Webb DuncanDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. Well that was a speech that you'd expect from a true National Party member: fundamentally conservative. Do nothing" is essentially the approach of the National Party. Change nothing leave the status quo. And do you know what? We saw that for a long time and things got progressively worse. This bill says "No we're going to take a long-term approach."—not an approach which satisfies the clamouring of industry today but one which will make any industry sustainable in the long term. That's our plan across all industry and a fundamental principle of that plan is to say that people who use resources who damage the environment and who cause an impact will pay for it. And that's fair—that is absolutely fair and that is what this bill does.You know I don't know how many people have ever drafted or litigated an energy contract in this House. We hear from the other side many times that we don't know what we're doing we don't know what we're talking about but you know what? I've actually done a bit of work in this area and the fact of the matter is—[Multiple interjections] Yeah I know how about that! There they are over the other side of the House pretending they know all about business and none of them have even seen an energy contract. Well bonds and indemnities—we heard all this pooh-poohing about bonds and indemnities; they are fundamental to these arrangements. These arrangements last 20 30 and 50 years sometimes and the idea of a chain of liability—because the main evil we're trying to attack here is the difficulty when people sell an asset to a less robust company a company that doesn't have the financial strength of the original licence holder. And that can happen down a chain across the life of a mine or of a well—it can happen many times: every five or 10 or 12 years. Now what we don't want to see is the weakest party being held holding the baby a well with huge decommissioning costs when all of a sudden as we saw in the Tamarind situation they go broke and they run for cover and the taxpayer bears the burden whereas there's people who have been extracting minerals for profit over a long period of time who get away with paying nothing. You know what? That's not fair. We won't have it.So the committee's done a really good job and there's nothing wrong with strict liability either. Any economist will actually tell you that saying you pay regardless of fault means that an operator will absolutely take the appropriate level of precautions. [Multiple interjections] Go and do your research. I thought you'd like Richard Posner. He's one of the neoliberal philosophers that I thought you'd be right into. Go and read what he says about strict liability. So go and do your research: strict liability is entirely appropriate especially when you're doing something which is inherently risky. The mere fact of drilling for oil and gas—it can be that no matter what precautions you take devastation can happen. We can't have someone going and doing something which is inherently dangerous and then say "Oops I did my best." That's not good enough. Reasonable precautions won't do it. The committee's done a great job tidying up some technical aspects of this bill. It's a great piece of work. I look forward to seeing it going through this House and becoming law to protect our environment and create truly sustainable industries in this area. Kia ora Madam Speaker."