Delahunty Catherine: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — Referral to Commerce Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — Referral to Commerce Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 10 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9255. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I am delighted to take a call in the Committee stage of the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill which was a bad bill to start with and has got only worse in quite an astonishing way really. It was bad enough at the Commerce Committee going through clause after clause of facilitating mining—andPart 1 is extremely focused on assisting the mining industry—and promoting the role of the Minister not as a regulator but as a facilitator and great attractor of industry. But then to have Supplementary Order Paper 205 sprung upon us on Easter Day was another extraordinary experience that has made this bill which was bad enough a whole lot worse. My colleagues will speak more about this Supplementary Order Paper.As to my own experience of what can happen I would say looking around the Chamber that I am probably the most experienced protester in this Chamber. I have had more experience of non-violent protest than many of you have had hot dinners. I have experienced what can happen on the high seas. I have had experience of what non-violence means and how the law can be misinterpreted to privilege certain industries.Once when we were the Cook Strait in Greenpeace protesting against a whaling supply vessel it was really interesting because our own people were thrown off that vessel by the port police from Wellington who were assisting the Japanese whalers to throw people into the Cook Strait 40 kilometres off the coast. I remember thinking at the time that it was not very safe but of course health and safety was not the concern of the Japanese whalers or the New Zealand police in that situation. Fortunately our people were picked up by some very skilled captains of inflatables who saved their lives. When I read Supplementary Order Paper 205 I thought: “Great it’s all about those who dare to challenge but it is not about the behaviour of people who believe that their right to extract a resource is under challenge.” So it is a very concerning Supplementary Order Paper.Basically when you have been in the front line of this you know that it is not necessarily like the lawyers think it is going to be and it is not just words on the page. It is about what happens to human beings who non-violently challenge the right of others to rip off resources. It can be extremely dangerous if the rules are not fair to everybody and this Supplementary Order Paper demonstrates that it is actually dangerous.I was astonished at the Minister of Energy and Resources saying in the Chamber: “No I don’t need to consult the Attorney-General. No I don’t need to think about international law. No I don’t even need to answer this question.” because I think that will come back to bite him in the future. People in this country including the New Zealander of the Year are watching and those people are there because they are concerned about what we pass on to mokopuna what we pass on to future generations. They do not regard this as something to be treated with lightness or contempt in any way.But I want to talk about Part 1 in terms of another Supplementary Order Paper which is Supplementary Order Paper 211 in my name. I want to talk about this one because this is about another bad aspect of this bill which is the ambiguities around the use of schedule 4. This needs to be clarified once and for all and this bill is a positive opportunity I believe to do that.In my Supplementary Order Paper what I am suggesting for section 25 in clause 16 is to insert after subsection (6): “(6AA) The Minister must not grant a permit of any kind in respect of a Crown owned mineral or petroleum in any Crown owned land described in Schedule 4” and then it goes on to describe the land and water. The purpose of this is to make it crystal clear to anybody that schedule 4 land is not open to mining and it is not open to exploration and prospecting either because exploration and prospecting are being carried out for mining.We know that because if you go to the Coromandel right now and you go to the Coromandel Harbour you will find a mining company that has made public statements about its intention to mine that exact piece of harbour—that exact piece of harbour—for tailings. It is not looking to get a grid picture or an aerial magnetic survey; it is there to mine that exact spot. So we need to clarify for it and also for the Broken Hill mining company over at Tairua which has a mining permit application in front of the Minister at the moment that this area in schedule 4 was set aside by Governments by people—and we had 30000 people march on this issue—to protect it.So what my Supplementary Order Paper does is clarify that there is no point in playing games it is time for clarity. Let us say schedule 4 is OK if you want to fossick for gold with your kids for fun but it is not for anything else. It is not for prospecting and exploration in order to facilitate your access for mining. Otherwise the Government is playing games with the miners and the miners are confused.So I am hoping that the Committee will see the clarity and the logic of what I am proposing here because it would be very straightforward if we could then say to everybody concerned: “You can have certainty. There will be no mining on schedule 4 so don’t bother to waste your resources looking for it in those exact spots where you want to mine because you are not going to be allowed to.” That kind of clarity would be welcomed by the public of this country and that is why I have put up this Supplementary Order Paper—it is an opportunity to clarify this once and for all.The whole issue in this bill is unfortunately not towards creating certainty for the public; it is for creating certainly for industry. That is why the Supplementary Order Paper that Minister Bridges put up at Easter was written as well. It was to make sure that industry had certainty. But industry probably did not have to complain. I would not be at all surprised if it did not. Why would it need to? A Government that will let Warner Bros write legislation does not really need much incentive to write legislation to facilitate people like Petrobras. It did not even have to hear from Petrobras. It may have but it did not have to because actually it was very very upset.The plain truth of what happened in Te Whānau-a-Apanui is that Elvis Teddy and Te Whānau-a Apanui with Greenpeace went out there and said: “No we do not accept this in our waters. We do not care what you call them but these are our waters this is our rohe—you can call it what you like—but we are not having deep sea oil. We are not having it off the East Coast.” And do you know what? They won in the court and that of course is completely unacceptable!Imagine—a rural iwi and Greenpeace actually beating a Brazilian mining company that the Government had facilitated to come into their waters. It was not acceptable and that is why we have got Supplementary Order Paper 205—because apparently we cannot have that kind of thing going on in this country and we cannot have legitimateprotest by tangata whenua about their right within their own fishing waters to say no to an industry that has the risk of polluting their fishing waters.That is what it is about and that is why Dame Anne Salmond from the East Coast is standing with those people because that is where she comes from and that is what she stands for. You will find that she is standing up more and more on environmental issues since she moved on from the Historic Places Trust because some people at some time in their life will take a stand and say “No it is not all right.” She has got to that point where now it is not about getting successful it is not about being approved of by everybody—strangely for New Zealander of the Year—but actually standing up for something worthwhile which is our environment because without it we are nothing—we are nothing. And that is what is so repellent about a Supplementary Order Paper that tries to take away from Elvis Teddy Te Whānau-a-Apanui and Greenpeace the right to stand up.Interference can be interpreted in a million ways and it will be. Sometimes just standing there and breathing or being in the water breathing in the right zone is interference. I have been told we are interfering if we bear witness if we stand in the way if we put our bodies on the line. Some of the most important justice changes in the history of the world have come from people non-violently taking a stand. We stand proud in the tradition of non-violence of taking a direct stand and putting our bodies between things that are acceptable and things that are not. We will continue to do that despite this Supplementary Order Paper. But this Supplementary Order Paper has been misjudged and it is misjudged by people who do not understand what it is to bear witness in that situation. It has not been designed to protect everybody’s rights. That is why there are all these people making a fuss.Hon Member: Oh you’re making me cry.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: However there are lots of other aspects of this bill and I am proud to stimulate emotion across the Chamber. This is actually an emotional issue for the people who are not the lawyers who are not the clever people who sit in Parliament deciding what will be legal and what will not be but who care about this country and whose true commitment to the environment is going to be what gets us through what is actually quite a dark time in terms of the environment.So back to the bill; back to Part 1. Part 1 has a purpose that many people came to the select committee and objected to. They objected to the purpose of the bill and what they objected to was this. Most people think that the Minister’s role is to be a regulator—to be a fair unbiased regulator on behalf of the community to represent the community to represent a fair balance of issues. Instead what we find in the purpose of this bill is that it is there for the efficient allocation of resources supposedly for New Zealand’s benefit and also to be the great attractor—the attractor of permits.