Street Maryan: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10218. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. As my colleague Moana Mackey said this legislation that we passed just a matter of weeks ago has now had to be resubmitted by the Minister of Energy and Resources because it was rushed through in a way that left it completely riddled with loopholes that the Minister had not spotted and had not been rigorous enough in his oversight of this bill to discern.But I have a particular question relating to this issue and it is whether this bill being so rushed—the members opposite wish it to pass through all its three stages under urgency—may mean and it is a bit of a conundrum that it might come into force prior to the legislation that it is designed to amend. The legislation that it is designed to amend takes effect as I understand it and as I recall it on 24 May. Today in parliamentary terms although not in real-world terms it is 16 May under urgency.What happens if the Royal assent is given to this amending legislation prior to the other legislation having been signed off—well having reached its implementation date?I do not even know whether the Minister has thought that far because looking at the size of this amendment bill to the amendment Act one can only assume that he hardly reads past page 1 because he believes then that the officials are right and everything he does is backed up by officials and he can blame them later. Well I am sorry Minister. I know this Minister is a new Minister and I understand that it takes a little while to get the hang of the job—it is a very big job—but in the end the policy and the legislation are the Minister’s responsibility. We have not yet had the primary legislation arrive at its implementation date and we are ramming through a bill to amend that legislation. Lesson No. 1 for new Ministers is that this is not good enough—this is not good enough.The Minister has then compounded the errors by not producing a regulatory impact statement on the amendment bill. In fact what we have tabled are the regulatory impact statements on the original bill on the first amendment bill which was passed a few weeks ago. So instead of taking a leaf out of Tony Ryall’s approach to ministerial responsibility and blacking out large portions of regulatory impact statements the Minister has become so scared of making a mistake now that he has refused to give Parliament a regulatory impact statement. So it is even worse than having a completely redacted regulatory impact statement. We do not have one at all.So now we are getting past the boundaries of the Minister’s competence. We can see that this is a chapter of errors from which I can only hope the Minister will learn if he wishes to remain in such a job at any time in the future because this clearly is not good enough. We will on 16 May pass because of the attrition of time an amendment bill to an amendment Act that has not even come into effect yet.There are a couple of other things I want to talk about and one is the impacts on health and safety as well as environmental rules. The previous speaker Jonathan Young knows a little bit about this because it is happening just offshore from his electorate and onshore at the north end of his electorate and he assured us about how they have health and safety rules and regulations and they have to have them signed off. I have been on those sites. Yes they do have health and safety programmes. But this legislation says that under the conditional permits which are the ones that this amendment bill is seeking to add to the amendment bill that we passed a few weeks ago applicants no longer have to show that they have the ability to comply with health and safety or capability or environment tests associated with exploratory drilling if at the time they do not intend to carry it out. So they are required to meet the standards of health and safety and environment tests only if they are committed to carrying out those activities at the start of what they are doing. At the point of needing to conduct exploratory drilling they can either sell it to another company or try meeting the tests themselves but the risks open up a huge loophole in the health and safety provisions and in the environmental tests if not given proper scrutiny.The theme of today under urgency is not giving things proper scrutiny. If this bill went to a select committee came into effect after the primary legislation had come into effect but was properly scrutinised through a select committee process we might end up with sensible amendments and better amendments to the primary legislation than the Minister has come up with.At the moment quite frankly in looking at this bill as it stands I do not know how these people who would apply for conditional permits would recruit to their companies and organisations. I do not know how the human resources manager would advertise positions—perhaps with a name like “a job to die for”. Perhaps that would be the tagline for the human resources manager. These protections that we require in otherlegislation are being waived in the case of these conditional permits and that is not good enough.The other thing that is of major concern to me is the extension of the ban on protesting. Not only does this Government wish to control all levers of power within New Zealand; it wishes to reach out beyond our jurisdiction and exercise power outside territories that are ours and in fact subject people to a stripping of human rights to lawfully protest way beyond the exclusive economic zone and to the continental shelf where in fact international law would apply. This extension of something that already strips away the rights of legitimate protest now seeks to extend that beyond the bounds of this Government’s legitimate jurisdiction. Thank you.