Genter Julie AnneJULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. The Green Party will be supporting this bill at its first reading. As some of the other speakers have mentioned this evening already notably the Hon David Parker we do wonder why it is that this bill has taken so long to come before the House given that it has been 5 years since the catastrophic event of the Rena hitting the Astrolabe Reef. Of course there have been ongoing problems because of our inability to claim the amount of costs that were actually incurred as a result of that cargo ship running aground and disintegrating.This bill has three to four main points. The first one is that of course it increases the amount that we are able to receive in compensation in the case that an oil tanker should have a catastrophic spill or accident—that only makes sense. But again I wonder why it has taken so long. This is the Protocol of 2003 to the International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage 1992. So presumably it has been about 13 years that we have been waiting to accede to this particular protocol and I am not sure why it has taken quite so long.New Zealand is a country that trades on its clean green reputation in the world. Part of the reason people come here—tourism being one of our major exports—is that we have these pristine beaches. That reputation is at risk if there is an oil spill which could then potentially result in far costlier damage than what we are even able to access in terms of a major oil spill. Under this legislation we are increasing it from $377 million to $1.392 billion. That is considering no-fault claims. But obviously it would cost us far more—and that much is clear from the national interest analysis which goes into the ways in which a tanker spill in New Zealand may cause environmental and economic damage.These include damage to New Zealand's aquaculture industry fishing stocks and decreased demand for New Zealand seafood and an oil spill could also potentially impact shipping vessels reaching or leaving ports resulting in delays and costs for exporters and importers. The environmental damage if oil reaches our coastline—or the occurrence of an oil spill itself—could damage New Zealand's tourism industry. So we are highly vulnerable to the impacts of a catastrophic oil spill. Even if the chances of one occurring are quite low the impact and the consequences of such an event would be so catastrophic that we should be taking it very seriously and making it a priority.For that reason of course it is probably also a very very very bad idea for the current Government to be pursuing deep sea oil drilling as an economic development strategy because the risks of a catastrophic spill in that case are equally high and the pay-offs are actually quite low—particularly given that we know we cannot afford to burn all of the fossil fuels that we currently know are proven and exist while we are exploring for new fossil fuel reserves and we know we cannot afford to burn them. The risk of a catastrophic oil spill could potentially do enormous damage to New Zealand's reputation and economic ability to earn a living in the world. It seems a bit short-sighted.The second point of this bill is of course the removal of the limitation of liability on certain types of accidents relating to cargo ships and other types of ships which is directly related to the Rena. Of course it has taken 5 years for this legislation to come to the House. We are glad that it has finally come to the House and we will be supporting it but we do wonder what would have happened if in the intervening years there had been a similar accident. It would have been quite costly for New Zealand—and quite problematic.The third point of the bill I do have some personal concerns about. Although it makes absolute sense to have drug and alcohol testing for people who are operating marine vessels there is a question about whether or not it would become problematic if any level of alcohol or drugs showed up in the test sample for a worker who submits a positive drug test. I mean obviously most people in this House would enjoy a glass of wine or two when they have the ability to and as long as that is done responsibly that is OK—if they are not on the job. So we are interested in drug testing for impairment rather than for the presence of the drug. I will be interested to see in the select committee process if the regime that is set up for drug and alcohol testing is going to be appropriate for assessing impairment on the job rather than just the presence of alcohol or the drug.The other changes that are proposed by this bill in Part 3 are a whole range of technical changes. One that jumps out for me is to improve access to coastal shipping services to non-mainland ports by allowing for foreign-registered ships to carry freight to and from New Zealand's offshore islands" and "to enable territorial authorities to transfer responsibilities in relation to maritime activity to council-controlled organisations and port operators:".I am not yet convinced that this would be the right approach. If anything I think the events of this week have shown how important it is for the resilience of New Zealand's transport system to have a robust domestic coastal shipping service. I think that it is something that this Government has let languish in its term since it came to power and it cancelled the paltry amount of money that the Ministry of Transport had assigned to it—which was $1 million to $2 million a year—for investigating the ability to increase coastal shipping. Of course in that time the freight tonne kilometres carried by coastal shipping have actually declined from 15 percent to 14 percent of the total overall freight task.At a time when we know we need to be reducing carbon pollution from transport and knowing all that we do about the high cost of infrastructure and the high cost of transporting goods inter-regionally around New Zealand we should be looking for opportunities to increase coastal shipping. We have got the ocean all around us—we are a coastal nation. It is true that it has not flourished in the previous decades but that is not to say that there are not economic opportunities in moving more goods by sea. By the Government examining the opportunities to increase coastal shipping services it could potentially be vastly reducing the cost of moving goods around New Zealand the pollution associated with moving goods around New Zealand and the number of big heavy trucks on the road. But at the moment our transport funding and assessment of infrastructure projects is very very siloed.The Government has a huge fund for putting money into a few State highway projects on the assumption that they are going to benefit people driving around New Zealand whether they be in trucks or cars. The reality is that if we made it easier to move goods by sea it could result in huge economic benefits in terms of reduced cost of wear and tear on the roads of congestion of cost to our domestic shippers and of an improvement in terms of safety risk. We want to make our roads safer and moving more goods with big heavy trucks is obviously not the way to make our roads safer and it is certainly not going to reduce the cost—Hon Simon Bridges: You like trucks don't you? What's wrong with trucks?JULIE ANNE GENTER: Trucks have their place Minister. Trucks have their place but there is the potential for more goods to be carried by sea or by rail. If that is going to result in benefits to ratepayers and people who are using the roads then I think the Government should not be ideologically opposed to rail and sea freight—which it obviously is.The Green Party would like to see a resilient and safe integrated transport system and we recognise the enormous opportunities afforded by utilising our "blue highway" which is available to us if we can keep it safe and if we can protect our national environment. Thank you."