Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Chair. It's good to take a call in this committee of the whole House. Yeah I find it really strange. I would like to know if there is a single company that has triggered this. Have the officials identified a company that has a resource on a pre-1986 licence that is potentially about to drill and do some exploration? Are they doing that? Is that what's triggered this? The other part of my question—because if that is the case I mean we should know and we will find out in the fullness of time and there's no doubt about that—but it's such a strange thing. It doesn't make sense to us on this side of the House and nothing we've heard from the Government members has thrown any light on to this at all; in fact it's made it more confusing you know so that makes us even more suspicious.My second question is around if we have a platform and there's another well drilled another hole drilled into the same field horizontally drilling into that same structure—is that a new well? Or is that the same well in the same field? Hon Gerry Brownlee: It's a question I asked. It hasn't been answered.STUART SMITH: Yes I know and I haven't heard an answer and I think that's a very fair question. Also you can redo those particular holes and that happens quite frequently. Is it geographically defined within a particular licence? Is it where the well penetrates the surface whether that be the seafloor or the surface of the earth on dry land? Or is it dependent on where the hole goes once it's into the structure? Is it if it's in the same layer of the structure—how far away from it before it becomes a new well? I deeply suspect you don't know Minister. I deeply suspect that the officials don't know; I deeply suspect that they haven't done any work on it because this whole bill has been rushed. It's quite clear it's been rushed. It's quite clear that there has been very little work go on behind the scenes. If the best estimate that they can come up with is $50 million what does that mean? Is that a wet finger in the air exercise in terms of the value of that? How did they assess that particular number? All these things would have been probably teased out I would think—even in a quick select committee process we would have got to the bottom of those details—but under urgency we are putting this bill through for some unknown reason. We could have got this through before the election. Well maybe there's an early election coming. Perhaps that's the explanation. Hon Gerry Brownlee: I think that's happening.STUART SMITH: I think it is. I mean quite clearly they'll see that they won't get much of a bump out of this Budget and it's probably a good idea to staunch the bleeding while you can take what little—I mean there'll be a big disappointment that they got nothing out of the Coronation given to the—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Back to the matter in hand.STUART SMITH: Well I'm getting there Madam Chair.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Back to the matter in hand. STUART SMITH: Well the reason that we've got these strange bills here is I think because of the worries that they have about the stability of the Government and the party dysphoria being exhibited by some people who want to hop from one party to another not quite sure which one they belong to and so they're going to get these things through at the last minute and it just seems quite strange. CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK. Order! Order! No. Order! I did ask the member to come back to the matter in hand and by that I meant the bill for which we are in the committee stage and I think that beginning to disregard the warnings of the Chair is just not a respectful way to treat this committee process.