Wagner Nicky: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWagner Nicky: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15662. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central): I am very pleased to support the Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill. It is very exciting that we are going to have three new subantarctic marine reserves. As we have noted in the Chamber tonight New Zealanders really do care about the environment are closely connected to the sea and really have embraced the idea of marine reserves. Under National we were the first country in the world to create marine reserves and the first reserve that we created was in Leigh in 1976. Now nearly 30 years later and 34 marine reserves—mostly created under National—later once again we are establishing three huge marine reserves in the Southern Ocean. When I say “huge” I mean they cover 435000 hectares. I have just been trying to figure out how much space that actually is. It is aboutthree times the size of Stewart Island. Of course they are established about 800 miles south of New Zealand—probably south-south-east of New Zealand.That is an amazing part of the world. There is an incredible unique biodiversity and there are significant heritage values in those areas. These reserves will surround three island groups in a very similar way to the existing marine reserve surrounding the Auckland Islands. The groups they will surround are the MoutereMahue/Antipodes Island the MoutereHauriri/Bounty Islands and the Moutere Ihupuku/Campbell Island. Already the land masses of these islands have World Heritage status because they are one of the most untouched areas of the world. They are known for their very prolific and special birdlife and for their unique vegetation particularly their giant herbs which are absolutely amazing plants. Now they are going to be surrounded by an ocean that has equal protection.The Local Government and Environment Committee enjoyed working on this bill because we were really keen to see these reserves put in place and we learnt a lot about these fascinating areas. In fact there was quite a lot of information about the plants that were there about the fish and about the bottom of the seabed. It was a particularly interesting thing to do. We felt that we really wanted to get on with getting these marine reserves in place. We all supported the majority of the bill but there was some debate over the size of the marine reserve particularly round Moutere Ihupuku/Campbell Island. We have allowed for an investigation into the deep-sea crab fishing in that area but we wanted to make sure that that was done in a reasonable time frame so we shortened the length of time for it to begin—within 3 years—and for it to be completed within 5 years.I would also like to comment on some of the discussion about the amount of oceans that we have protected as marine reserves. There has often been debate about the idea of 10 percent of our territorial waters protected as marine reserves. In this case when we add these subantarctic reserves we will bring that up to 9.5 percent of those territorial waters and of course we have more marine reserves in the pipeline. So I think we are doing a good job to try to cover all the particular diverse environments under the sea and we are looking at certain areas around New Zealand particularly in Otago which is one area that has not been covered as yet.Overall the Government and the Local Government and Environment Committee are very happy with this bill and we support it passing as soon as possible through Parliament. I commend the bill to the House.