Meeting calls for withdrawal of Parks Bill

Press, 13 August 1980, Page 3

Meeting calls for withdrawal of Parks Bill

The withdrawal of the National Parks Bill was called for by a packed public meeting at the Christchurch Arts Centre on Monday evening. The meeting demanded i that the atidr.'l Parks Bill, i introduced by the Minister | of Lands (Mr V. S. Young) land now before the Lands land Agriculture Select Committee, be withdrawn, because it gave a Minister of the Crown direct control of national parks. More than 400 people attended the meeting, organised by Federated Mountain Clubs, to debate the 1980 bill. They were addressed by the Deputy Director-General of Lands (Mr P. H. C. Lucas); the F.M.C.. nominee on the National Parks Authority, Mr L. F. Molloy; an Arthur’s Pass Park Board member, Mr I. D. Gardiner; and the chairman of the Canterbury Council for Civil Liberties (Dr K. P. Clements). Representatives of environmental and recreational organisations, the Labour member of Parliament for Christchurch Central (Dr G.

W. R. Palmer), and the public, were also invited to address the meeting by the chairman, the Mayor of Christchurch (Mr Hamish Hay). Mr Lucas said that the bill had been initiated in response to changes in national parks administration since the National Parks Act was constituted in 1952. These changes included the addition of more than 100 qualified rangers to the Lands and Survey Department.

The department’s staff would take over the day-to-day running of the parks, and leave board members with more time to consider park policy, he said. Mr Lucas said that the bill made significant changes in public participation in national parks, with the increased scope and role of the park baords. Under the 1952 act, the public had no statutory rights to representation on the boards, to take part in management planning, or to make policy proposals, he said. These rights to public participation in new areas were contained in the bill. There were sufficient safeguards that “severely constrained” the powers held by the Minister, who was bound by Government policy, and the necessity to make public any proposals. Mr Molloy said that he was opposed to the wide powers that the bill granted the Minister through 17 new clauses. Checks and balances on the Minister’s powers should be reinstated, to protect the parks from political intervention.

The park boards’ planning powers had been cut to the extent that they would be “laughed out of court” in a planning hearing, he said. It could be that the department was the only body with sufficient powers to oppose any development in a national park, but no Government department could stand up to a Minister. The park boards were left as “toothless paper tigers,” Mr Molloy said. Mr Gardiner said that the 1978 silver jubilee national parks conference had agreed that the authority boards system should be retained and strengthened.

The conference was attended by representatives from Government, recreation, environment, and scientific groups, yet there was no mandate to axe the present system.

Mr Gardiner questioned where the idea to make such a complete change to the system had come from. It had not come from the public users of the parks, he said.

The caucus committee had said that there were “compelling reasons” for changes, an ’ had based this on the contents of a Lands and Survey Department submission. The department and the committee had refused to make that submission public, which only left people to speculate why it was so important.