Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Madam Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. The last member talked about people wanting to move to New Zealand. I know exactly why so many people want to move to New Zealand to work. We've got record low unemployment. We've got a Prime Minister who's a bastion of positivity on the world stage in the age of Trump and Brexit. This beautiful country which has got this great direction that's embracing the future and embracing innovation—no wonder so many people want to come to New Zealand despite the relentless negativity of the National Party and that last member.I'm proud to be part of a Government which has had the courage the integrity of its convictions the ability to listen to the clear clarion call of science and the courage to set a leadership direction when it comes to the oil and gas exploration end and the start of the just transitions away from fossil fuels. That's in contrast to the intellectual dishonesty of the National Party: the party who finally stopped denying the science of climate change but then did everything possible to encourage more mining more drilling and more fracking across New Zealand; the party who said that we would have to start to transition away from oil and gas but the party never had the intellectual honesty to actually say when that would start; the party who continue to prop it up with more subsidies tax breaks and other actions.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): And back to the third reading please. Thank you.GARETH HUGHES: So I'm proud to stand here as this Parliament tonight does a tune-up of the Crown Minerals Act 1991 (CMA) that closes the loopholes. I raise these points because the last Government didn't do this didn't do a tune up of the CMA to actually improve it and didn't close the loopholes that Parliament's having to spend its time on now.What we're doing is two big things: a slight technical amendment and upgrading of the Crown Minerals Act—a bit of a spring clean if you will. The big thing though is closing the loopholes. What we saw was that a change of permit operator needed ministerial consent under the existing regime but that very same company could have its operations changed could be bought out could be sold a foreign multinational could come in and purchase it and that needed no ministerial control. It's important that we close this loophole because we're at a time of considerable change in what I believe is a sunset industry—fossil fuels oil and gas. It's a sector that's seen huge change in New Zealand. Just in the last few years we've seen almost minuscule demand for oil block offers. We've seen Apache Corporation go we've seen Petrobras go we've seen the oddly named New Zealand Energy Corp—which is not New Zealand - owned—go we've seen Shell go and we see other operators come in and pick up the scraps left. What we've also seen as a trend as the fields are declining is a consolidation of ownership but also smaller companies coming in trying to tweak the last bit of oil out of it.What we don't want to see is cowboys operating in the New Zealand oil and gas sector. That's why it's important we close this loophole. But I do reiterate the point—it's deeply disappointing that National when they had the chance over nine years didn't close this loophole. In fact what they did was throw tens of millions of dollars of tax breaks and subsidies to one of the wealthiest and most profitable industries in the world. They literally passed under urgency legislation to criminalise protest activity at sea. They hosted lavish conferences for oil executives. I remember when Phil Heatley spent $240000 hosting just 10 executives for four days. It is a party that literally called out the navy on Te Whānau-a-Apanui as they tried to exercise their customary rights at sea. That was where National was focused on. What you've finally seen I believe is a separation of oil and State in New Zealand which is great.Now for the submitters—there were only 11 submitters in the select committee process. It was a privilege to hear from them. Despite the technical amendments and the loopholes there were some concerns from some submitters particularly from the NGO and environmental sector around some of the language in the legislation. I'm deeply proud that the bill has been clarified to assuage those concerns. The way the legislation was originally drafted legitimately could've given people the impression that existing permit activities could occur on adjacent land. I think that's totally contrary to the principles of our Crown minerals regime totally contrary to the issues of natural justice that if someone has a permit on one farm for example they could apply the existing activities on the neighbouring farm. So what the committee has clarified is that that is not the case despite the large number of submissions regarding that point. What it simply applies to is geophysical surveys. A point that I was deeply interested in picking up was well if we're going to allow geophysical surveys on adjacent land will this include seismic surveys which have proved so controversial in Taranaki and so controversial overseas? These geophysical surveys will not apply in the adjacent land.The second area it's important to clarify for the submitters which the committee dealt with and considered was the issue of marine and coastal land. What could have been read by the initial drafting of the legislation was a legitimate concern that schedule 4 could be opened up. I remember marching—I was one of I think 50000 people that marched down Queen Street in Auckland to protect our most precious conservation lands the beautiful forests the rivers that all Kiwis love which was opened up for mining. The way the original bill in front of us could have been drafted could have opened up that prospect. What the legislation and the select committee made crystal clear though is that with new section 54A in clause 14 schedule 4 is only common marine and coastal area. We're not opening up and there's no risk of opening up this treasured conservation land; it's simply only applying to activities at sea.So we're closing up some loopholes we're making some technical amendments and there's a bit of a tune-up. What's the future? Now I don't believe mining is going to be New Zealand's future. We've seen IT skyrocket into one of our top export industries. We've seen oil revenues slashed. We've seen oil companies leave New Zealand—hardly any interest in the oil blocks that the Government's offered. What we're seeing is a country and I believe a world that's turning away from damaging and polluting fossil fuels.I was heartened to read just today that every 25 minutes in New Zealand a new solar system is installed on a Kiwi's roof. Every month a new megawatt of battery storage is added on to the New Zealand grid. Transpower our national transmission provider is forecasting 1.5 million Kiwi homes powered by the sun—the free energy. This is I think the important thing to put in context right? All fossil fuels—the coal and the oil and the gas—are simply stored sunlight that fell on earth tens or hundreds of millions of years ago in the age of the dinosaurs. Why on earth are we going through the middle man with these polluting fossil fuels when we could harness the power of the sun? In fact one hour of sunlight that hits the world—one hour—would power all of the world's economy for a year. That's on a single hour of sunlight.This is where we should be going and in fact this is where international capital markets are going. This is where the investment community is going. The Bloomberg New Energy outlook says that we're going to see $9.3 trillion spent on renewable energies in the coming year. We see internationally 100 gigawatts of solar installed last year—that's 10 times the size of New Zealand and this is just simply ramping up. I mean just across my lifetime the price of solar has dropped 99 percent and it's still going to drop by another quarter. So we don't need to keep drilling for oil and gas or mining coal; the solutions are there.There's an old Chinese proverb in fact which is: when the wind blows do you build walls or do you build windmills? This Government has set a clear direction which is a just transition away from the old-fashioned sunset polluting economy. We're setting a new direction towards the job-rich the productive the clean energy economy—a 100 percent renewable future. This is the clear direction and I'm proud to be part of a Government which is promoting clean energy over polluting fossil fuels.