Hughes Gareth: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 11 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15818. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. It is a great pleasure to rise in support of the Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill tonight. Like the last speaker David Shearer I think probably every member in this House and I believe everyone in our country has a similar example where they had a spiritual a visceral a human connection with the oceans or the incredible animals that live within them. It is something that is I believe unique to our country. We are a maritime nation. We have got waters 15 times larger than our land masses.I grew up in Gisborne. Every summer we used to go camping at Pouawa Beach. My dad had a lifestyle block up at Whangarā. No doubt Hekia Parata knows that location well. For 18 years we used to camp at the same campsite. I learnt to swim there. I used to go out on the dinghy with my dad and put the crayfish pots out. Reflecting on the debate tonight reminded me of when I learnt to scuba-dive just before the last election in 2011. That was at the Taputeranga Marine Reserve a new marine reserve we have created in Wellington—an absolutely spectacular place. I think that when New Zealanders get to experience these beautiful marine reserves we have around the country they are committed and they want to see more of them.That is the science that informs the debate—that we need more marine reserves. Our oceans are under threat despite having these amazing dolphin sightings shark sightings and experiences with our oceans. We love them but we also know that they are threatened. We see it when we go down to the beach and we see the waste washing up. We see it when those dying starving turtles wash up in Northland. We see it when the finned sharks wash ashore. We all know that our oceans are sick and they are unhealthy and we need to do something about it. This is why it is good to see this Parliament coming together to do something about it. But this bill is not enough. It is not going to save our oceans. It is not even going to protect the full waters around these World Heritage listed islands. It is going to be protecting only 39 percent of Campbell Island’s waters and 58 percent of the Bounty Islands’ waters. But it is good to be doing something about marine reserves. They are something we all love and we all want to protect.We see when we watch the news and read the science reports that there is rising acidification the great garbage Gaia—the great giant Pacific garbage patch as it is also known—and overfishing in the oceans. We are literally replacing keystone species in the marine ecosystem with jellyfish. I am your stereotypical greenie vegetarian who does not eat fish but you know what? I think many people in New Zealand—and perhaps more relevantly around the world—will have to get used to having jellyfish and chips instead of their fish and chips. The jellies are literally taking over our oceansbecause of overfishing. The question is not where the fish went because the answer is clear: we have literally eaten all the fish. Using our industrial fishing fleets and the might of our industrial civilisation we have gone out to harvest the world’s fisheries and we are seeing them collapse. Our large shark species have seen a population decline of 90 percent since 1950 because we are using the advanced technological fishing techniques we now have to hunt target and—unfortunately for 73 million of them every year—fin them and dump them overboard.We all know the risks the threats and the dangers facing our oceans and we all know the answer. Marine reserves are a simple effective and cheap way we can protect our oceans. That is why it is good to be going some way towards that tonight. It is clear we need more marine reserves in New Zealand. Sure you know these reserves cover 435000 hectares. It sounds like a large number when you have the National members trumpeting about it but these marine reserves take the percentage of New Zealand waters in marine reserves only from 0.31 to 0.41 percent. That is still less than 0.5 percent.Here we see the Minister of Conservation trumpeting these announcements and saying that he wants to gazette a record number of marine reserves. Nick Smith thunders about eight new marine reserves in his kayak as he does his media stunts. He says we are going to set a record. Never mind that the eight marine reserves he is talking about were started under the last Government. Never mind that all his marine reserves are still taking us to less than 0.5 percent of our waters protected. Never mind that a single year’s oil block offer is greater than all of these marine reserves we are creating tonight. Let us put it in contrast. We need more progress. Kiwis know it they support it and that is what they told Colmar Brunton—96 percent of New Zealanders want to see more marine reserves. That is why in a recent Andrea Vance column recent polling showed that in fact most New Zealanders thought we already had 30 percent coverage. No we will have only 0.41 percent if this bill passes.I have talked before about the irony of needing a law from Parliament to create marine reserves. It shows how out of date and out of touch our legislation from 1971 has become. What we need to do is modernise that law. Under National it languished for the second-longest period of any legislation in our country’s history. Remember we are the fourth-oldest democracy in the world and the second-oldest bill ever to languish and die in a select committee happened over marine reserves and we still cannot produce them in the exclusive economic zone.Remember we saw this Government decline the Akaroa marine reserve. The Government members are trumpeting as if they are environmental champions or something yet let us not forget that they declined the Akaroa marine reserve. It was not until they were taken to court and had a judicial review go in the Akaroa community’s favour that they did something about it. Let us not forget that this is a Government that is quite happy to have oil wells in the middle of those Māui’s dolphins sanctuaries. It is not providing a sanctuary.The Government is quite happy for the iron sands and Chatham Rock phosphate miners to literally vacuum up the seabed between 5 and 20 metres. On the West Coast for example 50 million tonnes of sediment is going to get vacuumed up but the Government is quite happy for that to happen in benthic protected areas. These are areas where fishers cannot go 100 metres above the seabed. This Government is quite happy to have industrial fleets literally vacuuming up the seabed and is not providing protection in these benthic protected areas.This is my last call in this debate and I want to reiterate the support for this legislation. It is good to be doing something about it. The Greens would go further. We would protect 100 percent of these World Heritage listed islands and the waterssurrounding them. But I want to touch on the politics because after all this is a house of politics. This is a year of politics being an election year. I want to question what the rationale is. What are National’s focus groups showing? Why do National suddenly feel compelled after 5 years of doing nothing—in fact taking a toxic “wreck it destroy it” approach to the environment—to be rushing through legislation like this? Why finally—5 years in and after allowing innumerable sharks to be finned and thrown overboard dead—does National have to do something about it?What we know—and I think what the data the National Party strategists are looking at shows—is that this is an issue National is incredibly weak on. It is an issue where some of its voters are potentially leaving it. We know that female voters in particular have historically had a problem with the National Party. The National Party has got a problem. The problem is that it does not care about the environment. It is not protecting the environment. It is actively destroying it. It is not a problem that is going to be remediated through spin or through public relations. It is a problem that can be addressed only by taking action by actually producing more marine reserves. We have talked about expanding the Kermadec Islands Marine Reserve which I am advocating for and trying to build parliamentary support for. That would see 15 percent of our waters protected overnight. We need to upgrade our laws. We need an integrated oceans policy. We need to stop the deep-sea drilling that is risking our marine environment. We need to stop the seabed mining. We need to protect our Māui’s dolphins.These are the solutions Kiwis support. These are the solutions the prosperity of our country is going to be built on. We know that the $1.5 billion aquaculture and fisheries sector depends on our brand. International consumers do not want to be buying crabs from a World Heritage area that is not protected. They do not want to buy our fish when they know that our Māui’s dolphins and Hector’s dolphins or those sea lions we heard about last year are becoming extinct. If National has identified it has a problem when it comes to New Zealanders’ perceptions of its environmentalism the answer is not more spin. The answer is not more gloss or more media stunts for Nick Smith. The answer is to do something about it. But I guess I am not holding out in hope or holding my breath because what we have seen under the 5 years of this Government is a callous disregard for the environment and the prosperity that the New Zealand economy relies on that is based on that environment.So it is quite good that New Zealanders will get a choice this election. They will get to choose between protecting the Māui’s dolphins or slaughtering them indiscriminately in those unsustainable fishing nets. They will get a choice between more marine reserves—protecting the Kermadec Islands and other marine reserves around New Zealand—or the spin. They will get a choice between clean energy or deep-sea drilling. That is the challenge we are giving to the National Party and that is the challenge and the option we are giving New Zealand voters at this election. Kia ora.