Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much Madam Chair. It's with pleasure that I will make a short contribution on the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill whether for five or 10 minutes—the latter being urged by Andrew Falloon but perhaps he'll be urging me in a different direction once he's heard the content of what I have to suggest along with some other members of the House perhaps.I'd like to focus on clause 4 of the bill which relates to section 2 of the principal Act which is in relation to interpretation and more particularly the phrase onshore Taranaki region". Now in the bill it's proposed by the Minister of Energy and Resources and her Government that this be defined in a certain way which I'll come to quite specifically in a moment. My colleague Melissa Lee asked some very intelligent questions about exactly the meaning of some of these words and it is significant because the application of the Act as amended as it will become if this passes will be affected by exactly the areas that we're talking about.So onshore Taranaki region then "means the Taranaki region as constituted by clause 4 of the Local Government Taranaki Reorganisation Order 1989 but excludes any part of the region that is offshore". I emphasise the final word "offshore" because the meaning of that isn't actually particularly clear in this amendment bill. And so we can actually look of course in the Act itself and we see there a definition of offshore as being and I quote "anywhere that is on the seaward side of the mean high-water mark." Seaward meaning on the side of course of the sea rather than the land in the same way that leeward and windward are opposites.I'll just pause for a moment to note that this is an area of my life which I have in a previous professional life spent some time agonising over as a navigator with the navy. So I appreciate and understand that actually lives are at stake when it comes to understanding exactly the definition and understanding of where water and land intersect. So what then is offshore? And we have that definition in the Crown Minerals Act but that in turn leads us to ask the question: what does the phrase "mean high-water mark" actually mean?Some concerned citizens and I have been looking into this question with some enthusiasm and we've noted that there's a paper from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in the early 1990s that provides guidance along those lines. It was published by the professional development committee of the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors. It actually goes back to the common law cadastral boundary definition so as between again the land and the sea as being and I quote from a case in 1854 between the Attorney-General v Chambers—whoever or whatever "Chambers" might have been. "The line of medium high tide between the springs and neaps"—"springs" being the tides which are at their greatest or lowest extent corresponding to full moons or new moons and "neaps" being all those other tides. So on a sine curve such as we can use to represent tides coming and going over the course of a year—our springs being at the greatest extent.So again just reminding you Madam Chair and anyone else who's still following with interest at this point we're talking about the definition of "offshore" which specifically helps to define the exclusion within the "onshore Taranaki region" definition in the bill. And so we've got a legal definition by that particular item of case law from a century and a half ago but also some advice of chief surveyors that talks about the foot of a cliff the toe of a bank the edge of vegetation or my personal favourite a line of driftwood as being indicators of where the mean high-water mark might occur.So my question to the Minister then noting all these possible different understandings is whether she agrees with any of those types of definitions for what a mean high-water mark might mean. Bearing in mind that that in turn will define what will be "offshore" for the purpose of section 2 of the principal Act in defining onshore Taranaki region. So if she can give some guidance on that. No doubt there won't be any changes to the legislation on the basis of me having asked these questions. I don't seek that; I merely seek some clarification so that the record will state when this bill comes into the law as amended as it inevitably will—it seems then we'll at least know what we're dealing with."