Fenton Darien: Marine Legislation Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fenton Darien: Marine Legislation Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5098. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on this bill the Marine Legislation Bill which is somewhat belated. I am looking forward to its consideration in the select committee because as some of my colleagues have pointed out there is an awful lot more to this bill than just the issue of the belated implementation of the conventions that would have made such a difference had they been in place during the  
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 disaster. I respect my colleagues on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and I want to point out that it is now chaired by David Bennett but I have been in Parliament since 2005 and I have been on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee all of that time. So I have very clear memories of what we did in 2008 before the last election around these particular conventions. 
I have in front of me the recommendation from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee around the International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage—the bunker convention—and also the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims 1976. There was a majority recommendation to the House that these conventions be taken note of and preparation be made for their implementation but what is even more interesting when you go back to that time is who was on the select committee. Who was on the select committee? Well David Bennett the member who spoke before dinner and said “Oh! The Labour Government should have done something about it in the last 4 years.” He was on the select committee. But it gets even better. It gets better than that because the Hon Maurice Williamson was the deputy chairperson of that committee— 
Phil Twyford 
: He introduced the bill! 
DARIEN FENTON 
: He introduced the bill tonight—he introduced the bill! He was the deputy chairperson and here he is trying to defend his Government’s abysmal record. Then if we have a look at who else was on there there was Kate Wilkinson. What is she now? She is the Minister of Conservation. How interesting. How embarrassing that must be for those members. My speculation is that they became so overexcited about the idea of being Ministers when the National Party became the Government in 2008 that they forgot all about the work the important work that had been done on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and will continue to be done—and they forgot to brief the incoming Minister Steven Joyce who was then the Minister of Transport. Of course we also know that the ministry briefed him when he was the incoming Minister and said that it was preparing to introduce legislation to update the Maritime Transport Act. Well it has taken an election in 2008 and another election for this legislation to hit the House. 
Phil Twyford 
: They should be embarrassed. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: They should be embarrassed by that. 
I just want to make a couple of other comments. I know there are other really important things that we have to talk about tonight so I do not want to take up too much time. But I did want to— 
Maggie Barry 
: Sit down then. 
DARIEN FENTON: Yes 
 thank you Maggie Barry as polite as always—polite as always. Really constructive you know—a really constructive member of the House. We really enjoy your contributions thank you very much—thank you very much. 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: Don’t be sarcastic Darien. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Oh am I being sarcastic? I thought being sarcastic was that member’s forte actually. 
 However I did want to observe that there are other things in this bill that will be very important for us to consider. There are issues around port safety that are included in this bill. I will be very interested to hear the submissions from various people about port safety because we do have an issue about port safety in New Zealand with a very very unregulated port system and coastline. I do think actually that while the Government was so busy including all sorts of references to the Local Government Act 1974 it could have included a very very important one that would have incorporated my bill which would ensure that there was transparency and that there was accountability for ports companies when it comes to the Official Information Act. It has not done that of course and we all know that part of the problem with the  
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 is that we have an unregulated coastline and that the Government ditched the very successful programme of the Labour Government around Sea Change and moving towards coastal shipping as part of an integrated transport strategy. This will be a very very interesting select committee but I do hope that at the end of it the members take more notice than they did of the last consideration we had on this issue.