Street Maryan: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 16 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9371. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I wish I could say that it gave me great pleasure to get up and speak to the third reading of these bills which come from the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill but it does not. I am very sorry that legislation is being passed in this way about these matters. There are some things in the legislation which my colleague Ruth Dyson outlined earlier that we are perfectly happy with. Certainly she identified those things. For example we welcome the schedule 4 provisions and the two-tier process around permitting complex and more straightforward applications. Those sorts of things we have no trouble with.But bad process always results in bad law. Good process sometimes results in bad law but much less often. Bad process always results in bad law. With the introduction of the Minister’s amendment around protest vessels we have dare I say it a sneaky little amendment brought in without public scrutiny. In fact Parliament was used to prevent that amendment from going back to the Commerce Committee for proper consideration and submission. When the Green Party moved a procedural motion that it be returned to the select committee the Government used the weight of its numbers regardless of the process to deny that leave and to deny the public the opportunity to speak to this matter and to have their views made known. So what we will have is legislation that is bad in process and bad in parts.The explicit purpose of this bill is to promote the prospecting for exploration for and mining of Crown-owned minerals for the benefit of New Zealand. That is what it says in the Bills Digest about the purpose of this piece of legislation. This is a contentious area without any doubt and for the Minister to proceed in more than a cavalier way—in I think a sinister way—with the amendment that he introduced which will restrict protest vehicles from getting within 500 metres of a drilling rig or a seagoing vessel that has mineral exploration as its purpose is simply a denial of community upset and community disquiet about deep-sea exploration. There have been sufficient examples overseas of the dangers of deep-sea mining and deep-sea drilling for people to be legitimately concerned.When protestors get close to property and trespass they are arrested and they pay the price. Lucy Lawless and others recently in relation to a Greenpeace protest at New Plymouth were arrested when they transgressed the law and they have paid the price forthat or are in the process of doing so. To ban protesters from getting close to the object of their protest is simply a curtailment of democratic rights that we should not be tolerating in this country. Protestors often do things that are dramatic in order to get attention. I do not want our society in its rapacious desire led by this Government for fossil fuels for ongoing depletion of natural resources at all costs to compromise our democratic freedoms in the process.This is in large part bad law. It encourages the development of Crown-owned minerals so that they contribute more to New Zealand’s economic development. Yes on the surface it could be a reasonable thing to do and even a beneficial thing to do if it were being seen in a vacuum. But at the same time as this legislation is going through the House with its tawdry little ministerial amendment we have round one of the Resource Management Act changes in front of the select committee we have proposals on round two of the Resource Management Act changes and we have proposals on water quality and management which give nobody who has an interest in this area any confidence—any confidence—that this Government cares about the protection of the environment. There is no guarantee in any of these provisions—which are not crowding in upon us now by accident; this is designed by Government—and there is no evidence in any of this crowding of legislation and proposals for legislation that gives anybody in New Zealand interested in our environment confidence that this Government will protect it or intends to protect it.For example in response to an earlier National Party speaker Jonathan Young MP for New Plymouth who contributed to this debate I just want to ask on behalf of the people in Tikorangi what that member is going to say and what he is going to do about the community disquiet the community concern around the Kōwhai wells especially Kōwhai C in Tikorangi just out of Waitara. It is an area that I personally know very well. I spent quite a lot of my childhood there. On the basis of this bill and the way that this Minister has ridden roughshod over community concerns and concerns expressed by notable New Zealanders—who are not stupid and who are clever and intelligent and perceptive about these things. In the face of that concern he has proceeded against due process to bring in an amendment that makes this bill a travesty.It seems to me that Jonathan Young has now been given the right by the Minister to ignore the people of Tikorangi to simply say to the people of Tikorangi: “Oh yes heard what you said don’t agree with you. You might be clever. You might be the New Zealander of the Year but your opinion”—oh sorry Mr Speaker; this is in quotation marks. He might say to the people of Tikorangi that those people are clever they might have the New Zealander of the Year amongst them but he puts no store by their opinions. That is not good enough. It might be the way John Key wants to run his Cabinet—and the new boy on the block Simon Bridges is following the Prime Minister’s pattern—but it is not good enough if one is trying to run a democratic country that is accustomed to democratic rights and to being able to make a difference where it sees the need. Thank you.