Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I just wanted to make a short contribution on Part 2 so I'm grateful for this opportunity. Part 2 talks to a provision to protect existing or lodged applications for mining consents or exploration consents and it talks to the existing permits and says that they continue to have the same effect as if this bill was not enacted. However it talks also about applications that were submitted but not processed and they're being determined—so applications that were lodged or submitted but not determined before the commencement of this bill are going to be treated as having been withdrawn. So any applications that have been in the pipeline that haven't actually been processed are going to be withdrawn. Now I thank Minister Megan Woods for her feedback on some of the questions that we have had this afternoon during this debate but there was one outstanding one that wasn't addressed and that was my referral to coal-seam gas. That was an issue that was raised with me locally—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That's Part 1. MAUREEN PUGH: —and so I'd appreciate the Minister's feedback on whether coal-seam gas is going to be captured by this bill and be disregarded. I do also want to point out that in 2013 there was a visit to the wealthy sultanate of Brunei during the East Asia Summit by the then Prime Minister John Key. Back then he said to us that This is a country that's national income is dominated by the fact that it has very large oil and gas reserves"—he was talking about Brunei the fifth-wealthiest nation on the planet. Then he went on to say "We have 18 basins (in New Zealand) that are prospective from an oil and gas perspective and only one of those [are currently being tapped] into." That is the potential of the sector to New Zealand that we have just had the curtain pulled down on. Now when you drill down into it the world is not always seen through green-tinted spectacles and we don't all have the luxury to be able to do that. Some of us actually live in real New Zealand. We live in provincial New Zealand not in the suburbs of Wellington and certainly not in Auckland City. In regional New Zealand in the provinces we make a living by working hard and extracting something farming something or producing something. That's real New Zealand. Now that's the real world and it's a very long way from the safety of Victoria University where the Prime Minister chose to make this announcement. But by shutting down this industry here in New Zealand we are shutting down the potential for our country to be prosperous. Now I do want to make note of one submitter in reference to Part 2 of the bill about existing permits. As has been well articulated already today by some of our colleagues on this side of the Chamber it's all very well to say that if you have an existing exploration permit that is safe but the cold hard reality is that there will be no investment partners who will come and invest here in an industry that has so much disorganisation and uncertainty associated with it. In fact one submitter even took the opportunity of giving notice of their intention to sue the Government for the $104 million worth of their assets that are now going to be abandoned. So we are very concerned about the ideology that is driving this especially from a party and a Government that has so many times professed to be the most open and transparent Government this country has ever seen. Well we are still to see that realised in the real world. It's another ad hoc on-the-hoof decision that's been made. It's going to have overwhelming impacts for this country. It's going to deliver no benefit to the environment."