Browning Steffan: Marine Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Marine Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13641. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I would like to take a short call on the commencement clause as well. I would like to follow on with regard to the friends I have inKaikōura—the electorate I live in—whom I joined when they protested the direction that this bill the Marine Legislation Bill and the Government is going in terms of oil exploration. They had hundreds of people on the beach in that very small community. They had a petition in which somebody from every household in that community said they did not want deep-sea oil exploration to go ahead as it could risk their livelihoods and risk the things that whole economy is based on inKaikōura.I just point out—the Government seems to have missed it and the Minister for the Environment missed it as well when she spoke about exploratory wells—that the riskiest phase in drilling is when exploration is happening because they do not know until they do that what is likely to go. The risk of blowout is worse in the exploration stage. I will just pop over to another area that has had exploration and that is just offD’Urville Island another part of my rohe over into Tasman Bay. I negotiated with an oil company that wanted to drill offD’Urville Island and ultimately did. I remember that the Minister—it was Nick Smith—actually got on the platform when they did do the exploration ultimately. That is in a much shallower area but the risks even there are too high.Even following that negotiation where we ended up getting some format where you could do decent environmental assessments—a matrix that you would look at to check what the risks were in a marine environment; we got that developed out of that negotiation—there is no way I would sign off again on something like that. What we found with that company which has got a very good record in theory is that it did not disclose to us that years before it had managed to pollute the Taranaki coast with a much smaller oil spill than what we are really worried about here. But that spill I think affected up to 15 kilometres of coast at the time.So these risks are very real and if we get the companies that have been associated with the Gulf of Mexico coming over here and thinking they can do the same thing without as my colleague pointed out the resources to support or back up any correction from a mistake in even just the exploratory part we have got some real concern. But I go back to the people inKaikōura. They are actually further away from some of the main focus of that protest which was closer to the Wairarapa Wellington the Marlborough Sounds Clifford Bay and Cloudy Bay areas—those people as we have heard were promised that they would have access to the process. That has been taken away from them and left with the council maybe and some of the iwi maybe and we can hopefully rely on them—we certainly can in respect ofKaikōura—to be very concerned and to be opposing this. But that is not necessarily the case elsewhere in the country for other councils that may have been told porkies as we were—we were misled—in terms of the exploration offD’Urville Island to some degree.So I just want to add voice to the fact that the Minister does not know everything and may be being misled by some of the officials as to where the risk lies. This Committee certainly has been misled if we are listening to the Minister on that. There is a major risk. We are an island nation. We have got a lot of coastline. The last thing we need is oil on our coastline. We do not need it in the Marlborough Sounds around aquaculture and we do not need it down through theKaikōura coast either.If people on the Government seats have an issue I ask them to come to my region and talk to me. I ask them to meet those people and actually realise what they are concerned about: their livelihoods their local flora and fauna the things that they are really proud of. The fact that they can drive to theKaikōura coast and see seals just off the beach is fantastic for the tourist industry.Clause 1 agreed to.The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 360 in the name of the Hon Gerry Brownlee to clause 2 be agreed to.Amendment agreed to.Clause 2 as amended agreed to.The Committee divided the bill into the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill and the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 359.Bill to be reported with amendment presently.