Luxton JoJO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I'm really pleased to stand here and take a call on the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill at its second reading. I mean that. It's nice to stand here and take a call because I feel like I've been sitting in this House for several days and we've never quite got to it. So it's nice to be here.I want first of all to thank the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. Obviously I was a part of that select committee but I didn't come on to that select committee until nearer the end of this process. I have to say that it's a really collegial select committee and I think that's really good because it ensures that we work well together and we look at legislation quite thoroughly and that helps it to come back to the House in the state that you see it today. We've examined this piece of legislation and as has been said before we've agreed unanimously on this piece of legislation but we've added some amendments to it through the select committee process. I also want to thank Jonathan Young for his great chairmanship. He's very good at seeing us have our say and as I said it's really collegial.I want to thank the submitters. We've heard today that there were only 11 which is a small number but as Jonathan Young mentioned in his contribution to the second reading there are only a small number of participants that work within this industry. We appreciated the views that they expressed as the members have mentioned. Some of the things that they brought up we considered really carefully and as a result of some of those things they have been added into the piece of legislation. I think that's the beauty of our Parliament and democracy: that people can come and submit to these select committees and we do consider what they say very carefully and they actually can make changes to legislation.I just want to move on to the bill itself. It's not a large piece of legislation; someone referred to it before as tidying up" and that is what it does. It's not large but it's actually an important bill and it's quite technical. It's quite tricky to get your head around. It addresses regulatory duplication gaps errors and inconsistencies with the current Act. One of the important aspects of this piece of legislation is that it will provide clarity for the industry and regulators around permitting confusion. We know that if we have confusion within this industry it actually could be quite catastrophic. So it's really important that everyone has clarity around these rules. We know that the nature of our petroleum industry is changing and we need to ensure that our legislation reflects the changes that we are seeing.When we think about the changes that are happening within this industry it's really important that we really keep the changes in mind because there are risks that come with change. When we're managing change it does need to be I believe in this particular industry managed by the Crown through retaining oversight of the acquisition and divestment activity occurring within this sector. The current legislation says that where you have a change in control of a permit operator which is someone who operates the day-to-day management of a permit—if it changes from one permit participant to another—at the moment that can happen without any oversight but this new piece of legislation will ensure that the Minister or a delegated authority must give consent to someone to become an operator.This is really important and if you want to become an operator there are certain criteria that you have to meet as well. You must ensure that you are financially viable because there'd be nothing worse than being in charge of the clean-up or the decommissioning of a mine at the end of its life and going broke. Therefore the work is not going to happen—well it will happen but it'll be at someone else's expense. So we need to ensure that people have the financial stability when taking on these particular roles.Another thing about this that I want to bring up is that it gives certainty to the Minister and the public of New Zealand because as we know this type of industry is watched very closely by the public. It will help ensure that the public can see that the industry is really trying hard and is adhering to strict guidelines to ensure that it is sticking to the rules that it has agreed to. Thank you."