Marcroft JennyJENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's a privilege to stand and speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill. I too will take a relatively short call on this as we progress this bill through the House.I'd first like to make note of Minister David Parker and thank the Minister for bringing this bill to the House; noting that he mentioned that the original Act—this is why this amendment needs to happen—had a bit of a shambolic passage through the House. But he also noted to his credit that the former chair of the select committee—actually it was not his fault; so it was good to hear that as well. It was an overly complex Act—the original one—and more work definitely needs to be done on that and we will be seeing that work come through the House at some later stage.I'd also like to acknowledge my fellow colleague from the Environment Committee the Hon Scott Simpson for his contribution on this bill today. As a new member to the House who was not here in the previous Parliament I appreciate your contribution as you saw the original bill coming through the House; so thank you for that. In fact it really is a pleasure to work in the Environment Committee on pieces of legislation like this where we can work together effectively and collaboratively. That's something that I'm really enjoying—being a part of that team.Just noting that this bill as has been mentioned already by all the previous speakers is a sensible housekeeping piece of legislation. It has a very narrow scope and it corrects an error. So there is no point delaying its passage through the House. It will amend the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012 and the Minister for the Environment will be able to recover the costs of a board of inquiry when an applicant applies for a notifiable marine consent. Now those costs of the board of inquiry are substantial. They can go into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and that's why it is important that we tidy up this piece of legislation so that the taxpayer the Crown doesn't have to foot the board of inquiry costs.So as we looked through this piece of legislation when it came into the select committee we noted that we did not seek to have submissions on it but we did hear from the New Zealand Law Society. Their contribution to this piece of legislation although it was asked to be a shortened truncated process actually ended up being quite important and I note that they pointed out one amendment to this amendment and that will correct a cross-referencing error. It is a very tiny very minor cross-referencing error but wouldn't it be a tragedy to have an amendment and then have to find another amendment if we didn't get this piece of legislation through the House with this correction? So the cross-referencing error comes through in clause 4: In section 14 [replacing] 'Parts 3 and 4' " and then we delete Part 3 so it will just read "with … 3A and 4'." So it's a very tiny amendment there that the Law Society pointed out; so it was a very fortunate thing that we did have that period of time where they could make a submission.This amendment bill will enable the Minister for the Environment to recover the costs of the board of inquiry but it will also enable the Minister to delegate power to the Environmental Protection Authority to recover the real and actual costs on his behalf and that's a very important part of the process.I won't delay any further my contribution to the House other than to note that the Government will be introducing a range of other short-term changes to the Resource Management Act over the next period of the year and a more comprehensive longer-term view of the resource management system will be considered next year. In fact there has been one submission which will have a board of inquiry. The first application in fact to the exclusive economic zone board of inquiry process has recently been lodged; so that is already under way but there will be no further once this piece of legislation passes through the House.So we cannot penalise people who in fact have played by these rules but this is a cost which will go into hundreds of thousands of dollars and it's really great that we'll be able to get this through the House over the course of the next few days so that there will be no further cost burden to the taxpayer. The environment Minister as I've mentioned will be introducing more of these amendments as the Government proceeds logically to tidy up other pieces of legislation that need some technical fix-ups.In conclusion New Zealand First supports the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill as being a very sensible piece of housekeeping legislation. It's the first step in correcting a series of legislative mishaps and pointing towards more important work on the Resource Management Act and so I commend this bill to the House."