Delahunty Catherine: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 26 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5685. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe. Tena koutou e te whare. I am very pleased to get up and talk about this bill the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. There are serious issues in it and much of it to use a cliché is in the detail. The Green Party will not be supporting it although there are parts of it when it is divided into different bills that we will support. There are several quite good ideas but unfortunately—more than the issues named by the Labour Party—there are some serious problems in the detail which those of us who have lived through trying to address mining on the ground are not happy about. 
Fundamentally the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill is flawed in its key goals which are to promote the Government’s programme to facilitate and promote petroleum and minerals development above all other functions. In fact the Government has a plan via this bill and other measures to make extractive exploration drilling and mining the rescue plan for a recession despite the relatively low employment opportunities high risks and costs. For goodness’ sake this week has shown the risks and costs associated with this industry which are paid for both by the environment and by communities. Those communities are people who have believed in the boom and have been hurt by the bust. 
What is the problem with this bill? There are multiple problems. The Labour Party mentioned the issues around the role of the Minister of Energy and Resources—that is one of the problems—and the issues around maximising economics above all else but there is more. The bill is seen as a key element in the Government’s Petroleum Action Plan. It is the first step which is to explicitly state the position that the Government is pro the development of petroleum resources. The regulatory impact statement for this bill suggests a figure for the future royalty income from yet to be discovered fields based on anticipated new production coming on stream from eight known petroleum basins—eight—and we have currently developed only one such basin. This petroleum development will include risky deep-sea oil drilling—an incredibly unpopular and dangerous move at the moment being advocated by companies who need to be vetted and who have not been vetted such as Petrobras which has many communities opposing it—not to mention the controversial and dangerous fracking which was debated in this House and will continue to be. 
We object particularly to the new functions of the Minister of Energy and Resources under the bill. It is clearly stated that the function of the Minister is “to attract permit applications”—not to look at them on their merits not to look at sustainability but to attract permit applications. The functions of the Minister under the bill fail to require him to consider the appropriateness of those applications at all or to consider the sustainability of the resource that is being proposed for extraction. So this is a huge bias which the Crown Minerals Act already had but this bill increases reinforces and promotes that bias. Whatever the oil gas and mining industries want the Government has made it really clear it is going to do its absolute best except for a few little token things to make sure they get it. Unfortunately this will not result in the economic nirvana the golf course nirvana that “Planet Key” wants to create. What it will do is put at risk the fact that our economy is our environment and that our people deserve real sustainability in their employment which is not ever to be found if you have any ability to study history in terms of mining. 
In response to the Government’s request for feedback on a discussion document on schedule 4 in 2010 submitters—and there were thousands; more than 30000—requested that in future all national park and high-value conservation areas should be automatically added to schedule 4. This bill does this and I think some people have gone “Great progress! Fantastic!” and we wanted to believe this too. But we had a look at this because it is not as simple as that that land will just be included. The land is going to be included through a process by which it is granted conservation status but the decision making in classifying this land was solely the responsibility of the Minister of Conservation under the conservation reserves and wildlife legislation. My colleague Eugenie Sage will talk about this more. However this bill now makes it a process by which the Governor-General will perform this role by Order in Council. 
I talked to my colleague the former member of Parliament Jeanette Fitzsimons about this today because I wanted to understand it. She has lived schedule 4 she wrote the amendments to schedule 4 and what she told me is that this effectively means that Cabinet will now have input into the decision making over this land. Therefore that means that instead of it being the Minister of Conservation having a primary role whereby it is automatically added to schedule 4 if advocated for by the Minister the Minister of Energy and Resources and other Ministers especially of higher status in Cabinet can now determine using economic criteria rather than conservation criteria whether that land should be protected or not. So sadly although it looks like progress it is not. It is about changing the process for what would have been a good idea and giving Cabinet through the Orders in Council power that previously belonged to the Minister of Conservation. 
That is actually similar to the whole issue of joint decision-making. It is in line with and it is consistent with the idea that the Minister of Energy and Resources should jointly decide the future of the conservation estate an issue that caused an outcry when it was first mentioned by this Government. I can see the Government’s consistency in this bill. It is completely consistent; it is just totally wrong. It is absolutely not going to help us make good decisions for the future of our country because it takes away the idea that conservation has any intrinsic value and that our land should be protected for future generations. There is only one driver and that driver is maximising profit. 
When it comes to the tier one and tier two stuff we are not objecting to that at all so long as tier two is robust and we do not have any exploration faking as hobby mining—things that do go on in our experience. We do see the value in separating out those tiers. 
We are very interested in something the Government has made up in this bill called iwi engagement reports. New section 33A talks about how a company is required to annually produce an iwi engagement report. What is it? What does that mean? What do tangata whenua now have to respond to? Is this some kind of—there is no robust Treaty framework around them. It is just an engagement. You ring up someone; they are engaged. Is that an engagement report? Do you tick the box? What does it mean? We are not satisfied with that. That is not robust and it is not as strong as the Conservation Act. So we are very concerned about what iwi engagement with absolutely no clarity and no robust principles actually means. The former Crown Minerals Act talks about the Treaty of Waitangi principles; it does not go into any detail. This is worse because it just talks about iwi engagement. Engagement is not marriage. The Treaty is supposed to be about a relationship that is actually binding on the Crown and this is certainly not it.  
We are also concerned about the durations of permits as set out in new section 35 where it talks about extending permits for exploration and prospecting which might seem like a minor detail. I have lived through this personally; it is not minor. They can prospect—from 2 years—for 4 years now and they can explore now up to 15 years. That is not minor for communities remembering that communities under this bill do not have any power to participate in decision making which is very concerning.  
The extension of permits also is very interesting. It talks in the same clauses about extending permits. If it is wished the Minister gets discretion on these things and you just sort of see that the extension for the permit can be for any period that the Minister considers necessary to enable the permit holder to carry out more work. So there are lots of little clauses like that where the Minister and the mining permit can just be extended. There can be an appraisal extension and it is all in the hands of the Minister so long as the Minister has regard for things like maximising economic return and maximising economic recovery. My other favourite one is: “Any change to a work programme determined by” the negotiation between the miner and the Government possibly using this mythical person called an “independent expert”—I do not know who that is I would love to meet them—“must be limited to what is reasonably required to ensure that economic recovery … is … maximised.” Get my drift. This is about maximising economic return doing anything the industry wants to make sure that it can extend permits so that it can do this.  
So when people say there are only a couple of bad things in this bill they have not read it. I know they have not. They have not read the detail because the detail is extremely interesting. The royalties detail—well the royalties are not really going to be defined in the bill. They will go through the regulations process and we will have less control of them but there are interesting provisions on how you can renew a permit but still pay the same amount of royalty even if the rate of that royalty has changed. This is again like a continuation of the ludicrous situation we saw with Newmont Waihi Gold where it did not have to pay any royalties because it got its licence in 1987. Again the royalties are there to facilitate the miners. They have a permit and they only have to go to the modern royalty rate if they change the mineral. Well how often does the miner going after a particular mineral actually change a permit for a new mineral? It does not happen. 
We would just like to say that we are very concerned about Part 1B because although we like the idea of notification and we like the idea of moratoriums significant money proposals will be decided and defined by two Ministers. This is not it and we cannot support it.