Ryan Bridge: Emotion has overcome facts on conservation

Author: Ryan Bridge ,
Publish Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2026, 6:01am

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Most kiwis have an environmental bent to them that most of the rest of the western world just doesn't have. At least, not to the same extent.

Most people, left and right, use the outdoors here. We have quite a close relationship to it.

Matt Watson and his million fishers put Sane Jone's supposedly industry-friendly fishing clauses in the bin.

Now the same has happened with Potaka and his Conservation clauses.

In both cases, emotion overcame facts.

I spoke to Potaka the day before he U-turned, and he made some pretty clear promises. No parks, no bushland, no Great Walks, no protected species, would be destroyed or sold off under the bill.

The problem was the door was left ajar open for a future government to potentially sell bits of Conservation land.

Anyone who thinks that means a government would sell Tongariro National Park to the highest bidder is not serious or mad.

They were targeting, at least according to Potaka, land with old disused government buildings on them in a state of disrepair.

But the law left the door open, ajar, with caveats like sign-off from the DOC boss, for the sale of land most of us probably wouldn't want sold.

And opponents drove a truck through that hole.

Potaka looked like a deer in headlights.

They should have seen this coming. Especially after the fishing misstep.

This to say it'll cost them votes. It just means there's a perception out there - and it's not necessarily true - but there's a perception that not only are they not for the environment - as Potaka kept saying - but that they are against it.

Whatever that vague phrasing means.

It, clearly, resonates with quite a few kiwis.