Job change for two Ministers

Press, 12 February 1986, Page 1

Job change for two Ministers

By ’i

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington In a minor Cabinet reshuffle, Mr Philip Goff becomes the new Minister for the Environment and Mr Russell Marshall the new Minister of Conservation.

These changes follow from the Cabinet decision that the Minister for the Environment should not hold the Works, Forests, Lands, or Conservation portfolios. A new Minister of Conservation is needed as a result of the restructuring of environmental administration and the creation of a Department of Conservation to look after parks and reserves, wildlife, and native forests. Mr Marshall has been the Minister for the Environment and with his Under-Secretary, Mr Philip Woollaston, has been deeply involved in the reorganisation. As Minister of Education he already has a big workload and the reshuffle has been designed to give him a smaller workload while continuing his involvement in the area. The bigger portfolio of Environment ' has been

< . , given to the Minister of Housing, Mr Goff, who has been under-employed. Mr Woollaston will continue to be Under-Secre-tary for the Environment and will become Undersecretary of Conservation. The precise roles of the new Government agencies are still to be worked out, and Messrs Marshall, Goff and Woollaston will be involved in that. It will not be part of their job, however, to decide what land goes into which departments. That will be the role of the new Crown Estate Commission.

For example, in the case of the pastoral leases of the South Island high country, it will be the commission which decides what land falls within the ambit of which agency.