Abel Steve; Jones ShaneSTEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you Madam Chair thank you very much. We do appreciate the florid rhetoric of the Minister but we also would love to get some solid answers on some quite legitimate questions. I thought there was quite a valuable comment from my colleague Lawrence Xu-Nan who said that a beauty spot can too be carcinogenic and we need to be aware of which ones to watch out for.Now I have a very specific question to pick up on a comment the Minister made yesterday. It was a reference to his love of seabed mining in Taranaki—something the Minister raised yesterday. I wanted to question the Minister: how does he balance the diverse interests in that commons that he rightfully acknowledged yesterday when there are tensions between not just ecological values or visual values but also commercial activities? Taranaki being a good example but there are similar instances in other parts of the country—many similar instances. In Taranaki to clarify we have a situation where the seabed miners want to rip up tens of millions of tonnes of seafloor to extract supposed minerals. It has been fiercely opposed—as the Minister I'm sure would know—by the fishing industry for 10 years because it is seen by the commercial wild fisheries industry to be a direct threat to their industry.Most recently another opposition has come in from the offshore wind industry because they say they will be unable to build their windfarms if the seabed has been so disturbed that it has lost its stability. So these are three competing commercial activities. How and who is it to make the determinations about how to balance these tensions of use of the marine space which is a commons if there is simply a dictate from central government to say We are going to extend all of these marine farms without consideration of the other interests in that marine coastal environment."? That's a question for the Minister: how are you going to balance those different tensions? I note very well-articulated by the Marlborough regional council—his favourite regional council—"the allocation of public space in the coastal marine area is no easy feat requiring a strategic approach to balance the competing demand for this common resource." Now specifically regarding Marlborough described eloquently in their submission "with its drowned river valleys and the open coastline of the East Coast of South Marlborough. This coastal area contains scenic landscapes high levels of indigenous biodiversity as well as a diverse range of recreational commercial and cultural uses." Who is it to make the determination about how to allocate these resources if not the local people the regional councils those representatives of the locals? If we are to impose dictates from on high from central government that override the ability of those regionally elected representatives to make determinations on how to balance these different interests surely we are in big trouble. Because how is this House best able to determine all of the nuances of the interests that exist in a space such as Marlborough or Taranaki?In its submission the council concludes that "It is fundamentally unsound to have both central and local government attempting to allocate the same coastal marine area". I would like to ask the Minister: how does he reconcile that fundamental tension? Is he absolutely content to impose the will of central government—it is not localism—on those regional councils?My second point is another very important one to do with aquaculture management areas. This is a very excellent solution that Marlborough has come up with over years to deal with the challenges of marine farms. Now in 2016 the Marlborough Aquaculture Review Working Group sought to assist the council with how to deal with the extent of their marine farm activity. And just reminding us that we have half of all of New Zealand's marine farms in Marlborough and 80 percent of the total commercial value of marine farming is in Marlborough so we should be paying attention to this region. [Time expired]CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I'm going to let Mr Abel pose his question but I don't want to see this be a speech or a five-minute call. I want to see the question relating to Marlborough as you had already started on.STEVE ABEL: Thank you Madam Chair. So just to clarify what the aquaculture management areas are they're called simply Variation 1. They allow for a seaward movement or adjustment of the existing marine farm to the aquaculture management area. This adjustment is enabled through a controlled activity status for reconsenting existing marine farms within an aquaculture management area. The reallocation of the majority of inappropriate marine farms to an aquaculture management area (AMA)—I will speak about any inappropriate marine farms in another call. Marine farmers therefore have certainty of tenure through Variation 1. It articulates where aquaculture is appropriate and implements the requirements of the New Zealand coastal policy statement and the RMA in Marlborough.Now Variation 1 disincentivised marine farmers from moving seaward into AMAs to provide for Variation 1. In this legislation they're saying "The blanket extension provided by the Bill has the very real potential to undermine Variation 1". And these variations strike the "balance of enabling Marlborough's marine farming to continue to thrive while at the same time ensuring sensitive coastal areas and habitats many of which are regionally and nationally significant are protected." So here it is Marlborough has at great lengths sought to solve the challenges. Marine farmers therefore have certainty of tenure through variation 1 which is what the Minister is concerned about.I'd like the Minister if he would to respond to that question about the impact of this blanket extension on the option of aquaculture management areas in variation 1 as well as my earlier question on how it is to manage these diverse interests in the marine space if not through the knowledge of the local regions. Kia ora.Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Let's be really clear: the allocation of space the utilisation of the commons is already subject to central and local government interactions. Aquaculture allocation i.e. entitlements are guided by the New Zealand coastal policy statement. That wretched creature is a feature of central government. Sadly in the vast majority of New Zealand it impedes the economic monetisation of our boundless coastal environment—something I hope to change in the near future. So it is not correct to say this is exclusively an area where local representatives have the ultimate authority. They are guided by guardrails created by central government. An additional guardrail with neon lights will be passed by this Parliament very shortly—that's the first thing.On the question of how do you manage vexed areas such as Taranaki I'm the first to admit that there has been a historic level of friction between quota owners and applicants wanting to extract vanadium titanium and a host of other very valuable rare earth minerals from the bed of the sea. A national conversation is most certainly needed because we have surrendered to a tiny minority of loud shrill ill-informed voices who have weaponised not only tikanga Māori but have weaponised the anxieties that people have at a time when New Zealand has very few options other than to engage in trade-off politics and use mother Nature's bounty i.e. the iron sands off the coast of Taranaki.I look forward to playing a key role as the Minister of natural resources but today I'm here as the steward of this bill in my fisheries role. There is already a host of opportunities in regional New Zealand to balance what's in the coastal policy statement driven by the Department of Conservation what's in regional coastal policy statements what's in regional coastal plans. The effect of those plans has been to chill undermine and freeze economic development in the coastal environment.Coming back to Marlborough there is nothing to stop future applicants using this much-vaunted new approach. But people who already have their permits will be spared the ordeal of having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in these processes in Marlborough—highly weaponised—and employment is going to trump privilege enjoyment."