Woods Megan: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4623. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram):I am very pleased to take my final call on this piece of legislation that we have put through and I am very pleased that this is a piece of legislation that has gone through this House relatively quickly. It was introduced only a short time ago and it has worked its way through the select committee process and Labour is supporting this legislation as we have indicated at previous readings. The reason why we are supporting this legislation is that simply we had to because this is a fix up of a fix up of a fix up of a blunder by Nick Smith. This is a fix up of a piece of legislation that we should not be using this House time to debate. It is a fix-up piece of legislation that could have been anticipated.So let me take you through the various things that this legislation does in case people over the few days we have had away from this House have lost sight of the important things.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the member. Could I ask those who are leaving to please do so in a timely manner. It is important that we hear what the speaker is saying.Dr MEGAN WOODS: So what this bill does is it amends section 162 of the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act. In effect what that does is allow the Māui Gas platform to continue operating. It has just recently only in the last week or so or couple of weeks had its consent approved. But what the original principal legislation of the exclusive economic zone did not do was put a transitional arrangement in place to allow the existing operators of which there are only four to come inside the new regulatory regime. So we were faced with the very real prospect at the beginning of this year of a piece of shoddy legislation from Nick Smith that did not allow for the existing operators to come in and the really real possibility that we would have had to have seen the Māui Gas platform shut down while this was worked through. All of this was entirely predictable.But what has also been entirely predictable is the passage of this legislation in the House. This is not the first time as we have talked about in previous contributions that we have been in this House playing fix up to the fix up to the fix-up legislation on this. In fact when the principal legislation was first brought to the House and sent to the Local Government and Environment Committee it took an entire rewrite by the select committee to get that legislation in any kind of shape. It had to come back to the House for something like 14 pages of a ministerial Supplementary Order Paper in order to make it fit for purpose and do what it purported to do. But within only a very short time frame in the last Parliament we were back in this House playing patch up to that legislation and here we are again. But what is even more disturbing is that this bill which was introduced to the House and sent off to the Local Government and Environment Committee when it got there had some fundamental flaws with it too.I would like to acknowledge the hard work of the select committee. I would like to acknowledge the work of the select committee chair Scott Simpson but above all I would like to acknowledge the submitters on this bill because it was the submitters on this bill who have meant that we are not going to be back here in a week a month or two or three months playing fix up to the fix up to the fix up to the fix-up legislation on another Nick Smith blunder. What the original legislation that Nick Smith tabled in the House did was leave things entirely open-ended. We were putting in place transitional arrangements to bring only four operators into a regulatory regime. Māui Gas platform’s consent expires at the end of June of this year but the ability of the fourth and final of these operators to operate under the environment that existed before the passage of the exclusive economic zone legislation does not run out until 2032. What the initial legislation that was tabled did was offer an open-ended time frame to those operators. There was no onus as to when it was that they needed to have their consents in by. This is the standard of work we have had from this Government on this piece of legislation.What this legislation does is it creates a bypass for the existing operators to say: “OK you were operating under the Crown Minerals Act and various other pieces of legislation prior to the passage of the exclusive economic zone legislation. What we’ll do is create a way for you to come in to the new regulatory regime. You need to have your consent in place and you need to transition in.” But it was only the work of the select committee and only the very fine submissions we heard from a number of submitters that pointed out that the legislation we had in front of us put absolutely no parameters around when it was that one of those operators had to have their consents filed by. So we were faced with the real prospect of consent-holders whose consents expire in 2032—quite some time away when there is not a real rush and urgency around the time frame. We were faced with the prospect of those operators being able to not put their consent application in until the day their consent expired or even before.But what the work of the select committee did was look at three options: 6 9 and 12 months for what is a reasonable time frame for one of these existing operators to have applied for a consent. We went through a range of options and looked for alignment with other legislation. We settled on 9 months because not only did it align well with other pieces of legislation in this space but also it was practical around the amount of time it will take for a consent to be processed. It is not only the consent being processed of course—that is one part of it—but what was putting the Māui platform really at risk was the spectre that we may indeed have appeals to that and that operator would not be able to operate while those appeals are heard. So this legislation brings the time period far more into line with what we see under the Resource Management Act although there is not total alignment. But it has brought it far more into alignment with that.It is of concern to us that there was a lucky catch by the select committee on ministerial incompetence from Nick Smith and that through his office a piece of legislation like that could land on the Table in this House and then could be sent to a select committee. I know that it is the job of select committees to examine legislation and we did support this legislation at its first reading. We said it was a piece of legislation that we wanted to look at very closely when it went to the select committee. We wanted to look for the fish-hooks. But when it comes to putting in place a regulatory regime that is going to govern something that actually could potentially have turned off over 25 percent of the gas supply for New Zealand not to mention a number of jobs being put on the line while the appeals were heard is not an acceptable standard from a Government.It is yet another example of a Government that is failing to meet the needs of ordinary New Zealanders when it is failing in the most fundamental role and that is to table legislation that is fit for purpose and is going to do what it purports to do. It shows a Government that it out of touch. Its members think: “Oh well it doesn’t really matter that we could see the Māui Gas platform close down. It might be a loss of a bit of natural gas.” It would be all those people whose jobs are put on the line. This is a distracted Government that is making mistakes. It is prone to blunders and lo and behold who do we find at the centre of this blunder? The “Minister of Blunders” himself Nick Smith. It is sloppy that this legislation got to this House in this form. This could literally have been the Government that failed to deliver a brighter future when the lights went out because we shut down one of our major energy sources in this country. We expect more.But we are supporting this legislation. This is a problem that does need to be fixed. It is yet another error in an error-prone piece of legislation. We will be supporting it and once again I would like to acknowledge the very important role that those submitters played when they came to our select committee and made sure that this was legislation that we did not have to come back to and in only a few weeks fix up another Nick Smith blunder. Thank you.