Cameron MarkMARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. Thank you very much. I always relish the opportunity to actually come to this Chamber and have a debate rather than offer priestly sermons and speeches. Debate is what this Chamber is all about I think we would concur.To speak to this bill the Resource Management (Extended Duration of Coastal Permits for Marine Farms) Amendment Bill I want to pose the question to this House if I can: what's the length of New Zealand's coastline? I'd imagine the other side of the House doesn't have the answer. It's 15000 kilometres in length. Let's conceptualise 15000 kilometres by 200 nautical miles. It's several million square kilometres of coastline at our disposal to contextualise—[Interruption] without the catastrophisation of marine farming in New Zealand Rachel Brooking; without the catastrophisation—what that looks like in terms of affording the rural sector the farming sector some of our most marginal communities the kind of economic activity that we on this side of the House would celebrate.Now I'm trying to see where the issues lie. I've heard the member Steve Abel raise concerns about the benthic environment and I think perhaps those remarks are salient to the sentience of finfish farming. I want to go back to the 15000 kilometres of coastline in New Zealand: that is a third of the length of the entire coastline around Australia. We've only five million people here in New Zealand. Let's frame some logic in the debate without the priestly sermons. I want to see economic activity afforded to all New Zealanders sir—and I respect your opinion but I handsomely disagree with you. Some of the poorest New Zealanders are in our regions. Some of the poorest New Zealanders in New Zealand happen to be people that live in coastal communities. By the certainty that this bill would bring them I would hope that we could see some of the support for this legislation on the left.We've heard about the sentience in finfish farming; we also heard the counterfactual that the population densities in those finfish farming environments was conducive—that the concerns that the member raised and I raised and others raised in the Primary Production Committee weren't as onerous as perhaps were otherwise framed. We heard about the frequency of development that this piece of legislation would afford with much respect and how wonderful that industry was with the 3500 people that that entire industry encapsulated. That is 3500 jobs. I wager anyone worth their salt when we're trying to frame that in our minds what that looks like—when we're talking about $700 million for 3500 people in a country that is economically depressed—with the left respectfully telling us every day ad nauseam they care about people. Well I absolutely do. I absolutely do. I live in and I go home to rural New Zealand and they are economically deprived and quite often suffering. The average income in New Zealand in some of those areas is $37000. I wager anyone that this kind of business would certainly afford them the reality that they absolutely deserve.I'm sorry that I disagree with Tangi Utikere—good member; sat on my committee; very collegial. But this is a debate chamber where we actually put cause and effect—causality you might say—into the debate sir. I don't think that member has actually reconciled causality—cause and effect. This will give investment certainty to the kind of people that deserve it. Everyone in this Chamber here—we have a pretty comfortable lifestyle you might say by virtue of our income. These people often do not. And when I'm trying to reconcile $20000 to $100000 for a resource consent—some said flippantly that's not a lot of money. Well it certainly is when your margins are slight.Operational costs in the remarks by Steve Abel were excluded in that part of his debate. I appreciate his remarks. Over 20 years you would argue that isn't a lot of money—if you extrapolate that out over 20 years which is the extension we're affording. But that assumes that these businesses kind sir do not have costs—and they're exorbitant excluding the resource consent. The margins are so slight—and I'm not going to over-litigate the point because I want to hear what remarks other members have in their speeches that support rural New Zealand.We hear all the time on the other side of the House the evangelical sermons: I care about rural New Zealand. I care about poor people. I care about marginal communities." Well this bill being shepherded by my Primary Production Committee with the steer of Minister Jones I think—Hon Rachel Brooking: Oh it's just the steer Minister Jones.MARK CAMERON: —puts fishing people fishing communities rural people—Rachel Brooking—back into the conversation. That is our job as parliamentarians: to represent their interests. Hopefully tomorrow is a little bit better for those people than today. I commend this bill to the House."