Ardern Shane: Crown Minerals Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Ardern Shane: Crown Minerals Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7534] 
SHANE ARDERN (NZ National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 I am pleased that the member for Whanganui is quite happy to see me take a call. That member has not turned up to a single “flatulence tax” meeting anywhere in the electorate despite the fact that there have been many of them up and down the country. 
We are here to talk about the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill and I intend to do so. Once again I say it is an outrage to have a socialist Government that cares nothing for property rights development potential jobs or anything else that makes the country work. In fact the old cliché “If it moves tax it; if it keeps moving tax it; and if it stops moving subsidise it to get it moving again.” could never apply more than it does to this bill. As my colleague said the bill itself—or the work that was done in the Commerce Committee—is very sloppy. All that I need to do is to refer Government members to the first reading debate when the Hon Paul Swain said— 
Jill Pettis 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I ask the member to withdraw the statement he made about my not having attended any public meetings in my electorate on the “flatulence tax” issue. I have not attended any because there have not been any. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: That is an issue for debate. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The member has inadvertently misled the House in this sense: yesterday I was at a public meeting in the city of Wanganui on the subject of flatulence. The meeting had been advertised in the  
Wanganui Chronicle 
. If that was not a meeting in her electorate— 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: The member was invited? 
SHANE ARDERN 
: I am sure she probably was invited but if she was not I will take her word for that. However the fact is that she may have misled the House with her statement. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: All members are honourable members. Their word is their bond and if it is found to be otherwise there are other courses of action. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I hope that has not come off my time. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No it has not. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: To get back to the bill I point out that it is a sloppy piece of work for the reason that in the first reading the Hon Paul Swain said it would not be retrospective. That is what he said. Yet that statement is clearly contradicted by clauses 22 and 23. Those clauses absolutely contradict that. The wider constituency in the mining industry was led to believe by a Minister of this House that the bill would not be ultra vires. That is what the industry was told. Yet when we look in the bill we see it is ulta vires. 
The select committee in the minority report also stated it had asked the officials of the Department of Conservation whether they could advise the committee as to whether the department had ever granted access to its lands for the purposes of mining since 1991. That is a simple enough question to answer; there would be no difficulty in finding an answer to that if the officials went back through their records. So they went back through their records and found that the answer was no access has never been granted. The Hon Ken Shirley made a very good point when he said that there is something like $86 billion worth of minerals tied up in New Zealand at the moment under the ground and that most of that is on Department of Conservation land. 
How is it that the Government goes around the country talking about growth jobs and lifting us back into the top half of the OECD yet brings to this House legislation that runs like jackboots right over the top of all those objectives and over property rights? How can that be? I invite a member on the Government side of the House to take a call and fill me in on that. Maybe I have missed a bit somewhere. Maybe the Government has been talking about something that we have not caught up with. My colleague Pansy Wong at the time that this bill was being promoted said that the National Party members of the select committee were absolutely outraged that the bill absolutely ignored the High Court judgment—the judgment of the Acting Chief Justice at the time Justice Heron. He was the Acting Chief Justice not somebody who was just a new appointee and who may not have been up to speed with the issue. This bill totally ignores that judgment. It has not taken it into consideration at all—not under any circumstances. 
This bill goes right across property rights and right across what the High Court found—right across what that finding stated about property rights with regard to the 1971 Act—and it brings us to a situation where the only conclusion that those in the mining industry can come to is that this Government cannot be trusted. We cannot trust it. Whatever it says it will not do. Regardless of what the issue is the Government will rule over the top of it because there may be a fringe group out on the hard left that the Government needs to support it in a vote just like the one we have in this House today. It is interesting to note that at last United Future has taken a stand and said that it will not support this legislation which is not good for growth or for the things that United Future was led to believe that this Government would support. Therefore United Future will not support this bill. Well what do we know? We are back to Jim Anderton and the Greens—back to that team again. We will see some fostering of friendships there in the next few days because Labour will need those votes more and more over the months to come. 
This bill also flies right in the face of what international experience shows us. I was recently away at a conference in Western Australia where at a town called Karratha about 1500 kilometres north of Perth $10 billion worth of ironsand per year is extracted and exported to Japan mainly. At the per tonne price that the Western Australians are paid for their ironsand that is billions of tonnes of material. We would think that that would have a huge environmental impact. We should think about how they manage that in a way that will not have an everlasting totally devastating impact on the Western Australian landscape. 
The Government members on the opposite side of the House should hop on a plane—instead of flying to Fiji for their usual junket away—and go and look at that. 
David Benson-Pope 
: Careful! 
SHANE ARDERN 
: Careful about what? Those members should hop on a plane and go and have a look. They should investigate what the Western Australians do there and look at the Australian law. The Western Australian Government is a Labour Government as well. I tell those members to go and see what the Western Australians do. They will find that Western Australia’s economy is strong robust and growing faster than New Zealand’s because Western Australia has sensible laws. Employment in a place like Western Australia has strong growth. The place is going ahead and prospering on the back of a commodity—ironsand—and is doing so in a way that protects the environment. 
Here we have members on the Government side of the Chamber who carp away at me because they do not like what I am saying. Yet they take absolutely no notice of those international examples that are there for them to go and look at. Why did the select committee not have a look at that before it came back to this House with stupid legislation that is retrospective that runs like jackboots over the top of property rights that brings no clarity to those involved in this industry and that gives them no faith that this Government will protect them in any way at all let alone encourage them. Why does that member who has been yelling at the top of his voice back at me not go and talk to the Department of Conservation about how many permits have been allowed? Why does he not do that? Maybe the member will take a call and answer those questions after I have completed my speech but I doubt it. 
At the moment $500 million dollars per annum of exports come from our mining industries and there is the potential for that to grow 10 times. This Government is standing in the industry’s way as it does with most things that are profitable most things that potentially could help it to carry out the social programme which it wants to carry out most things that would create jobs most things that earn revenue and most things that are sustainable.