O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It gives me pleasure to speak to the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill 2016. I am privileged to represent an electorate not far from here. If you look up when you're leaving here you'll see the summit of Mount Kaukau. When you stand on that summit you look out on to Cook Strait you look out on to the harbour and it would be a very very rare time you would be there that you wouldn't see considerable shipping activity around this area. When I stand there—it's a very attractive and pretty part of what is probably one of the most underrated electorates in New Zealand—and when I look at this bill I see how important it is that we actually ensure that we get it right.Many of the speakers here have talked about the issue of drug testing. What was originally proposed of course was the drug and alcohol management plan (DAMP). I'm surprised no one else has been dad jokey" enough to talk about how we were going to take the "damp" out of the maritime industry but it would appear we have actually done that very thing.On a more serious note when I look at the whole question of drug testing I'm very pleased that what again on the surface of it—and I commend the select committee that looked at this and probably thought "Well yes this is a logical thing to do when we have a look at some of the disasters." However what is incredibly important as we now look at the issue of drug testing as it becomes more important—and so many of the issues we'll be dealing with in this country relate to drugs. We've just seen this morning the police seizure—the civil action against the leader of a major gang in Auckland seizing property that may or may not be tainted property from drug transacting. This gives some idea when you look at the millions involved in that just how much drugs are an important—how much it's part of the lifestyle of New Zealand. So we do need to address that.But we always have to be aware of the law of unintended consequences in doing so. I've seen that where we do introduce stringent regimes we actually can bring about behaviour that is—if we're not actually going to address what we intended to do we can actually end up with perverse outcomes. I talk about things like synthetic cannabis and the prevailing use of it. It's come back into use because one of the problems is that the drug-testing regime around it is very inaccurate. People can actually still—and I should be careful saying this and giving people ideas. But I'll just say that the testing regime around that is a little inaccurate and if we're not careful we just encourage what is actually more dangerous behaviour.So I'm pleased that a provision that was relatively thrown into the bill—it made sense but cooler heads have prevailed. What we've asked the employers to do the shipping owners to do and the companies to do is to take a broader look at this at their whole policies and bring in what should always be testing or bring in regimes around dealing with these issues that take into account the broad issues involved so that we don't take a narrow approach that could actually end up making our industries more unsafe because those involved may end up in alternative activities that are actually more dangerous.We have seen and we don't need to look far to see the effect on our shipping and what can go wrong in shipping. The Rena has been spoken about many times and the Mikhail Lermontov also. New Zealand became the first country since the Cold War to actually sink a Russian ship at the time. But our levity around that should be—obviously we should be careful around the fact that a man did lose his life in relation to that.The Rena also was something that occupied all our attention. Again it was an act of crazy shipping where someone decided basically to take a short cut into Tauranga Harbour and ended up on the Astrolabe Reef. I know I was in Waihī after a major storm and a lot of the cargo that had been on board a lot of the shipping containers broke open and ended up on Waihī Beach. Again I'm reminded of my mother who was from a dairy farm up there. She saw all these bags of skim-milk powder on the beach and was wondering how she could get them back to my brother's farm in Westport. She couldn't stand to see the waste like a very good farmer's wife.But again we saw the result of what can go wrong in shipping. So I'd hate to think when we seek to address it that we sort of think that by introducing a drug-testing regime somehow we're going to fix it. So this really does put it back now on the shipping owners to make sure that they have got a regime in place that ensures that their employees are safe; that it's not just a narrow provision being used because if they don't get it right—and this is the message I like to see going out to so many groups before we do embark on regulation—and if you don't self-regulate then we will be forced as a Government as a State to do this. So this does give the opportunity.As I look through the submissions that were made to the select committee by various groups it's not selfishness in there; as I read through those submissions it's people who actually understand the implications of legislation like this. So again I think those who may find the fact that those DAMP provisions have been removed could gain some comfort from the fact that the industry has now been alerted to what will happen if they don't take some sort of action themselves.Moving on to other provisions of the bill of course we have the oil spills. Actually now this bill really does give us the opportunity to make sure through the insurance that we actually have funding that goes from $411 million to $1.5 billion which we can actually now ensure is available through the insurance scheme. We can make access to that to fix up these spills. Again I go back to the beginning of my speech when I talked about the amount of shipping that goes through the relatively narrow Cook Strait and Wellington Harbour and I'm sure that the near misses are reported but I do fear that one day we may—my colleague Mr Eagle talked about the fantastic fishing and diving and the blue cod and the crayfish down at the Chatham Islands but a much better-kept secret is the south coast of Wellington where once one is outside the rāhui or the reserve there is a great amount of crayfish blue cod and other delicacies to be found in that area. So I would hate to think that an oil spill—however far away such an oil spill might occur—and the fact that we didn't have the funding to actually stop it from coming ashore would prevent those lucky Wellingtonians from being able to avail themselves of that very lucrative fertile and tasty produce from that part of the coast and that that would be lost. So again I think that's another great provision of this bill.I was going to talk about the Chatham Islands but I think again after my colleague Mr Eagle spoke there is not much left to say. I think they're small islands—and again I wouldn't put my name forward to be on that plane because I think already with the number of people who'd be interested I'd hate to think that this country could be at the mercy of some of the brightest minds in New Zealand perhaps not making it out there. I'd hate to think what might happen.Just finally I think that one of the provisions of the bill—the Rocket Lab. Again it's hard when you speak this late into a debate to actually find something new—and already I think one of my colleagues across the House has referred to it but I have to inform him that one of the provisions of this bill is to ensure that basically ships stay out of the way when rockets are being launched. I see that the rocket launch that was to take place today has been aborted. I'd hate to think that it did actually make it and there was one of these massive passenger ships that we're seeing—passenger liners; the one that I walked past today was one of the bigger ones I've seen—and I'd hate to think that one of them happened to be sailing past oblivious to the danger when the rocket came down on it. So again it just shows that there is quite a bit of sense to this so I commend this bill to the House."