Walters VanushiVANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker and thank you for the opportunity to rise to take a short call in relation to the Maritime Powers Bill which I support.In 2018 Greenpeace released a report about human trafficking slavery and abuse on board international fishing fleets. Now the report actually concerned international waters outside of Taiwan but the authors were Kiwis. They were New Zealand investigators who highlighted some of what I would call the shadows in terms of the laws that operate on land versus the laws that operate on the sea. And New Zealand is no exception in terms of enforcement provisions that sit in those shadows. What this bill does is it allows the flow of enforcement powers that are applied on land in New Zealand out to those powers applied in the oceans and seas beyond New Zealand territory including our exclusive economic zone. In short it keeps our environment secure against threats including drug trafficking wildlife trafficking and human trafficking.I want to specifically touch on the impact of the new proposed powers where it's suspected that serious offences such as trafficking or human rights abuses serious human rights abuses are happening. As many in the Chamber will know we already have human trafficking as an offence under the Crimes Act in section 98D. We've ratified the Palermo protocol on trafficking. We participate in regional anti-trafficking efforts. But we've made these commitments with a lack of comprehensive enforcement powers at sea which really restricts the ability of our enforcement officers to be able to act.And I think it's important to note that these aren't just hypothetical scenarios we're protecting against; some of my colleagues have spoken about the human trafficking that we see in terms of data and numbers. But there are also significant human rights violations that happen on the sea as well. In 1997 there was the first proceeding alleging abuse on a foreign charter vessel brought in New Zealand courts where 10 Indonesian crew of the Korean flagged Sky 75 vessel fled at the port and then made claims with the New Zealand Police about human rights violations. We saw it again in 2010 when the Oyang 70 sank killing six crew members. The surviving crew members then revealed that they had been subject to serious human rights abuse. In 2011 we saw it again when crew members of the Shin Ji and Oyang 75 alleged that they'd been subject to physical psychological and sexual abuse and suffered inhumane conditions. So we know that this is happening but in those cases we know it was happening because those crew members reported it at port. There weren't the search powers at sea.We did have a partial response from this House with the passing of the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2014 which gave New Zealand courts full jurisdiction over crew members and foreign vessels. But again we did not have the extension of those enforcement powers to sea. So in short we do have much of the substantive legislative architecture in place that's intended to protect people from these horrific human rights abuses but we do need to extend these enforcement provisions. I commend this bill to the House.