Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill because the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana - Te Moananui a Toi—the gulf—is a taonga of natural economic recreational and cultural importance. It covers 1.2 million hectares of coastal area between Mangawhai and Waihi and is used for aguaculture fishing tourism shipping and transport amongst other activities. The gulf is valued by manawhenua as well as others who work live and recreate there. Due to its national significance the gulf was designated New Zealand's first marine park under the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act 2000. So the National Party is supporting this reading of the bill today. We support the intent of where the Government is wanting to take this piece of legislation. What we're open to is making sure that we have a very good select committee process. I know there's been a lot of consultation that's been held to date but it is always important. I'm just going to talk a bit about some of the clauses here and some of the regulated parties. So when we look at the regulated parties they are the recreational and commercial fishers there's manawhenua there's marine ecotourism operators recreational users further recreational users community central government. In the regulatory impact statement the impact has been assessed for all those groups and they've been assessed in various parts as low medium-high low-medium and a range of other assessments. But what we want to do is hear from those groups coming in the room and we look forward to a full and fulsome select committee process because this is such an important issue.But it is really important that we get the balance right between all of the groups while we actually protect the Hauraki Gulf and it really does need protecting. There are so many things going on in there: the kina barrens the habitat loss the local fisheries depletion and something that Chlöe Swarbrick and Tama Potaka have brought to my attention strongly over recent days is the seaweed species that's invasive the Caulerpa brachypus and Caulerpa parvifolia. I didn't realise until recently just how quickly this awful invasive seaweed had spread. It has only been there since mid-2021 at Aotea Island - Great Barrier Island and Ahuahu - Great Mercury Island. We've got this invasive species that's spreading like a lot of things we haven't seen before so we really do need to take some concern over that because it's just going to make the gulf way worse than it currently is.Just going through some of these main provisions of the bill it's looking at establishing two new marine reserves 12 high protection areas and five seafloor protection areas. These measures seek to significantly enhance the conservation efforts increasing the protected area from 6.7 percent to slightly above 18 percent of the gulf. So to some of the clauses in the bill and I think this is where the select committee will get into its debate about how we—if there are any changes to this—put the different needs of the different community groups in while we protect the gulf at the same time. Clause 10 is the one that establishes marine reserves over the areas that are described in Schedule 2 in the bill and in effect they are really extensions of the existing marine reserves. Clause 14 prohibits various activities in seafloor protection areas including aquaculture dumping dredging trawling and contacts with the seabed and so there's definitely a need for that to go on in some areas of the gulf. Clause 18 bans various activities in high protection areas including fishing aquaculture material removal and dumping. So we would understand why there are some areas that are absolutely far more flush with biodiversity than others and how we really do need to protect those areas.Clause 19 through to 21 sets out some exemptions from the activities restricted by clauses 14 15 and 18 within seafloor protection areas and high protection areas and I would imagine that's probably going to be one of the topics of conversation that we're going to get a lot of submissions about when they open and when people come to select committee. The exemption I would imagine would be a highly discussed set of clauses in terms of everyone sees aspects of what's trying to be done from their own specific situation and so there's going to be some I think great conversations around how that's going to work in the future.Clause 21 provides for other general activities to which the prohibitions do not apply including actions taken under enactments such as the Biosecurity Act 1993 all the Resource Management (Marine Pollution) Regulations 1998 training activities by the New Zealand Defence Force emergencies and transit shipping. So in creating an Act that is affecting something as big as the Hauraki Gulf there are always other Acts that need to interact with it and everything needs to be built in to alignment so there will be a bit of work that obviously needs to go on there.Clauses 27 to 32 set out the process for obtaining a permit authorising a person to undertake a prohibited activity within a protected area and the key elements of that process are that a person must apply to the Director-General of the Department of Conservation for a permit in a form approved by the director-general. The directorgeneral may seek further information in relation to the application and must consider certain matters and the director-general may approve the application if certain grounds are met or decline the application at their discretion if it's not as they consider it to be. Clauses 35 to 40 relate to the monitoring and enforcement of the prohibitions in the protected areas because obviously whatever is put in place in law is going to have to be monitored.In terms of the National Party's messaging around this bill today it's that the bill won't pass in the current Parliament because as most people know this current Parliament will have its last day of sitting tomorrow. However supporting the bill to the first reading gives us a good opportunity to test the stakeholder feedback and better understand the officials' rationale for implementing further consideration in the new Parliament. The bill does not ban bottom trawling in the gulf; rather it is limiting trawling to trawl corridors. This is a key point of contention among environment NGOs such as Forest & Bird and Greenpeace. A complete ban in the gulf was viewed to impact the commercial fisheries sector unfairly and would move activity to other areas near the gulf. Many New Zealanders have strong views on bottom trawling so while there will presumably be many submissions in favour of the bill there will also be many in favour of a complete ban on bottom trawling spurred on by the NGOs.National strongly believes that action will need to be taken to address the environmental decline of the gulf so we strongly support the intent of the bill. National may want to look at changing the high protection areas—location amount—based on submissions to the select committee and any scientific input that has been done or will be done in the future. So it is our pleasure to stand here in support of the bill and we look forward to coming back in the next Parliament—hopefully as Government—and working through this bill making sure we take the consideration of everyone into account and get some runs on the board when it comes to the Hauraki Gulf and getting rid of some of those awful seaweeds and tidying the place up.Simon Watts: Tidying up their mess.BARBARA KURIGER: Yeah absolutely—and cleaning up the mess. So thank you Mr Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.