Quinn Paul: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — Third Reading 
Quinn Paul: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17645] 
PAUL QUINN (National) 
: 
 I will focus on three aspects of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill in my contribution to this debate. Firstly I take the opportunity to thank the advisers whom I see in the gallery and whom I acknowledge and also the select committee staff. I wonder whether anyone knows how much I at least appreciated their very hard work by paying them the compliment—unlike the members on the opposite side of the House—of actually reading the material they put in front of us. I acknowledge and thank them for that. 
I will also talk a little bit about the process. It is fortunate that the previous speaker spoke a wee bit about the process because what he just said was a load of bollocks. It is as simple as that. Labour declared its position on 9 December. Labour members said: “It is this or nothing.” I have here the press release. On 9 December Labour declared its position and that was it. The Green Party member on the Maori Affairs Committee sat in the committee and said nothing. Notwithstanding the fact that the leader of that party said that we did not discuss the report the member who was present when we did discuss it is sitting in the House right now. When we were deliberating he was asked for a contribution. The chairman asked him whether he had something to say and what did the Green Party member say? He said that no he had nothing to contribute and that his party was writing an independent report. 
The point is that those people had already declared their positions. Therefore what was the chairman left to do? The chairman was left to say that if that were the case the best form of sunlight— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I refer the member to the Speakers’ rulings on page 117. There are a number of them there. It is a third reading speech. We need to concentrate on the content of the bill. The member may mention what has happened in the Committee of the whole House but may not speak at length on the select committee process. 
PAUL QUINN 
: The chairman—wisely I think—made the decision to bring the bill back to the Committee of the whole House and in fact to have all 86 recommendations that were recommended by the departmental report talked about in the Committee of the whole House. I ask what greater acknowledgment of democracy there is than to actually get it out of the secrecy of the select committee and have the debate here and thrash it out so that the people could see the positions of each party. What did we do? We took notice of all of those submissions and as a consequence we had thousands of amendments. That puts to bed the issue of process. 
The last matter I want to focus on in my short contribution to the debate is the main difference between the major Opposition party and ourselves and that is the issue of codification. This is where the Opposition has said that it wants to leave it to the courts full stop. The problem with leaving it to the courts—and history has shown this as I have referred to in an earlier debate—is that since 1877 we have had three principal cases on which the Ngati Apa case was based and they are all different. Each decision has taken the debate in a new direction. In fact this Government under the guidance of the Attorney-General said that yes we need to have the capability to go to court but we need to ring-fence it and that is what codification does. It says we make the judgments but it is within these boundaries. 
It has been a great privilege for me to be part of this process and as a parting shot I offer a loan of my tikanga book to the ACT Party so that it might get to know it better and be more fully informed when it wants to debate the issue going forward.