Mackey Moana: Maritime Transport Amendment Bill Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Maritime Transport Amendment Bill Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 15 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13862. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Labour will be supporting the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill portion of this marine legislation and we will be opposing the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill portion of this marine legislation. If I could start with the bill that we do support the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill the question would really have to be why it has taken the Government so long to pass this legislation.When theRena disaster occurred 2 years ago New Zealand taxpayers were lumped with enormous costs and the risk of even more had the negotiations with the companies involved not been successful because we had not ratified the international bunker convention. In 2008 the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee recommended to the Government that it ratify that convention as soon as possible and it has taken until now in 2013 for the Government to do anything about that. So due to this Government’s failure to ratify that convention when theRena crashed on the reef of Tauranga it was liable to pay only $11.3 million of the total clean-up costs which were more than $50 million and it was New Zealand taxpayers who ended up picking up the rest of that tab. Had we ratified that convention the total cap that we could have claimed back would have been lifted.The Crown was able to secure $27.6 million through negotiation with the companies but it should not have had to take months and months of negotiating to come to an outcome that would be achieved absolutely by right had that convention been signed. The cap would have been lifted and that $27 million would have been absolutely unquestionably provided so that New Zealand taxpayers would not have to fund that. The Government recently was saying that it was a good outcome and that we got what we would have got anyway. Well it took a lot of money a lot of time and a lot of stress particularly for those business owners around Tauranga which did not need to happen and should not have happened.We are pleased this legislation is finally passing but I have to say that we have passed a whole lot of really dire legislation that this should have been ahead of. We have passed a lot of legislation that is not nearly as important as this Maritime Transport Amendment Bill.The Minister Maurice Williamson in his third reading speech mentioned that this legislation sets a blood-alcohol level of 0.05 for ships and my question to the Minister would be why not for cars as well then? Why is the Government so absolutely adamant in its refusal to reduce the drink-driving limit from 0.08 to 0.05—Hon Maurice Williamson: Anybody who drives their cars on the ocean will be caught.MOANA MACKEY: The Minister says that it is because people do not drive cars on the ocean—people do not drive cars on the ocean. Well that is one of the more lucid reasons I have heard for why the National Party is not supporting my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway’s member’s bill. Anyone who sawSeven Sharp last night—for those people who were not watching Minister Simon Bridges imploding onCampbell Live—saw that there was actually a really good item onSeven Sharp where a couple of staff members from Television New Zealand drank enough to get them to 0.05 and then to 0.08—[Interruption] This is in the bill. We changed the blood-alcohol limit from 0.08 to 0.05—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Not for cars.MOANA MACKEY: —for ships. What we are saying is that if it applies to ships it should also apply to cars. What was clear was that even at 0.05 they were still significantly impaired. When they were doing a driving simulation I think one of them killed a deer at 0.05 and then at 0.08 a pedestrian.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Ships not cars.MOANA MACKEY: We are just saying that if it is good enough for ships then it should be good enough for cars. It is completely lacking in any rational explanation as to why it should apply to ships but not apply to cars especially when you see the death rate on our roads that alcohol causes. We are pleased to see this Maritime Transport Amendment Bill finally passing but again I say that it should have happened a lot sooner.The bit I want to focus on is the changes to the exclusive economic zone legislation. This is just yet another greasing of the wheels for industry from a Government that has no plan for regional New Zealand other than oil and gas exploration. That is all it has. That is all it has. So what it has done is consistently embark on a programme of weakening environmental protections of locking the public out from having any say in what is occurring off their coastlines and of arrogantly ignoring some very very valid concerns that the public hold around the dangers associated with deep-sea oil drilling. Some of the depths that we are talking about now in New Zealand are not depths that have been seen around the world. I think that those communities have a right to have a say through a process of issuing the marine consent under the exclusive economic zonelegislation about the concerns to have those concerns acknowledged and to have the Environmental Protection Authority actually have to consider them.What you have now is out to 12 nautical miles—that is our territorial waters—that is where the Resource Management Act applies. The public do get to have their say through a submission process. The Government is trying to take that away but fortunately it does not have the numbers to do that at the moment. We have a Resource Management Act process that is well tested. There are 20 years of case law behind it. There are appeals to the Environment Court on substance not just on process and there is a submission process where affected communities can have their say about what is going on. We think the Resource Management Act is a good piece of legislation notwithstanding the changes that the Government wants to make to it.Once you get to 12 nautical miles we head into our exclusive economic zone. New Zealand does not actually have the right to exploit any of the resources there unless there is a regulatory regime in place and that is what the exclusive economic zone legislation that passed late last year does. But unfortunately unlike the Resource Management Act there is no ability for appeals to the Environment Court. There is very ambiguous language that has not been tested in the courts. We asked why we could not just pick up the well-tested language of the Resource Management Act as an indication that we expected that with two regimes operating side by side in our ocean where the line that divides them is jurisdictional only it would make sense to use similar language and similar processes so that the companies that currently deal with regional councils and our territorial borders in Taranaki know that basically the same standards are going to apply in the exclusive economic zone. I note that when the Taranaki Regional Council submitted on that bill it said that actually it would be helpful to have more guidelines.What we have is an incredibly laissez-faire piece of legislation a very permissive piece of legislation on our exclusive economic zone.David Bennett: But you’re going to vote for it though.MOANA MACKEY: We voted against it the whole way through Mr Bennett actually because unlike you we read the legislation. I think it is counter-intuitive to what most New Zealanders would expect. I think most New Zealanders would expect that actually the deeper you go out the more rigorous the regulation. In fact what we have in New Zealand is that the deeper you go out the more permissive the regulation.Andrew Little: It makes no sense.MOANA MACKEY: From our perspective that simply does not make sense and it does not provide the environmental protections and those bottom lines that New Zealanders want to know are there if this activity is going to go ahead in our exclusive economic zone.Depth is not the only factor. There is whether the area is seismically active. There is the geology of the area. There is the size of the actual reserve that might be discovered. There are a whole lot of things that need to be factored in. What we need is robust risk analysis in our exclusive economic zone and this bill does not provide it. When a number of these concerns were raised at the select committee the Minister of Energy and Resources at the time Phil Heatley spoke to the people inKaikōura who were very concerned that there is a very deep trench about 100 kilometres off the coast ofKaikōura where exploration work is going to start this summer. They were very very concerned about the permissive nature of the exclusive economic zone regulations. They were very concerned about the Environmental Protection Authority’s capability to actually issue these marine consents. This is an organisation that does not have any internal investigative capability so it is going to have to go out to look for it. What did Minister Heatley say to the people ofKaikōura? He said: “Don’t worry. You’ll get tohave your say during the submissions process for the marine consents. You will get to have your say during the submissions process for the marine consents.”David Bennett: Talk about the real bill.MOANA MACKEY: David Bennett really does not even understand what is in this bill. This is actually in the bill Mr Bennett that you are about to vote for. You are taking away—taking away—the right of people in this country to have a say over exploratory drilling by the creation of this new discretionary non-notified category. Mr Bennett Phil Heatley promised the people of New Zealand that exploratory drilling would be notified and this legislation creates the very category that is going to take away that right. Now you have an Environmental Protection Authority process where it is not going to have the benefit of the submissions that come from individuals from NGOs and from independent technical experts who take an interest in this thing. It will no longer have that. It has no internal investigative capability. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) which is the organisation that the Environmental Protection Authority will go toto do it has been contracted to the oil industry. I do not know whether NIWA in that contractual arrangement is actually also able to provide advice to the Environmental Protection Authority. It may well be that it cannot. The very organisation that is expert in this country has already been contracted to the oil industry because the Government cut its funding and told it that it had to go out and get those commercial contracts. Where is this information going to come from that the Environmental Protection Authority is going to be making incredibly important decisions on?As we saw onCampbell Live last night and as we have been pointing out consistently we do not have the capability to respond if something goes wrong in the deep sea. We have three vessels. They are 8 metres long each. One is in Northland one is in Auckland and one is in Picton. When they are going at top speed at full capacity they go at 12 kilometres an hour. The idea that they are going to be able to get out to the trench off theKaikōura coast is absolutely not true and we will be—