Sage Eugenie: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10301. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Speaking to the third reading of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill I say that the Green Party opposes this bill. It is a very troubling bill and there are a number of reasons for that. One of them is that it is being pushed through under urgency with no scrutiny—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Where’s the member’s tie? Coming into the House in an open-neck shirt.EUGENIE SAGE: —and no ability for the public to comment. Yes I am wearing a pink shirt. It was Pink Shirt Day yesterday. I am a day late and that is because we are still on Thursday.When we are dealing with bills under urgency when there is no opportunity for the public to comment or for a select committee to engage with a bill we have only the collective intelligence of members of Parliament in this Chamber. So it has been particularly disturbing that during the Committee stage of the bill we have had no Government members standing up to defend the bill and to engage with the issues that the Opposition has raised. What is even more disturbing is that the Minister in the chair the Minister of Energy and Resources never answered any of the questions that the Opposition was asking. So when it is down to us—because the Government has excluded others from engaging with this bill—we should engage. The Opposition has engaged and has flagged some very troubling aspects of the bill but Government members have not engaged during the Committee stage. That is very disturbing.It is also disturbing that we did not have a regulatory impact statement apart from the one that Moana Mackey produced and held up with a series of black lines on it. Without a regulatory impact statement there has not been an honest effort to explain the implications of the bill. So it has been left to the Opposition to highlight the problems caused by clause 14 and the way in which it extends to the high seas the five criminal offences that were created by the Anadarko Supplementary Order Paper to the principal Act.Without a regulatory impact statement there has been no examination of how this clashes with our responsibilities under the United Nations Convention on the Law of theSea which New Zealand has signed up to nor on what basis the Government is purporting to establish new criminal offences in an area where we do not have the jurisdiction to do so. But because the bill has not gone to a select committee we have not been able to engage with officials.This law that we are passing today is potentially null and void if it overrides and does not implement our international obligations. Yet at no point did the Minister rise to explain what he thought was the jurisdictional basis for doing that. It is interesting that when you look at the comparable Australian legislation which is the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 that legislation provides for a 500-metre no-go zone around oil rigs and similar structures but there is no provision in the Australian legislation for a no-go zone for vessels. That is obviously because Australia understands the requirement of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the fact that that preserves freedom of navigation on the high seas.So why does the Government feel that it has to go so far and potentially breach our international obligations when there are already numerous international instruments and the Maritime Transport Act that address this whole issue of safety of navigation and vessels? Why? It is because under this Government we have a Government that has morphed from being nanny State as it accused the former Labour Government of being to being strong-arm State—one that is intolerant of dissent that is contemptuous of the democratic process and that wants to ensure that people have no opportunity or minimal opportunity to disagree with it. It is prepared to criminalise legitimate protest on the high seas against the Government’s flawed economic agenda which relies so heavily on the exploitation of resources. It is prepared to cut across the whole tradition of dissent and protest on the high seas that is upheld in other international treaties. This is a bad bill. The Green Party is opposing it.