Fenton Darien: Marine Legislation Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fenton Darien: Marine Legislation Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8754. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to have the opportunity to take a call in the second reading of the Marine Legislation Bill and I share my colleague Chris Auchinvole’s enthusiasm for this bill. It was indeed extremely interesting to work on. Also while I have the opportunity may I welcome Mike Sabin as deputy chair to our Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. He is not listening but anyway— 
Mike Sabin 
: No I am listening—absolutely. I appreciate that. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Oh you are listening. OK. But may I also point out that it is actually the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. It has got a lot to do with workers and I fear that it is going to be very challenging for that member when the time comes to consider this Government’s terrible programme for cutting the rights of workers. Can I also assure Mr Sabin that he going to get a ritual beating from me in my speech as well because I have been on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee— 
Hon Kate Wilkinson 
: For ever. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: For ever—that is right. The member is right. I have since 2005 when I came into Parliament with Kate Wilkinson. Actually we were on the select committee together then too. So I know quite a lot of the history of the events that led to some of the provisions in this bill. 
Also I arrived in Tauranga the day after the  
Rena  
hit the Astrolabe Reef and before the storm. There was a big storm and overnight the sands of Tauranga turned black. I will never forget waking up in the morning and looking out of my window and seeing that all of the beaches surrounding where I was staying were black. It was just devastating. The people of Tauranga were heartbroken. They were already reeling as we know from the impact of Psa on their kiwifruit. What they were looking at was what was happening to their beautiful coastline the wildlife and their kai moana. What was wonderful was how they got out and helped where they could. Although that was more than 2 years ago there are still questions I think that this bill brings up. 
As I said I have been a member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee since I entered Parliament in 2005. Maurice Williamson was a member from 2005 to 2008. Kate Wilkinson was also a member during that period. Both became Ministers in the new Government. David Bennett was also a member and he has been there for ever as well but he is now chair of the committee. What is interesting—Kate Wilkinson can speak for herself but I wonder about this—is that David Bennett cannot even remember that in 2005 to 2008 that committee passed a recommendation that the two conventions that this bill introduces should be passed into legislation so that they could be enforced by the New Zealand courts. Those two conventions are the international treaty Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims which would have doubled the $12 million liability limit in the case of the  
Rena 
 and funded compensation for businesses and properties that were adversely affected and the bunker convention the second convention that this bill deals with. 
The then incoming Minister of Transport Steven Joyce had a briefing in 2008 that noted that the ministry was ready to introduce legislation to update the Maritime Transport Act. And guess what? This is now 2013 and we are just on the second reading of this bill—5 years later. It has taken all this time to hit the House. In the meantime what I saw as I sat on that select committee was Maritime New Zealand being engaged in pointless value-for-money exercises demanded by this Government—demanded by the Government—when all the time we had an accident of the size of the  
Rena 
 waiting to happen with dreadful consequences. In fact the consequences could be described as the leaky homes crisis of the sea. 
It goes back even further than that. I think it goes back to Maurice Williamson’s days as Minister of Transport when he deregulated coastal shipping in New Zealand—when he gutted the regulations required for coastal shipping and ships sailing around our coastline delivering freight and basically opened up our seaways to the sort of disaster that we ended up seeing with the  
Rena 
. That is another debate and I am sure we will have that debate at some stage because Labour is certainly committed to reinstating coastal shipping. I think one of the members before described how important shipping is how it brings huge amounts of goods in and how it is worth billions of dollars and so on but what this Government does instead of course is it tends to put all of that freight and other things on the roads when we have perfectly great highways of the sea that currently are not regulated and that need to be regulated. 
But there are other things in this bill and as I mentioned some of them are very interesting. I am fascinated—and this again goes back to the length of time that I have spent on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—by the Government’s keenness to introduce the blood-alcohol limit of 0.05 grams for seafarers. Yes we know that it is part of a convention that we signed up for but this issue of the blood-alcohol limit for drivers on New Zealand roads is not new to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and in fact the Government has had several opportunities to introduce it. When we last considered it I think it was 2 years ago and what we were told by the Government then was that there was not enough research available. Actually there are mountains of research but we had to have New Zealand - specific research so we are still waiting. I think actually one of the things that our committee should do is ask for an update as to where that research is because I suspect that it may well have been just a means of putting off a difficult issue that this Government did not want to tackle. 
Anyone who loves the sea as we do in New Zealand and who is fascinated by ships would be fascinated by this bill. There are some really interesting things in it—a whole provision around the removal of wrecks. It had never occurred to me that there would be regional council responsibility for removing wrecks which of course become a hazard in their own right. There was lengthy discussion around responsibilities and the requirements around that. Of course wrecks become not only a hazard to other ships but also an environmental hazard. 
 The other recollection I have of working on this bill are the long discussions we had about harbour masters and the role of harbour masters who are apparently very very difficult to find. We have very few trained and qualified harbour masters in New Zealand and local councils were very concerned about some of the provisions that were being proposed because they say that it is almost impossible to hire trained and qualified harbour masters as required by maritime legislation. When I asked why they were pretty frank. They said that there was no training programme going on and also that the salaries are not attractive enough. I think that is something we will have to address in the future. 
The other thing that I was interested in and that there were some good submissions on were the proposals around the responsibilities of port facilities in ports to ensure health and safety—the responsibilities that they would be required to carry out. Under the original bill they had responsibilities to prevent health and safety accidents that could endanger or were likely to endanger any person or property on a ship or at sea. We all know that ports were a bit of a sensitive topic and still continue to be—actually Auckland port is still not settled. What they did note was that the Government has this great ministerial task force on health and safety. It considers that our health and safety levels are below the levels of other countries and it is absolutely right about that. The Port CEO Group wants to see the task force process actually completed and was concerned that there was going to be a mix-up between the Health and Safety in Employment Act and the requirements under this bill in terms of port facility responsibilities. 
So it is an interesting bill. It is a very long bill. I also want to endorse what Chris Auchinvole said about the contribution of the officials their willingness to answer questions and do the research and their very impressive knowledge of what is clearly a unique part of law in New Zealand that very few people have experience in. Labour is supporting this bill. We look forward to the debate in the Committee stage when I am sure we will get into discussing it in a lot more detail. Thank you.