Mackey Moana: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 16 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9360. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Labour will be opposing at the third readings the amending bills from the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. It would be nice if everything that Minister Bridges just said was true but unfortunately largely it was a nice piece of fiction. Minister Bridges might think that by merely saying that environmental protections are important and paramount like some grand wizard it will automatically be so but unfortunately that is not the reality. This legislation seriously undermines the ability and the role of the Minister of Conservation to carry out the protection and preservation of the conservation estate. It seriously undermines the democratic rights of New Zealanders to protest. It is a missed opportunity.I want to say upfront that there are some things in this legislation that are good. We welcome the health and safety changes that came out of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. Those recommendations were picked up. That is positive. There are some changes to streamline and to pre-evaluate some players in the industry which we do welcome. But we are very disappointed that despite some promising approaches made to Labour by Minister Heatley when he held the portfolio at the first reading we were not able to find agreement on this legislation.I want to pick up first of all the issue that the Minister of Energy and Resources raised last which is the changes that are being made to introduce criminal penalties for protesters in our exclusive economic zone. Let us be quite clear: this does not plug a gap in our international obligations. The reason it does not is that it applies only to protest vessels. It does not apply to the vessels that industry uses. It does not apply to any other vessels carrying out an activity in the exclusive economic zone. Not only that: it does not just apply only to protest vessels it applies only to protest vessels that are protesting against oil and gas exploration. If this was about safety and if this was about plugging a gap in our legislation then we would make it apply to everyone. I want to know from the Minister why any vessel that is behaving in a way that would be illegal in our territorial waters under the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act—why are those vessels not being covered in the exclusive economic zone? Why is it only one narrow class of vessel that is being covered? Surely if someone is behaving illegally or dangerously or recklessly then they should be covered by this change. Why are they not Minister? The Minister refused to answer that question all through the Committee stage. No National Party member has even begun to address that issue.This is not about safety and this is not about our international obligations. If it was then this issue would have been raised with the Commerce Committee whilst we were considering the bill. Not once did officials raise this issue with the select committee. Instead the Minister waited until the bill had been reported back to the House to drop this amendment in Supplementary Order Paper 205 on the Table. It has not had the proper scrutiny. It is incredibly bad lawmaking. It was embarrassing to see our Attorney-General come down to the House to defend it. This is a man whose job it is to uphold the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in New Zealand. When we have had a number of eminent legal minds say that this not only contravenes a number of our international obligations but also contravenes the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to see our Attorney-General come down imply he had a legal opinion which he had toadmit he did not have and defend the indefensible is frankly embarrassing—frankly embarrassing.As I said throughout the Committee stage if the Minister had wanted to extend the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act out into the exclusive economic zone which is what the High Court said he should do then Labour would not have had a problem with that because if people are behaving dangerously if lives are being put at risk then absolutely that needs to be dealt with. This does not deal with it. All this is is a public relations stunt that sends a message to the oil companies that this Government is prepared to do anything to get them here. It is prepared to sacrifice any democratic rights or environmental standards in order to see this activity go ahead.We have already seen it with the exclusive economic zone legislation which is the version of the Resource Management Act that will apply in the exclusive economic zone. That does not comply with our international obligations. That is incredibly weak and permissive as well. We are seeing it in changes being touted around the Resource Management Act—a tilting of the playing field constantly in favour of industry over the environment. Whilst—Hon Dr Nick Smith: Jobs.MOANA MACKEY: “Jobs.” says Minister Nick Smith. Well I think that this is going to turn out to be the biggest false economy that the National Government has ever put in place. At the moment New Zealanders have trust in the processes that are laid out both in the Crown Minerals Act and in the Resource Management Act. They trust the process and if the outcome is that a mining project should go ahead they are less likely to want to oppose it if they trust the process. This is going to result in huge amounts of litigation. This is an absolute boon for judicial review.I want to refer to one of the changes the bill makes. Currently if a mining company wants to mine on Department of Conservation land then that concession goes to the Minister of Conservation. That decision-making power is now being shared with the Minister of Energy and Resources. The Minister of Energy and Resources’ role under this bill is to promote mining. Does anyone not see a problem with a Minister of Energy and Resources who enthusiastically goes out and promotes mining—we had Minister Heatley when he held the portfolio in a general debate doing a big rah-rah speech about the Denniston project in particular—giving himself half the decision-making powers on whether that concession should go ahead? Did he not think that an organisation or an individual might think there was a slight little bit of predetermination of the decision there? That is why we have kept that power with the Minister of Conservation because that is where it is most appropriately held. That is where you are going to get the fewest legal or judicial review processes taken against the Government. This is a false economy. This is not going to result in the outcomes that the Government thinks are going to happen.But we come back to a fundamental point which is why we are doing this. We are doing this because for this Government there is no plan B. This is it. It has put all its economic development eggs in this one basket. So far we have seen Exxon Mobil pull out we have seen Petrobras pull out we have seen Apache pull out—this is a high-risk area. It is serious money and companies are not going to invest unless returns are going to be—unless one they find something and two they find it in commercial amounts. And the likelihood of that is actually not very high but this is all the Government has. This is the plan. This and asset sales are the plan so if it does not work well it is kind of stuffed and it knows that.So what we have seen is a progressive watering down of environmental regulation a watering down of environmental protections and now a watering down of people’s democratic rights in order to grease the wheels as much as possible for this to go aheadbecause the Government is desperate. Well that is not a good basis for lawmaking or decision making in this Parliament.If we have learnt anything from theRena disaster or from the Gulf of Mexico it is that sometimes things go wrong and we need to be absolutely prepared for that. So instead of ramping ahead with this activity and scaling it up to extraordinary levels this Government should be asking itself some very basic questions. One: do we have the capacity to deal with any disaster should that happen in New Zealand? I think theRena disaster showed us that perhaps our capacity to deal with it was not as great as we thought. That is No. 1. The second thing is this: is the regulation that we have in place adequate to ensure the levels of environmental protection that New Zealanders expect? We have confidence in the Resource Management Act; we do not have confidence in what the Government is planning to do to it. We do not have confidence in the exclusive economic zone legislation. That legislation is dangerously weak given that it governs the activity that is going to be carried out in some of the most difficult parts of New Zealand out in deep water in the exclusive economic zone. Four kilometres deep is what Petrobras was looking at in the Raukūmara Basin; the Gulf of Mexico was 1.4 kilometres deep. So we are talking about seriously challenging technical difficulties if something goes wrong and we have to be able to respond to that.We want to be sure that we are actually going to see benefits coming to New Zealand and coming to New Zealanders and I accept that in Taranaki this industry has been very good for economic development in that part of the country. That does not mean that there is a guarantee that that is going to be the case everywhere else. Petrobras said when it was still looking at the East Coast that there were not going to be local jobs and there were not going to be those local benefits that we got out of Taranaki. So people on the East Coast—and if any National MP including our local MP or Minister had bothered to front up to any of the meetings that were held on this issue then they would have been told this—were asking: “Why are we expected to carry all the environmental risks the risks to our economy the risks to our livelihoods for absolutely no economic benefit on the East Coast?”.There are a number of serious questions that the Government simply is not asking. It is not asking them because the answers may indicate that it might need to slow down and that there may be some regulatory gaps that need to be filled in order to provide that level of assurance to New Zealanders. New Zealanders have seen what has happened around both our own country and the world with these environmental disasters and human disasters and tragedies. Instead we are doing the exact opposite. Instead what we are doing is we are stripping out some absolutely fundamental protections. What we are doing is we are skewing the playing field. To the member who is about to take to his feet I would like to know why it is that the economic benefit test applies only to the mining industry. Why should the tourism industry which is operating on Department of Conservation land not be able to have that same economic benefit test applied? In fact we seem to be passing an awful lot of legislation for one industry in this country to the detriment of the environment and the democratic rights of New Zealanders.