Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): The Labour Party is supporting the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill to select committee. I want to focus in particular on the changes to the law that enable New Zealand to accede to the changes made by the 1996 protocol amending the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims. There are two aspects to that that are important. One is that this bill enables the New Zealand Government to accede to the 2003 protocol that led to the establishment of an international fund for compensation for oil pollution damage which originally started in 1992.This change which has been open to New Zealand for some time now enables New Zealand to join this other fund. It is paid for by a levy on oil importers into New Zealand. They are charged a levy and that levy goes into this international fund which is a bit like an insurance fund. If there is a big oil spill our way then that fund can be drawn upon in order to deal with the consequences of a major oil spill. It is very appropriate that New Zealand protects itself in that regard. We hope we never have to call upon those sorts of things but one only has to look at some of the terrible consequences that have dogged parts of America for decades since the Exxon Valdez went down off the American coast and you realise how terrible the consequences can be if you have the foundering of a major oil tanker. So that is good and that is one of the reasons why the Labour Party is supporting this to select committee.The second aspect as the prior speaker Alastair Scott mentioned is that it also enables New Zealand to take the steps that are necessary to exclude ourselves from some of the limitations of liability that apply to other forms of carriage of goods at sea. Unless New Zealand changes its rules and makes reservations that exclude the limitation of liability that otherwise applies—so unless New Zealand takes an active step to remove the limitation of liability that currently applies—the New Zealand Government is limited in its ability to recover costs in respect of the consequences of other vessels that founder on our coastline.This is a very real issue that was encountered in New Zealand as a consequence of the grounding of the Rena. The explanatory note the departmental disclosure statement and the regulatory impact statement all variously mention the Rena but none of them make explicit that one of the problems with the Rena was that New Zealand had not done what it could have done by then to have removed the limitation of liability which meant that there were limits on the amount that the New Zealand Government could recover from those at fault for the Rena disaster and effectively more of it had to be borne—or potentially borne—by the New Zealand Crown. I cannot remember—because it is quite a while ago now—what the final amounts were but the Rena foundered on 5 October 2011. When it hit the Astrolabe Reef it subsequently broke up and it released about 2500 barrels of oil—about 400 cubic metres of oil—and there were also containers that went overboard and the contents of those containers ended up in the sea as well.The ability of the New Zealand Government to sheet home the cost of that remedial work was limited by the then limitation of liability under the international convention which the New Zealand Government had not been able to remove because this legislation had not been passed. It was a criticism that was made by the media and by Opposition parties at the time—that if we had acceded to the changes to that treaty earlier and if we had enabled in law the New Zealand Government to remove that limitation of liability then the position could have been different.It is sad enough that that happened in respect of the Rena but you have to ask yourself if that was on 5 October 2011 why it is that it has taken 5 years since that event to bring this legislation to Parliament because it was evident at the time of the Rena disaster that this problem needed to be fixed. Luckily there has not been a significant foundering of a large cargo ship off the shores of New Zealand since then so we have not been adversely affected by that in the intervening period—but we could have been. It is only a matter of luck that in the period since 5 October 2011 when the Rena grounded and now we have not been faced with a substantial claim where the Government's ability to recover compensation from the owners of the vessel that caused the environmental damage—you know had that occurred during this intervening period the New Zealand Government would have been hindered in its ability to do the right thing.I cannot see why it has taken that long to get this into Parliament. It is not a particularly long bill as others have already said. This also covers drug testing and the total bill is 25 pages long—it is not a large bill. A significant part of that relates to the drug and alcohol management plans. Looking at that those go for about five pages—the explanatory note and the index sections are about 10 pages of it—so you know the relevant provisions that the Minister of Transport if he spent less time looking in the mirror and more time looking at his papers he would—[Interruption] I know that he is from down near the Astrolabe and I do not know whether that is where he got the idea for the Brylcreem but—[Interruption] You know.Hon Simon Bridges: This is—this is—Hon DAVID PARKER: I know this is a cruel contribution but I am sure that your ego is strong enough to take it. The Minister of Transport should have had this in Parliament years ago. I am looking forward to a contribution from the National Government to explain why given that it was evident in 2011 we had a gap in New Zealand's law that meant that there was a limitation of liability as to how much we could recover from an overseas owner of cargo ships that foundered in New Zealand waters.Hon Simon Bridges: Some people can never be happy.Hon DAVID PARKER: I am actually very easily made happy. I am a very happy person but I am disappointed at the slackness of the Government and the Minister in not bringing this to the House to cure this problem that was so publicly aired in 2011 following the foundering of the Rena.I am not going to spend much time on the drug and alcohol testing provisions. I agree that they are necessary. I agree that technology has improved in a way that enables those testing regimes to be more practical than they used to be. And I also agree with the last speaker that the tragedy that we had in respect of the balloon that burnt and then crashed to the ground following a collision with wires may have been avoided—we do not know that it would have been—if we had those tests and arrangements in place earlier.One of the questions that does I think need to be asked by the select committee is why it is that there has been this delay in respect of the empowering provisions that enable the changes to the protocol to be brought into effect both in terms of the oil spills for oil tankers which is a different thing from the cargo ships but also why there have been the delays in respect of getting rid of this limitation of liability in respect of cargo ships. And I would also be interested to see a time line as to how long it is going to take once this legislation is passed for those changes to be brought into effect in practice through the changes that are then made to New Zealand's participation in those international agreements.