Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well Madam Chair thank you very much. Speaking to the first reading of this Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill I'm staggered. Fancy having to follow a speech like that. So the revelation tonight has been that Labour Party backbenchers are now required to go away and learn by rote the quotes from the Hon Michael Wood. Now I've got a vision of the book—the book of quotes—probably about 100 pages; 99 of them will be blank but there will be one page with one or two quotes mostly about a walking cycleway across the Auckland Harbour Bridge—Chris Bishop: That's right a little red book.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —and no—yes it might well be a little red book who would know? It probably will be a socialist Labour Party little red book Famous Quotes of the Hon Michael Wood"! And there we go it will be a fascinating thing. What will be interesting is to hear other Labour Party backbenchers quoting from the little book of the Hon Michael Wood's famous quotes—"The Little Red Book of Michael Wood"—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I invite the member to come back to the bill.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Well I'm responding Madam Chair to the revelation from the previous Labour member Naisi Chen who was telling us what her bedside reading was and the quotes that she has committed to memory. But this is a bill that warrants more serious consideration than the last Labour member has given it.It is a problem because here is a situation where a company has defaulted on their environmental and corporate responsibilities in terms of decommissioning and cleaning up a gasfield off the coast of New Zealand and sadly it's been the long-suffering New Zealand taxpayer that has had to foot the bill for the tidy up for the clean-up and that is as a result of a hole in our law—not only a hole in the gasfield but a hole in our law. The challenge is to get the fix right because this stuff is expensive. And actually the companies who trade in this area in terms of gas exploration and extraction and oil or whatever kind of mineral extraction it is they understand the costs involved. For many of them the cost of exiting is a very significant portion of the total cost of their operation and of doing business.Now what particularly worries me about this exercise—and we will no doubt hear the details in select committee—is that the company that eventually went into liquidation and ceased trading Tamarind were a company that purchased what was left of the field back in September 2019. Now there is more than a hint more than a suspicion that actually Tamarind did not purchase that site that facility until near the end of its life. They are a company that we are told specialises in end-of-life gasfields and exiting them. I suspect that there is a real potential that an international organisation of that sort knew more about the loopholes and the intricacies and the costs than we did as a New Zealand Parliament and/or Government of the day. I think that there is a real potential that that purchase of their rights towards the end of the life of that field by a company that specialises in the operation of end-of-life oil and gas wells they knew more about it than the unsuspecting New Zealand taxpayer. What is particularly galling is that this company having gone into liquidation and ceased trading their parent company actually continued to trade.So the issues around the intricacies of company and corporate law are at play here and not least of which is the intent and indeed the undertakings of an international parent company that sets up a smaller company that ostensibly comes into to do the end-of-life stuff then falls over for whatever particular reason leaving the New Zealand taxpayer high and dry.Now this is not only a problem in terms of this particular case at hand but today is the second time that we've heard of a similar—not completely separate in terms of the style of a situation of this sort of thing occurring where the New Zealand taxpayer has had to intervene to clean up an environmental mess left by a company that has either failed in its moral and corporate obligations or in fact has actually fallen over in terms of its liquidity and insolvency. I'm referring to the situation of the dross at Mataura in Southland and the taxpayers had to pick up quite a lot of that bill. Finally New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Ltd has done what I think is the morally correct and proper thing to do and sorted it out but not after a long number of years of putting the people of Mataura at significant risk because the dross was liable to be exposed to water which would have created a toxic mess and that would have put people's lives and health at risk. So in that case the aluminium smelter contracted out the removal and disposal of the toxic dross to a company that in turn stored it at Mataura and then that company fell over as well leaving the toxic mess sitting there and no obvious owner of the obligation to put it right. So after what is nearly a decade or maybe even more finally it has been—or at least it is now back on the site at the aluminium smelter at Bluff.So the parallels to this legislation in terms of decommissioning Crown mineral sites and what has happened there just highlight in my view the kinds of potential loopholes that exist and the risk that exists for the New Zealand taxpayer if this sort of legislation is not right and detailed and correct.So at select committee—and we are going to support this legislation through to select committee—we will be wanting to make sure that this well-intentioned bill because I'm sure that it is well intentioned is actually not going to result in any perverse outcomes that the well-intentioned objectives of the bill are going to be fulfilled and that the detail will ensure that the situation that has happened concerning Tamarind will not happen again. That is where the trick is in terms of getting the drafting right getting the wording right getting the intent right and getting a complete understanding because we're dealing with international companies large companies with huge amounts of capital big numbers of dollars at stake and for them the potential of finding a narrow loophole that absolves them from fulfilling their moral environmental and legal obligations to New Zealand taxpayers and cleaning up end-of-life gas- and oilfields without that correct analysis and making sure that the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed in this legislation then we run the risk of having exactly the same situation occur again.So as my colleague Barbara Kuriger has mentioned in her contribution in this debate we'll be looking very carefully at select committee to ensure that the detail is analysed. We'll be looking forward to submissions from people like John Carnegie who is well versed in expertise and has expertise in this area because he is a person whose judgment I value and his experience I know will be of benefit to the select committee. So those are the issues that concern us.There is one final matter that I do want to raise in this first reading speech and that relates to the question of whether or not this legislation is going to be retrospective. Now on the reading of the bill at the moment that question appears to be moot and it is a little bit unsure. But if in fact it is to be retrospective then those businesses—Hon Andrew Little: What rubbish. The member should sit down.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —will want to be taking an even closer look at it. So this is a fair thing. It is obvious this matter has struck a raw nerve with the Minister who's on duty tonight. He didn't get a chance to have a go earlier on. He'd be better to tend to his papers. But it is interesting when the Minister does get a little bit roused up. So the question of retrospectivity is obviously something that will be teased out at select committee. So we'll have a close look at it at select committee and we are going to support this bill through to first reading. Thank you."