Beaumont Carol: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10282. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): This bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill has as others have said been a highly questionable bill and I want to touch on all three of clauses 1 2 and 3 in my contribution now. First of all I want to look at clause 3 and the amendments to the principal Act because part of the reason we are here is to fix up a whole lot of mistakes that were made in the original bill when it was forced through. As others have so eloquently outlined to the Committee we are in a very odd situation of having to amend a bill that has not yet come into effect which is a very strange situation. But I just thought it was worth putting on the record what those mistakes are—what we are amending in clause 3.Hon Gerry Brownlee: No we’re talking about the title.CAROL BEAUMONT: Clause 3 is about amending the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013. We are talking about clauses 1 to 3. The mistakes made in the original bill relate to the definition of “underground gas storage facility”; references to “reserves” being changed to “resources”; extensions to existing petroleum permits; the addition of platinum to tier 1 permits to make it the same as gold and silver; clarification of the application of the Crown Minerals Act 1991 to existing privileges; clarification of the proprietary status of permits acquired by the Crown; references to a dwelling change because as was so eloquently explained last night we are going from a “dwelling house” as two words to “dwellinghouse” as one word—or the other way round I cannot quite remember—and other “minor changes consequential” to the above. So those are all the mistakes.But if I look at some of the more serious matters in this bill I think I want to look at the possibility of changing the title and making a suggestion for that. Some of those things are perhaps about sloppiness and about a Minister and a Government that just force through legislation without adequate scrutiny. But there are some changes in this bill that are very very serious and we talked about those last night at the relevant parts of the bill. They are making significant changes to permit processes—creating conditional permits running real risks around health and safety and environmental matters—and in Part 2 they are around covering the whole continental shelf areawhich is an extra 1.7 million square kilometres. So these are serious matters; they are not just sloppiness.Andrew Geddis in an article last night talked about sloppy and highly questionable lawmaking so I would like to suggest that this bill be amended to be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Sloppy and Highly Questionable Lawmaking) 2013 Amendment Bill” because it has both elements in this. It has both sloppiness and it has some very serious and highly questionable matters in this bill. Or perhaps in more kind of day-to-day language we could call it the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Sinister or Stuff-up or Both?) 2013 Amendment Bill” because there are those two elements. So I think that people listening to this debate will be very concerned about this whole process.I want to perhaps suggest another amendment to the name. We sat last night and went through the specifics of this legislation with a Minister in the chair who sat there and failed to answer one single question—not one—and they were serious questions. They were questions about the legality of what was happening here—questions about whether we were breaching international law for example—but still the Minister of Energy and Resources sat there and he read his magazines or at least he pretended to. So I would like to suggest another one which is the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Refusal to Answer Questions) 2013 Amendment Bill”. I have never ever seen such a disgraceful performance by a Minister in the face of very serious questioning about important matters that relate to environmental standards that relate to health and safety and that relate to the legality of legislation that we are having to deal with in this House as part of this Government’s push-through of legislation following the Budget.Again I just want to put it in context. A very good piece by Andrew Geddis was entitled “I think National just broke our constitution” and I think that this legislation is part of that process. He refers to the Government pushing through—