Minister backs down on controversial clauses in conservation reforms
Thursday, 25 June 2026
Conservation Minister Tama Potaka is getting rid of the controversial disposal and exchange provisions from the Conservation Amendment Bill.
Opposition to the clauses gained traction last week after the lobby group Forest and Bird released maps of potential areas that could be affected by the bill.
The bill would have made it easier to either sell or allow economic activity on conservation land. It excluded national parks but not other vast areas of the conservation estate.
At a speech in Auckland, Potaka said he had listened to the public and was acting on their concerns.
“The Government has always been firm that our iconic landscapes and the places that make New Zealand special will never be put at risk. But we were not clear enough about how this bill will do that, so we are fixing it.”
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The minister said he had met with the Environmental Defence Society and Forest & Bird and agreed to remove the controversial clauses.
“We had a constructive discussion, and I want to thank them for engaging in good faith.”
He intended to write to the select committee the bill was currently before in the next few days to outline his intentions.
This is a big shift from Potaka, who as recently as Wednesday was calling Forest & Bird’s maps “mythical”.
The Government has maintained throughout the legislative process that it has no interest in large-scale sell-offs, instead aiming to sell small parcels of land with low conservation value.
The bill required the director-general of the Department of Conservation to consult on any sell-offs, with the sale not going ahead if the consultation report was not supportive.
Potaka said the Conservation Act had not seen large reform in four decades.
“Reform of that scale was always going to benefit from robust debate, careful scrutiny and constructive ideas.
“There will be things we agree on, and there will be things we disagree on, that is healthy. What matters is that we stay at the table, listen to one another, and work towards legislation that will stand the test of time.”
Green Party MP Steve Abel said the Government needed to completely get rid of the bill, “not simply amending bits of it”.
Abel believed a desire for mining was behind the clauses.
“It's my belief that the drive for mining exploitation is one of the key drivers of why they wanted to allow greater access to conservation land and potential sell off to private corporations.”
He said the Government had not learned its lessons from protests in 2010 in opposition to opening the conservation estate for mining.
“Forty thousand people marched up Queen Street and that Government completely backed away from that proposal.”