Dyson Ruth: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dyson Ruth: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8845. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I am very pleased to make a contribution on the second reading of the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. When this bill was originally introduced Labour said that it would support its referral to the Commerce Committee but we made some very strong views known at the time about the issues that we disagreed with and that we would need to have changed in order for us to support the further progress of this legislation. One of those issues was the new regime of joint responsibility that is being brought in. In our view the joint decision-making regime is a direct undermining of the responsibility and the role of the Minister of Conservation. I am amazed that the Hon Dr Nick Smith has put up with it frankly. I thought that he would have had a bit more pride in the position as Minister of Conservation but it still remains. It is a mistake. It shows a really massive deficit in the understanding that the National Party has about the role of the Minister of Conservation and that is obvious actually in the priorities that it has set particularly in the budgeting area. So that joint ministerial responsibility is a mistake. I hope that as the bill progresses through the House it is removed. 
The second area is the economic benefit test which is again a huge indication of the lack of understanding that the National Party has of the value of the conservation estate—the value of not mining in areas that should be protected. Its framework of thinking is about the balance between conservation and so-called economic benefits that may be gained from exploration without any acknowledgment that there are some parts of our country that are just too precious to mine. That is not part of the Government’s consideration or its thinking. So the area of joint ministerial responsibility should go as should the way the economic benefit test overrides the intrinsic worth and value of the conservation estate. 
I also want to make it very clear that Labour does not oppose mining. Our party started on the West Coast an area that has at its heart mining—coalmining—so we have a strong history and have retained that link with the mining community. But there must be a regime around mining that recognises the environmental damage that can be done as well as the inherently unsafe nature of coalmining and I want to come back to that point later. 
In the purpose statement there is an indication of the flawed thinking that I referred to earlier. The purpose statement says that the purpose should be to promote mining activities. In our view that language is wrong. It reduces the responsibility in other areas of mining and it does not truly reflect the best way for mining to be managed by the Government. So instead of “promotion” there should be phrases like “managed” “facilitate” or “regulate”. There are no references to health and safety there are no references to sustainability and there are no references to environmental principles. This is a big gap in the frame of the Minister of Energy and Resources Simon Bridges who has just resumed his seat. It is not surprising that he has got a bit of a gap in his knowledge at the moment because he is new to the job but his predecessor the Hon Phil Heatley had it for a while and did not seem to get a grip on it either. So the two issues that we raised right at the start—that of joint ministerial decision-making and then that of the economic benefit test—have not been addressed and the purpose statement itself indicates the deficit that the National Party has in valuing our conservation estate. 
 The submissions that we heard—and I managed to sit on this committee quite a number of times as it went through the process—expressed some very strongly held concerns about the issues that I have raised about the fact that this bill totally undermines the mandate that the Minister of Conservation has as the guardian of the conservation estate. It is totally undermined by this legislation by that joint ministerial decision-making role. The submissions in that regard I think have been largely ignored by the Government and that is a big shame. Labour sees the environment and the economy as two sides of the same coin and when we are developing policy that might affect them we have to view them as a whole. This is not a balancing game; this is two sides of the same coin and they need to be viewed as a whole. 
I just want to refer to the second part of the select committee activity which was instigated by the committee who called for further submissions as a result of the report from Pike River. I think that the committee responded to the recommendations of the Pike River report in a very responsible way and I want to pay credit to all the members of the select committee. This is a very difficult issue for us. We were being asked as members of Parliament to look at one of the biggest tragedies we have ever had in New Zealand and make some legislative amendments. I think that the way the select committee went through that part of the process was not just to its credit—not just to the credit of the select committee and it was—but to the credit of our whole Parliament and frankly I think sometimes we could do with a bit more of that sort of work. Those health and safety issues the mining regime issues were taken very seriously and as a result a number of amendments have been made to the legislation. 
Our minority report which we have put in with the select committee report itemises the areas that we oppose but actually there were some areas of the legislation that we support and I just want to take a minute of the House’s time to outline those because even though we are going to be voting against this bill in the end because of the problems that I identified at the start of my contribution there are some parts of this legislation that are very good. The move to enshrine schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act 1991 and automatic inclusion of certain areas into schedule 4 is a good move and Labour supports that. The introduction of the two-tier system for permanent management with all the complex higher-return petroleum and minerals operations being classified as tier 1 and therefore because of their nature subject to a more stringent permitting process and a high-level pre-vetting of applicants—that is a good move and Labour supports that. 
We also support the improved coordination between the Crown minerals permitting regime and health and safety and environmental regulatory functions for tier 1 activities. That is what it is in the bill. We support that but we are committed to saying that it should not necessarily be limited just to tier 1 applications. Integrating health and safety into the permitting process to ensure consistency and collaboration amongst the regulators to ensure that health and safety is considered right throughout the permitting process as a general condition of permits—that is a very good move. The process of revocation of permits has been simplified and Labour supports that as well as we support increasing the penalties for offences under the Act. So there are some good things in this bill and we welcome them and as I say we support them. 
However we will oppose the bill and that is with some regret. Had the Government had any understanding of the importance of our conservation estate we would not be debating this legislation. It completely undermines and demonstrates the lack of understanding of the intrinsic value of the conservation estate in and of itself. We should not have the joint ministerial responsibility in these matters. The Minister of Conservation has the legislative mandate under the Conservation Act and it is being weakened by this legislation and the economic benefit test totally ignores the value that the conservation estate has and gives to our country. So I look forward to the rest of the debate. I am glad that I have been able to put on the record the parts of the legislation that Labour supports because too often that gets overlooked in the debate. I regret that we were not able to get those fundamental changes so that we could support the progress of this bill even further.