Woods Megan: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 04 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4376. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I am happy to take a call. Labour is supporting this legislation because we need to. If we do not the consequences are simply far too great. That was a shocking speech by a Minister who has had a shocking week. What we had in that speech is a whole lot of excuses a whole lot of justification and certainly what you would say is a defensive game. It was an absolutely defensive game. We have a Minister who claims that before the passage of the exclusive economic zone legislation there was no regulation in terms of how we governed activities in our oceans. This is simply not correct. It would be more helpful if the Minister were to come into the House and deal with facts.I want to deal with the facts of what we are calling a simple tweak to an imperfect piece of legislation. If we have a look at the principal piece of legislation that we are amending here the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act this is a technical amendment to allow for the transition of four existing operations into the regulatory regime outlined in the exclusive economic zone legislation. Let us have a look at this not-so-perfect legislation. When the not-so-perfect legislation was first introduced it had to be sent back to the select committee for an entire rewrite because it was such shoddily drafted legislation. Even after the select committee had completely rewritten this legislation and had got it into a form that could be brought back to the House that was fit for purpose and that might actually do something about providing a thorough regulatory regime in terms of protecting our oceans the Minister then had to introduce a 14-page Supplementary Order Paper with even more fix-ups to the principal legislation. And 1 month later there was an amendment bill with 37 pages of amendments to the principal legislationback in this House.This is the second time that we have had to come back into this House and use valuable House time to play fix-up for a Government that cannot run a legislative agenda or pass legislation that is fit for purpose.Hon David Parker: It’s the amendment to the amendment to the amendment.Dr MEGAN WOODS: That is quite correct Mr Parker; this is the “Amendment to the Amendment to the Amendment Bill” because this Government cannot legislate.When we had the bill at the first reading we supported it and said that it needed to be sent to the Local Government and Environment Committee to be examined. I would like to acknowledge the submissions that we received on this legislation. There were not many of them but they were incredibly important submissions. I think there were five of them. Through the select committee process we stopped yet another disastrous piece of legislation. There had to be an amendment to the amendment to the amendment to the amendment at the select committee because what we had was yet another very shoddy piece of work by this Government coming before this House.What this bill does is provide for the four current operators to be able to transition into the new regime. The first of these operators with permission to operate under the old regime—yes Minister there was a regime unlike what you would like to say—has a consent that expires on 27 June 2015. That is the Māui gasfield which provides a significant portion of this country’s gas. In fact the department’s own report informed us that it provides 26 percent of New Zealand’s gas supply. When the Māui field had a 5-day shutdown in operations in 2011 the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment calculated a gross cost to gas consumers of $200 million over that 5-day duration. This is a Government that passed legislation that could have potentially seen the Māui gasfield shut down for an unknown period of time before it could transition into the regulatory regime. I would have thought that when there are four operators operating you could put in place a transition provision that would see those four operators come within the principal Act in a reasonably seamless way. It does not seem like rocket science.When we had the amendment to the amendment to the amendment come before the House in order to play fix-up on this what we had was a completely open-ended transitional arrangement fix up for these operators. The Māui gasfield—fine; its transition date was 27 June 2015. But for the last of the operators needing to transition into the new regime the permission to operate expires in 2031. The legislation that this Government brought into this House was going to create an open-ended time frame in which these people could lodge their consent. They would have been able to operate potentially for ever and a day without any onus on them to have their homework handed in or their consent processed by a certain date. It was only the select committee process that picked up yet another failure by this Government to understand why it is that you need to put in place a proper regulatory regime.This is a Government that has shown that it has made mistake after mistake after mistake when it comes to this legislation. This is not legislation that has been on our statute book for a lengthy period of time. This is legislation that was passed only in the 50th Parliament in the last Parliament and already we are amending it in such fundamental ways—well not fundamental ways; these are things that you think about when you are thinking about putting in place a new regulatory regime. You think “OK there are some people already operating. How do we bring them in? What are the time frames? How do we make sure that that happens smoothly?”.It is my hope that this is the last time that we have to use this House’s time and this House’s resource—Grant Robertson: Oh I’d be very surprised.Dr MEGAN WOODS: Grant Robertson is saying that he would be very surprised.Grant Robertson: Well it is Nick Smith.Dr MEGAN WOODS: It is Nick Smith; you are correct Mr Robertson. But I am ever the optimist. I am ever the optimist.Grant Robertson: The sun always shines.Dr MEGAN WOODS: The sun is always shining when I see things and I am hopeful that this is the last time that we will have to play patch-up on bad legislation.The 9-month period that we agreed on at the select committee seems to be a sensible length of time that an operator now has to have their completed application in before their consent expires. It is hardly an onerous obligation on the operators especially the one whose consent does not expire till 2031 for them to have that consent lodged 9 months beforehand. We looked at a range of options—whether it should be 6 months 9 months or 12 months that we have a look at those applications that need to be lodged. We settled on 9 months in the collaborative way in which we looked at this because that would allow the full 140 working days statutory time frame for the Environmental Protection Agency to consider the marine consent application with 15 working days to lodge an appeal. That is approximately 8 months in total. Nine months seemed to the select committee to be a sensible period of time in which to put this in.I think that this legislation needs to serve as an important lesson to this House and to the people drafting legislation about the need to examine legislation thoroughly when the Government brings such important legislation that could have such dire economic consequences such as denying the country 26 percent of its gas supply actually because of a botch-up in the legislation. Really more homework needs to be done. There needs to be a more thorough examination of the legislation that is brought forward. The Minister in his speech introducing this bill tried to spray blame around everywhere except where it needs to fall and that is on a Government that is making mistakes. It is losing its way and it is failing to meet the needs of New Zealanders. Certainly it would not have been meeting the needs of New Zealanders who are dependent on that operation for their jobs. We believe that we need to have a managed transition away from fossil fuels but it needs to be just that—managed—not shut down on 27 June because the Government made a mistake in the drafting of its legislation and could not understand the ramifications of a regulatory regime.This is a Government that is completely out of touch with what it needs to be doing in terms of putting in place the right base. The Environmental Protection Agency has made some very sensible decisions under the exclusive economic zone legislation. We have seen some decisions where the environment has been considered and the Environmental Protection Agency has actually weighed up that the activity that an operator has applied to do will be far too detrimental to the environment. A classic example of this was on the Chatham Rise. When Chatham Rock Phosphate applied to mine there under this legislation it was seen that there would be inadequate benefit to the country and too much environmental risk. Labour will be supporting this bill. We have to; the economic implications are simply far too great.