Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCrown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10213. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment BillFirst ReadingHon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): I moveThat the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a first time. The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 established a new approach to the Crown’s management of the petroleum and minerals estate. It streamlined and simplified the regime where appropriate bringing it into line with the regulatory reform agenda and made it better able to deal with future developments. Regulatory attention has been focused on key industry work programme deliverables that have the potential togenerate significant value to New Zealand. Equally tighter controls have been introduced so that when non-compliance arises swift and decisive action is possible.It has been brought to my attention that there was a significant omission in the transitional provisions for the Crown Minerals Amendment Act. This meant that a small number of existing privileges in the form of licences to mine a range of minerals that were granted under Acts that have now been repealed such as the Mining Act 1971 would not be covered by the Crown Minerals Amendment Act. In order to guarantee certainty for the operators affected and to ensure that the Crown can manage these resources effectively I have decided to amend the Act at this time. I also propose a small number of other amendments. The amendments that I propose to make can be summarised in four categories: those resulting from a minor policy change those that deal with transitional issues such as the one that I have just outlined amendments to drafting to implement policy intent and amendments clarifying drafting where necessary.It has been brought to my attention by officials and by the industry that operators who seek to obtain a permit to begin to explore for petroleum with a view to bringing on board a joint-venture partner at a later stage to confirm the resource through drilling and to operate a subsequent mining permit could be excluded from the current regime. This is because the initial operator would not be able to pass the increased financial technical and health and safety capability assessments that the new Act requires as these currently apply to all activities up to and including drilling a well. In order to allow these operators to be awarded permits through a competitive bidding round I propose to include an alternative option where the assessment can be applied to the initial elements of the exploration work programme. Any permit awarded through this process will contain additional conditions to ensure that the operator including any operating partner that they bring in is able to satisfy the financial technical and health and safety requirements for the later stages of the exploration work programme. This approach ensures that the newly strengthened capability assessment remains in place but is more responsive to the way in which parts of the industry operate.Another newly identified issue relates to the tier status of permits for platinum group elements. Tier 1 permits are those that are subject to a high degree of regulatory oversight and a mining permit’s tier status is determined based on the estimated annual production with different thresholds for different minerals. The threshold for metallic minerals other than gold and silver is currently set too high meaning that future platinum tier 1 mining permits would be unlikely. I propose to lower this threshold for platinum group elements to ensure that the definition of tier 1 permits captures permits for these high-value complex operations as is consistent with the policy intent of the two-tiered permit management regime that the Act introduced. The proposed change is to set the threshold for platinum group elements at the same level as that for gold and silver.As I have already mentioned there are elements of the transitional provisions for existing privilege holders that I propose to amend. I propose to amend the Act to ensure that it applies to licences applied for prior to the Crown Minerals Act but granted after the Act came into effect in 1991. These are the existing privileges that are currently omitted from the Act. I also intend to clarify how certain elements of the Act apply to existing privilege holders including clarifying that if there is a change of operator they must be approved and pass the health and safety capability assessment; that data can be shared between regulators and the management of these existing privileges; and that there is consistent treatment of conditions for holders of permits in existing privileges regarding data confidentiality reporting requirements and the treatment of pending applications.There are some instances where I propose to amend the drafting of the Act to reflect the original policy intent. A new offence was included in the Act relating to interference with offshore petroleum and mineral activities. The offshore area to which the new offences apply was intended to include all of the continental shelf and exclusive economic zone. Parts of the exclusive economic zone that are not above the continental shelf have been inadvertently excluded as are parts of the continental shelf that extend beyond the exclusive economic zone and I propose to rectify this.The Act refers to providing information on reserves. Reserves are mineral resources that are commercially recoverable. Resources are all quantities of minerals naturally occurring in the ground including all reserves. It is important that the Crown is able to collect data on mineral resources in order to manage effectively New Zealand’s petroleum and minerals estate. I propose that all instances of “reserves” should be changed to “resources” to ensure that regulations under the Act can set out the information on mineral resources that is provided by permit holders. I also propose to make minor amendments to the definition of “underground gas storage facility” to clarify the confidentiality provisions of certain data classes and the treatment of a permit as property. Through this bill Government is continuing work on all fronts to ensure that the industry is bound by rules that appropriately reflect the risk profile associated with it. This bill also ensures that the changes to the regime can be implemented to their fullest extent in a consistent manner across the industry.This bill is important for the future of responsible development of New Zealand’s oil gas and mineral resources and will ensure the future contribution of these resources to the New Zealand economy. I commend this bill to the House.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I think the best response to that speech is “Really?”. Really Minister? We passed this bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill only weeks ago it is not even in force yet and already we are back here in the House having to clean up the mess because there were so many mistakes. That is a whole new level of incompetence that I do not think we have seen in Ministers so far. I mean it is still warm this piece of legislation. It is still warm. The body has not cooled down and here we are having to pass an amendment bill under urgency to fix all the mistakes in it.Unfortunately the reality is that this amendment bill is so shabby—and is being rushed through all stages tonight and tomorrow and not going to a select committee—that we are probably going to have to come back for another amendment bill to fix the mistakes in this amendment bill. Well Simon Bridges has completely outdone himself. This is a whole new level of incompetence. He has set a new record and I challenge any Minister over there to beat it. The talent is certainly there—the talent is certainly there. It is going to be a hard task to beat it but I think they can.This is not a minor technical bill as the Minister of Energy and Resources would have us believe. The original bill as he pointed out significantly changed the way the Crown minerals regime worked in New Zealand. There were elements of that bill that the Labour Party supported which included the implementation of the recommendations of the Pike River inquiry. That was really good. Unfortunately the rest of it was nothing more than a developer’s charter with scant regard for the environment and as the Labour Opposition we were not able to support it.I want to welcome the approaches that were made by the Hon Phil Heatley when he held the portfolio to try to come to some cross-party agreement on this very important piece of legislation. We welcome that. Unfortunately he was turfed out of the portfolio. We now have Simon Bridges and Simon Bridges does not seem to want to provide that security for industry. He is desperately looking like he is deep in conversation with TimGroser at the moment so that he does not have to listen to what I am talking about. We know that is not real—we know that is not real.Hon Lianne Dalziel: He’s “en-Groser-ed” in that conversation.MOANA MACKEY: He is “en-Groser-ed” in conversation. But the reality is that this is important and it is a shame that this is being rushed through the House under urgency with no chance to actually discuss the amendments that are being made.The Minister talked about this new permitting regime that he is introducing. It is a conditional permit which will allow prospectors who are not going to carry out drilling to be held to only the health and safety environmental and financial standards that apply to the activities that they are actually carrying out. Well on the surface of it that seems perfectly reasonable. The problem is that we are not sure that that is actually what the drafting is going to achieve and that is the value of a select committee process. This is an area where we are at risk of opening up enormous loopholes if we do not get it right. I am afraid that what is at stake is far too precious to take that risk. There is no reason why this could not have gone to a select committee just to have a look even for a truncated period given that that part is the bit that we are really looking at so that we can get advice as Opposition members on what this clause actually does and when it will actually achieve the stated aims and outcomes that the Minister has indicated.The wording actually says that “An applicant for a Tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities will be able to be granted a permit on a conditional basis. If the permit is granted the permit holder will be required to undertake the committed work … and must then—based on the results of that work negotiate to sell all or part of its permit …”—and this is the bit that I am concerned about—“or build its own capability to do the contingent work so that it can commit to do that further work itself.”My question would be that if we are passing this because we are acknowledging that these companies that are going to be carrying out the seismic surveying—because that is largely what we are talking about—do not have the capability up front to carry out exploratory drilling so therefore are not going to be held to that higher standard then why would we expect that they are going to be able to go on and carry out that work after they have done the seismic surveying? Carrying out seismic surveying does not give you any experience in carrying out exploratory drilling so why is that part of the clause even necessary? Why do you not just end it at saying that they have to onsell the permit relinquish it to Government and that is it? That is what I understood the amendment was trying to achieve and what the Minister has said it is trying to achieve but that is not what the legislation says. The legislation says that a company that the Government deemed unable to meet the standards required to carry out exploratory drilling could in fact go on to carry out that drilling. I wonder why that is there.This is the kind of question that a select committee would ask of officials and there may be a response to that. I look forward to Jonathan Young’s speech. Maybe he can provide an answer to that question. But if the expectation is that only companies that meet those environmental health and safety and financial standards can carry out this work then why are we leaving open a loophole for them to carry out this work in the legislation? To me that is a real danger and in this area where there are literally millions of lawyers all around the world being paid literally billions of dollars to find these loopholes I want to know that our law is as tight as possible and meets those high standards. I simply do not have that confidence based on what the Minister said which does not match up with what the law says.But I want to come back to the area that I am really concerned about in this legislation and that is the extension of the incredibly Draconian and anti-democratic bans on protests beyond our exclusive economic zone and out into the continental shelf.The Minister has tried to say: “Oh that’s what I meant to do in the first place and it’s not really a big deal.” Well the Minister might think it is not a big deal but what we are talking about is 1.7 million square kilometres of area in the ocean. That is a big deal. When the original amendment Act was passed “offshore area” was defined as “any area within the territorial sea or exclusive economic zone that is on or above the continental shelf”. That quite clearly means that it is our territorial waters and it is the exclusive economic zone. That is it. That was what we understood when it went through the select committee process that is what we passed in this House just weeks ago and tonight we had the Minister amending that to say: “ ‘offshore area’ means any area that is—(a) within the territorial sea; or (b) within the exclusive economic zone; or (c) on or above the continental shelf”.So we have now just included 1.7 million square kilometres of deep-sea area that was not included in the original legislation. I would seriously question whether or not we actually as a Parliament have the right to pass this legislation. What we know is that we do not have the right to fisheries in the continental shelf and we do not have the right to regulate other activities above the continental shelf such as shipping. So if we do not have those rights to regulate those activities what makes the Government believe we have the right to regulate protesting? I want to hear the answer from Jonathan Young to that question because I know that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website makes it quite clear that we do not have the right to regulate activities in those areas.This brings me back to another very important area which is that once again we did not have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vetting or a legal opinion in relation to our international obligations on the original Supplementary Order Paper that introduced the protesting ban in the exclusive economic zone. We had the Attorney-General coming down to the House and giving a speech trying to insinuate that he had a legal opinion on its consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. When he was actually pushed and asked to table it it turned out he did not have a legal opinion on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act which is highly unusual for something so controversial.Hon Maryan Street: Just his own opinion.MOANA MACKEY: Just his own opinion which he might think is a legal opinion. It is not the one we wanted. We wanted one that was actually applicable to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and there was no legal opinion. Once again on this piece of legislation there is no legal opinion on its consistency with New Zealand the Bill of Rights Act and no legal opinion on its consistency with our international obligations.Equally disturbing there is no regulatory impact statement on this piece of legislation. So the two regulatory impact statements we have are from the previous piece of legislation that we passed just weeks ago which do not refer to the new matters raised in this bill at all.I am a very helpful member of the House. I do not agree with this legislation—we will be voting against it—but I like to be as helpful as I can possibly be and aid the Government so I have drafted my own regulatory impact statement on this piece of legislation in order to advise and inform and help members because I want to be constructive and this is it. I have drafted it myself and it is very much in line with the other blanked out regulatory impact statements we have seen tonight in the House. I have copies for members if they think it would help inform their speeches just as the other regulatory impact statements have! It is very informative and it took me quite a long time—quite a long time! A lot of Vivid pen was used in the making of this regulatory impact statement but it really meets the quality of the other regulatory impact statements we have seen in the House tonight and I think it will go a long way to inform the debate! I am trying to be constructive Minister. I am interested in findingmulti-party solutions to these multifaceted problems and I am here to help—I am here to help. That is all I can say.This is a dreadful attempt by the Government to fix up a mess of a bill—Hon Lianne Dalziel: What does it say?MOANA MACKEY: It says “and”—it says “and”. So make of that what you will. It says “and” and that is a legal opinion and the rest of it is redacted—redacted for Government purposes. So we will be opposing this bill. It is a shameful attempt to extend a Draconian anti-democratic law. Thank you. I seek leave to table the regulatory impact statement that I drafted—Mr SPEAKER: No I am not prepared to put that leave.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I guess it is a pity that the only word that the previous speaker Moana Mackey could put on a piece of paper was the word “and” because I think that you know in terms of the select committee process yes she did participate she did contribute and she brought her point of view across. I think what we need to understand around the adjustments that we are now proposing here with this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill is how the oil industry operates because there are very very few operators around the world who would be able to supply every step every facet of technology and implementation of their programme within the scope of their own company.If you go to Taranaki and you see a great New Zealand company like Todd Energy up there working away if you go on-site and look at what they are doing there in north Taranaki you will see on their site probably half a dozen companies. You will see Schlumberger. You will see other companies that do the cementing—Halliburton. You will see drill companies. You will see all of these different companies operating. What we are saying is that instead of having just a single health and safety plan for a permit every single step of the process in this incredibly important and risky enterprise should have a health a safety plan that is submitted and ticked off so that we see that every step along the chain in terms of exploration and production is going to be done in a very safe way for the sake of not only the workers but also the environment in which it happens. So this is very sensible stuff.We know that in Taranaki oil exploration has been happening since 1865 with the Alpha well on Ngāmotu beach—probably before Texas Taranaki was hard at work in this industry. We are a great industry up there and we serve the country very well. We want to see this industry expanded throughout the country. We know what it has done for Taranaki and for the people there and for employment there and we believe that this is going to be something that if done wisely done well and done in a very proactive and a positive way is going to be a great benefit to all New Zealand. Thank you.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. As my colleague Moana Mackey said this legislation that we passed just a matter of weeks ago has now had to be resubmitted by the Minister of Energy and Resources because it was rushed through in a way that left it completely riddled with loopholes that the Minister had not spotted and had not been rigorous enough in his oversight of this bill to discern.But I have a particular question relating to this issue and it is whether this bill being so rushed—the members opposite wish it to pass through all its three stages under urgency—may mean and it is a bit of a conundrum that it might come into force prior to the legislation that it is designed to amend. The legislation that it is designed to amend takes effect as I understand it and as I recall it on 24 May. Today in parliamentary terms although not in real-world terms it is 16 May under urgency.What happens if the Royal assent is given to this amending legislation prior to the other legislation having been signed off—well having reached its implementation date?I do not even know whether the Minister has thought that far because looking at the size of this amendment bill to the amendment Act one can only assume that he hardly reads past page 1 because he believes then that the officials are right and everything he does is backed up by officials and he can blame them later. Well I am sorry Minister. I know this Minister is a new Minister and I understand that it takes a little while to get the hang of the job—it is a very big job—but in the end the policy and the legislation are the Minister’s responsibility. We have not yet had the primary legislation arrive at its implementation date and we are ramming through a bill to amend that legislation. Lesson No. 1 for new Ministers is that this is not good enough—this is not good enough.The Minister has then compounded the errors by not producing a regulatory impact statement on the amendment bill. In fact what we have tabled are the regulatory impact statements on the original bill on the first amendment bill which was passed a few weeks ago. So instead of taking a leaf out of Tony Ryall’s approach to ministerial responsibility and blacking out large portions of regulatory impact statements the Minister has become so scared of making a mistake now that he has refused to give Parliament a regulatory impact statement. So it is even worse than having a completely redacted regulatory impact statement. We do not have one at all.So now we are getting past the boundaries of the Minister’s competence. We can see that this is a chapter of errors from which I can only hope the Minister will learn if he wishes to remain in such a job at any time in the future because this clearly is not good enough. We will on 16 May pass because of the attrition of time an amendment bill to an amendment Act that has not even come into effect yet.There are a couple of other things I want to talk about and one is the impacts on health and safety as well as environmental rules. The previous speaker Jonathan Young knows a little bit about this because it is happening just offshore from his electorate and onshore at the north end of his electorate and he assured us about how they have health and safety rules and regulations and they have to have them signed off. I have been on those sites. Yes they do have health and safety programmes. But this legislation says that under the conditional permits which are the ones that this amendment bill is seeking to add to the amendment bill that we passed a few weeks ago applicants no longer have to show that they have the ability to comply with health and safety or capability or environment tests associated with exploratory drilling if at the time they do not intend to carry it out. So they are required to meet the standards of health and safety and environment tests only if they are committed to carrying out those activities at the start of what they are doing. At the point of needing to conduct exploratory drilling they can either sell it to another company or try meeting the tests themselves but the risks open up a huge loophole in the health and safety provisions and in the environmental tests if not given proper scrutiny.The theme of today under urgency is not giving things proper scrutiny. If this bill went to a select committee came into effect after the primary legislation had come into effect but was properly scrutinised through a select committee process we might end up with sensible amendments and better amendments to the primary legislation than the Minister has come up with.At the moment quite frankly in looking at this bill as it stands I do not know how these people who would apply for conditional permits would recruit to their companies and organisations. I do not know how the human resources manager would advertise positions—perhaps with a name like “a job to die for”. Perhaps that would be the tagline for the human resources manager. These protections that we require in otherlegislation are being waived in the case of these conditional permits and that is not good enough.The other thing that is of major concern to me is the extension of the ban on protesting. Not only does this Government wish to control all levers of power within New Zealand; it wishes to reach out beyond our jurisdiction and exercise power outside territories that are ours and in fact subject people to a stripping of human rights to lawfully protest way beyond the exclusive economic zone and to the continental shelf where in fact international law would apply. This extension of something that already strips away the rights of legitimate protest now seeks to extend that beyond the bounds of this Government’s legitimate jurisdiction. Thank you.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. The National Party members are obviously asleep in Parliament tonight and are not taking their calls on this very important bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. This is an embarrassment—an embarrassment to the country—because what we are seeing is an amendment Act amendment bill being introduced to Parliament under urgency without—[Interruption] Mr Young you want to go back to the people of Taranaki and say that you are doing your best to have a good strong regulation of the oil industry but you are quite comfortable with passing these amendment Act amendment bills to fix up the messes that the current Minister of Energy and Resources has made. You are comfortable with not having any regulatory impact statement any select committee process any real explanatory statement or any New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vetting. Are you comfortable with that? Are you comfortable with such a laissez-faire approach to oil regulation in this country when we are talking about our “100% Pure New Zealand” environment our agriculture industries our tourism industries and our fisheries industries?When we are talking about the future of our economy we should be standing up and protecting it and having the best regulations. But instead what we see are cowboy tactics from this Government. We heard the Prime Minister say: “We won’t allow cowboys in this industry.” but what we are seeing is cowboy behaviour from the Government benches. It is an embarrassment.I want to touch on four points. I want to talk on the Minister’s role in this fiasco in the House. I want to talk about the shoddy process we are seeing. I want to talk about the cowboys we are encouraging with this amendment Act amendment bill. Lastly I want to talk about what we should really call this bill which is the “China National Offshore Oil Corporation Law Bill” because this is what I believe this is really about. This is not a minor technical bill. This bill is making a significant number of changes to a very important piece of our legislation protecting our economy protecting our environment and protecting our workers’ health and safety.I do not want to play personal politics because I do not believe that is the right way to go and I am not going to pit it against the Minister. But what I am going to say is that I think we are seeing an inexperienced Minister who is in over his head trying to fix the mistakes. It is an embarrassment for this Government that an amendment Act that still has not even come into effect needs to be amended under urgency in such fundamental and numerous ways.We are seeing a Minister who is in over his head. The legislation originally was full of holes but the Minister was quite happy—once again I guess like Jonathan Young was quite happy—to not have a select committee process and to not have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet for the fundamental Anadarko amendment which a former Prime Minister and a prominent Queen’s Counsel said was a fundamental breach of human rights and could quite possibly breach international law. But National was quite happy to run ahead in cowboy fashion and here we are seeing the consequences.I agree with Moana Mackey. How long will it be until we are back in this Chamber fixing the holes in this rushed amendment Act amendment bill. It still sounds ridiculous just saying it out loud—“amendment Act amendment bill”. The process is shocking. We are seeing Budget urgency being abused I believe. We do not see any regulatory impact statement. I know it is not a Standing Order of our Parliament but there is a convention that an explanatory statement will actually refer to what is in the legislation particularly in important pieces of legislation.What we know is that clause 14 of this new amendment Act amendment bill is extending the jurisdiction of this country an extra 1.7 million square kilometres over the continental shelf. This is the subject matter of huge international tension at the moment as we see with China North Korea and South Korea. We see China debating these issues over the Spratly Islands. We see the Arctic nations of Canada Russia and the United States arguing about these issues. Who controls the continental shelf? National though unilaterally has decided under Budget urgency to go and decide what the jurisdictional issues are over the continental shelf.I wish the Minister of Foreign Affairs would share his opinion on this legislation because what we are doing is an unprecedented step a unilateral step on something that has vexed international scholars international legal experts and Governments for more than four decades. National has gone ahead and made the decision under urgency. Again what I think we are seeing is a Minister in over his head. We see no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. The process is shocking.There are going to be a number of calls because we are looking at this legislation under all stages. I do want to very briefly touch on—I know there will be a lot more time to discuss it in detail—the substantial amendment in this amendment Act amendment bill which is that the Government is easing up liberalising and taking a laissez-faire approach to who gets an oil permit in New Zealand.I understand that 2 weeks ago the Government opened up 189000 square kilometres of New Zealand’s water to deep-sea drilling. It said that we have got the best standards in the world world-class regulations and that we would have only the best for New Zealand but what the Government is doing is relaxing and weakening the standards for those who get a permit. The Prime Minister said that we are not going to allow cowboys to get permits but what the Government is doing is allowing companies without the financial backing or without the expertise to do things they are applying for permits to do to get permits. This is incredibly worrying because what we are going to see is a posse of cowboys enter New Zealand to speculate in the oil market.The background to this bill of course is that the Government’s oil strategy the Minister’s oil strategy has been such a woeful failure in its own terms. We have seen Petrobras go we have seen Apache Corporation go and we have seen Anadarko delay its activities. The strategy has been such a failure to attract the big players down to New Zealand that now just to keep up appearances the Government is trying to bring in all the small speculators around the world trying to get them to come down to New Zealand and speculate. It is incredibly worrying because we do not want cowboy activity in our oil sector.Lastly why is clause 14 amending section 55 by amending the definition of “offshore area”? It is important because all the Government is adding in clause 14—and it was not until about 10 p.m. last night that I actually saw why the word “or” was so important. What the original Anadarko amendment said was that the provisions the five new offences to criminalise protest activity at sea apply only in the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone. By adding the word “or” to extend jurisdiction over the continental shelf what this Government is doing is expanding its powers over another 1.7 million square kilometres. Why this is significant is that last week the ChinaNational Offshore Oil Corporation and Shell announced they would be applying for a permit—where? Over the continental shelf in between New Zealand and New Caledonia.I would not be surprised if Official Information Act requests show that the Minister probably received a phone call from one of these players saying: “Hey did you realise your amendment Act did not cover our activities because we are worried about protesters. We are worried about New Zealanders standing up to our interests. We are worried about Kiwis who are looking out for the environment and economy. Do something about it.” So of course Minister Bridges said: “Well how high would you like me to jump?”.What we see is an embarrassing process and a shoddy process. We are encouraging cowboys. We are seeing benefits again to the big mates of the National Party. It is a bad day for Parliament. I do not think anyone is proud to see this legislation in front of the House but I am sure there will be a lot more to say about it. Kia ora.Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): It is a pleasure to take a call on this the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. This bill is really about New Zealand’s future. It is about building on the platform that this Government has created in order to provide jobs opportunities and economic growth for our nation going forward.Due to some minor omissions in the transitional provisions of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act which we passed last month we have had to bring this bill into the House in order to correct some of those omissions. We are doing this because it is prudent. We are doing this because it is responsible. We are doing this because it is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do because this Government is continuing to work on all fronts to ensure that these industries—the oil and gas industry and the minerals industry—are able to thrive and prosper in this country.Although members opposite will cry foul about what is going on in Australia and how its Crown minerals are being utilised to their fullest extent they continue to vote against bills that create jobs and opportunities for all New Zealanders. They continue to vote against jobs that are created by the construction of a convention centre. They continue to vote against jobs provided in manufacturing. They continue to vote against jobs where the provision of infrastructure and broadband investment continue under this Government. They are against it all. It is quite sad.But what this bill also creates is certainty for operators who obtained mining licences under earlier regimes and who are covered by these transitional arrangements. It provides certainty. Certainly when you go out and talk to manufacturers and producers out in the market—I know the Labour Party do not worry about talking to those who create jobs and growth. But when I go out there and I visit my manufacturers in Maungakiekie what do they say to me? What do they say? They say they want lower taxes. They want less compliance and red tape. They want the Government to support business in order to support jobs and growth and they support this Government’s Business Growth Agenda.Although members opposite continue to rail against economic growth and rail against providing for our families it is about families. It is about giving them the opportunities to look after themselves.Hon Lianne Dalziel: What’s that got to do with this bill?Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: That is what this bill does—it supports that economic growth agenda. Miss Dalziel does not know what the economic growth agenda is even though she was the Minister of Commerce for so long under that shabby Labour Government between 1999 and 2008. Although Labour prefers to legislate over tax andincrease red tape and compliance this Government with this bill and other bills like it continues to promote jobs in this country. That is why I commend this bill to the House.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on 16 May here in this Chamber but outside it is 17 May my son’s 28th birthday. Happy birthday Sam. It is somewhat surreal to be here and although we are in the same country to think we are on a different date line and different time zone while others are enjoying a very nice birthday in Auckland. But having said that we also have another young man—who is a bit older than my son who is 28—who is now the energy Minister Simon Bridges. We are going to give Simon the benefit of the doubt because Simon came in as the new Minister of Energy and Resources in January and I think he has actually been doing a pretty good job. I have had a bit to do with Simon. I have brought things to Simon’s attention and he has responded. I have appreciated the fact that he has.In this instance everyone wants to try and pin it all on Simon that this amendment bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill is being required but at the end of the day as we all know legislation is drafted by legal minds and advisers within the Parliament. It is not always that every single loophole is picked up. It is not always that every contingency is included. In this respect this was a pretty big bit of legislation in terms of the Crown Minerals Act in the first place. It does not surprise us in New Zealand First that there probably were a few things overlooked. We are actually very pleased that some of these small loopholes in it are being corrected so soon and now so that it does not just drag on and on. There is nothing worse than having bad legislation on the books and finding that it does not work and it does not help.We are particularly drawn to the regulatory impact statement. As New Zealanders well know New Zealand First is very supportive of good policy that will see more employment more jobs more economic opportunity for this country and more regional development in particular. In this regard in the regulatory impact statement says that there will be an increase in permitted activity and this could in turn lead to increased economic activity exports royalties to the Crown employment and regional development. So obviously if you have an increase in permitted activity it does stimulate greater economic activity as a result. We are very supportive of that. New Zealand First wants to see New Zealand improve its performance overall and we do want to see good sustainable responsible use of the resources that our country has.We do have to recall the fact that New Zealand has the fifth-largest exclusive economic zone in the world. It is vast; it is huge. I sat on the Local Government and Environment Committee and I was most impressed with the information that came to that committee about just the potential that is out there in our economic zone and what it would mean to a small country of 4.5 million people if we properly explored it and if we properly took care of it bearing in mind that we have to be very mindful that we are the guardians of a very important part of the South Pacific. It has to be done in a proper manner a safe manner and a responsible manner but there still is huge opportunity out there which this country must be looking at. So in that respect this is good legislation to sort this out get it right and get it improved so that that can occur.In reading the explanatory note of the legislation it says: “An applicant for a Tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities will be able to be granted a permit on a conditional basis.” and it goes on to give the reasons applying to that. There will be instances of some companies wanting to come and invest and look at opportunities put their money on the line and look at ways to contribute to our economy that may need to gear up improve their capacity and improve their knowledge in the area and that will be bringing on other partners and other joint venture operators with them to do this. So thisis a building programme and you cannot necessarily have the full level of expertise and capacity from day one. Again this legislation provides for that. We do not see that as necessarily being negative but what it does mean is that there will be opportunities for investment in this country by those that otherwise might not have considered it in the first place.So we will be supporting this but what New Zealand First would like to remind New Zealanders of is the fact that out of all the minerals and out of the taking of resources from our country often the very places where those minerals and those resources are taken from do not necessarily get the full benefit of that extraction. Taranaki has done very well. Taranaki has been the jewel in the crown of the resources industry in this country but often that is not the way. Around the world it is often the way that the people living where the resources are taken from do not necessarily benefit. Companies benefit corporates benefit the Government can benefit but not necessarily the people.So New Zealand First has a month or so ago put out a policy our regional royalties policy. It is very clear what we say in New Zealand First: we would return 25 percent of all Crown royalties taken from any resources or minerals or extractions back to the region that they are removed from. We believe that is a very sound and sensible policy and it would put money back into those areas to pay for necessary infrastructure to support roading to support infrastructure to support the necessary capacity in those regions to help support those very same mining minerals or extraction industries that are going on. We believe that would be a very very sensible thing which we would like at some stage in the future to get through legislation to provide for. At the same time we believe that those minerals and the extractions should be paying higher Crown royalties as well. We believe the Crown royalties that are taken at the moment are too low. We think there should be a review of this and we think New Zealand should undertake a full comparison with other countries and ensure that we really are getting a fair—what do they say—suck of the sav as they say in Australia. We should be getting our fair whack from what is being taken.So we are going to support this legislation and we hope that this will now sort out the Crown Minerals Amendment Act that we can take this on and that New Zealand can continue to grow and prosper as a result of future opportunities with Crown minerals.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): It is my great pleasure to stand in support of this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. It is good to follow Andrew Williams from New Zealand First which has supported this bill. Sometimes I feel that New Zealand First has got some common sense and it supports this bill under consideration.I would like to clarify something for the member from the Green Party Gareth Hughes who just mentioned that a lot of overseas companies are withdrawing from New Zealand. I had an opportunity to meet one of the investors from Canada recently who are investing millions of dollars in oil exploration in New Zealand. He was very excited by the opportunities available over here and investors are ready to support the exploration of the mineral opportunities available over here and come and invest over here.While I am talking about petroleum petroleum is the fourth-largest export earner for New Zealand. It earns about $1.8 billion in revenue and employs about 7000 New Zealanders. This bill ensures commercial certainty for the operators who have been granted permits and this amendment bill fixes some of the loopholes that were left in the Act earlier. So I hope these opportunities will bring more investment into New Zealand and create more jobs which will help the economic growth in New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): The title of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill speaks for itself. This is a tidy-up bill because the last bill—now the Crown Minerals Amendment Act—was such a mess because it did not have the requisite attention paid to it. We are now passing an amending tidying-up improving piece of legislation that will have very little scrutiny at all—certainly not the sort of scrutiny that ought to apply in a bill dealing with an issue that is so important.The primary purpose of this bill is to split the approval process over the different stages of oil and gas exploration—and that is approval for the health and safety as well as the environmental aspects or measures to be taken—first of all for prospecting the second stage for exploration and then subsequently for production. It is about splitting up that process so we have the separate process after the first one for the prospecting part of it.It deals with the regime that is set up in the new Crown Minerals Amendment Act but the reality is that that regime is already pretty light. If you have a look at new section 29A in the Crown Minerals Amendment Act and look at what is required for the Minister to approve a permit in terms of health and safety in subsection (2)(b) of new section 29A it says the Minister must be satisfied “that the applicant is likely to comply with”—not “is required to” not “will” but “is likely to comply with”—“and give proper effect to the … work programme taking into account—(i) the applicant’s technical capability;”. It is not as the Health and Safety in Employment Act would have it which is the industry knowledge available at the time but the very subjective test of “(i) the applicant’s technical capability; and (ii) the applicant’s financial capability;”—so if it is a small company it gets let off the hook—and then “(iii) any relevant information …”. A later paragraph says that the Minister “is only required to undertake a high-level preliminary assessment;”. That is actually a pretty light approach to health and safety and environmental safeguards when it comes to this important economic activity. This bill now seeks to split that up and effectively to make it even lighter.There is another aspect to it too which is that the whole workplace health and safety regime in this country is undergoing change—radical change long-overdue change but change that has been prompted first of all by the Pike River disaster and secondly by the review that this Government under the previous Minister of Labour very sensibly initiated of which we have now seen the report. Both the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and the Government’s own health and safety advisory group have recommended radical change in health and safety. So that is all in play at the moment. Now we have this bill which is seeking to weaken an already very light regime for this industry at the permit-setting process.One thing was very clear that came out of the royal commission on Pike River and that was that health and safety was an issue that had to be considered at the very beginning of mining prospecting and development not as an afterthought once production got under way. I fear that the provision in this bill that softens an already pretty weak provision in the bill that we amended just months ago is going to make that worse. In that respect this bill may be seen as being somewhat premature in relation to the other health and safety changes that this Government and this Minister in fact with his Minister of Labour hat on are already meant to be managing through.But there is another issue that I think is even more compelling—another reason that is even more compelling—to justify why we are opposed to this bill. It comes out of something that the honourable Jonathan Young said. Jonathan Young referred to some of the companies that are active certainly in Taranaki: Schlumberger—and with all due respect Mr Young did not quite get the pronunciation right—Shell and Halliburton with that well-known international reputation for good faith and ethical conduct.These are giant multinational corporations. Halliburton has a balance sheet that probably surpasses New Zealand’s. We are saying to these companies: “Come here. You can do your prospecting. We will give you a permit for that. But once you have done your prospecting don’t expect to get your exploration permit. You have to come for a second process for that.” But the reality is that we know what this Government is like when large multinational corporates turn up at its door and want a special deal. It goes weak at the knees it quivers and it gives up rolls over and has its belly tickled and before you know it the New Zealand taxpayer is shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to prop up the multinational. That is the way the Government conducts itself. That is the legacy of this tawdry grubby little National Government that we have at the moment.I can imagine Halliburton turning up—probably Dick Cheney himself an emeritus director of Halliburton will turn up have a cup of tea with John Key and say: “Oh you gave us the permit for this bit. Give us the permit for the next bit.” Somehow Simon Bridges the neophyte Minister of Energy and Resources and Minister of Labour is meant to stand up to Dick Cheney and Halliburton or Schlumberger or Shell and say: “Oh no we are tough here. We are tough with our regulatory regime and we are going to say no. You can start all over again and prove that you have got in place the health and safety and the environmental safeguards that we demand.”The problem with that is it just is not credible. It is not credible given the track record of this Government. When Warner Bros came here wanting a law change sponsored by Sir Peter Jackson what did this Government do? It laid on the limos. It put on the hospitality took Warner Bros representatives up to Premier House wined and dined them and gave up everything. What did the Government do when Skycity Casino took the Prime Minister out to dinner? That was it—deal done convention centre built a 35-year licence and an attempt to buy Parliament and its sovereign rights. That is how disgracefully low our ethical standards are now.And now this party in Government comes to this Parliament all in a heated rush as part of the Budget process and says: “Listen we got the last set of amendments so wrong we have to get the changes in now and by the way we want to make this change which gives these multinationals the opportunity to stand over us and to leverage the partial permission we have already given them in this very crucial and sensitive industry.” That is what this Government is asking us to do. That is what this Minister wants us to do. It is tragic it is wrong and it is the reason we are opposed to the bill.The oil and gas industry is a very important industry to this country and indeed to the world and what we do the way we manage it is given close scrutiny from all around the world from the operators and from others too. It is an industry where the industry players now expect high standards of regulatory conduct. They expect it and are not fazed by it. But they will see an opportunity if they see weakness in a regulatory authority and if they see a Government demonstrating weakness they will be all over it. There is nothing to lose in having a Government that is prepared to set the highest standards of health and safety and the highest standards for environmental safeguards in this industry but this Government is going in the opposite direction. It is a great disappointment it is wrong it should not be happening and that is why we will be opposing this bill.Dr JIAN YANG (National): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the first reading of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill in the name of the Minister of Energy and Resources Simon Bridges. As my other colleagues have already stated the purpose of this bill is to encourage the safe and sensible development of Crown-owned minerals so that they contribute more to New Zealand’s economicgrowth and standard of living. This will be achieved by streamlining and simplifying the Crown minerals regulatory regime and ensuring better coordination of regulatory agencies. This bill also makes minor changes that do not dilute the robust performance management provisions of the regime in any way but are necessary to improve the alignment of the regime with current industry structures and future resource development.The bill ensures that the changes to the regime can be implemented to their fullest extent in a consistent manner across the industry. The Government’s Business Growth Agenda supports New Zealand business to grow in order to create jobs and improve New Zealand’s standard of living. Natural resource industries are an essential part of this. They are major export earners they contribute significant royalty and tax revenue and they create higher-paid jobs. However there is huge untapped potential. Many many New Zealanders are simply frustrated that we are doing nothing to tap the huge potential of our natural resource industries. This bill is good news for them. I support the bill. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): This is a split call. I call the Hon Ruth Dyson.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Correct. Can I say that of all the excuses that I have heard this evening the ones I have just heard from the member Jian Yang who has just resumed his seat were the best. They were the most innovative and the least related to the research unit notes of the National Party and I want to commend the member for that.We have heard some extraordinary stories about why this bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill is here. Jonathan Young stood up and said with an absolutely dead-straight face: “We now know more about the industry.” This bill is amending a bill that has not even come into force yet Mr Young. We have not learnt a huge amount more about the industry in the last 3 weeks. Well perhaps the member might have but the rest of the world has not—certainly not enough to bring in an amendment to the legislation. Another one of the National Party said that this bill is to correct minor omissions in the transitional provisions and that it was prudent responsible and the right thing to do. This is just amazing. That was clearly in the research unit notes. And somebody else said that it was a tidy-up. Well it certainly is a tidy-up and the reason that it is a tidy-up is that the Minister of Energy and Resources Simon Bridges made a mess of the last attempt at a bill.It is quite clear that even though Jonathan Young has learnt a huge amount about the oil industry over the last 3 weeks the Minister has not. If he had learnt anything about parliamentary process he would know that ramming a bill through all stages with no scrutiny by a select committee and with no submissions from the public is begging for problems. I predict that we will have the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Act (Later On in 2013) Amendment Bill 2013” coming before the House before the end of the year because the Minister just cannot help it. He is in such a desperate hurry to get his name on the statute records that he just makes a muck-up of it. He is going to be known as the Minister who has made more mistakes in his tenure as a Minister than any other in history.We should not have to do this. We should send the bill to a select committee where people like Jonathan Young who is actually a competent and good chair—he is a competent chair—could make sure that submitters came in and told us about the issues of concern could alert us to potential fish-hooks and could explain to us that there could be unintended consequences from legislation and the committee could say: “Well we’re prepared to take the risk.” or “No we want to avoid that and we’ll changeit.” But no Minister Simon Bridges knows it all and barrels the whole lot through under urgency without any scrutiny. That is just a recipe for disaster.What this actually is is a developer’s charter. It is clear that the changes that separate the consideration of the standards from the granting of the application are going to be a problem so with health and safety standards with environmental standards and with the financial standards that the Government itself has set it does not matter whether the application says no it does not meet any of those standards; it can still be granted a licence to go ahead. That is a major mistake. Those standards are there for a reason. The Government put them in place and I think it should make sure that they are adhered to.The final point I want to make is in relation to something that clearly is not a tidy-up or correcting some omission or sudden change because we have learnt so much more about the industry and that is the extension of the no-protest zone to cover the continental shelf. What arrogance of the Government. Whose space is the continental shelf? Is it ours to suddenly say that this new no-protest regime will be in place there as well? Well that is what this legislation does. I know that tomorrow the country will wake to news of this that this provision—which was justifiably lambasted when it first came before the Parliament just a little while ago—is now being extended. It is being extended by a significant amount; I think it is 1.7 million square kilometres. That is a huge area of continental shelf outside the exclusive economic zone where this new no-protest regime will come into place. It is ruining New Zealand’s international reputation it is ruining our own democratic rights and protections and I think this bill should be opposed.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am not pleased to take a call on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill because I think it shows the contempt with which this Government treats the democratic process and this Parliament that it is introducing this bill and passing it through all of its stages under urgency with absolutely no opportunity for public submissions or scrutiny by a select committee.The Minister of Energy and Resources talked about providing certainty for operators and that is certainly a theme that you hear a lot from this Government—providing certainty for applicants and operators. It does that by weakening the regulatory regime weakening our environmental laws and making it much less certain for the environment. That is what we are seeing in this bill with these proposals for conditional permits where the holders will not have to meet the same criteria and the same standards that the principal Act establishes. The Government sets up a regime in the Crown Minerals Amendment Act and then introduces legislation to apply a much weaker framework.The Minister also said that the bill would fix a number of technical errors in the Act. It was given Royal assent only on 19 April. It has not come into force yet and yet it is back before the House needing to be fixed. If the Minister and the juggernaut of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment cannot even get the legislation right and have to come back to Parliament within the month then how can anyone have any confidence that this Government can effectively manage risky activities such as offshore oil drilling? The answer is that we cannot have any confidence that it will get it right either in the law or across our oceans.Other speakers have pointed to this noxious little clause clause 14 which extends the “no protest” law much farther out to sea—out 350 nautical miles from our coastline much farther out than the very controversial Anadarko amendment did. That of course was another change to the law that was dropped into the House at the Committee stage with a Supplementary Order Paper with no chance for public submissions and no chance to go to a select committee. In the same way today the Government is curtailing people’s democratic right to protest but without allowing the public to have a say onthat. When Greenpeace put up its petition it got tens of thousands of people objecting. But no the Government did not want to allow people to make submissions along those lines to the select committee so it smuggled it through at the Committee stage just as it is smuggling through this change under urgency.The bill raises questions about whether there are potential breaches of international conventions like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which enshrines freedom of navigation. When you have a look at the Ministry for the Environment website it says that in areas where the continental shelf extends beyond 200 nautical miles from the baseline the water itself above the continental shelf is not within New Zealand’s jurisdiction and is part of the high seas. So why does the Minister think he has the jurisdiction to extend New Zealand law to create criminal offences on the high seas? What does he think gives him the right to do that? That is one of the reasons the Green Party is opposing the bill.Another one is because it facilitates inexperienced prospectors and pushes them potentially to start drilling because if they get a tender and then they do not have the capacity to exercise it the bill is requiring them to surrender it or onsell it. If you have put that investment into doing the exploration why would you surrender the permit? It is tempting those permit holders to engage in very risky activities.We have not got a regulatory impact statement as other speakers have noted; we have got to depend on the one that went with the original Act. I would like to just quote from the explanatory note which says: “An applicant for a Tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities will be able to be granted a permit on a conditional basis.” So the Government in the principal Act set up some conditions weak though they are and then in this bill is allowing people to go round those conditions. It is a very weak regime that the Government is introducing in this bill.MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I am very pleased to take a call on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I just wanted to talk about the delivery of our Budget yesterday by our Minister of Finance Bill English and that fact that it highlighted something. It is that not only are we building momentum in our economy but actually we are on track to return to surplus in 2014-15. When I was campaigning in 2011 all I heard from the Opposition parties was that it was impossible to return our country to surplus in 2014 or 2015. Well I tell you what look at the results. Look at the results that were presented yesterday. We are on track to return to surplus in 2014-15.We have also got in Simon Bridges a Minister of Energy and Resources who has also carried on that momentum and who will continue that momentum in our oil and gas sector. It is an oil and gas sector that is critically important to the future economic growth of New Zealand. We heard Jonathan Young stand up and speak about his electorate of Taranaki. I was fortunate enough to visit Taranaki myself last year. The place is buzzing. The oil and gas sector there contributes the same amount to the GDP as the dairy industry does. So it is a very very important part of our economy. I know for a fact that Northland Rodney and Whangarei and Phil Heatley and Mike Sabin will welcome and look forward to this sector growing. This bill is making a big contribution towards making sure that happens. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a first time.Ayes68New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes49New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bill read a first time.Second ReadingHon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): I moveThat the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill seeks to clarify elements of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 and to rectify omissions in the transitional provisions applied to existing privilege holders who were granted mining licences under regimes prior to the Crown Minerals Act 1991 coming into effect.The responsible development of our petroleum and minerals resources is a key element of this Government’s Business Growth Agenda which will improve employment opportunities and living standards for all New Zealanders. I have visited a number of petroleum and minerals operations and I can tell you that I have seen at first hand the high-quality opportunities that these businesses can bring to a region—not just the highly skilled highly paid jobs in the industry itself but the flow-on employment that comes with the necessary support industries. These all add up to make a big difference. But it is not just regions such as Taranaki and the West Coast that benefit from increased activity in this sector. All New Zealanders benefit as we collect billions of dollars in royalties which will go to fund new schools and hospitals and the like.By proposing these amendments I am seeking to ensure that the new regime for the improved management of the Crown’s petroleum and minerals resources is applied effectively in order to enable us to focus on attracting and retaining world-class operators who have committed to managing and reducing operational risk and to working with the communities in which they operate in a responsible manner. During the development of the Act extensive consultation was carried out with iwi local communities industry and other regulators. I am confident that the intentions within the Act were clearly communicated. I consider the proposed amendments are necessary to ensure consistency and clarity of application. I commend this bill to the House.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): This is the part of urgency when we pretend that a bill has just been to a select committee because normally we would be doing the second reading speech after a select committee has been given the opportunity to actually scrutinise the bill to make sure that it does what the Government intends it to do and to make sure there are not any unintended consequences. Instead here we are giving second reading speeches a matter of about 30 or 40 minutes after we gave the first reading speech. Unfortunately such is the way with this Government; it does not really care about the unintended consequences. All it knows is that this is the only plan it has—this and asset sales and pokie machines. That is it for the economy. If this does not work it is kind of screwed—it is kind of screwed. So it is going to do anything it can to grease the wheels and do everything possible to make sure this stuff happens regardless of the risks to the environment—regardless of the risks to the environment—because it does not have a plan B. The Government talks about jobs. Does it realise that there areactually other industries in New Zealand that create jobs and that are desperate for Government assistance like say the manufacturing industry or like say the cleantech and renewable energy sectors? There are actually other industries that could be used to create jobs.I want to comment on what Mark Mitchell and also Jonathan Young said when they talked about Taranaki and about how great this industry has been for Taranaki. You do realise that that happened under the existing regime. All of that development happened under legislation that actually provided adequate environmental protection. It does not need this shabby weak—weak—legislation in order for it to go ahead. If the existing legislation was so difficult that the oil and gas industry would never be able to operate then how did the industry in Taranaki happen in the first place Mr Young? I look forward to your speech answering that question just like you answered all the other questions.The reality is that it can go ahead under the legislation that is already there and Mr Young knows it. It is just that those members want to make sure that stuff that perhaps might not have got through that legislation because it is too risky does go ahead. On that balance it is too environmentally risky and risky with regard to health and safety but they are quite happy for that stuff to go ahead because this is the only plan they have got and that is the sad reality of what we are passing in the House today. As I said in my first reading speech you know the body is not even cold yet on the original bill which we passed 3 weeks ago and we are here having to clean up the mess that the Minister of Energy and Resources made and fix all the mistakes he made in that piece of legislation.One of the things that the Minister is doing in this piece of legislation—and he is pretending that he meant to do it the first time round but apparently he just accidentally left out 1.7 million square kilometres in the original bill and there is a minor technical amendment to make sure it is included in this one. Well the Minister might say that it is about ensuring health and safety and ensuring safety on the high seas. Well if that is the case—I asked this question all through the debate on the original bill and I would like an answer please from the Minister or anyone else—and if safety is the issue then why does it not cover every vessel? Why is it only vessels that are protesting and then only vessels that are protesting against oil and gas operations? If it is about safety then surely that should apply to every vessel in which case instead of this bill or maybe as well as this bill why did we not have a bill extending the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act which deal with the issue of dangerous behaviour in our territorial waters into the exclusive economic zone and maybe the continental shelf—even though there are questions about our ability to do that? Why did we not have a bill in the urgency motion doing simply that?I want to put on record my disappointment with the industry and how it has responded to this particular clause. I was really disappointed to see the Petroleum and Exploration and Production Association come out in support of it because I have got a lot of time for that association. It is engaging it is representing its industry—good on it. I was really disappointed to see it come out and support this rather than saying “We think that the existing regime in the territorial waters should be extended out so that everyone is subject to the same standards of behaviour and we are not just targeting one group.” It would have been a good response from the industry to say “Yes we want this dealt with because it does need to be dealt with but we want it to apply to everyone and not just apply to only vessels protesting against deep-sea drilling.” That would have been a good response from the association and I have to put on record my disappointment at the position it took over that.But I want to thank Dennis who has Facebooked me since my first reading speech to point out something that I had not picked up on which was in fact another change. It is not just extending it into the continental shelf; this same targeted regime now applies in our territorial waters and our territorial waters are not all actually above the continental shelf. So this takes this protest ban right up to the beaches—right up to the beaches—in New Zealand and that was not the case under the amendment that we passed 3 weeks ago. So I want to thank Dennis for Facebooking me to point out that I had missed that because that is a very good point. This bill does not just extend it further out into the high seas but it actually extends it right up to the beaches—right up to the beaches—and that simply is appalling. Not only that but what it means is that in our territorial waters above the continental shelf we now have two regimes in place. Which one are the police going to prosecute under? Are they going to prosecute under the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act which is what the position is currently or are they going to prosecute under this new law that we are bringing in which targets just protest vessels? Which one? Which one are the police going to use? That is just the most ridiculous situation to find ourselves in.The final point that I want to make is that no member on that side of the House—no Minister no National Party member who has spoken—and I am glad Tau Henare is here because he will be able to inject a bit of clarity into the debate and maybe answer these questions that his colleagues are refusing to answer. On the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website it makes it quite clear that New Zealand has no rights to legislate in the column of water above the continental shelf. We do not have any rights to manage the fisheries and the ministry actually says that we do not have any rights to manage any activities such as shipping. So if we are not allowed legally—and I am glad that Mr Tim Groser is in the House because he is an international expert. He operates at the highest levels of international negotiations. This is a man who knows what he is talking about. We are so grateful to have this visiting international expert in the House tonight. I would hope that he would take a call—Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Oh be kind.MOANA MACKEY: I am being very kind. That is in all sincerity. I would hope that he would use—Simon O’Connor: That’s not a word we use on Labour.MOANA MACKEY: Mr Groser it is your own members who are laughing assuming that I am joking. I am not actually joking. I would hope that Mr Groser would be able to provide some clarity because what we are being told by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Mr Groser is in fact that we do not have any right to legislate this way in the waters above the continental shelf. If we cannot legislate to control shipping activities how is it that apparently we are allowed to legislate to control shipping activities that are protesting? I really look forward to an answer to that question because this is a serious issue for New Zealand’s reputation. I mean we are going to look like idiots if we start passing laws in parts of the world that we do not have any right to pass laws in. That is embarrassing. Then we will be back here in another few weeks passing the third Crown Minerals Amendment Act Amendment Act Amendment Bill in order to fix up all the mistakes from the last Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I mean it just gets to be farcical.This is why bills like this need to go to a select committee. Mr Lotu-Iiga might not think that it is a serious question to know whether or not we are actually overstepping our jurisdiction as a Parliament in passing laws that actually might not be legally enforceable and might make us look completely idiotic on the world stage but on this side of the House we take those things very seriously. Mr Lotu-Iiga might think that it is OK to have two completely separate regimes in place in our territorial waters so thatpolice will not know which one they are meant to apply when dealing with a complaint—in fact maybe he could tell me now. Which one would it be? Will it be the Maritime Transport Act or will it be this bill? Nod and smile Mr Lotu-Iiga nod and smile. That is right. That is the National Party approach to everything—smile and wave nod and smile. This is an utter mess. It really is. The more you look into it the more you peel back the layers the worse it is.What makes this even worse is that the reasons we are doing this are not laudable at all. They are not because the Government wants to see safety and good practice. That is not why we are passing this. We are passing this because there is a current permit that the Government is considering between a Chinese company and Shell that is over the continental shelf between New Zealand and New Caledonia. That is why we are passing this. I would like the next National Party speaker to assure me that a deal was not done with those groups that this is not being done because they asked for it in return—Hon Chester Borrows: A deal or a grubby little deal?MOANA MACKEY: Well you have to say it is a hell of a coincidence Mr Borrows that here we are passing a bill to ban protesting on the continental shelf which we do not even have the power to do right at the time when we have our first permit for prospecting on the continental shelf. That is a hell of a coincidence Mr Borrows. I am afraid I am a lot more cynical than you are. I am afraid that I believe that where there is smoke there is fire and in this case I definitely think it is not a coincidence. The sad thing is we are doing this because the Government has no plan B and it wants to make sure its plan A goes ahead no matter what the risks are.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): The previous speaker Moana Mackey talked a lot about reputation and about people looking foolish and things like that. Let me tell you that I would have liked to see a particular bill go to a select committee; it was called the Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill which passed under urgency in 2 days. It was to cover off $800000 of spending that the previous Labour Government did on the pledge card. That lady was there and she voted for it. So all of this talk about reputation and looking like an idiot—come on! The pot is called black.Coming back to this bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill and what—Moana Mackey: Is that the best you’ve got?Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Confess. Confess.JONATHAN YOUNG: Come on! Come on! No no no—hey hey hey. Obviously the member over there has had a brain fade and cannot remember about—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Order! Order! I do want to hear what the member is saying so please quieten it down.JONATHAN YOUNG: Thank you. I was saying that the member obviously has a brain fade and cannot remember what is happening. This bill touches on some important aspects of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act. One of the particular areas that I want to raise is this area regarding iwi engagement. During the select committee process this was very important. It was raised by a number of submitters and is something that New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals is taking extremely seriously. We believe that in going forward in terms of petroleum exploration and mining iwi engagement is a very important part of that process.We know in Taranaki that the companies that operate there have developed very good relationships with iwi and this is setting a model for other parts of the country. We know that these aspects of inclusion in our society—Andrew Little: How are the residents of Tikorangi feeling?JONATHAN YOUNG: I would like to just remind Mr Little—thank you very much for your assistance in pronunciation—about a couple of your comments around Taranaki just last week. I think you really need to understand that crude is not carried across Mount Messenger as you stated. So if you do not mind that is a reminder about some of those accuracies in terms of your knowledge of Taranaki. That is good to know. By the way the 30 metres of bridge that we are fixing up there is actually 5.3 kilometres of road as well.Andrew Little: There’s another 100 kilometres to go Jonathan. That’s the problem.JONATHAN YOUNG: Well we are always working on that let me tell you. We have to say that part of the answer—Hon Chris Tremain: Does that member know where Taranaki is?JONATHAN YOUNG: I do not think so. I do not think he does. Part of making this country prosperous and positive is legislation like this and we are pleased and proud to make sure that every “t” is crossed and “i” is dotted. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call—[Interruption] Order! I am calling the Hon Maryan Street.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Thank you very much Mr Speaker and thank you for calling for order. It is obvious that when the party opposite gives the women the night off those members do not control themselves quite as well as they usually do.Andrew Little: Bring back Jackie Blue.Hon MARYAN STREET: Bring back Maggie Barry! Rising to speak to the second reading just a very few minutes after I have spoken to the first reading of this amendment Act amendment bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill I want to pick up on a few comments that have been made.Although it was absolutely irrelevant to the debate in hand I think it is only fair because the previous speaker Jonathan Young introduced it to give some rebuttal. Jonathan Young referred to a piece of validating legislation that he thought would cause us to cringe but can I just say that we paid back that money not like the National Party which did not pay its GST on its expenditure. So let us just be clear about who is the greater sinner in this competition. Let us put the record straight. Labour paid the money back—Labour paid the money back—and the GST on the National Party’s bill in that election still has not been paid to my knowledge. It forgot to calculate it and then it did not cough up when it was told it should. However that is the end of that irrelevant interjection from Jonathan Young as far as I am concerned.The only reason the Government is pushing through this amendment to an amendment to an Act is that it has very little in its tool box with which to energise—and I use the word advisedly—this economy. If it is going to pick up this economy it has three strategies only. One is pokies. We can get money from pokies says Mr Key and that will be a fillip to the economy. Secondly it can allow any multinational that wishes to any multinational that is prepared to engage in extractive industry in this country and gives us a sideways glance to come into this country and to take advantage of whatever laws have been sold most recently for the privilege of them to do so. The third strategy the Government has of course is asset sales. It is pretty impoverished when it comes to a plan to lift this economy: asset sales pokie machines and multinationals for whom we will prostitute our legislation at every turn according to John Key because a deal is a deal is a deal.And so we have this tawdry little amendment bill coming in to amend an amendment Act which was passed only a few weeks ago which will facilitate all and any extractive industry multinational to come in and take as much as they can—in the course of which Jonathan Young assures us there will be lots of jobs created. Well the jobs are going to be created on the basis of the risk to the environment that this shabbypiece of legislation represents; or at the risk of infringing international law which this shabby little bill also represents; or at the risk of watering down health and safety standards so there is no guarantee for workers who engage in the extractive activities and particularly the ones that go on beforehand—surveying activities seismic surveying which goes on prior to any exploration.This legislation that I mention risks breaching international law and that is unacceptable. The Minister of Energy and Resources has for much of this debate tonight been in deep in conversation with the Hon Tim Groser who of course is a great expert in international law especially as it relates to trade. However he is not such an expert I think in other international law. When the amendment bill was first introduced a legal opinion provided by the international environmental lawyer Duncan Currie raised serious concerns about consistency with New Zealand’s international obligations and with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.What we had in that process apart from the fact that any other or contradictory legal opinion is never taken into account by this Government was again the Minister playing ducks and drakes with the process. That is a kind way of putting it because what he was doing was basically covering his own incompetence. He did not mention the proposed changes that would violate international law—that is the protesting ban—until the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill came into the House during the Committee stage. So this big abandonment of civil liberties and the right to protest peacefully was taken away by a Supplementary Order Paper introduced by the Minister late in the piece.Either the Minister does not know the rules or he is deliberately flouting them because now we have another process that says that this piece of legislation to amend the amendment Act has to go through under urgency and has to proceed in double quick time. That is evidenced by the shortness of the speeches that the National Party members opposite have been instructed to give.The point about extending the ban to protest is the point about overreaching our jurisdiction—that suddenly we seem to be able to pass laws that cover not only our economic zone but an additional 1.7 million square kilometres. The Minister says that we are quite wrong about the denial of human rights. Well I would like to say once more to the Minister that if out in the waters over the continental shelf—which I think this Minister mistakenly thinks we can legislate about; however I will leave that one there for now—there is a standoff between a drilling ship and a protest ship and the protest ship stops at the requisite 500 metres from the drilling rig and the exploratory or drilling vehicle ship moves towards the protest ship then who is to be at fault? Who is infringing the 500 metres? Will they simply say: “The protest ship clearly is not staying 500 metres away from us and we are going to keep advancing until we drive them back on to the shore.”? Who then is the culprit and who infringes the 500 metres Mr Bridges?This is sloppy legislation. This will have to be corrected again when the Government wakes up and realises that there are people who know about international maritime law even though our Minister does not. This will have to be amended again. So the amendment bill to the amendment Act will have to be amended further. Thank you.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call in the second reading of this bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. Obviously we had the first reading wrapped up only about 20 minutes ago so under urgency and under the auspices of the Budget this Government has decided to ram through the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill.In this call in the second reading I want to talk about the lessons. Obviously we are not learning the lessons of why it is important to have a deliberative consideredapproach to passing legislation because we are going and fixing up the messes Mr Bridges saw in the original Crown Minerals Amendment Act. But I want to talk about the lessons we should learn from our petroleum and gas history in New Zealand.Let us learn the lessons of McKee 13 and the well blowout we saw in Taranaki. Let us learn the lessons of the Kapuni soil and groundwater contamination we see affecting Taranaki right now because they decided back then in good old Kiwi fashion that when you have got produced water containing toxic chemicals and hydrocarbons you do not need to store it in a metal drum or store it in a secure facility. They dug a hole—a blow-down pit they call it or a frack pit—and they just stored the produced water and the toxic chemicals in the pit. Surprise surprise now we have groundwater contamination that cannot be remediated and literally hundreds of cubic metres of soil are being trucked to Wellington to be remediated.Let us learn the lessons from the lack of inspectors which has had tragic consequences in our country’s history. After the Pike River tragedy the Government announced it would be increasing the number of well and oil and gas facility inspectors. Up until then when it comes to oil and gas we had one inspector covering the entire country—one inspector covering all the onshore and all the offshore oil and gas facilities in this country. The Government of course raised it to three. I understand that this is still woefully inadequate. When you look across the world you see Australia has one inspector for every three installations Britain has one for every two and Norway has an inspector for every single facility.So if we are going to learn the lessons of some of the bad and shoddy practices we have seen in this country and actually come together to have stronger regulations stronger protections for our cities our towns our environment our people and our workers let us have that conversation. Let us learn the lessons from when practices have been done badly.And that is the tragedy because under urgency this Parliament could be introducing legislation to make oil and gas activities in New Zealand safer. We could be passing legislation to be introducing relief wells so that one was on hand if an accident happened. As we have seen in Australia as we have seen in America this is the only way a deep-sea well blowout or a well blowout has been contained. We could be talking about introducing liability because although the Government put the liability bill on the operators it requires them to carry only $30 million worth of insurance. When you look across the world oil spills have cost tens of billions of dollars yet the National Government says operators need to have only $30 million of insurance. We could be talking about increasing the penalties. Despite lobbying from the Green Party we have seen the exclusive economic zone legislation penalties being increased to $10 million which is still woefully inadequate when you talk about a potential $40 billion bill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Resource Management Act still has a maximum corporate penalty of only $600000.Why are we not talking about insurance? Why are we not talking about penalties? Why are we not talking about making sure that capping technology is on hand to New Zealand and that we have adequate oil pollution funds building up for when accidents happen? Why are we not talking about signing up to international conventions like the bunker convention and the new series of conventions we could be signing up to in order to protect the taxpayer from liability?That is the ultimate tragedy: we are not talking about those things. We are talking about making it easy for cowboy speculators to come down to New Zealand and drill and risk our environment. This is why I am opposed to deep-sea drilling. I am not opposed to on-shore or shallow drilling. The Green Party is not opposed to that. It is not in our policy. We would obviously like to see a transition to real jobs for Kiwis and atransition strategy because we are concerned about the environment but we are not opposed to those things. We want to see good regulations for those workers who are mostly in Taranaki at the moment.But when it comes to deep-sea drilling when you are drilling past 200 metres and maintenance and dealing with an accident can happen only when you have advanced robotics or submarines we are talking about a different kettle of fish from what we have done in Taranaki over the last 100 years. When you are drilling past 200 metres which is what Anadarko is going to be doing off the New Zealand coast this year—of course the very same company that recently paid out $4 billion for its involvement in the Gulf of Mexico spill. Let us have a conversation about risk and whether we are prepared to deal with a spill.The Government and the industry cannot guarantee we will not see a catastrophic well blowout in New Zealand’s waters. What we are talking about when you are drilling down as deep as 1500 metres—which is what they want to do off my coast in Wellington in the Pegasus Basin—is close to freezing conditions where the pressure would crush a person in an instant where it is completely black. Yet this is where the oil is gushing out at close to boiling point where the oil has to be heated across literally kilometres of hardened strengthened cables—because of course otherwise the cables would snap under the fantastic pressures of that depth—and where you are having to heat the oil so the methane crystals do not crystallise and break the cables. We are talking about operating at the frontiers of technology at the frontiers of geology and at the frontiers of geography in some of the most hostile marine environments in this country.So let us talk about what we are doing to prepare ourselves to get ready if an accident happens because when you look across the world accidents have happened. As the presidential commission in the United States pointed out it is akin to the nuclear industry when you are doing deep-sea drilling in the sense of course that not every well is going to have an accident but when an accident happens the consequences are catastrophic. What would a spill in New Zealand mean when 65 percent of our population lives within I understand 5 kilometres of the coast and when our entire economy depends on the environment—our fishing our tourism and our aquaculture?When we look across the Gulf of Mexico the exclusion zone from their oil spill was almost as large as the entire North Island. Imagine that happening and oil washing up at Pīhā or the Bay of Plenty. Of course they already know the effects. It is not academic to people in the Bay of Plenty. They have seen it they have touched it and they have smelt it and that was only 300 tonnes of oil. What we have seen in the Gulf of Mexico was 600000 tonnes of oil. What we saw in America was that they had more than 46000 people working on the spill response. New Zealand has 400. They had 46000; we have 400 trained responders.When you look across at America they had more than 1000 vessels working on that spill. I am sure the Minister can tell us how many boats Maritime New Zealand has. It has got three skimmers the size of dinghies and it refuses industry and union calls for a multi-purpose rapid response vessel. Look at the difficulty we had dealing with 350 tonnes of oil from theRena and the requirement of flying in literally two aeroplanes full of extra equipment. The Gulf of Mexico spill saw 600000 tonnes of oil yet this Minister’s oil preparedness plans are prepared to deal with a spill of only 5000 tonnes. That is the figure the Government has nominated to be prepared for. It is not on because it cannot guarantee the risks when operating in hazardous environments where every extra hundred metres you are going magnifies the consequences and the difficulty of dealing with a spill.But let us talk about the economics because this is what the Government likes to focus on of course. Let us talk about the economics because what we know is that under National we have got the fourth-lowest royalty plus tax rate in the world. Under National it will be easier to bring in foreign workers. We know the oil sector has got the lowest job-producing potential per percent of GDP of any sector of this country’s economy. What we know—and the Government’s own reports say this—is that it expects 90 percent of the profit to flow offshore. So for all that environmental risk threatening our economy and our environment we are going to see hardly any jobs hardly any taxes and hardly any royalties and most of the profit is going to flow offshore.It is not a smart economic strategy so let us talk abut how we can develop a smarter strategy. I am glad to see the Minister of Finance in the Chamber. I see him doing the numbers. Of course the National bench is obviously a bit worried for his position after that dire Budget because what the finance Minister said was that we are going to see our current account deficit blow out to 6.5 percent of GDP second only to Turkey in terms of the lowest grade in the OECD and we are predicted to be the worst. We see debt almost hitting—blowing out to a net level of more than $200 billion. That is $43000 for every single New Zealander. We are seeing more debt more assets being sold and more deals for the mates. The only thing we are not seeing is more jobs.So this is what we should be having a conversation about: how do we grow a prosperous economy? The answer is not looking to the past. The answer is not looking at the bottom of the ocean and hoping that someone from a foreign country will drill and not damage our environment. Let us look at the clean-energy potential we have got. I mean this is what PricewaterhouseCoopers says is a $22 billion opportunity. This is what Pure Advantage says is a $6 trillion global industry that we can get a slice out of. This is an industry where we could be building tens of thousands of jobs—building exports and sustainable jobs. What we know is that clean-energy jobs have got four times the job creation potential of dirty old fossil fuels. We are going on the wrong path and this bill is a huge step backward a huge missed opportunity. Let us look to the future not to the risky old dirty past. Kia ora.Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): We just spent the last 10 minutes listening to a Chicken Little speech that was bereft of ideas bereft of vision and bereft of any plan for this economy and the people of New Zealand. This gentleman who just sat down Gareth Hughes said: “Where are the jobs?”. Well I called up Clint before I got here and I asked him: “How many jobs are there in New Zealand?”. The answer is there are 2300000 jobs currently in New Zealand the most people that have ever been employed in this country in our history—the most in our history. Gareth Hughes asked where the jobs are and if you look at the SEEK website there are over 15000 jobs available in this country. The unemployment rate has dropped from 6.6 percent to 6.2 percent. He talked about frontiers and how this bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill needs to push the frontiers of oil and gas exploration. Well let me share with that member some facts—a few simple facts.Petroleum is the fourth-largest export earner in this country—the fourth-largest export earner. Of the $37 billion of exports every year—and that is the estimate for 2012—$1.8 billion in revenue comes from the oil and gas industry. It employs—and Mr Young here knows—over 7000 people across this country. This Government is out there trying to create jobs through convention centres through creative industries through the dairy industry and through wood meat fish aquaculture horticulture and agriculture. There are many industries across this country that actually produce jobs and export revenues for New Zealanders—for New Zealanders. If he took the time out to get away from his sheltered chardonnay socialist habitat here in Wellington and came andvisited the provinces or if he came and visited the cities like Auckland he would realise that there are people out there making things work producing things and earning a living for this country. This bill supports the Business Growth Agenda of this Government. This bill supports job opportunities and employment for our people to support their families and to support their kids. So I support this bill and I commend it again to the House because it is an important bill going forward.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call in the second reading of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. This is becoming bigger than Texas effectively. It has been blown out of all proportion and all sorts of spurious arguments are being thrown in the mix when basically what we are talking about here is sorting out a piece of legislation that unfortunately was originally drafted with an oversight in it. That oversight now needs to be rectified so that the original legislation which is to come into effect on 24 May—next week—can come into effect in the correct manner. If it is not it impacts on the original legislation and it means that the original legislation is left wanting. It means that New Zealand and our economy and the opportunities within it are left wanting as well.If we could just sort of simplify it down what the original legislation overlooked was the fact that in exploration in mining in looking for resources often there is the equivalent of a rugby team or a soccer team or a football team in respect of talent scout - type organisations that are looking for the potential and the opportunities in this particular industry. They are the sort of scouts—the ones who are going out there in advance—who are looking at what is the potential of the minerals or of the resources. But they themselves do not necessarily have the full capacity the full technical ability or indeed the financial strength to undertake the actual mining drilling or exploration that subsequently ensues. What they do is they set the parameters perhaps secure the permits and do all the initial exploration the initial findings the research and geotechnical investigations and all these various things to ascertain whether there is a future. If there is a future things can then be escalated. Then as it says here in this legislation you have farminees and farm-outs. Then it might go to the next stage where a much bigger operator will come in and take over and take it to the next stage.Unfortunately the original legislation did not allow for that exploration-type work to be approved under the original legislation. Effectively therefore on 24 May in a week’s time many of those exploratory companies will not be able to continue to operate in this manner and it would be an impasse. That would not be good. That would put a great deal of uncertainty within the industry and indeed it could pull the rug out from underneath some opportunities that are occurring in terms of mineral exploration and research in this country.So this amendment bill improves the legislation. It gets it right. It sorts out what was an error in terms of the original drafting. The original legislation was here in the House only 3 or 4 weeks ago. New Zealand First supported it at that time. We do believe in economic development in this country. We do believe in sustainable responsible development of our resources. That would not be the case if this amendment bill was not passed because it would simply kneecap the original legislation if this bill was not passed and it would make it very difficult for the original legislation to proceed as it was intended by this House. So New Zealand First will support this bill. We do believe that it is in the interests of the New Zealand economy and New Zealanders that this bill does proceed that this is sorted out and put on a correct footing and that the interests of the overall economy are put first in this.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): The bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill which we are debating tonight is because of some of the omissions that were made in the transitional provisions of the CrownMinerals Amendment Act. This bill is another bill that is in line with National’s Business Growth Agenda. This will provide opportunities for New Zealanders and we want to ensure that permit holders are confident that what they are doing is backed by the Government. We are in the early stages of development of our oil and gas natural resources and I hope that this bill will ensure that confidence to the permit holders. I commend this bill.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): Again I rise to take a call on this very important Crown Minerals—it has got so many different names and amendments to it that it is confusing. I take a call on this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. As my learned colleague Moana Mackey has pointed out we are amending a piece of legislation that we passed barely 2 months ago such is the nature of the management of legislation by this Government in this House. But what we have heard so far in this second reading debate are the trite old National Party platforms that are vacuous rhetoric ill-informed with no evidential basis at all. Of course it is compounded by the fact that we have a Government that is so terrified so scared of the citizens of this country that it is now routinely ramming important legislation through this House without any proper oversight from select committees and without the ability of members of the New Zealand public to have their say. We should not be passing legislation on the oil and gas industry on Crown minerals and on the extractive industries without the assistance and the input of the industry and of those people affected by it.Jonathan Young talks long and large about the good people of Taranaki. There are people in Taranaki who are starting to express concern—grave concern—about some of the oversight of the industry and the way it operates in Taranaki. The people ofTikorangi are expressing concern. Jonathan Young knows what the issue is with theKōwhai C well and he knows what the residents’ concerns are but they do not get a fair hearing. Well they do get a fair hearing from one person—the list MP who works in Taranaki and that is me. At least Taranaki has the benefit of one MP who spends his time up there listening to the citizens and what the people have to say. I spend a lot more time in Taranaki than the Minister of Finance spends down in Dipton I can tell you that much. I do not have multiple houses to show for it either. The people in New Plymouth are lining up at my constituency office there in New Plymouth ready to meet me and talk to me and tell me their concerns.Most of those concerns are their anxieties about a Government they perceive as failing them—failing to provide them with the assurances and the oversight that they as responsible citizens are entitled to expect of a Government that is truly acting in their best interests. They have now realised—many New Plymouth residents many Taranakians—that that is not the sort of Government that we have. If it was a Government that was genuinely interested in the public interest we would not be having important legislation on important industries rammed through this House in a matter of hours and without the benefit of the input of the citizens and indeed of the industry. I would want to hear from Schlumberger and from Shell and from Halliburton and from Todd Energy. I would want to hear from them about the impact of this legislation whether it is in fact any use to them to have a two-stage approval process for their permits as they go from prospecting to exploration. Let us hear from them because we certainly do not have a regulatory impact statement we can refer to apart from Moana Mackey’s very helpful one. It is certainly more helpful than the one we saw earlier today.I myself went looking for a regulatory impact statement on this bill earlier today and I could not find one but what I did find—and I cannot find it now; look at that. One comes to this House so well prepared! I went looking for a regulatory impact statementand I found this blank document. Then I realised of course that it is not the regulatory impact statement; it is the list of achievements of this Government over the last 4 years. That is what we are dealing with because this Government does not care and we have seen it so often. We saw it at the beginning of last week we saw it last night and we are seeing it again now. This Government does not care about due process.We should not take lightly the issues that are in this bill. They are issues firstly of health and safety and that is a matter that is very dear to my heart. I know that there are members in this Government there are former members of Cabinet in this Government who took the issue of health and safety very seriously. We are yet to see whether the present Cabinet and whether other members of this Government take health and safety seriously. But this bill and the roughshod manner in which it is being rammed through this House does not give me any comfort and will not give comfort to the many workers in the oil and gas industry the many men—they are men—who work on the rigs and do the dangerous work at the top of the derricks and out on the high seas. They will not be reassured by the way this Government is handling this piece of legislation.The best that Sam Lotu-Iiga could come up with by way of comparison was the wine industry—that somehow the oil and gas industry is comparable to the wine industry. Well there is a big difference. When they talk about strings in the wine industry they are talking about the things that prop up the grapes. In the oil and gas industry the strings are the lines—the pipes that go down into the well as part of the drilling system. That is the difference. You know we are not talking about winemaking here. This is tough work. It is hard work. It is complex technology. It is dangerous work and the workers in that industry are entitled to know that the oversight of it and the oversight of health and safety in the industry are the best available as world’s best practice. The Government has set a standard an ambition for itself or at least the committees reporting to it have—the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and the recent health and safety advisory group that reported which was chaired by Rob Jager the head of Shell New Zealand who himself understood that health and safety in this country is not good. The industry is entitled to know that this Government genuinely wants world’s best practice when it comes to health and safety oversight. This bill does the opposite. This bill treats it shabbily. This bill treats health and safety cheaply. It is not a good sign. So we do not take comfort that this Government and this neophyte Minister of Labour parading as a Minister of Energy and Resources tonight understand the fundamentals of health and safety either.Of course the other aspect of this bill is its extraordinary extension of jurisdiction across the continental shelf as it relates to its previous anti-protest anti-dissent law that now extends its coverage as well. And it just illustrates what this Government is all about. This is a Government that sadly has taken us back to 1951. It hates dissent hates anybody with an alternative view and cannot bring itself to collaborate with any other interests because it thinks it knows best. So it comes up with laws that are badly drafted. It comes up with laws that are so badly drafted that 6 weeks later we have to amend them—yet again—before the original law has even been enacted and it is so contemptuous of dissent that it does not want to hear alternative voices. Well Mr Bridges and members of the National Government—that party over there—the modern world now depends on collaboration. We live in a world of modern relationships. There is a sense of mutual respect where it is OK to talk to others with whom we disagree and to share ideas and to find the common ground. It is on that basis and only on that basis that we will come up with good quality legislation—not the roughshod stuff that we are being fed day in day out under this Government. It is hastily managed and shabbily done as it is all the time.This bill gives us no comfort. It will give the industry no comfort and it will do our international reputation no good in an industry upon which this Government is staking so much and banking so much for our economic future. For those members opposite who talk about the economic management of this country I say that we know that this is just a small part of the economic management of this country. The real challenge is building our economic base for the next 20 the next 50 years and this will not be it. This will not be it. We should get this right but this is not the economic panacea that it has been played up to be by members opposite. We need an economic strategy that is about broadening our economic base and that is playing to our innovation advantages—our strategic advantages in manufacturing high-tech goods and supplying the rest of the world. That is where the future will lie. But if we have to rely for the medium term on the extractive industries we want the best oversight and the best regimes governing those industries that we can possibly get. This bill could do a lot better. It does not. We will not have the chance to give it a proper debate in the select committee and have the benefit of the wisdom and insights of those in the industry and that is why we will remain opposed to this bill.Dr JIAN YANG (National): The previous speaker Andrew Little talked a lot about Taranaki so let us talk about Taranaki. I visited Taranaki a few months ago and it was absolutely clear that the people there overwhelmingly support the economic policy of the Government—Hon Members: And Jonathan Young.Dr JIAN YANG: —and Jonathan Young. Taranaki is a great example of how mineral exploration boosts the economy and creates jobs. Mineral exploration contributes $2 billion to the Taranaki economy second only to agriculture at $4.6 billion. Exploration sustains 5090 jobs in Taranaki alone compared with 3720 in agriculture. And the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research estimates Taranaki’s GDP per capita as $50145 as at June 2012—well above the national average of $47304 for the year ended December 2012.Continuing world demand for oil and gas provides New Zealand with a major economic development opportunity as they made a significant contribution to the New Zealand economy. Oil is our fourth-largest export after dairy meat and wood and each year $400 million in royalties and $300 million in company tax is collected from oil and gas. Oil and gas industries sustain 7700 jobs nationally so I support this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill and commend it to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Correct Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch—a 5-minute call each. One of the questions that came to my mind when the member resumed his seat was why this bill is going through this process as part of the Budget. Why is this bill being taken through all stages without its normal referral to a select committee to listen to submissions consider the bill properly and report back to Parliament and then take it through the next stages? Why is this bill going through all stages under urgency as part of the Budget? Well I think that is a very good answer from the Government—absolute silence. There is no proper answer to that question. Nobody has bothered explaining it. The Minister is sitting so far down in his seat you can hardly even see the top of his head.I would really like to have some better understanding so that when we finish here tomorrow night fly back to our respective homes on Sunday and on Monday morning turn up at the office and people say “What did you do after the Budget and why?” we might have some explanation. Why are we putting this through this process? What is the Budget relationship? And what is the urgency? I think the answer is none actually.We have also heard a lot from National Ministers about how important the minerals industry is how important the oil industry is how important exploration is for jobs. I agree with that entirely but I do not think the National members are serious about it. If they gave a toss about any of those players in the industry this bill would have been referred to a select committee and the industry would have been given the respect it deserves and been given an opportunity to make a submission. We could have learnt from it. Members of Parliament do not know everything; often industry players know a lot more about what works and what does not than people in this building who are a step removed. No matter how hard we try we are not nearly as knowledgable as people within the industry itself.By ramming this bill through all stages of the parliamentary process in one go we are being quite insulting to the industry and saying that actually its opinion does not matter at all and we know best in this Parliament. That is what Minister Bridges is saying: “I know better than anybody and we are just going to go on ahead and pass this bill.” It is quite a different way from the way the former Minister of Energy and Resources acted. The Hon Phil Heatley actually approached Labour and I am sure he approached the other parties as well and talked about the original Crown Minerals Amendment Bill. He asked whether we would like to work on it together: we could tell him the things that we disagreed with or agreed with and he would consider them. He did not give us any commitment to rectifying anything that we had concerns about but he gave us an honest understanding that he would give them proper consideration.So we supported that bill going to select committee and the rest is history of course. That Minister went elsewhere. Minister Bridges came in—boof! There goes the process—entirely gone. It was just foot down flat on the accelerator and away we go. So then we ended up with this bill that we did not support even though we really would have liked to have support across different parties for the legislation. But it was not in a shape we could support. It was also in a mess and we said that at the time. It was not corrected during the Committee of the whole House stage of the legislation so we ended up with a bill riddled with mistakes with a very narrow parliamentary majority which is a very bad sign to the industry. And now a matter of just a few weeks later before the Act has even come into force we have got amending legislation before us going through under urgency. I think it is quite a stunning process.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe. It feels very strange to be here at this time on a Friday night which is actually Thursday in the parliamentary world. But it is more strange to be here speaking on a second reading without the benefit of having read submissions on the bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill without having had an opportunity to question and engage with submitters and without having had an opportunity to ask questions of the officials to tease out some of the rationale for the bill. So it feels very strange indeed to be passing legislation like this without having had any public input which always makes a bill better when Government members are prepared to take account of the concerns raised in submissions.But it also feels very strange to be here because of the damage that this Government is continuing to do to New Zealand’s international reputation. It has done that through its dismissive attitude to climate change and to the Kyoto Protocol and now in this bill we are seeing similar disdain for international law. That is because of the way in which the bill purports to interfere with freedom of navigation on the high seas by applying this 500-metre exclusion zone around vessels when the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea enables such zones only around oil well installations and expressly preserves the rights of navigation.This bill potentially breaches international human rights by disallowing protests at sea and purporting to prohibit that. I would just like to quote Duncan Currie in his legal opinion on the Anadarko amendment. There he went to some lengths to show how New Zealand had stood up through the International Whaling Commission and at other forums in advocating for resolutions to uphold the right to legitimate and peaceful forms of protest and demonstration at sea. As he says: “… New Zealand took an important and active role in preserving the right to peaceful protest in the resolutions.” at the International Whaling Commission.It is worth noting that so many of our important environmental initiatives have come from protests at sea: the Mururoa protest the boats going to sea against that; protests against commercial whaling which achieved that moratorium; protests that ended the dumping of waste at sea; and the ban on the use of driftnets. Peaceful protest at sea is legitimate and this bill by the noxious clause 14 and its controls over the continental shelf on such protests is interfering with that and with the freedom of navigation. It is cutting across the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Government does not care about that such is its disdain for due process in pushing this bill through under urgency and such is its disdain for international law.This bill is also about a “Drill baby drill!” approach to exploration because of this whole regime around conditional permits so that means that in areas like the Great South Basin where we have got extremely challenging marine environments we would have operators without experience without expertise being encouraged to proceed with drilling. That sounds to me like the Government is encouraging cowboy operators to apply for and to be granted exploration permits. Do we really want operators learning on the job how to drill? The Deepwater Horizon was an exploration well and it highlighted just how wrong things can go.This bill is really problematic because of that—this whole notion of inexperienced operators being pushed to drill or to sell off their permits. It is also going to make things very complicated legally in terms of defining responsibility when things go wrong as they will. The whole issue of sorting out liability issues around theRena disaster will seem like a cakewalk when you have got operators having to onsell part of their permit or the whole of their permit for somebody else to actually go and do the drilling. Who then is responsible when an accident happens? That is this Government’s attitude—do the drilling as fast as you can do not care about the environment but have a regime that just weakens the protections for the environment and encourages exploitation as fast as possible.MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I am pleased to take a call in the second reading of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. The previous speaker Eugenie Sage spoke about accidents and safety issues which are extremely important. I would just like to talk about some of the achievements that this Government has had in that area. We have established the High Hazards Unit within the Department of Labour a dedicated unit of inspectors who oversee and regulate health and safety practices on oil and gas platforms in geothermal installations and in mines tunnels and quarries.There has been a targeted review of health and safety regulations that apply to well-drilling operations both onshore and offshore—the Government’s response to the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. There has been Maritime New Zealand’s recent review of oil spill preparedness the Ministry of Transport’s proposed review of minimum insurance requirements for offshore oil installations in the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone and the Inland Revenue Department’s review of the specified minerals tax regime. So it is very clear the amount of work this Government has been engaged in to make sure that we do develop an oil and gasindustry where safety and health is a priority. I am very happy to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a second time.Ayes68New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes50New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bill read a second time.In CommitteePart 1 Amendments concerning applications under public tender for conditional exploration permitsGRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): It is a privilege to take a call in the Committee stage and to take a call from you Mr Chair. It is of course in the real world Friday night. I am here under some level of sufferance although I have now learnt that the Chiefs in fact did beat the Hurricanes 17-12. I personally blame the National Government for that result. Had I been at the game I am quite sure there would have been a different result than that. That will make my contribution to this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill perhaps even longer than it might have been had the Hurricanes managed to win that particular game.Mr Chair as you noted this is a debate around Part 1: clauses 4 5 and 6 of the bill. This is the bit that Simon Bridges tried to tell us was the original policy intent that just got missed out the first time around 6 weeks ago when the Crown Minerals Amendment Act was going through the House. I think Simon Bridges should actually just keep amendments to the Crown Minerals Act as a standing item on the Order Paper. That will just make things easier. We will just come back to it once a month correct all of the mistakes that Mr Bridges makes and then he can just get on with making a few more and we will come back and correct them as the Committee is now having to do here in Part 1 of this bill.In all seriousness it is concerning that on an issue of such importance to the Government—the Government puts a lot of store in the question of minerals extraction and what that will mean for New Zealand in the future—the Government is so sloppy in its lawmaking on that issue. But that is not just the end of the matter. The fact is that it is sloppy in an area where health and safety concerns are huge and where environmental impact is massive. This Government has been completely loose with its lawmaking. We saw it in the exclusive economic zone legislation and we see it again here in the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. We need a proper regime around these matters. These are matters of great significance to our economic and environmental future. It simply is not good enough to have to be back in Parliament 6 weeks after the amendment Act went through making yet another amendment to it.Part 1 of the bill as the Minister of Energy and Resources has alluded to changes the process for what happens with particular types of tier 1 permits. This is where there has been a permit granted for committed work that committed work is undertaken and a different company is now allowed to undertake the later work the contingent work. I have some questions for the Minister in the chair that I would like him to answer around Part 1. In particular I would like a further explanation about exactly why it is that thisdid not appear in the first version of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 because it seems to me to be a fairly significant matter.The fact is that the Government clearly intends it that under this legislation there can be new prospectors coming into the process of work at a later stage than what had been envisaged when the Act was passed. Looking through the material the regulatory impact statement on the last version of this bill—we do not have one for this version of the bill—it was quite clear to me in reading that that actually this was not envisaged. This actually was not envisaged. There was a process that was gone through to talk about what would happen with permits but when I actually read that original regulatory impact statement I cannot see that the Government did intend for this process to occur. I would like the Minister to take a call and answer to us how it is that it was missed out. If it was not just missed out what has changed?My second question for the Minister—it is a question that I think a lot of people will be asking—is: who has spoken to the Minister? Who has come to the Government in the last 6 weeks and said: “Guess what? You haven’t allowed for what we want to do.”? Gareth Hughes mentioned in the earlier readings of this bill that there are companies wanting to work for instance on the continental shelf and the question of protesting which we will come to in Part 2. But what happened here? Who was it who came to the Government and said that they wanted this permitting regime that has been changed here under clause 6 to be changed?That is an important matter because the track record of this Government is to kowtow to corporate interests and to vested interests when they come knocking. Be it Warner Bros or be it Skycity the Government will bow down. It will say: “That’s all right; the laws are for sale.” Well who was it in this case Mr Bridges? Who was it who came to the Government and said: “We think we need your law changed.”? That is the question that Simon Bridges needs to answer. Why are we changing this today? What went wrong? And who was it who wanted it changed? Simon Bridges should take a call and tell New Zealanders the answers to those questions.When we look at the changes that are suggested here I do have some significant concerns about the process. If we work through the process an applicant for a tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake the exploration drilling activities can be granted a permit on a conditional basis. The permit holder can undertake what is called “committed work”—it is essentially seismic surveys—and then after that they can acting as the farminee farm out their rights effectively. This as the Government would like to tell us provides us with a different route for this exploration to take place.The two key elements to making this work are whether or not this can be managed through tighter permit conditions. The tighter permit conditions have to be put in place and monitored by the Minister. That is the concern that I have: whether or not the management of these permit conditions can be undertaken and whether we can have confidence that they will be undertaken by the Minister in the way that we want. Again the track record of this Government is one where if corporate interests come into play the Government will back down.If we look at new section 29B(3) in clause 5 we see that “If a permit is granted in accordance with this section—(a) work cannot be undertaken after the exploration drilling committal date unless before that date—(i) the Minister has upon application by the permit holder satisfied himself or herself of the matters set out in section 29A(2)(b) and (d) …” of the original Act. Those are the matters around health and safety. So what they are saying is the Minister has to satisfy himself—in this case himself—around the matters of health and safety. Well what confidence do we have in this Government to do that? I do not believe the track record of this Government is suchthat we can say we have confidence that the Minister’s satisfying himself as he has to do under section 29B(3) would actually be in the interests—[Interruption]—I thank my colleague Megan Woods for that—of the New Zealand people. That is a problem.The permit holder themselves then goes on to be able to do the drilling and so on that was originally envisaged in the initial permit. So at that point in time a new player has entered the New Zealand extractive industries has gone into our pristine environment and has decided that it would like to be involved in this. It has picked up a permit that somebody else has got. What confidence can we have as a Parliament passing this law under urgency that we have in place all of the rules and the regimes to ensure that if a new player comes in we can have confidence in it? All we have got under this law is Simon Bridges to give us that assurance. That is all we have. Given his track record of coming to this House 6 weeks after he put up the last bit of legislation to amend the mistakes he made then does that give New Zealanders confidence when he is the one thing—the one thing—that stands between some kind of cowboy player entering the New Zealand extractive industry—Hon Maryan Street: Sector.GRANT ROBERTSON: —sector—thank you it is very late. The one thing that says whether this new player is up to it is Simon Bridges the Minister.I simply do not believe that the new section 29B(3) provides us with the kind of assurance that New Zealanders would expect. In Part 1 of this bill that is the substantive matter that I want to raise. I simply do not believe that the Government has made the case for why this change has been made today. We need to hear from the Minister to tell us why this has happened now who has come to him and asked him and then we can actually start looking at the detail of whether or not we have sufficient rules and safeguards in place to ensure that any new player entering the extractive sector has the attributes that we would expect of them. This is sloppy lawmaking from the Government and this part of the bill needs significant work.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I want to continue on from where my colleague Grant Robertson left off on Part 1 of this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill because there are some serious questions that do need to be answered. My colleague was talking about proposed new section 29B in clause 5. I want to talk about proposed new section 20A in clause 4 which amends the clause of the legislation that we passed a mere few weeks ago that amends section 24 of the Crown Minerals Act. What this new section 20A says is “that each tender must include an application that complies with section 29A(1) and be accompanied by sufficient information in relation to the permit offered for the Minister to satisfy himself or herself of the matters set out in section 29A(2) or the matters required under section 29B as the case may be;”.This raises the very serious question of where the accountability lies for ensuring that the very very highest standards are met when issuing permits during the tender process particularly for tier 1 applications. I question very much on two levels the ability of this Minister of Energy and Resources to carry out that function to the satisfaction of the people of New Zealand. This is the law that governs some very risky activity in some very sensitive areas of both the marine environment and onshore. So we need to make sure that we get this right.I have two concerns about the test being that the Minister must satisfy himself. The first is that we have seen from this Minister and from the previous Minister that really they are just so desperate for this to go ahead that I do not think they are going to be applying the kinds of stringent standards the public would expect when determining whether or not they have satisfied themselves. We saw it with Minister Heatley who during the course of the passage of the legislation that preceded this—which we haveonly just passed into law and are now amending here—was in the process of giving himself immense powers under the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill at that time immense powers to take half the decision-making power on Department of Conservation land away from the Minister of Conservation. He came into this Chamber and he was publicly naming specific projects that he thought absolutely should go ahead criticising the Green Party for saying that certain projects should not go ahead and really opening the Government up to serious danger of judicial review and excessive litigation.There is a reason why the Minister of Energy and Resources should not have the decision-making power in that area and that is that he does have a conflict of interest—he does. So when we see here again that this is merely coming down to a Minister to apply standards that are crucial for the protection of our environment and crucial for the health and safety of our workforce in this area the same conflict of interest applies. I would like to know how the Minister is going to manage that conflict of interest how he is going to manage the fact that his Government is so desperate for this stuff to succeed that it is prepared to do anything to get this stuff going regardless of the risk.How is he going to manage that conflict of interest with now being the Minister who determines whether or not he is satisfied that conditions have been met? I do not think he can—I do not think he can. We have discussed already that this is it for the Government. This pokie machines and asset sales are it. If it does not work we are kind of in trouble—kind of in trouble. That is why I question the ability of the Minister—I question the ability of the Minister—to manage that conflict of interest in proposed new section 20A when he is determining whether or not he is satisfied that the conditions have been met to ensure the safety of the environment and the health and safety of our workforce. I really do question it.There is nothing in the legislation that indicates how that conflict of interest is to be managed. It would have been nice Minister to have a regulatory impact statement on this bill because that is exactly the kind of thing that I would have been interested to know. I would be interested to know whether or not the officials had indicated that that was a risk. But we did not have a regulatory impact statement on this piece of legislation at all. Why was that Minister? That is my second question.We are here where you are basically introducing a test that you apply Minister—that the Minister himself applies. How is that conflict of interest going to be managed? That is exactly the kind of thing that a regulatory impact statement would have addressed. This kind of document is what we get with regulatory impact statements from the Government so maybe it would not have been that helpful to us after all. It would have been interesting to see how much of it was redacted—it is a great word “redacted” is it not? It is one that will for ever be associated with the National Party the party of redaction. The reality is that we need the Minister to answer that question because he has not provided the information to allow us to determine that for ourselves. He has not allowed this to go to a select committee so that we could ask those questions. He has not allowed any analysis of this at all.My other concern about the fact that this section relies on the Minister satisfying himself that certain conditions have been met and the test for that is up to him is that this is a Minister who is so incompetent that here we are weeks after we passed the last amendment bill into law having to fix the amendment bill with another amendment bill to the amendment bill. It has not even been enacted yet. Jonathan Young said earlier that we had learnt from the experience since the bill had been passed. Well it has not been enacted yet. I mean it has not even come into force so I do not know what we have learnt except that a company possibly came to the Minister and asked him to make certain changes or suggested that perhaps the legislation had not gone far enough.I would like to know whether anyone asked for these particular changes. You know what it might just be simpler if instead of having an amendment bill to the amendment bill to the amendment bill we just passed a new bill every time a permit is put up that the Government wants to pass. We could just be honest about it and each new permit that the Government wanted to fast track would just get its own legislation which could go through all stages under urgency. That would be easier and simpler. That is effectively what we are doing in Part 1 constantly amending legislation to fit in with what industry is demanding from the Government when instead what we should be doing is putting in place legislation that ensures the highest environmental and health and safety standards are upheld regardless of where the permit is regardless of what it is for and regardless of who is asking for it. But that is not what we have got.So here we have the Minister being required to satisfy himself and we do not have confidence in this Minister that he is going to be able to handle that conflict of interest given that he could not even pass a piece of legislation that lasted more than a few weeks before it had to be fixed up. Maybe we could just take out the word “Minister” and put in the words “Steven Joyce” because that is the reality. Wherever the word “Minister” appears we will just replace it with the words “Steven Joyce” because—Chris Hipkins: Or Gerry Brownlee.MOANA MACKEY: Or Gerry Brownlee because they are the ones who make all the decisions in the Government. That might be more honest as well.The real problem with this Part 1 is that we were sold the original legislation on the basis that tier 1 applications were meant to be tough. This was going to be a tough rigorous process that was gone through. And here we are in Part 1 already before the legislation the last amendment bill has even come into force undermining those tier 1 application processes—already already. It was passed only a few weeks ago. It has not even come into law yet and already we are undermining what the public were told were going to be very very stringent and very very tough conditions for those tier 1 projects. Well the Government could not wait even a few weeks until the law had come into force to pass these amendments. It is so desperate for this stuff to go ahead that these changes in Part 1 to tier 1 application processes are already being put into place.You know the Minister is trying to say: “Oh well we just missed this in the original process.” Well that was a process that actually went to a select committee. Can you imagine what he has missed in this bill given it has not gone to a select committee at all given how rushed it has been? I cannot even begin to imagine what other mistakes he has made in this legislation that we have not had time to pick up since it was tabled yesterday late afternoon. Certainly again a select committee process would have allowed us to see whether what we are doing in Part 1 is actually what the Minister claims or whether in fact this is a quite deliberate undermining of those strict tier 1 conditions. This is an area where you do not want to have loopholes.This is an area where internationally there is enormous litigation—enormous litigation. So when we start talking about arbitrary tests like the Minister satisfying himself that this is being met or that is being met with no information about how the very real conflicts of interest are going to be managed that makes me very very worried. I would hope that the Minister will take a call on this to tell us how he is going to manage those conflicts of interest to protect the New Zealand taxpayers—CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a brief call on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. Actually hang on—let me just get this right: this is the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill so if I am correct this is a bill amending an Act that has not yet come into force. How did we get to this state of being where we are here under urgency amending a piece of legislation that has not even yet come into force? Could it be—Hon Maryan Street: We could pass this one first.CHRIS HIPKINS: Well that is right. This one could be passed before the other one even comes into force. Could it be that the Government made a critical mistake when it introduced that last piece of legislation? It made the critical mistake of putting Simon Bridges as Minister of Energy and Resources in charge of it. It put Simon Bridges in charge of it and he decided that he was going to make some changes and that he was not going to allow anyone to have a say on those changes that he was going to make. He was going to introduce them by way of a Supplementary Order Paper after the bill had been through the select committee process without any chance to give those changes adequate scrutiny. But that is OK because according to the National Government that is all a bit of an option these days—asking people whether they actually agree with anything or whether maybe they could improve legislation.That is all just optional these days with the National Government. So it did not bother with that. And what do you know? Before the legislation is even in force the Government is back here amending it because it stuffed it up. It completely stuffed it up. The Government left Simon Bridges in charge. It was his first piece of legislation in the House I think and he managed to completely stuff it up. I bet he is popular with his Cabinet colleagues. The very first thing he did was to introduce a piece of legislation take it through the House with amendments and then within weeks he is taking up more House time to fix his stuff-ups. I bet that makes him really really popular. Urgency on a Friday night—I bet that makes him really popular.Oil and gas exploration is something that people do talk about in New Zealand. The first question that the people who come up to me in my electorate to talk about oil and gas exploration will ask—even those who are in favour of it—is whether it is safe. Even if they are in favour of it and they say: “Yes we should go out there and if we have got oil there we should drill it.”—even people who are in favour of it—the first question they will ask is whether it is safe. They look at some of the experiences offshore things like the Gulf of Mexico which focused everybody’s minds on the risks involved in deep-sea oil drilling so they want to know whether if we are going to be doing it here we have safeguards in place to ensure that that sort of thing would not happen in New Zealand.I think New Zealanders’ minds were focused on that even more when a separate issue occurred with theRena and with the clean-up that was required from the fraction of oil that came off theRena compared with the amount that might come out of a deep-sea oil well if something went wrong. The amount of oil from theRena was a fraction. We could have a lot more than that if something went wrong with deep-sea oil drilling. So people simply want to know whether if we are going to do it it is safe and that if despite all of the safety precautions that might be put in place something were to go wrong we could remedy it quickly.New Zealand’s worst nightmare—the worst nightmare of all New Zealanders—would be a Gulf of Mexico - like disaster with oil continually gushing for weeks and weeks and weeks without the ability to stop it. Think of the damage that would do to New Zealand. Our tourism industry would be down the drain overnight—one of the biggest industries in New Zealand and one that we rely on. It is our bread and butter. We rely on it to make our living as a country and yet a massive oil spill would wipe out our tourism industry overnight because of the damage it would do to our clean green economy. A lot of our primary exporting industries also rely on our clean green image for their access to overseas markets.So when people ask whether it is safe they have got really really good reasons for doing so because of the considerable damage it would do to New Zealanders the New Zealand environment the New Zealand economy and New Zealanders’ way of life ifsomething went wrong should deep-sea oil drilling happen in New Zealand in the future. So that is the first question that people ask and it is the right question to ask.Consider that now in the context of this particular piece of legislation and in the context in which it is brought into the House. The bill that we are now debating is fixing up mistakes that were made in the original piece of legislation that is yet to come into force because it was rushed through and because it did not get appropriate scrutiny. I have said this once already in the House in this urgency debate because this is not the first bill we are debating under urgency. This is not the first bill we are debating in this particular urgency motion that has not been referred to a select committee.I said in the debate on the earlier bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) that I have not participated in any select committee hearing around a bill where the bill has not been improved in some way by comments made by counsel by advisers and often by the public who pick things up that those who are dealing with the matter all day every day perhaps lose sight of. That is one of the reasons why we have a select committee process. This Parliament is made up of people who are lay people I guess in Parliament. We are not all subject matter experts in absolutely everything that goes on here. So we allow the people who are experts the chance to scrutinise what it is that we are doing in the House. It is a really critical part of our democratic process and a part of our constitutional arrangements.I do not know a heck of a lot about oil and gas exploration. I did work in the oil and gas industry for about a year and a half. I was not actually doing the practical hands-on stuff; I was coordinating training for the people who were. It was a huge eye-opener for me. I learnt a lot about the oil and gas industry but I would never for one second purport to be an expert on the matters that are covered by this bill and by this legislation. Therefore as a parliamentarian to do my job effectively I need the chance to hear from the people who are experts.The other way we do that in this House is we have a thing called a regulatory impact statement and that is where again independent experts check over legislation to make sure that the legislation before the House does what it says it is supposed to do and that the Government in deciding what legislation to bring before members has chosen the best of the options available to achieve the desired outcome. What is the regulatory impact statement for this bill? We do not have one. The regulatory impact statement that the Government is relying on for this piece of legislation is the same regulatory impact statement that it had for the first lot of legislation which it completely stuffed up. So the advice the best advice that we have here under urgency is the advice we got when the House stuffed it up in the first place because Simon Bridges is too lazy to make sure that we actually get better advice and that we are not going to be back here again in a few weeks because he has stuffed it up a second time.It is vitally important that we work through these processes carefully because there is a heck of a lot at stake. And every New Zealander is entitled to know that if we are going to be doing deep-sea drilling in New Zealand it is going to be safe there are appropriate checks and balances in place and yes there are contingencies there so that should something go dramatically wrong steps can be taken to address the damage minimise the damage before it gets completely out of hand. We have seen the Gulf of Mexico. We have seen what happens when things go wrong.The Labour Party does in fact support exploration in New Zealand. We do see the value of the minerals we have here. I can see Gareth Hughes. I am sure Gareth has got something to say about that and I am sure he will be speaking very shortly in the debate. We do see value but we want to know that there are appropriate safety measures in place and we want to know that decisions are being made judiciously and following appropriate processes. It may sound a bit bureaucratic to say “followingappropriate processes” but in a country like ours a small country like ours with a simple governing structure like ours where there are not a huge number of checks and balances in our legislative processes at least if we make sure that we are following a democratic process we minimise the risk of things going wrong.We do not have an Upper House. In many other countries if a bill like this were introduced through Parliament and passed under urgency it would then be subject to scrutiny by another legislative body. We do not have that in New Zealand. Once it gets passed by Parliament it then gets the Royal assent normally within a few days and it is the law—that is it. It cannot be struck down via the court because we do not have a written constitution that gives the court the powers to strike down laws in New Zealand as many other countries do. Therefore it is incumbent on all of us as parliamentarians to make sure that the decisions we make in the House are robust. And in order to do that we have got a series of processes that this Government time and time again has proven that it is willing to completely ignore and ride roughshod over. This I am sad to say is a return to the sort of practice we saw so much of in the last Parliament when urgency was used to circumvent—SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you for allowing me to take a call on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. It is a bit of a mouthful because as we have just heard the Government well it stuffed up basically the first time around. The Minister Simon Bridges had the original amendment bill amending the Act before the House just a few weeks ago and now here he is already in urgency on a Friday evening bringing back an amendment to his amendment. We have talked about this a bit tonight already but this is the very reason why a bill should not be rushed through because it will come back time and time again.In Part 1 of this bill we are asking the public to put an awful lot of faith in that very same Minister—that very same Minister—who could not get it right 2 or 3 weeks ago. Part 1 says that the public of New Zealand should put absolute faith in that same Minister to simply satisfy himself that the application is all fine and dandy. The same Minister who actually screwed up this legislation just a few weeks ago is going to have the power to satisfy himself and go: “Oh yes OK. That application looks fine to me.”I think that is a real concern because what we know about the exploration of Crown minerals is that actually safety should be the predominant measure. In the explanatory note of this bill there is an alarm bell that goes off for me because it talks about “An applicant for a Tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities will be able to be granted a permit on a conditional basis.” I just want to read that out again for the public because I think this is alarming: “An applicant for a Tier 1 permit for exploration who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities will be able to be granted a permit on a conditional basis.” They will be able to be granted that permit by the very Minster who got this legislation wrong just a few weeks ago.That is an awful lot of power to put in the hands of a Minister—particularly a Minister for whom this is probably I think one of his very first attempts at putting a piece of legislation through this House—who could not get it right the first time. That is not going to end up as a catastrophe here in the Chamber tonight. He did not get the legislation right the first time around and it means yes we are sitting at this time on a Friday night to rectify his mistake but it is not really the end of the world. But if he gets it wrong in satisfying himself about one of these applicants and they do not have the expertise and something goes horribly wrong then that is a whole different scenario for New Zealand. It is a whole different scenario for New Zealand.Here in Part 1 we are asking the public of New Zealand to trust I guess the wisdom and the judgment of the very same Minister who could not even get this basic piece oflegislation right to make a decision that could actually impact on the environment and safety of New Zealand and New Zealanders. I think New Zealanders need to be very worried about that.I think actually the contribution from my colleague Moana Mackey shed some light on this before. It seems obvious now I have heard her contribution to this debate that it is not because the legislation was passed in this House and then it was enacted and the Government saw it in practice and thought: “Oh gosh we’ve got it a little wrong.” That is not what has occurred here. The original legislation has not even been enacted. So what could it be that could cause the Government to come back this quickly under urgency to fix something up? Well it seems that it has been got to. Some company one of these tier 1 applicants “who does not have the expertise or financial ability to undertake exploration drilling activities” has obviously come back to the Government and asked it to weaken the legislation further. I can see no other explanation for why before the original legislation has been enacted we are suddenly back here.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): I am pleased to speak yet again on this very important bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill in the Committee stage. In Part 1 the critical issue is the change that it makes in terms of the existing Act which has not yet come into force in relation to the oversight that the Minister of Energy and Resources effectively provides to permit seekers when they are having their permit approved for—presently it would be for both prospecting and exploration. What the change does is it splits that up and requires a separate approval at least in terms of the health and safety and environmental measures. It splits it between the prospecting stage and then a separate approval of the health and safety and environmental measures for the exploration stage.Our concern is simply this: we know—and I do not think there is too much disagreement actually between members in this Chamber especially in light of the events of the last 2 or 3 years—that health and safety is absolutely paramount. It is absolutely paramount for those who work in the industry and indeed for the communities they are part of. The other aspect is of course environmental and the events of 2011 off the Bay of Plenty tell us that the public’s demand is that the most effective and world’s best-practice environmental safeguards are expected. The question we then ask is what it is about the measures that are in this bill and the splitting up of the approval process for the health and safety and environmental safeguard measures that is going to improve what is already there. The reality is that it will not.The reason for that is twofold. First of all the present law which we passed only a short while ago and which is not yet in force is reasonably light in terms of the standard the Minister is obliged to require when considering approval of a permit. That is simply that the Minister needs to be satisfied that the permit applicant is likely to have the appropriate technical capability and is likely to have the financial capability and then any other relevant information. That is the Minister being satisfied that these criteria are likely to be met. It is a pretty low test. Not only that but it is a subjective test because it is the applicant’s means—the potential permit holder’s means—that are relevant. So the Minister’s satisfaction is confined to the particular applicant. It is not about meeting an industry minimum standard or a world’s best-practice standard; it is what the particular permit applicant can do. So that is a low test. Presently it says that when the Minister is giving the approval the Minister has to be satisfied that the appropriate health and safety and environmental measures are in place for both prospecting and exploration.By splitting it up it means that the successful permit holder needs to provide satisfaction only in relation to their prospecting part and at that point they have a foot in the door—have a foot in the door. So if having prospected they gather the data and they decide that this is worth taking to the next phase the exploration stage then it isincumbent upon the Minister of the day to deal with a permit holder who comes back and says: “Right we’ve done the prospecting. We’re satisfied there’s enough there to move to the exploration stage to start drilling and to bring down our rig.”—and those rigs can cost up to $1 million a day. The Minister then must deal with the permit holder and is expected to hold them to a further test about health and safety and environmental measures.I am just saying that on the track record of this Government which has shown no ability no intestinal fortitude to stand up to corporate heavyweights from around the world why would we rely on the Government—this Government or frankly any Government—to be able to withstand the sort of pressure that large multinational enterprises can bring to bear—Dr CAM CALDER (National): I moveThat the question be now put.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak in this Committee debate on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. There are several things wrong with Part 1. One is the process one is the content and one is the context in which this bill and Part 1 sits. The particular concern about the process has been well traversed by members on this side of the House during the course of the first and second readings. It has been a shabby process. The first piece of legislation that the Minister of Energy and Resources brought in which this bill is now seeking to amend was not a stellar process either in that one of the most significant changes to it—that is the ban on protesting—was not brought in until after the bill had been reported back from the select committee. But in this part the thing that gets my attention is that we do not have a regulatory impact statement here and in the explanatory note of this amendment bill to the amendment Act there is reference to the two previous regulatory impact statements. So I am forced back on to those two previous regulatory impact statements from which to draw my own suppositions and to apply them to the bill in front of us at the moment.One of the things that struck me in one of the regulatory impact statements was that in one of the parts of the stocktake of schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act 1991—and that is one of the regulatory impact statements that has been tabled for us today—it said that given the public interest in this matter full public consultation was undertaken and there were three hui around the country with iwi on Great Barrier Island in Thames and in Christchurch in relation to areas of land that were proposed to be removed from schedule 4. In total the regulatory impact statement says there were 37552 submissions—37552 submissions. This goes to the process around this bill and Part 1 of this bill. Of those submissions 32000 were made by individuals using a standard submission form that had been supplied to them by groups that care and whose business it is to care about the environment. Even if you take those out there were still 5234 unique submissions made by individuals and organisations.It becomes crystal clear now why the Minister has engaged in such a shabby process: he is afraid of public opinion. He is afraid that the people who care about the health and safety standards applying to the permits in respect of Part 1 of this bill or the environmental standards or the capability of organisations that are seeking to do exploratory or drilling work in our territory—he does not want submissions on those things. He does not want the weight of 37000 submissions to come down on him and because of that because of the weight of those submissions he has chosen—I can only assume he has done it deliberately. I do not assume the man to be a stupid man so I can only assume he has done it deliberately in order to avoid the weight of public opinion.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Chair. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I just add to what the honourable member Maryan Street has said about the public opinion of New Zealand. When we looked at the regulations being developed by theMinister for the Environment Amy Adams we saw that 99 percent of thousands and thousands of submissions were not saying: “We want stronger rules.”; they actually said that deep-sea drilling should be prohibited but she said her Government would not rule out making it permitted. This is a big worry because the regulations of the new legal framework we have established over the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf and the regime we have through the Crown Minerals Act are such that potentially if the Government did go with making it a permitted activity Kiwis would have to go and get a consent for a deck but not to drill down kilometres under the sea.That is why it is important we have good rules strong rules and that is why it is incredibly worrying that we are in the Committee stage of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill and we have not had obviously a select committee hearing. In fact we have not had a single National member seek the call to actually make a contribution. Without a select committee hearing without public input without experts’ input without the members of the committee being able to grill officials—I saw a member trying to talk to the officials before; obviously we cannot talk to officials so we cannot get advice—this is not how good laws are passed. This is not how we get good regulations that protect our environment protect our economy and protect our people and our workers.When we look at Part 1 of this legislation this is the only scrutiny it is going to get—basically the Opposition taking a few calls. Hopefully the Minister in the chair the Minister of Energy and Resources will take a call because there have been a number of questions raised of the Minister and hopefully he can ask his officials if he needs advice.So I guess the question is what is wrong with a select committee? Why have we not had a select committee process? Was there consultation with the industry? Was there consultation with the experts with NGOs in formulating this amendment Act amendment bill?Hon Christopher Finlayson: What does Clint say?GARETH HUGHES: Did he have a casual chat to the member Chris Finlayson about the human rights implications? Was it a casual chat outside the Chamber or was it a proper New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet as you would expect with such significant legislation? Why was there no regulatory impact statement? Who has been lobbying whom? And why are we are in this farcical process right now? So Part 1 deals with permits and with how the tender process is opened up.I have been having a bit of a read of the Government’s 2013 block offer. It is quite a significant document because what the Government has opened up is 189000 square kilometres of New Zealand’s waters mostly up on the west coast of the North Island and on the east coast of the South Island and over the Great South Basin—189000 square kilometres. That is a significant increase over the other tender block processes that have been in the order of around 40000 square kilometres like the PEG1 and PEG2 basins which were offered to Anadarko and which it successfully tendered for despite Anadarko having a track record of being a 25 percent stakeholder and paying out $4 billion for its role in the Deepwater Horizon incident.The tender process as outlined in this document which we are amending in Part 1 of this bill through relaxing and weakening the provisions is allowing a weaker more liberal approach—not in a good sense of course because regulation when you are talking about potentially causing a catastrophic oil spill is good. So you see the incredible detail of how to apply for a bid. You have to put it in the red tender box. I do not know whether members have seen the red tender box. It is a special box that you put your bid in. It has to be delivered in three copies double sided and in an electronic copy on a CD-Rom. They have to be received before 5 p.m.There is incredible detail outlined in this document yet when it comes to the actual content of the bids what the Minister is doing is incredibly weakening the process because what we see in this part is of course not the need for the financial capability or the expertise. So what we are seeing is a weakening of the process despite all the bureaucratic attention to which coloured box you put your bid into.So I think the Minister should answer these questions. Why is he weakening the process? What is the rationale behind it? Why can Kiwis not have a stronger permitting regime? Why should the Minister be the one to have the ultimate decision because what you see I think in new sections 29A and 29B in clause 5 is that the Minister has to be satisfied of the matters relating to the granting of a permit. I have got no confidence in the current Minister in the chair being the one to be satisfied with regard to health and safety. I think it is deeply worrying—KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): I moveThat the question be now put.GARETH HUGHES (Green): I hope the National members will take a call on this important part Part 1 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. As I was talking about before it is the Minister of Energy and Resources who has to be satisfied whether a permit will be achieved. It is incredibly worrying because the Minister cannot do even basic legislation. We are here on a Friday night. I am sure he is not the most popular member in the National caucus at the moment because all the National members have to stay here fixing up his mess on Friday night and under urgency. This is the Minister who is probably too busy having dinners with the oil companies to decide what is good for us. It is the Minister who is all behind the “Drill baby drill.” He cannot do even basic legislation.While he is opening up 189000 square kilometres of our waters he is weakening the process. What he is allowing are cowboys to enter our market. The previous tender rules as outlined in the Crown Minerals Act allowed for people going for bids to comprise their committed work and then there was their contingent work. What you saw with the Petrobras example off the Raukūmara Basin was that it obviously outlined the planned work programme which it had to put in its application in the red box in the foyer. It was not able to do it. We still have not received the answer as to why Petrobras pulled out why it decided to surrender its permit at the point it did. Why did Petrobras surrender? Was there just not enough oil there? Was its seismic data not prospective enough? Was it scared of Te Whānau-a-Apanui and Greenpeace? Was that the reason why it left our country and surrendered our permit?I believe that this is the rationale for amending the Anadarko amendment—sorry the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill—here because what you are allowing now is for permits to be applied for without the financial backing or the expertise. It is incredibly worrying because exploratory drilling which is what we are dealing with is the riskiest phase. It is the frontiers of technology geology and geography. It is the riskiest phase because despite the 2-D and 3-D seismic data you still do not know what is down there. With the considerable depth that operators are looking at in New Zealand the risks are intensified so we should not be releasing and weakening our tender permit rules when it comes to exploratory drilling because this is the riskiest phase. We should not be playing fast and loose but sadly this is exactly what the Minister is doing when you look at Part 1 of this legislation. I could talk all night about these important issues but I think I will take my seat now. Kia ora.Dr JIAN YANG (National): I moveThat the question be now put.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I want to return us to the important matter of the Minister of Energy and Resources satisfying himself on “the matters set out in section 29A(2)(b) and (d)”. This is the critical element of the decision that is being facilitated in Part 1 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013Amendment Bill to allow somebody to take on the contingent work that has been agreed to as part of a permit when a company decides that it does not have the capability or the resources to do that. As I was discussing in my earlier call the matters that the Minister now has to satisfy himself on are serious matters which I am concerned that we are putting in the powers at this point of a Minister who has shown himself incapable of actually controlling this legislation.But let us have a look at what it is that he is having to satisfy himself on. New section 29A(2)(b) implemented by section 24 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act covers “that the applicant is likely to comply with and give proper effect to the proposed work programme taking into account— … the applicant’s technical capability; … the applicant’s financial capability; and … any relevant information on the applicant’s failure to comply with permits or rights or conditions in respect of those permits or rights to prospect explore or mine in New Zealand or internationally;”. So that is actually the Minister effectively acting as our policeman our protector when it comes to the question of whether or not a permit has been fully looked after and properly looked after.But then when we get to section 29A(2)(d) this is where the rubber hits the road in terms of what is concerning those of us on this side of the Chamber. New section 29A(2)(d) of the amendment Act says that “in the case of a Tier 1 permit for exploration or mining that the proposed permit operator has or is likely to have by the time the relevant work in any granted permit is undertaken the capability and systems that are likely to be required to meet the health and safety and environmental requirements of all specified Acts for the types of activities proposed under the permit.”So bear in mind that in this instance that is being proposed in this law a new player to the extractive industries is arriving and it is up to the Minister to satisfy himself that that company will “meet the health and safety and environmental requirements of all specified Acts for the types of activities proposed …”. That is a wide breadth. That is something that will require the Minister to make decisions about vital matters for our environmental future vital matters for our economic future. We do not know today why it is this did not end up in the legislation originally. We do not know who it is who has come to the Minister to ask the Minister to take this law on. All we know is that we have to trust the Minister to ensure that this company which has not necessarily ever been involved in the extractive industry in New Zealand—it has come in off the back of another company’s permit—is OK. Will the Minister be able to assure this House of that about a company that he perhaps has had no dealings with before and the officials have had no dealings with before? He is the one thing standing between us and that company being allowed to undertake the drilling that is the result of the seismic work of another company.So new section 29A(2)(b) and (d) is about health and safety and it is about the environmental requirements of the Acts that govern anyone who wants to undertake drilling in our waters. That is a significant change. It is not a change that I believe should be undertaken through an urgency process like this. It is not a change under Part 1 that I believe the Government has thought through. It is most certainly a change that had we had a select committee process there would have been significant submission on. This is exactly the kind of matter that people would have been raising their concerns about. This is a different process from the one that was envisaged when the bill first came before the House.I simply do not believe that the Government has made the case to us tonight for why it is that this change has been brought in. Mr Bridges tried to tell us at the start it was all technical it was all matters of policy that were meant to have been put in place but I simply do not buy that. I do not buy that because it was only 6 weeks ago. I do not buythat some person found a paragraph that was meant to have been put into the law and suddenly thought “Gosh! We forgot that.” Something occurred that made the Minister bring this change forward. I believe Parliament and the people of New Zealand deserve to know what that was. They deserve to know why it is that a process that is now laxer for a company coming in to do drilling than it was when the amendment Act was passed previously is being put in place. The Minister needs to answer those questions for us.Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): I moveThat the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I have not heard from Carol Beaumont.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): How very kind of you Mr Chair. Having sat through the previous bit of legislation and now the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill it does raise some very fundamental questions about why we are here in urgency. In this case clearly on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill it is because as others have said the Minister of Energy and Resources was so determined to push through the legislation that he left it riddled with mistakes and now he has had to come to this House in urgency to fix up those mistakes.In Part 1 which we are talking about now we are looking at this concept of conditional exploration permits. Those proposed conditional exploration permits pose we believe a risk of creating a loophole in health and safety and environmental rules. These are serious matters as others have commented. New Zealanders are concerned about these sorts of issues as we should be. It seems that under conditional permits applicants no longer have to show that they have the ability to comply with health and safety capability or environment tests associated with exploratory drilling if at the time they do not intend to carry it out. So it is splitting the process in two. Others have been asking and yet we have received no response from the Minister why this change has come about. What is the need for this change? Who has lobbied the Minister? What is the purpose of this change? And what analysis of the risks has been made?For the legislation that we had earlier in the day we had a regulatory impact statement that was absolutely blacked out most of the way through. You could not actually read the advice but there was a regulatory impact statement none the less. In this case there is no regulatory impact statement. So under urgency we are being asked to push through legislation that initially we were told was merely technical changes and yet it has this provision for conditional permits which the Minister has failed to explain the purpose of. He seems unwilling to answer any questions is sitting there reading magazines and other things and is failing to follow this debate. Members on the other side of the Chamber have not taken a single call and have merely tried to close down this debate. What is going on here? Why are members opposite not taking calls? Why is the Minister not answering questions? Why is there no regulatory impact statement?There is a substantial change being proposed here in Part 1 and we have the right on behalf of the public to ask what it is about especially when it is being forced through under urgency here tonight. So I ask the Minister to actually get up on his feet and start to address the questions if for no other reason than that New Zealanders have the right to expect that legislation is put to some scrutiny in this House. And we have a whole process for doing that which includes the select committee process. The Minister in this case made mistakes after the select committee process which was part of the reason we are here now but then furthermore is trying to add in additional provisions to this amendment bill. There is no intention to take the bill through the select committee process there is no regulatory impact statement and nobody from the National Government is commenting on this bill at all. I say to people listening to this debate that surely that must raise alarm bells. What is going on here? There is the potential for hugevested interests in this area. We are talking about potentially very large sums of money involved but we are also talking about very significant health and safety and environmental risks and so it is incumbent on the Minister to address those questions.We see that taking account of the environment and growing our economy are flip sides of the same coin. We need to be doing both and the concern on this side of the Chamber is that members opposite are so focused on pushing through their mining and extractive industries at the expense of safety controls and environmental controls that we will see real risks for our environment. So again I urge the Minister to get up and answer those questions.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes70New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes46New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 11; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 1 be agreed to.Ayes68New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes48New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 11; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Part 1 agreed to.Part 2 Other amendmentsThe CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call our spokesperson. I call the honourable member Moana Mackey.Hon Simon Bridges: I thought you were impartial!The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am supposed to be. I had better explain myself!MOANA MACKEY (Labour): By “our spokesperson” clearly you mean Parliament’s spokesperson. It is a role that I am very humbled to hold. Part 2 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill is where many of the substantive amendments are being made. This is the part of the bill that extends the Government’s anti-democratic and Draconian protest ban which it passed into law a mere few weeks ago and here we are not 2 months later extending it even further than the original bill suggested.The original Crown Minerals Amendment Bill which was passed a mere few weeks ago had the definition of offshore area as “any area within the territorial sea or exclusive economic zone that is on or above the continental shelf”. What that means is that wherever the continental shelf exists the area of the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone that sits above that is where this new Draconian anti-protest law applies. The change that is being made under clause 14 of Part 2 is that that is being amended so that the definition of offshore area now means “any area that is—(a) within the territorial sea; or (b) within the exclusive economic zone; or (c) on or above thecontinental shelf.” What we are seeing is a rapid expansion of this utterly utterly repugnant law out into the high seas and right up to the beaches. So between the beaches of New Zealand and the high seas—where we do not actually have the ability to pass laws but we are doing it anyway—we will see a ban on protest vessels protesting against deep-sea oil and gas exploration.The Minister in the chair the Minister of Energy and Resources has never answered this question. He has been sitting there like a dried arrangement all night so I would welcome him getting on his pins and actually taking a call. He never answered this question during the Committee stage of the last bill when the original ban was passed so maybe he is prepared to answer it tonight. If it is about safety then why did he simply not introduce a bill that extends the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act which deal with dangerous and reckless behaviour by vessels in our territorial waters into the exclusive economic zone? Why did he not do it like that? At the moment anyone who behaves in a dangerous or reckless manner in our territorial waters is committing an offence and it is quite appropriate that that offence be extended to the exclusive economic zone. So why Minister have you not done that? Why is it that instead of saying that anyone who behaves in a dangerous or reckless manner deserves to be held to account for that you have said that it is only protest vessels and it is only protest vessels that are protesting against oil and gas exploration? I welcome an answer to that question Minister. I believe the fact that you cannot answer the question shows that you have no answer for it. There is no legitimate reason why one would not extend the existing law out into the exclusive economic zone.So here we have a ridiculous law—and I am glad the Attorney-General has come down to the Chamber. He came down to the Chamber when we passed the original bill and tried to pretend that he had a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act opinion which it turned out he did not have. When we asked him to table it it turned out it was just his opinion and it was not a particularly good one. I am disappointed the Hon Tim Groser is not still here—a man with an international reputation a man who knows about international law. I mean it would be good if Chris Finlayson could take a call. He is kind of the poor man’s Tim Groser but he is the Attorney-General and we would welcome hearing whether he has an actual legal opinion on this because the issue that we have Mr Attorney-General—who is meant to be the protector of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in this country—is that there has been no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. We have had no legal opinion on whether this complies with international law and there is no regulatory impact statement so how is Parliament supposed to be able to make a considered decision on whether or not this is good lawmaking?I will point out a particular issue. According the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade we do not have the right to make laws in the waters above the continental shelf. That is the high seas. The ministry actually specifically says—and it refers to an example—that we do not have the right to make laws that regulate shipping activities. Well what is a protest vessel protesting in the high seas if it is not a shipping activity? The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website clearly states that we do not have the jurisdiction in this Parliament to pass those kinds of laws in the waters above the continental shelf. So I would like to hear an answer to that from the Minister in the chair and from the Attorney-General as to how come the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is saying one thing which is that we have do not have the right to make laws in this area and the Minister is telling us another thing.He is passing a law that opens us up to potential legal challenges. It actually makes us look like idiots if we think that we are passing—well the Minister in the chair is shaking his head. Get up and take a call for once. That is what we pay you the big bucks for Minister—get up and take a call. People deserve to have an answer to thosequestions and if the Minister does not want to answer them that is because he does not have the answers and that is because he does not know what he is doing. We know that; it is because of his incompetence that we have to pass this bill in the first place. The previous bill has not even come into force yet and we are already having to fix it. That is extraordinary. But the Minister needs to answer the questions that he refused to answer on the original bill and that he has not answered on clause 14 of this piece of legislation.I have two amendments in my name on this part. One is to delete clause 14 because I do not believe that we should be extending what is a rotten repugnant law out into the high seas where we actually do not have the jurisdiction to do it or right into the beaches of New Zealand just because the Minister does not like the fact that a large number of New Zealanders disagree with the way his Government has handled the very sensitive issue of deep-sea drilling. Let us be clear. It is this Government’s handling of this issue that is the problem. It is because it has not listened to communities it is because it has watered down legislation and it is because it does not front up in those communities to answer questions about why communities are having this foisted upon them when they feel nervous about it and when they do not understand it. That is why there is so much concern. That is why people are taking to protest. It is because the Government will not listen to them. The Government will not talk to them and the Government will not answer their questions.That is why we are seeing clause 14 of this bill coming into force which is saying: “You don’t like it? You’re protesting? Well we’re just going to legislate away your right to do that.” That is utterly appalling—utterly appalling—and National should hang its head in shame particularly the Attorney-General who is meant to be the protector of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in this country. What a joke. What a joke. How can he even sit in this Chamber when such a repugnant piece of legislation that is so contrary to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is going through?Chris Auchinvole: Oh don’t you love the virtue of it all.Hon Christopher Finlayson: The venom.MOANA MACKEY: Venom? Oh hello! Wafer-thin ice Mr Finlayson—wafer-thin ice. Wow. Anyway the second amendment in my name is actually to amend clause 14 so that the definition of “offshore area” is simply limited to within the territorial seas so to reduce that area down there as well. Although I hope the amendments are passed the reality is that neither of them actually fixes the basic problem which is that we need to get rid of the section that is in the original legislation.What happens now—and again the Attorney-General might have an opinion on this; the Minister in the chair is pretending to read something so he is not listening. But another question is that we now have two separate offence regimes penalty regimes in our territorial waters. We now have two different regimes one under the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act and one under this section amended in clause 14. So which one are the police going to apply when someone makes a complaint or says that someone is breaking the law in terms of this right to protest? We now have two offence regimes in our territorial waters. Which one applies Minister? Minister? Hello? There is only so long you can ignore me for. We are not going away Minister. Which one applies? We now have the ridiculous position of having two completely different penalty and offence regimes in the same area of water. Why is that? Which one are the police supposed to apply? Do they just get to pick? Do we flip a coin? Is it a lottery? Is there some kind of algorithm the Minister has that can—Grant Robertson: Skycity.MOANA MACKEY: Skycity can sort it out. That is it. It is probably part of its deal. But how are we meant to know? How are the people who are operating meant to knowwhich penalty regime is going to apply? Did the Minister even know that this was going to result in two completely separate offence and penalty regimes in the same part of the ocean? No he did not. And we will be back here in another few weeks passing another amendment bill to the “Crown Minerals Amendment Bill Amendment Act Amendment Bill Amendment Bill” because the Minister has not done the work and the Minister does not know the detail of this bill that we are passing and that is why this should have gone to a select committee. Those are my questions to the Minister.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): The call I want to take on this particular part of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill will focus on clause 14. I want to be very clear what this clause is about. It is amending what is already a very bad part of the law which was passed only 6 weeks ago to restrict the rights of people to protest. John Key loves to go around on the world stage shake hands with people like Barack Obama and show up to events that are about opposing nuclear proliferation and about celebrating New Zealand’s place in the world as an antinuclear country. He has his photograph taken and he says he supports this. Well where do Mr Key and Mr Bridges think New Zealand’s status in the world as a country that stands up against nuclear weapons comes from? It comes from New Zealanders on boats and in dinghies getting out there in the 1970s and the 1980s and saying: “We’re not prepared to see the world go about destroying itself. We want to make sure that we stand up for people and the planet and we’re going to get out and protest in those boats and in those dinghies.”That is the kind of dissent that has led to good law in New Zealand. It is the kind of dissent that has led to New Zealand being respected on the world stage and this Government is prepared to chuck that away because some corporate interests have asked it to do it. That is the bottom line here—corporate interests dictating New Zealand’s legislation again. We had it with Warner Bros we had it with Skycity and now we have it with companies that do not want to see protesters too close to them and this Government is prepared to sacrifice all that history of protest in New Zealand all that history of dissent in New Zealand to appease these companies.Chris Auchinvole: Not much history of oil protests.GRANT ROBERTSON: It is as simple as that Mr Auchinvole. That is what has happened with this law.That is bad enough—trashing New Zealand’s reputation and selling off our laws one more time—but what is more this Government cannot even make a case for why it is expanding the legislation and potentially doing something that actually goes against our international obligations. I am wondering whether the Minister has had the time to have a read of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s website because what that says is: “States do not have any special rights to the water column above the continental shelf; so New Zealand does not have special rights to the fisheries above the continental shelf beyond the EEZ or to control other activities such as shipping.” That is an exact quote Minister from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website.The Minister could get on his feet and actually explain how it is that he is passing a law through this House tonight that appears to go against what New Zealand is actually allowed to do when it comes to the continental shelf. But the Minister does not seem to care about that. The Minister does not want to actually get up and explain whether he is even allowed to make this law. So he is selling the law off and he will not even explain how he can justify expanding that to a massive extra 1.7 million square kilometres—1.7 million square kilometres extra. We do not even according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade actually have the right to make any law in that area and yet the Minister comes to this Chamber with this bill. As Moana Mackey says we will be back here in a month with yet another amendment bill after Mr Bridges makes the sensibledecision to put it as a standing item on the Order Paper so we can just keep coming back to it and he will have to correct another mistake.There are other matters about the continental shelf that the Minister does not appear to have taken into account. The continental shelf overlaps with other countries’ jurisdictions. We actually have an agreement with the Australians around where the continental shelf overlaps with us. It is around Lord Howe Rise through to the Three Kings Ridge. We have that agreement. The problem for the Minister and the problem for the Government is that we do not have that agreement with other countries around where the continental shelf overlaps with their jurisdictions—Fiji and Tonga for instance. We have not done anything about that when it comes to other areas the Kermadec Ridge being one of those. So the Government has two areas where it appears to be actually breaching international law about whether it can even put this up.These are the issues that would be discussed at a select committee. In fact they would have already been discussed at a select committee and we would now no doubt not be looking at amendments to the law because the Government had stuffed up. But instead at 11 o’clock on a Friday night we have got a bill being shoved through the House not in the interests of New Zealanders nor even of our Pacific neighbours whose territory this impinges upon but in the interests of the corporate sector—in the vested interests of those for whom this Government the National Government seems to believe they are governing.That is what we see time and time again. We saw it with Skycity and what a shameful shabby deal that was. We saw it with Warner Bros. Our laws are for sale under this Government. What is more we are going to have to pay to change the law in the case of Skycity because of the compensation arrangements that have been put in place there. If we want to change the gambling laws we will be paying for it. Now under this law we have a situation where we have been pushed into changing the law to ensure that the corporate interests are kept happy. We are not protecting New Zealanders’ rights to protest. [Interruption] The Attorney-General likes to interject on these matters. He is living in his own golden age over there—the Attorney-General the saviour of the art scene a legend in his own Twitterverse. But he is sitting there today as the right to protest is limited. He is sitting there today as the right to dissent is limited.What kind of Attorney-General is that? Why do we not have an Attorney-General who stands up for the rights of New Zealanders to protest? Why do we not have an Attorney-General who actually comes to this Chamber and says to his Government: “No way I am not accepting this. New Zealanders have the right to protest.”? Instead we have an Attorney-General who sits on Twitter trying to come up with his own achievements in the arts sector and he does not care about a bill before this Committee that severely limits what New Zealanders would see as their basic rights.This bill is deeply flawed. This amendment bill to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act is deeply flawed. New Zealanders right across the country have expressed their concern about this and they have been dismissed by people like Chris Finlayson and the Prime Minister. Geoffrey Palmer Dame Ann Salmond who is the New Zealander of the Year—John Key will have his photograph taken with Dame Ann Salmond but when she signs a letter that says this kind of law change limiting the right to protest is wrong suddenly she is dismissed. She is totally taken out of the picture.This is absolutely poor lawmaking. It is shabby lawmaking. It is sloppy lawmaking. We are back in front of this Committee with an extension to this legislation and once again the Minister needs to get up and answer the question that a lot of New Zealanders want to know: who is behind this? Who is behind this change? Which company has asked for it? Who has come to Simon Bridges and put the pressure on him? There areimportant aspects of this law which Simon Bridges is responsible for for protecting the rights of New Zealanders. It seems to us on this side of the Chamber that Simon Bridges has caved. He caved straight away. As soon as someone has come to him and asked “Can you please extend out this already bad law?” he has caved. He has said: “Yes I will take it out to the continental shelf. That is fine.” Even if New Zealand does not have a right to make a law in that place he will take it out.This bill and clause 14 of this bill are typical of this Government. They are typical of a Government that is no longer governing in the interests of New Zealanders. It is governing in corporate interests and overseas interests and in the interests of its mates not in the interests of ordinary New Zealanders. This clause should not pass.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Clause 8 in Part 2 of this bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill changes all references to mineral “reserves” in the Crown Minerals Act to mineral “resources”. That is very symbolic because this Government sees nature as a resource ripe for exploitation rather than having values that deserve protection and keeping them in reserve for present and future generations.What right do we have to try to access oil and coal and minerals that were put down millennia ago? It is almost as if this Government does not believe humans are going to exist in another 200 years because it wants to exploit everything now rather than recognising that in 200 years’ time we might have the technology whereby we can mine coal and burn it without getting the emissions that contribute to climate change. But no this Government wants it now. It never thinks of the future and it does not think of the environmental debt that it is creating for our future generations.Mr Bridges on Easter Monday I think it was introduced the Supplementary Order Paper that amended the principal Crown Minerals Amendment Act by putting in the Anadarko amendment—the no-protest amendment. The April issue ofLawTalk and I will just quote from it described what the Government did: “The Government appears to be developing a practice of using post-Select Committee supplementary order papers (SOPs) as a portal through which to rush controversial law changes.” We are seeing the same thing happening tonight not through a Supplementary Order Paper but through using urgency.AsLawTalk said further: “The introduction of significant law changes by way of SOP bypasses the normal vetting processes and increases the risk of sloppy lawmaking.” Well we have certainly seen that with the previous legislation because it is back here before it has even become law.This Government should be ashamed of what it is doing tonight. It should be ashamed because of the way in which democracy is being undermined not just by that noxious little clause 14 which creates that 500-metre no-go zone around vessels so that you cannot protest and not just because the Government wants to shut down dissent but because of the way this bill is going through under urgency with no opportunity for public comment.That is typical because we have seen a whole weakening of the regulatory regime in New Zealand under this Government. We have seen the exclusive economic zone legislation that we passed which has yet to come into force that had a bastardised version of sustainable management and then we have seen regulations under that Act that make offshore deep-sea prospecting a permitted activity with no opportunity for the public to comment on it.So what are New Zealanders able to do? If they cannot make submissions on legislation if they cannot make submissions on applications to prospect offshore of course they take to protest because there is no legitimate forum to express their concerns and their dissent. So what does the Government do? It then seeks to shut down that dissent. That is why this bill is very troubling because it potentially increases thelevel of disaffection with Government and with democracy in New Zealand. People are being denied their legitimate right to have a say. They cannot do it in this Parliament through submissions and by contributing to the lawmaking. They now cannot do it under this bill by protesting because the Government wants to make that a criminal offence.So where do people go when they see that they cannot have a say? They get disaffected. That is how revolutions start because people cannot have a say through the normal processes. That is what this Government is doing. It is shutting down the right to have a say. It is totally undemocratic. Clause 14 at the heart of this bill is about that. The Government wants to make it easy for the big corporates—the transnational oil companies the Chinese State companies—to exploit nature and make it easier for its mates which doubtless contribute to the National Party coffers at election time. So that is what this bill is about: making it easier to exploit nature and actually attacking the heart of democracy by riding roughshod over due process and then suppressing the right to protest.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to take a call on Part 2 of this bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I do want to just note that when there was a closure motion called for Part 1 and there were those of us who wanted to try to take a call and were disappointed that we did not have a chance to debate what is an incredibly important bill the Attorney-General’s response to that denial of what I would call a basic element of a democratic procedure in this Committee was “Stiff bickies.” “Stiff bickies.” was the call.Hon Christopher Finlayson: No it wasn’t.JACINDA ARDERN: What was it? Was it “Stiff cookies.”?Hon Christopher Finlayson: No “Stiff cheese.”JACINDA ARDERN: “Stiff cheese.”—I stand corrected. I am glad that that will be on the record. It was “Stiff cheese.” I am glad we cleared that up.Grant Robertson: Was it brie or camembert?JACINDA ARDERN: The deputy leader asks a fine point. Does the Attorney-General wish to further define his type of cheese?Chris Hipkins: Blue cheese.JACINDA ARDERN: It was a blue cheese of course.It is important that we have the chance to fully debate particularly this section of the bill. One of my concerns is that even in Part 1 of this bill which we have obviously already closed off our discussions on there was a bit of discussion about the types of companies that might be drawn into our exploration regime in New Zealand via this bill. I spent a very small amount of time working for an Associate Minister of Energy—like Chris Hipkins said this certainly does not make me an expert in the field—who obviously had the same portfolio that Mr Bridges the Minister of Energy and Resources now has and that is around oil and gas exploration and mining. What I certainly learnt in that time was that this business is a high-stakes game. It is incredibly expensive to operate in this field and yet we have discussion in this bill that uses language like that someone “who does not have the expertise or financial ability” to operate in this area having the use of conditional permits. If you do not have the expertise or the financial ability then you will not last in this sector for a particularly long time. Nor will you potentially—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No.JACINDA ARDERN: —have the success in what is obviously a high-stakes game. Sorry Mr Chairperson I am bringing you into the debate. So that was a point I just wanted to make before moving on—that this “give it a punt” mentality will bring in I think the kind of low-grade exploration and explorers that the Green Party hasreferenced. That is bad for everyone particularly when the Labour Party’s views on these issues are that until we can give the absolute guarantees that we need and the protections that we need particularly for deep-sea drilling that is not a space we are willing to go into. If the Government at the same time is opening up for rogue explorers then that is absolutely not a space we want to move into.But moving on to Part 2 the amendment to section 55 in clause 14 is the area I want to talk about. As has been raised this is the extension of that much-protested—ironically—provision that 79 percent of New Zealanders were opposed to and that was the setting of limitations around the right to protest out on the seas and now out on the high seas. The change in definition that we have seen here in clause 14 is: “In section 55 new section 101A replace the definition of offshore area with: offshore area means any area that is—(a) within the territorial sea; or (b) within the exclusive economic zone; or (c) on or above the continental shelf.” I wanted to do a little bit of reading about what the definition of the continental shelf is. There was a United Nations declaration signed on 29 August 1980. It was a statement of understanding. That makes this declaration I think about the same age as the Minister. That declaration set out a definition for the continental shelf—this is really interesting—“The continental shelf of a coastal State comprises the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea ...”. It is absolutely correct that we have mining rights over the continental shelf according to this declaration under article 76.If we move on though to article 78 which sets out the legal status of the superjacent waters and airspace and the rights and freedoms of other States it says—[Bell rung] Mr Chair—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Jacinda Ardern.JACINDA ARDERN: Thank you. I did want to get through this UN declaration because clearly this has not been explored nearly enough and I hope the Minister will respond to my questions here. Article 78 of this declaration which as I said sets out the legal status of the superjacent waters and airspace and the rights and freedoms of other States sets out in the first point that “The rights of the coastal State over the continental shelf do not affect the legal status of the superjacent waters or of the air space above those waters.” and in point 2 that “The exercise of the rights of the coastal State over the continental shelf must not infringe or result in any unjustifiable interference with navigation and other rights and freedoms of other States as provided for in this Convention.”—of other States and probably of the citizens of those States because as this declaration clearly points out yes mining rights do exist over the continental shelf but those rights are limited to activities in the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas. Above that continental shelf those same rights do not extend. We are at the high seas point at that point and as article 78 points out “The rights … over the continental shelf do not affect the legal status of the superjacent waters or of the air space …”.So this Government does not have the right to extend this already much-disliked and hated provision to the continental shelf but it is going to try and if it is going to try that then it might as well just go for the airspace as well. Why do we not just have protests banned from the air as well anything above the continental shelf? It is just as ludicrous.Grant Robertson: Don’t give them ideas.JACINDA ARDERN: We could just claim as a territory all of Mars while we are at it because it is actually about as legally possible.This declaration goes down as far as article 85 to tunnelling: “This Part does not prejudice the right of the coastal State to exploit the subsoil by means of tunnelling irrespective of the depth of water above the subsoil.” Again it is reiterating that at sealevel and at the subsoil level you can go for gold literally. It is the State’s patch. You can tunnel it you can mine it you can drill it—sorry Mr Chairperson—according to this UN declaration. I am not advocating that this is what the Government should do. It should not take this as a challenge. So the Government can go in and tunnel. A protester could be banned from tunnelling but they cannot be banned from doing anything at sea level. That is the distinction that we are trying to make here.The point I wish to leave with the Minister is whether he can tell the Committee whether or not this declaration—which as I pointed out has been around on this Earth as long as he has been—was even looked at. Was there any consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in drafting these provisions? The Minister is doing a very good job of pretending that he is not registering any of these questions. Or was this simply something where the ministry determined we did not need to look at any of this? Did it just simply decide that what was signed at an international level did not matter? And is it possible for the UN to question these kinds of limitations that we are now legislating in an area where the UN has said that we cannot prevent other States? And that might mean a citizen from the United States who might want to come over and protest in our waters. We cannot set a limitation on them so how can we set a limitation on our own citizens in that regard? I would ask the Minister to rise and speak to that very important question.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui. Kia ora. It is a bit late Mr Chairperson. We are in the Committee stage of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill where we get the ability to drill down into the parts and clauses in detail and have the ability to make amendments. I was thinking about writing some amendments but actually we should just throw the whole bill out. This is an embarrassment for the Minister of Energy and Resources. It is a shoddy process it is bad content and I do not know why we are here in urgency doing it.What I want to focus on in this call is clause 14—this egregious clause. I do not know whether the Minister thought he could get away with this but sneakily under Budget urgency he is trying to extend out these egregious powers these anti-democratic powers these anti - human rights powers. Clause 14 relates to new sections 101A and 101B in section 55 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act—the so-called Anadarko amendment. It introduces five new criminal offences if protesters—and it is only protesters—protest against seabed mining or drilling and it is only seabed mining or drilling. It is a ridiculous situation. You could commit the same offence on land and get about a third to a quarter of the same penalty and we have the ridiculous scenario now where if you do something against one particular industry that has got Government friends in the Beehive you will face higher penalties. In fact I believe these are unconstitutional and unlawful laws.This Anadarko amendment was lawmaking at its worst and that is what clause 14 is amending. This was legislation that was introduced via a Supplementary Order Paper. We have heard mention in theLawTalk magazine that experts were critical but I have also got a letter here from the New Zealand Law Society to the Attorney-General criticising the process and suggesting: “Why can’t we have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis for substantive Supplementary Order Papers?”. It is a good idea and I think we should look at that at the Standing Orders Committee. We saw no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act consideration and no select committee process. It is a terrible process and what the Government is now doing is trying to sneak in an abhorrent expansion of it.Let us put it in context. Protesting at sea—which is what clause 14 is amending by amending the definition of offshore; that is all it is doing—is honourable. It has played an important role in our country’s history and in our Government’s history whenNorman Kirk sent that frigate to Mururoa. I note that Chris Hipkins and Jacinda Ardern have a background in the energy industry and some experience with petroleum. I have a bit of experience on the other side. I sailed on theRainbow Warrior protesting at sea and successfully I might add when the Labour Government worked to ban deep-sea bottom trawling in international waters between New Zealand and Chile. So it paid off. We saw some success.What we are seeing here is all about supporting the mates. Clause 14 has dubious legality and I hope the member Phil Goff will take a call because by adding this word I believe we are making an unprecedented international move that I think as a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade he would have some experience with. If other States took a step like this I think New Zealand would be critical. What New Zealand is doing is unilaterally extending its jurisdiction over the extended continental shelf. This has been the subject of huge international debates over the Spratly Islands between Japan China Sarawak and Taiwan and huge debates up in the Arctic and New Zealand—little old New Zealand—under urgency is deciding what it wants to do with jurisdiction. No country has been able to sort out all the vexed grey areas in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea but New Zealand is just racing ahead deciding it with this amendment in clause 14 passed under urgency.I want to look at the detail. Clause 14 is interesting because there is only one word changed. It is the introduction of the word “or”. It was late last night when I picked up why this inclusion of the word “or” was so important. I have spent the day on the phone with legal professors from various universities and international law experts who work in international forums to see whether this was as big a deal as I suspected late last night under urgency—the inclusion of the word “or”.Let us go back in history because in the Crown Minerals Amendment Act the new definition of “offshore area” was defined originally as meaning “any area within the territorial sea or exclusive economic zone that is on or above the continental shelf”. I missed the inclusion of the word “or” because what this reminded me of was how poor the drafting was with the Anadarko amendment. It is actually logically inconsistent. If you are in the territorial sea or the exclusive economic zone of course you will automatically be on top of the continental shelf in New Zealand. It is inconsistent. I thought they were just fixing this schoolboy mistake of the Minister with his amendment but actually what they have done is snuck in the word “or” in clause 14. It is the territorial sea the exclusive economic zone or the continental shelf. What this is is a massive expansion because now the five new criminal provisions are extending out over an additional—MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I moveThat the question be now put.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak to Part 2 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. In the explanatory note of this bill there are some bullet points that relate to “Matters in the Bill … to which errors or omissions will be corrected …”. In other words we have an amendment bill to the amendment Act because there are errors or omissions that need to be corrected. As it happens they all fall within Part 2. They start with the definition of “underground gas storage facility”; the definition of “offshore area” which is in clause 14 which members have been discussing recently; references to “reserves” being changed to “resources” which was a matter that the Minister of Energy and Resources referred to in his introductory speech; extensions to existing petroleum permits; addition of “platinum group metals” to the list of mineral types with the same tier 1 thresholds as for gold and silver; clarification of the application of the Crown Minerals Act 1991 to existing privileges granted after that Act came into effect; clarification of the proprietary status of permits acquired by the Crown; and references to a “dwellinghouse”. That is eight items—eight items—thatwere errors or omissions in the bill that was passed a matter of just weeks ago—eight errors and omissions.I am beginning to wonder whether the Minister has just about begun to understand the importance of the select committee process. With eight errors or omissions being corrected in this amendment bill perhaps now after hours and hours in the House under urgency on this the Minister might be beginning to understand the importance of going to a select committee where people with expertise can help MPs to get the law right.We can argue about the policy position—and we are arguing about it particularly with reference to clause 14—but it at least ought to be expressed accurately in the law. But for these eight points that are missing or are incorrect all of which fall within Part 2 we are here under urgency instead of observing the proper process which might have rescued this Minister from these hours of purgatory as he has had to listen to one speech after another berating him for his incompetence and his inadequate approach to the legislation. I would like to ask the Minister whether he prefers this kind of repeated drubbing in urgency or whether he would rather have the legislation go to a select committee where people can have some say and where in fact improved legislation may be the result.I would like to focus a little bit on clause 13 which is unusual because clause 14 is the lightning rod in this part. But clause 13(1) says: “In section 52 new section 99B(1) replace ‘dwelling house’ ”—spelt as two words—“with ‘dwellinghouse’ ”—spelt as one word. “Dwelling house” spelt as two words “dwelling” and “house” is to be replaced with one word “dwellinghouse”. We are here at 11.30 on a Friday night to turn “dwelling house” into “dwellinghouse”. I wonder whether the Minister could clarify why that should be the case. Why are we here taking a space out between two perfectly legible and understandable words and making them into one word? I presume there is some significance in that and it has a particular meaning. Had I been able to ask at a select committee I might have been able to find out. If this is bringing “dwellinghouse” into the same—CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): I moveThat the question be now put.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I was not going to take a call on this but frankly I am outraged that tonight we have had a Minister in the chair the Minister of Energy and Resources who either is asleep is too damn arrogant to respond to valid questions that are being asked of him or is afraid and frozen to his seat because he cannot answer the questions that have been asked of him.It is an absolute outrage that that Minister in his first piece of legislation stuffed up so much that we have a bill in front of us the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill that says that we are debating the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 amendment to the Crown Minerals Act. We were in this House 6 weeks ago Minister. How was it that you were so ill prepared and so incompetent that you brought legislation into the House that has this many errors? Why is it that you brought in legislation that abridges the fundamental rights of people to freedom of expression freedom of speech and freedom of assembly? You brought it in by a Supplementary Order Paper after the—no I am sorry Mr Chairperson. You did not bring it in; the Minister brought it in. You would never have done such a thing. The Minister brought in legislation that abridges the fundamental rights of New Zealanders through a Supplementary Order Paper after the Commerce Committee had met so he never had to front up. The Government members trembling in their bloody seats never had to front up at the select committee to answer the question of why they were doing things that are totally without justification.The Attorney-General sits there and interjects from his seat but he has never taken a call. What is the role of the Attorney-General if not the watchdog of the fundamentalrights of New Zealanders: the right to freedom of speech the right to assembly and the right to protest? I think it was Grant Robertson who was speaking before about the proud tradition of New Zealand being nuclear-free. It was a proud tradition that I remember when Norman Kirk farewelled the frigateOtago to go up to protest against French nuclear testing in Mururoa. And now the National Party would say: “Wasn’t that a wonderful thing?”. It was the right of protest—the right of protest—actually exercised by the Government of New Zealand.Then I remember when I was a young member like Mr Bridges in this House and I was out on the harbour in Auckland and Wellington protesting about nuclear-armed submarines and ships coming into New Zealand. Now the National Party would want to claim credit for some of that policy. So why is it given that New Zealanders are so proud about the way in which we have used the right of protest at sea to achieve our goals that this Minister can bring back a bill into the House that abridges those fundamental rights?But he does not stop there. Not only does he want to abridge the fundamental rights of protest in our territorial waters but he wants to extend that abridgment to our exclusive economic zone and on or above the continental shelf. My question to Mr Bridges is this if he actually knows the answer to it but I suspect that he has stuffed up yet again: how does he claim the right to legislate for the waters under and on the surface of the waters of our exclusive economic zone and above the continental shelf when he does not have that right under law? How is he legislating to extend the outrage of stopping protest within New Zealand’s territorial waters to the waters that we do not even have the right to legislate over? That question has been asked time and again of the Minister in the chair.How many times has the Minister got up to answer a question in the Committee? Is it not the role of the Committee of the whole House that members of the Committee ask questions of the Minister in the chair and the Minister is sufficiently competent courageous and ready to get up and answer those questions? That Minister has not got out of his chair. We are debating this at 11.35 at night and not one of the members of the Government has the guts to stand up and to defend the legislation that they have got—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I will ask the member just to withdraw that comment. It implies that the member does not have courage. So I ask the member to withdraw that comment.Hon PHIL GOFF: I will withdraw that Mr Chairman. They do not have the intestinal fortitude to get out of their seats and to debate legislation to make excuses for their incompetence or to defend what they are doing in the House tonight.The first time they try to bring this in they bring it in by a Supplementary Order Paper that does not go to a select committee. This time they do not even take that chance. They rush it through all its stages under urgency late on a Friday night when they hope no New Zealanders are listening to the outrage that they are perpetrating.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): We are in the position at the moment of debating late on a Friday night because we have not had the benefit of a proper considered process to consider this legislation the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. The legislation that we are amending which we considered only 6 weeks ago now has to be corrected. But we are still dealing with issues that are significant and are important. We have not had the benefit of considered legal advice and other advice. In this particular part of the bill and particularly clause 14 it is quite obvious now through the contributions of other members of the Committee tonight that there is some real doubt about the lawfulness and legality of this provision. We are in no better shape because we simply have not had access to advice—the sort of professionaladvice that officials would give us if this had properly gone before a select committee. We have not had the benefit of that. We have not had the benefit of the Attorney-General and his good offices to give advice about the lawfulness of this particular provision.It is a matter of the pride and reputation of this House that is now being put at stake. We—when I say “we” I mean all members of this House whichever party we are from whichever side we are on—should never be put in the position where we have a law in front of us that is patently doubtful and questionable as to its legal correctness. That is an unconscionable position for the House to be put in. It is not much for this Committee and for members on this side of the Chamber to ask the Minister in the chair the Minister of Energy and Resources to at least respond to a perfectly reasonable and legitimate question about the correctness of this particular provision. There is ample room for doubt—ample room for doubt—of its integrity. What would be the point of passing a law urgency or no when we simply do not know whether it will survive the merest scrutiny once it is passed? Let us for heaven’s sake not put ourselves in that position.There is real doubt about this particular provision and the honourable member Gareth Hughes has pointed out the significant difference—the changing of the language the ordering of the provision in clause 14—that means that we are now legislating for this whole area above the continental shelf when there is real doubt about whether this House has the ability to do that and whether in doing that we are compliant with our international obligations. That is a matter that this House has to be cognisant of and has to take note of when we are passing legislation. It would be totally wrong if we—even in this truncated process even in the absence of a select committee—now barged ahead without receiving some sort of assurance from those who are in a position to give that assurance: either the Minister in the chair the Attorney-General the Minister of Foreign Affairs or even indeed the Minister of Justice when she has finished killing the turtles. Any of them ought to be able to give us an assurance about the integrity and the correctness of this provision because it is not good. It is not good. It is not good for the turtles that live above the continental shelf. In fact it will be the turtles that will be most affected because they live above the continental shelf and they will be on the foreshore and seabed. But it is not good. It is not good.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Let’s get on to the foreshore and seabed—Labour taking away the rights of people to go to court.ANDREW LITTLE: That has got the Attorney-General up. The Attorney-General has woken up. If only we could have the benefit of his advice on this particular provision because it is a serious matter. We can laugh about that. We can laugh at the Attorney-General and we can laugh about the turtles but it is a matter of the integrity of this House and every member in it that we are called upon to consider a piece of legislation under urgency. We ordinarily ought to expect the Minister to answer legitimate questions where there is doubt. He has not done that and we are in no better position. It is wrong for us to be put in this position. We must continue to oppose this unless and until we have some sort of assurance from the Minister in the chair. We are being put in an impossible position. It must never happen. Hopefully it will never happen again after this.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. What we are seeing is this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill being sneaked through under urgency. This egregious clause 14 is being sneaked through under urgency to amend the Anadarko amendment—also snuck through without any New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or select committee scrutiny through a Supplementary Order Paper and amendment. This isterrible lawmaking. I believe it is lawmaking at its worst. That is what the Law SocietyLawTalk magazine is talking about.But what we are doing right now with clause 14 is something we possibly do not even have the legal ability to do. We do not have the jurisdiction to enforce criminal provisions against protesters to protect one specific industry on the high sea. I am sure members know and I am sure the Minister of Energy and Resources knows because he is the lawyer in the Chamber that the high sea is considered to be an inch above the seabed on the extended continental shelf past our exclusive economic zone. This extends out to 350 nautical miles. The reason is that a country is given the rights with the royalties paid to the International Seabed Authority to exploit the minerals on the seabed. But the water column and the sea are not considered part of New Zealand’s jurisdiction.We have heard numerous quotes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website and from the Ministry for the Environment website showing it is clear that we do not have jurisdiction to control shipping. But this is exactly what this Government is trying to do and to sneak it through under Budget urgency at a quarter to midnight. I think it is an outrage.I think the question for the Minister is this: was he even aware he was doing this? It is not in the explanatory note of the bill. Did he even know he was taking this huge step to extend international jurisdiction unilaterally over 1.7 million square kilometres? I believe this is going to have international ramifications. You are going to see the North Koreans try this example you are going to see Japan—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No no I’m not. No I’m not.GARETH HUGHES: You are right Mr Chair. We are going to see countries like Japan and North Korea trying this on. The world is going to see Japan trying to enforce non-interference zones around its ships trying to do its whaling. North Korea is going to do it. I think this is going to be an internationally significant precedent and I do not think the Minister is even aware he is doing it.Did he get a legal opinion from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade? Is the Minister of Foreign Affairs even aware that Simon Bridges the Minister under urgency is sneaking through a massive jurisdictional grab to extend New Zealand’s rights over it? This is likely going to be challenged I believe at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea at Hamburg. It could be challenged in New Zealand’s courts and again we are doing it all without select committee scrutiny. It is an absolute outrage.But why are we doing it? What happened last week? Which is the first oil company wanting to apply for a permit over the continental shelf? Of course it is the China National Offshore Oil Corporation which last week with Shell announced it wanted to get a permit. This is a company that on its own website describes itself as a mega State asset of the Chinese Government. This company wants to get a permit from Mr Bridges over the continental shelf. I want Mr Bridges to tell this Parliament whether he got a call from either Shell or the China National Offshore Oil Corporation the State-owned oil driller of the Chinese Communist Government. Did he get a call from them saying “Hey Mr Bridges I’m sorry but with your Anadarko amendment you covered only the territories in the EEZ. The poor drafting used didn’t cover the continental shelf where we want to go prospect for oil with Shell.”?Mr Bridges you have not answered a single question. My question to the Minister is this: were you aware and had your office been contacted? What we are seeing is a travesty of justice with a poor egregious clause 14 being rushed through under Budget urgency. This ain’t a good look for this Government.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes52New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 11; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Moana Mackey to clause 14 be agreed to:delete clause 14.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes52New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 11; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Moana Mackey to clause 14 be agreed to:replace this clause with the following clause:14Section 55 amended (New sections 101A to 101C inserted)In section 55 new section 101A replace the definition ofoffshore area with:“offshore area means any area that is within the territorial sea”.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes52New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 11; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 2 be agreed to.Ayes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes54New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 11; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Part 2 agreed to.Clauses 1 to 3MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I am very pleased to take a call on the title and commencement clauses of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I will come to the title soon but I think the commencement is a good place to start. Clause 2 says: “Commencement—This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” My question would be this: will it? Will it orwill it be something else that we have had to pass in the meantime because of all the mistakes in this piece of legislation? I do not think we can have any confidence that this legislation will in fact come into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent because I suspect we may have to pass yet another amendment bill before the original amendment Act comes into force because of course we passed the original amendment Act only 6 weeks ago. The body is not yet cold it is still warm and here we are having to amend it substantially again.This is a record for National Government Ministers I think. I do not think we have ever had to see a bill come back to Parliament so quickly to be amended under urgency through all stages because there were so many mistakes and errors in the original bill including a significant error where the Minister of Energy and Resources forgot 1.7 million square kilometres of water—1.7 million square kilometres of water he just forgot to include in the original bill. That was of course in a Supplementary Order Paper that did not go to a select committee. It did not go to a select committee at all and no member of the public got to submit on it. There was no chance for public scrutiny no chance for select committee scrutiny and no chance for officials to give us the information that we need. So we are here passing this amendment bill to the amendment Act. When it comes to the commencement I do not think that the Minister can have any faith that this is the actual legislation that will come into law and that is an indictment upon him as a Minister.When it comes to the title I could suggest that perhaps—pre-empting what is certainly likely to happen in the next few months—instead of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill we could just call it the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment to the Amendment to the Amendment to the Amendment Bill” and that might be somewhat closer to what we are actually going to end up with thanks to the absolutely shambolic process that this has gone through.There are more questions than answers—in fact no answers have been provided. The Minister sits there on a quarter-million-dollar salary and will not even do his job which is answering very basic questions—and very serious questions—about the legality of the law he is passing and about the rights of New Zealanders that are being taken away stripped away under this legislation. The Minister sits there like a dried arrangement pretending to read his magazine because he does not know the answers or he is too arrogant to provide the answers. Frankly it is an absolute outrage. The Minister is simply not up to it. That is what has become quite clear from this process tonight.Maybe another potential title for the bill could be the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Passing Laws in Jurisdictions We Have No Right to Pass Laws in) Amendment Bill” because there was a very serious question raised with the Minister in Part 2 of this debate—a question that he has refused to answer and that is absolutely extraordinary. I know he is trying very hard to pretend that he is reading right now but I know that he is listening. He should feel ashamed of himself. The question was Mr Bridges why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is telling us on its website—confirming what happens under the Continental Shelf Act the relevant provisions of which my colleague Jacinda Ardern read out in full—that international law states quite clearly that New Zealand has no right to pass laws in the water column above the continental shelf in the high seas. It has no right. Why when the example that the ministry gives is that we have no right to regulate activities like shipping is it that the Minister is telling us that we are able to pass laws that restrict the activities of vessels above the continental shelf? Those two things do not match up.Either we do have the right to pass laws in the water column above the continental shelf or we do not. The United Nations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade tell us that we do not. Minister Bridges in this legislation tells us that we do. He hasnot actually said it in person because he has been too busy pretending to read and trying to avoid answering questions. So which of those two is correct Minister? Is it the United Nations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade or is it you? It is simple. Is there any acknowledgment? No. Take a drink of water that will chew up some time. It is simply—GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): There are two matters to deal with here: the title and obviously the commencement date of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I shall begin with the title because it really does sum up what an absolute shambles of a portfolio Simon Bridges has: the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. The Act is not even in force yet and my colleague Maryan Street will tell me—24 May is that right—that 24 May is when the Crown Minerals Amendment Act will come into force. We now have an amendment bill. As has been noted despite the fact that the rest of the world has moved on to Friday 17 May in this Chamber it is still 16 May. It is still possible for the Hurricanes to beat the Chiefs because it is still Thursday and not Friday which is when they lose—that is for Sue Moroney. It is possible that this bill will in fact manage to pass before the bill that it amends actually comes into force. That is an extraordinary stuff-up. So if I was giving this bill a title it would actually be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Simon Bridges’ Stuff-up Amendment Bill” because that is the honest truth. We do not want to have a go at Simon Bridges. He is such a friendly chap. He is always saying nice things about the Labour Party. But today is the opportunity to tell the truth and the truth is that Simon Bridges has stuffed up and that should be included in the title. Simon Bridges should actually take some responsibility for the fact that this legislation has gone wrong.There is an alternative title for it here. That could be the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Golden Age of Government Amendment Bill” in honour of the Attorney-General because it is the golden age of Government to come to this House and push legislation through. That is this Government’s golden age—pushing legislation through under urgency selling off laws to corporates. That is the golden age of this Government the golden age of democracy brought to you by an Attorney-General who will not even stand up in this Chamber and take a call about a bill that limits the right of New Zealanders to protest. That is the Attorney-General’s responsibility to this House. It is to come to this House and actually defend the rights of New Zealanders but he fails—he fails. Chris Finlayson has failed and we could include Simon Bridges’ and Chris Finlayson’s failure in the title of this bill.But if we look at the commencement issue we really do have a major issue—[Interruption] Sorry? What was that?Hon Christopher Finlayson: Grow up. Don’t be such a juvenile.GRANT ROBERTSON: A juvenile. Right apparently I am a juvenile. That is an interesting statement to come from a man who spent all day on Twitter making ridiculous comments trying to match Judith Collins for the verbosity and irrelevance of his tweets. He calls me juvenile. He should actually take a look at the Minister in the chair the Minister of Energy and Resources—a boy doing a woman’s job as Maryan Street said before—because if it was being done by this side the Minister of Energy and Resources would be Moana Mackey and we would not have these problems. Instead we have the boy wonder in the chair unable to speak it would seem this evening. He has lost the power of speech. He has to turn it over to Chris Finlayson to talk about stiff cheese for the evening. That is the best we have had from the National Party tonight. The only intervention on theHansard tonight on this bill from the National Party is Mr Finlayson saying “Stiff cheese.” He has not even identified what kind of cheese yet—that is all it is.This bill is an absolute disaster for democracy. That could be in the title as well. We could call it the “Disaster for Democracy Bill”. We could certainly call it the “Simon Bridges’ Stuff-up Bill”. We could certainly call it the “Chris Finlayson’s Golden Age of Democracy Bill”. But what it should not be called is a bill that amends an Act that has not even come into force yet. [Interruption] Sorry Mr Coleman—a contribution?Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I said it’s 3 minutes till your midnight feast.GRANT ROBERTSON: Jonathan Coleman makes it. The National Party now has two contributions. He will be able to blow cigar smoke into someone’s face in 3 minutes’ time. That is what we will get from Jonathan Coleman. His greatest contribution to New Zealand politics is to stand up there “The Maestro” the man who delivered Mt Albert to Labour with every single thing he did—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. It is now 2 minutes until his midnight feast.GRANT ROBERTSON: Jonathan Coleman thinks that if he tells a joke again it will be funny but it is not. He is the man who led Melissa Lee on her triumphant march through Mt Albert—magnificent strategist that Jonathan Coleman is for the National Party. He has got himself on theHansard tonight along with Chris Finlayson and still no member of the National Party has got up—Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): The commencement date is one of the two clauses under discussion right now for this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. Anybody could be forgiven for thinking that the title of it is in fact a misprint but no it is just a mistake. It is not a misprint; it is a ministerial mistake.Can I just ask that the Minister of Energy and Resources if he wishes the commencement clause to mean what it says to take away this piece of legislation after the requisite period of time—and it gets passed tomorrow—and if he is going to stuff it under his mattress could he please put a sticky note on it to say “Bring up for 25 May.” because the other bill is not going to be law. The other Act will not be in force until 24 May so the Minister has to take this amendment bill away and put a little sticky note on it or please—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. I was waiting for someone to call me juvenile but it did not happen.Debate interrupted.