Hughes Gareth: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15660. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora.Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. It is a great privilege and a pleasure to rise to speak in support of the Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserve Bill in the Committee stage. This is a bill that the Green Party supported through every stage. It is great to see more marine reserves being created around our waters. We want to congratulate the Government and acknowledge the work done by the former Labour Government which kicked this ball off back in 2006-08.Marine reserves should not be a partisan political issue. This should be something that unites the parties that unites the people because all New Zealanders as we have heard in this debate have an affinity for our oceans. We love it. We want to protect it. Obviously there is always going to be a debate about where how much and what level of protection but it is something that unites us. All of us have our experiences of learning to swim in the sea and summers at the beach or fishing and putting out thecraypots with your dad as I vividly remember doing atPouawa Beach on the East Coast.It is important to remember this because New Zealand is an oceanic country with the fourth-largest exclusive economic zone in the world. We may be big on the world stage in some aspects and small in others but when it comes to the oceans we are a global superpower. It is great to see the work we have done in the past—from protecting Antarctica to advocating for the Ross Sea and protecting sharks which we have seen recently in New Zealand. It is great to see New Zealand embrace this but we need to embrace our oceanic destiny even further. This could be the basis of our prosperity going forward from more marine protection through to sustainable fishing and export products through to being a pioneer even when it comes to wave and tidal energy. We could be trialling and selling our expertise and services around the world.We welcome this bill. We support it. We believe that protecting our waters is our future. We were quite happy to support it. If you read the bill it is pretty small but a big chunk of the bill is actually taken up with the Green Party minority report. Although we support having marine reserve protection round these three Subantarctic Islands we would protect all of them. These are World Heritage listed areas. We think they should all be protected. We do not think that anyone around the world is going to be potentially buying crab from a World Heritage listed area that is not protected as a marine reserve.We are making I guess you would say some small progress when it comes to the 10 percent target originally signed up to by the Labour Government in 2000 subsequently signed up by the Minister for the Environment Amy Adams. We have still got this target of 10 percent of our marine waters being protected in marine reserves. At the moment this legislation takes us from 0.31 to 0.41 percent. The 430000 hectares contained in this reserve takes us to less than 0.5 percent.The Green Party would go much much further than this. We would do things like protect theKermedec Islands which overnight would take us to 15 percent. We would modernise our marine reserves legislation because although we have been voting in support of this bill it is deeply ironic that in 2014 New Zealand needs legislation to create marine reserves. I find it ridiculous frankly that New Zealand needs legislation to make marine reserves.We were pioneers once upon a time in 1971 with the Marine Reserves Act. However subsequent delays by successive Governments mean we still have this antiquated legislation with out-of-date purposes and out-of-date processes as we heard from the Hon Ruth Dyson. We have this antiquated process that has not served New Zealand well. It has not served our sustainable fisheries brand and it has not served us well in terms of marine protection. So although we support this bill we oppose the principle that we need legislation. We should have modern progressive legislation that brings communities together gives stakeholders a genuine say gives a genuine voice to iwi and actually protects our waters because what the science informs us is that we need 30 to 40 percent of our waters protected in marine reserves for the health and viability of those ecosystems.This being the Committee stage it is a chance to go clause by clause through the bill. I am going to take only one or two calls because a lot has been said in the previous stages. I want to acknowledge the select committee process and the Local Government and Environment Committee chair Nicky Wagner. We obviously put a minority report in. Eugenie Sage and I the Green members on the Local Government and Environment Committee pushed for full protection. We were not a lone voice. This is what the majority of submitters were urging—to fully protect these World Heritage areas. That is what a future Green Government would look to be doing.We welcome the 5-year review which has been brought forward from 7 years. That is a positive move. I would have preferred that to be brought forward a little sooner because I think that we can move to 100 percent protection a lot sooner. The single Supplementary Order Paper we have in front of this Committee Supplementary Order Paper 410—the amendment to be considered by this stage of the debate—relates to moving the establishment of this marine reserve forward. Although we welcome and will be voting for moving the protection of these three Subantarctic Islands forward in time we have to acknowledge the rationale.This is what I want to communicate to the people of New Zealand: the Government is doing this to try to look good on the environment. It is trying to look good on the environment because in reality it is hopeless. No amount of spin no amount of gloss is going to cover over or paper over those glaring gaps in the environmental performance of New Zealand under 5 years of a National Government. It has managed to take us toless than 0.5 percent of our waters in marine reserves. It is quite happy to see oil wells in the middle of marine mammal sanctuaries. It is quite happy to see benthic mining in the benthic protected areas. It is quite happy to see sanctuaries forMāui’s dolphin that do not provide sanctuary and benthic protected areas that do not provide protection.We see Ministers standing up and advocating for a company—Trans-Tasman Resources—to literally vacuum up 50 million tonnes of iron ore and sand off the Whanganui coast aMāui’s dolphin habitat. It is a Government that is prepared to give that very same company $25 million over 5 years. It is the very same Government that stacked the Environmental Protection Agency process against and is not delivering for that small group of brave Kiwis trying to fight this gigantic seabed-mining experiment on the coast. It will not even help them out with environmental legal aid and is putting them through the ringer. We see it in the Chatham Rise another area under threat from New Zealand. This Government is advocating putting the pompoms on and cheerleading for Chatham Rock Phosphate to mine—to literally vacuum up—the first 5 metres of the seabed. It is quite an interesting situation when it is the Green Party and the fishing industry opposing that particular proposal.We have heard a lot about theMāui’s dolphin—the 55 that are left. What the Green Party would do is stop the killing of them in nets. It is as simple as that. What the Government’s own data shows is that 95 percent of the mortality is human-induced by unsustainable fishing methods. We would stop the lethal fishing nets. We would protect us from the seabed mining. We would act to reduce our waste flows going into the great garbage patch—our ocean which is filling up with plastic waste. I am sure Mr Heatley heard about the turtles that are arriving in Northland his neck of the woods that are unfortunately ingesting so much plastic that they cannot dive they cannot eat and they are unfortunately washing up in New Zealand and perishing.What we need to do is embrace a future in New Zealand that takes this seriously that has integrated oceans policy and that undertakes spatial planning so that we know where to protect and what resources are appropriate and right obviously with due consultation with iwi and the public of New Zealand. What we need to do is protect what we love because this is the basis of our $1.5 billion seafood export industry.This is the basis of who we are as New Zealanders. We love our waters and we want to protect them and that is what I am quite happy to sing to the rafters in election year. Obviously the Government is trying to make a focus of this during the election campaign and trying to literally use legislation first of all to create marine reserves and second to bring forward amendments to try to rush it through to bring it sooner. We welcome the faster inclusion of this reserve. If the Government wants to have an election battle fought on marine protection I think both sides of this House welcome that. We have got some great ideas and great policy. When you look at the track record I think New Zealanders know that if you are going to protect the basis of your livelihood and if you are going to protect what you love you are going to be voting Green in 2014. Kia ora.