Scott AlastairALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): This bill deals a lot with the health and safety of people in the maritime industry. I would also like to echo the sentiments of Sue Moroney the previous speaker by acknowledging those people in Kaikōura who are in the business of keeping us safe across the community: the police the Fire Service civil defence the ambulance service NGOs and the Defence Force which is down there with our allies from offshore. There are also the persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) which we have talked about in previous legislation; the health and safety officers who are in our businesses; and a new term—which is in this bill—the DAMP operator. The DAMP operator is the term that relates to the drug and alcohol management plan operator.Andrew Bayly: Very important.ALASTAIR SCOTT: It is. It is a very important person. That DAMP operator—that person—is responsible for a management plan that is initiated in this bill which brings in the regime for random testing for drugs and alcohol that has come out of an earlier tragedy—in Carterton in fact in my electorate—which was the balloon tragedy. The review of that has brought about some of these changes and has applied them to the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill which we are dealing with today.So that is all about improving safety—and people scoff at some of the health and safety regulations that are put in place. I am sure people would say that this is going over the top with health and safety but we only need to be reminded of what can happen and what could happen because things that have happened only in the last couple of days demonstrate that no matter how hard we try to keep people safe there are always going to be accidents and there are always going to be emergencies. But what we are trying to do here is raise awareness of health and safety—raise the bar a little bit further—in the maritime industry. The bar was raised in the health and safety law reforms earlier as I said with the persons conducting a business or undertaking giving the responsibility for the health and safety of workers and employers to each other so there is shared responsibility. This bill complements that and talks about as I say a DAMP and a DAMP operator. Sorry about the word DAMP".Andrew Bayly: Acronym.ALASTAIR SCOTT: Acronym. Thank you. This bill also deals with a couple of other issues. It deals with compensation and particularly it un-limits the liability—or creates an unlimited liability—to the operator regarding cost when there is the cost of removing a wreck when there is removal of cargo and when there are remediating damages from hazardous substances. Previously there were limitations on the liability of the operator; this bill would make those liabilities unlimited. It also opens up a larger fund which is an insurance fund essentially. It is able to be accessed—as the Minister of Transport said from $388 million to $1.4 billion worth of funding—where there is an oil event in our patch.So there are three major parts to this bill. There are a few bits and pieces around flag-bearings as the previous speaker Sue Moroney mentioned and that is related to competition which I am sure we can discuss robustly in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which I look forward to. With that I commend this bill to the House."