Dyson Ruth: Marine Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Marine Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13619. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I first of all congratulate you Mr Chairman on the extraordinary talent you display in chairing the Committee stage of the House—in particular most recently the calls you have just made. I am really pleased to be able to speak on this legislation the Marine Legislation Bill. It is a piece of legislation we support. It has made some progress over recent times but the question that is on the lips of every single member on this side of the Chamber is why it took so long. What on earth has this Government been doing? How does it see its priorities? And where is its vision for the country? None of it is evident in either the words the Government members speak or the contributions they make.One of the better ones came from Chris Auchinvole the member of Parliament who lives on the West Coast. I just want to pick up on a very good point that he made in commending the Lyttelton Port Co. That port company happens to be in my electorate. It is at the centre of my electorate.Dr Megan Woods: Oh!Hon RUTH DYSON: It should not come as a surprise to the honourable member for Wigram because she is right next door and gains a lot of the benefits from our port. I just want to say that the workforce in the port company the management and all those who are involved through contracting at the port company have been through a really really hard 3 years. They have had a hard time in their work environment. The wharves are extraordinarily badly damaged in Lyttelton. The home of the Lyttelton Port Co. itself has recently been red-stickered so all the workers had to move out into the city into temporary accommodation in Woolston which is another fine suburb right alongside Lyttelton. The workforce is now separated. Some of them are on the port and some of them are at the city depot in Woolston and it is pretty hard on them.Of course in addition to that many of those people who work on the wharf and those in senior management positions have had big impacts on their homes. They have had their homes damaged or destroyed. Many of them have children who are attending schools that are now going to be merged or closed. In the middle of all that the port company has not only kept operating but improved its efficiency its productivity and actually its profit. So I think that is a real commendation to the workers there.Lyttelton Port is very fortunate in that we have not had the sort of shipping disaster that landed us in the difficulty that the Government saw after theRena disaster. We are very fortunate not to have had that incident theRena disaster in our own port in Canterbury.If the Government had taken the international conventions that this legislation ratifies if the Government had listened to the words of the previous Labour Government when we went out in 2008 and had listened to the recommendation of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee from towards the end of 2008 the Government would have realised that this bill was urgent and needed passing with some urgency. I do not know who the Minister of Transport was. It might have been the Hon Steven Joyce the person who features as the key character in that very very commonhash tag now “Come home Steven.” Since the Minister arrived in San Francisco we have not seen one victory for Emirates Team New Zealand. It is an amazing coincidence. So everyone use that hash tag “Come home Steven”. We are all very keen on him getting home.The Hon Steven Joyce was the Minister in charge of transport at the time and seemed to think this was not a big deal at all. He just put it on the back-burner. It was a very critical issue for us to progress. It had been recommended by a select committee—unanimously I think—and had been the intention of the Labour Government. I think the Hon Phil Goff actually had a bill that dealt with this very issue when he was a Minister. Had he stayed a Minister it would have been dealt with promptly and rigorously—I know that for sure. But it was not. It got put on the back-burner.Then we ended up with theRena disaster. People might be asking what the connection is between this legislation and theRena. Well the connection is that under our previous legislation there was nobody responsible for paying the bill incurred by theRena and that bill was significant. That was a very very big bill for a huge amount of damage incurred as a result of that ship crashing and sinking. The Government went into negotiations with the owners of theRena and has come up with quite a lot of money prised out of them as a result. But hours and hours and hours—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The Hon Ruth Dyson.Hon RUTH DYSON: As I did with your predecessor in the Chair may I commend you for the talent you have exhibited in your choice of speaker on this legislation. The Government put in a lot of effort and a lot of energy which cost us a lot of money because we were paying for very competent negotiators to try to get some money out of the owners of theRena. It is a good thing that it did that but had this legislation been passed we would not have needed to go through that negotiation process. We would have saved the taxpayer a lot of money because the liability would have been obvious in the law. Instead we end up short-changed because the negotiations competent though they were certainly did not get all the money that should have been paid by the owners of theRena. Secondly the taxpayer had to fork out a whole lot of money and instead spend our Parliament’s money if you like on the negotiators—money that we would have preferred to put into the failing health or education systems. It is solely due to the fact that the Minister—“Come home Steven.”—did not consider this a priority. Well frankly I think the Minister got it wrong. Unfortunately the taxpayers of New Zealand have paid big time as a result. When theRena first crashed the liability was just over $11 million only—clearly a drop in the harbour compared with what the actual liability was. The Government managed to get just over $27.5 million out of the owners but still nowhere near the contribution that should have been made.The final point I want to make is that this bill is amending once again the Government’s very weak exclusive economic zone legislation.Chris Auchinvole: Part 2.Hon RUTH DYSON: That legislation was meant to be set up to protect the environment. There are many qualified people both inside and outside the House who have said that it does very little to amend that legislation at all. I know that the member is keen to take another call on this part but he should just restrain himself. I know that this Marine Legislation Bill is very interesting but he has got plenty of opportunity to take a call.As I said at the beginning Labour supports this legislation. It does make progress but it is a huge puzzle as to why—despite the recommendation of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and the then Labour-led Government of 2008 to progress this with some urgency—this matter was put on the back-burner and as aresult the taxpayer has to pay. That is the responsibility or irresponsibility of the Minister of Transport and the Minister for the Environment should have had a say as well. I think it is a shame that we have ended up in this situation as a result.