Williams Andrew: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 22 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4656. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I will take a call on Part 3 of the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill just to perhaps make a few points of clarification. I thank the prior speaker Rino Tirikatene for his comments but I just wanted to raise a few issues in regard to some of the comments he made. 
When this came to the Local Government and Environment Committee there were some concerns that possibly there was no recourse to the Environment Court and that was a question—I was one of the ones who questioned it. But we were assured by the officials and by the counsel who was in attendance that the actual Environmental Protection Authority itself had Environment Court judges who were now with the authority and were in effect fulfilling the role within the Environmental Protection Authority of providing that aspect. In other words instead of having to go off to the Environment Court the Environmental Protection Authority itself had learned judges within its own body who would be considering the applications for projects and consents within the exclusive economic zone. I was very pleased to hear that basically this agency was not just reliant on officials to do the work but did have High Court judges involved in the agency itself which took away much of the concern in relation to not having that appeal to the Environment Court. We still also heard that there are of course opportunities for appeals on points of law to both the High Court and the Court of Appeal. 
In relation to the fines—and again we did lobby to get the fines increased—we are very pleased that it did go to $10 million from what was $600000. It is a very hefty and sizeable increase. I do believe that New Zealand First would have difficulties with some of the other incremental fines going up to the order of $100000 per day because on a daily basis those sorts of figures become incredibly difficult to manage in that some of the breaches could be relatively minor or could actually have little consequence but would need the parties to take action. On the basis of $100000 per day where there might simply be some technical matters that need to be remedied that would be a very very onerous figure to impose on any organisation that was trying to bring itself into line with its particular consent. 
But having said that at the end of the day were that organisation to continue to breach the basis of its consents and if it were incurring $10000 a day and continuing to do so for a period of time to the point where it was not actually sorting the problem out or where it was unable or unwilling to solve the issue then there is that final situation where the organisation can be taken to court and fined up to $10 million. That would be the ultimate penalty—to do that. But in the meantime it certainly would make it very very difficult for many organisations to operate in New Zealand to undertake development exercises and to undertake important economic development within our exclusive economic zone if they were going to be subject to possibly $100000 in fines on a daily basis. 
So I would just repeat the comments that we made. It is most important—and we do support Part 3 of this bill and the rest of the bill in its total for the exclusive economic zone—that we do require economic development in this country. This is a huge potential resource. I will give one example which quite staggered me at the Local Government and Environment Committee where it was said that the Chatham Rise had one of the largest deposits of phosphate in the world and that currently New Zealand imports very very large volumes of phosphate from Morocco and Algeria. We are very dependant on sources of phosphate for our agricultural sector from countries that are not always necessarily that stable. We could as an agricultural nation find ourselves in great difficulty if our sources of phosphate came a bit unstuck. What is projected for the Chatham Rise would have an impact in the order of something like 1 percent of the total area of the Chatham Rise and to secure phosphate in the future from there for the New Zealand agricultural sector would make us 100 percent self-sufficient in this country for our agricultural needs. You can imagine what impact that would have on our economy whereby this country which is so dependent on agriculture could be basically self-sufficient for phosphate for the next 100 years 200 years 300 years or more. 
Hon Craig Foss 
: All “phos” is good Foss. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: Yes yes Mr Foss. You are a very good “Fossfate”. But your fate might be quite different in the future Mr Foss. 
But anyway to go back to the phosphate on the Chatham Rise that was one small example that came to the select committee of the importance of the exclusive economic zone to New Zealand and of the potential impact it would have on this economy if it is managed well if it is done in a sustainable manner and if the likes of extraction of that phosphate from the Chatham Rise is done in an environmentally friendly manner that will assist the New Zealand economy and not have any great impact on the Chathams. 
So I have just taken this call on behalf of New Zealand First to say that we will not be supporting the Supplementary Order Papers that are suggested and we feel that in this instance we support the Government through the Committee stage of the bill. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 95 in the name of Charles Chauvel to clause 103 be agreed to.