed to work with legal drafters to remove the land sale and exchange provisions before the Bill goes back to Parliament, but until we see the amended Bill, it remains unclear exactly what exactly is being removed,” says Toop.
“Until the amended text is released, there is no certainty that public conservation land is safe from being sold off or commercially exploited beyond recognition.”
Toop says the uncertainty is significant because the Bill contains multiple provisions that work together to make conservation land easier to sell or exchange.
“The Bill doesn’t contain just one land sale clause. It expands the categories of conservation land that can be sold, weakens the legal test for selling land, and changes the purpose architecture of the Conservation Act to give greater weight to commercial exploitation.”
“Even if the Government removed all those clauses they are still proposing to take a wrecking ball to the concessions framework, and allow the Minister to approve private resorts, monorails, shops and other inappropriate commercial exploitation inside National Parks.”
“And even with all the land sales clauses removed, the Bill would still make it easier for more open cast mines and toxic tailings dams to be approved on public conservation land.”
Toop says the Government should abandon the Bill altogether.
“After fierce public backlash to this Bill, the Minister tried to paper over the cracks with his hollow announcement. But this is the same Government that has spent its time in power waging a war on nature, and is backed by NZ First, a party openly pushing for more mining and commercial exploitation on public conservation land.”
“From start to finish this Bill is rotten to its core. It is unfixable and should be binned.”
Greenpeace is encouraging everyone concerned about the future of public conservation land to make a submission before the new deadline. People who have already submitted are being invited by the Committee to lodge an additional submission if they wish to.
Notes
After a bill has been publicly notified and introduced to Parliament it is then referred to a Select Committee, a cross-party panel of MPs who function as a ‘technical working group’ working on behalf of Parliament, not Ministers.
Ministers cannot tell a committee what changes to make to a bill. Any ministerial announcement purporting to do this has no effect. Only the Committee can instruct the legal drafters to make changes.