Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Madam Speaker thank you. The ACT Party supports this bill. We'll be supporting it to select committee. This is an important piece of legislation that allows us for the first time I think since the Resource Management Act (RMA) was passed to actually explore issues about legacy liability for environmental contamination and what you do with orphan sites. What's the balance of responsibility and accountability between the private sector who operates oil- and gasfields—and I do note that the Green Party member has left without actually waiting to hear—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member may not refer to the absence of a member even though she isn't absent.SIMON COURT: Thank you Madam Chair for that reminder. I know but some truths are inconvenient. So I just want to talk about some of the risks that this bill presents to Government and to our energy security because the businesses that are involved in delivering energy in New Zealand—in the gas sector in the oil sector but also in the electricity sector—rely on having access to a secure supply at affordable prices and to be confident that the environmental issues are well managed.It's important because businesses in New Zealand almost without fail are socially responsible. We've come a million miles from that time 20 30 40 years ago where businesses thought it was acceptable just to liquidate and leave and the issue that this piece of legislation aims to repair or address the abandoning of the Tūī oilfield and leaving those decommissioning responsibilities with Government was a surprise to many—a $350 million bill and counting we see. But it's not a surprise to all of us because in a previous life in a previous role I led environmental decontamination projects at some of New Zealand's worst legacy contaminated sites where chemicals like 245-T had been manufactured and where very very harmful timber treatment chemicals had been manufactured and used so I do have some insights which I'd like to share with the House.It is important to recognise that businesses that start off with a consent or with a permit that says You must pay forward a bond or into an after-care fund because something might happen and we don't know what will happen in the future."—it is commonplace that those arrangements are made at the time of consenting large long-term operations like landfills for example like waste-water treatment and other types of sites which actually handle quite harmful materials where if something went wrong it would be local government or central government that picked up the pieces and paid the bill. We've seen that a number of times over the past few years.This Tūī oilfield is not the only example of this. We saw the awful Pike River disaster which not only was a terrible loss of human life but has led to the Government for a number of reasons feeling it was necessary to commit tens of millions of dollars to remediate that site and make it safe. We've had the Rena disaster in the Bay of Plenty where a freighter—not an oil tanker but a freighter—ran aground and caused significant environmental damage and that cost was covered by the insurer but also significant costs had to be covered by the local authority and central government. We've seen the Whakaari / White Island disaster. We still don't fully understand all of the reasons that happened but it's clear that the Government will have to bear significant cost in some way for that terrible terrible event. So when we think about what this bill is trying to achieve in order to offset the risk of a potential future liability for cleaning up oil- and gasfields where the operator leaves or goes out of business or somehow abandons their operation without fulfilling their environmental obligations—and remember they already have resource consents if they're onshore and they have other permits under the RMA and issued by the Government through the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment if they're offshore. So it seems remarkable that in 2021 we're talking about having to create new legislation to address these issues.We know there are a number of different ways to do it but some of the risks that have been identified in developing this legislation have already been covered this evening so I won't cover them again. But what was interesting from the Government's own regulatory impact assessment was something I'd like to describe here. It said that it does identify a risk of implementation: that the proposals need to be implemented in a way that does not precipitate or exacerbate the very financial problems they're designed to safeguard against. In other words scaring the horses those New Zealand - based or international investors who we depend on to keep the gas flowing to keep the lights on this winter in fact—actually scaring them so they decide that they would rather pack up leave New Zealand and take their chances in the courts because that is a very very real risk.If we think we've got a problem now with projections that New Zealand will burn over 1.5 million tonnes of coal this year just wait until one of these big gas producers decides it's not worth being in New Zealand based on the behaviours of this Government and their approach to regulation. It's too uncertain. It's too scary. They'd rather go and work somewhere else like Victoria—that Australian state—which after having had a moratorium on gas exploration and bringing new gas on stream just last week announced that their moratorium was lifting because they want more gas. They see it as the best transition fuel from coal and other high carbon emitting fuel sources the best pathway to a low-emissions future.So it's surprising that while we're here talking about all the terrible things this industry might do or might have done or could do and how we need to protect the New Zealand Government and taxpayer from that actually there is still no recognition at all by this Government of the very important role that the gas sector plays in securing New Zealand's energy energy affordability and making sure that not only do we keep the lights on but we have high-paid jobs for people from sometimes very remote communities and regions that have no other economic activity to speak of—high-paid jobs that mean they keep food on the table their kids have shoes on their feet they can pay their bills and they can go to work for companies that actually treat them well and do observe all of the normal social responsibility practices we would expect from multinationals in New Zealand's biggest industries.So thinking a bit further about the risks of scaring those businesses and those jobs away another regulatory risk identified by the Government's advisers was reducing the attractiveness of New Zealand as a petroleum investment destination. When I read that all I could think of was "Ha! This must be a surprise to some people writing this paper." But petroleum investment destination—I don't think New Zealand currently has that brand. I think that we scared off our best chances of attracting that foreign direct investment some years ago and we don't know how we will ever return to that level of certainty. But I want to give you an example of how the Government in bringing this bill to the House is actually acting quite duplicitously. It's not sharing the full facts. In fact some of what is written in the regulatory impact statement almost sounds like utu particularly when you look at the way they've responded with this legislation to a court decision around whether a permit holder was likely to comply and give proper effect to their work programme. That was when the Government was successfully sued by a petroleum company and was then forced to admit in fact they hadn't followed their own processes. Then just a few days ago the Government's own radio station Radio New Zealand reported the Government was prepared to shell out millions—tens of millions—of dollars to Rio Tinto to help offset their costs of clean-up.So it's quite clear that the Government is prepared to play favourites and to buy silence when it has to but sees an opportunity to go after an industry here that is already suffering from poorly thought-out regulation and to go after them. That's why the ACT Party supports this bill going to select committee: so we can start to hear some of the real honest submissions from people who would be affected by what looks like a half-hearted half-arsed attempt at legislation. Thank you Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Before I call the next speaker could I ask the member to remove his coloured box from off the benchtop. Thank you."