Sage Eugenie: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4435. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am pleased to take a short call on the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. The Green Party opposed this bill at its first reading because it appeared to be another example of the Government amending the law to provide preferential treatment to industry to benefit corporate interests and in this particular case to benefit Shell Todd Oil Services so it could continue to operate the Māui gasfield. If the company did not have a new marine consent by 27 June then it would have be in breach of the principal exclusive economic zone Act and it would have to stop operating.With the benefit of submissions and advice from officials at the select committee and with the changes that Opposition members encouraged the Government members to support we will now be supporting this bill. The advice was quite helpful. It turned out that Shell Todd Oil Services had actually notified the Environmental Protection Authorityin June last year of its intention to lodge a marine consent application. It provided a draft impact assessment in September and actually lodged the application in November.The Green Party wants a robust process for the Environmental Protection Authority to consider these applications so their impacts can be thoroughly investigated assessed and considered. The changes that the select committee is making to the bill provide for that. The bill will not allow any existing operator to continue to operate unless it applies at least 9 months before its existing permit or privilege under the Crown Minerals Act expires and it files a complete application for a marine consent with the Environmental Protection Authority. This change ensures that in the 9-month period the full decision process can be gone through by the authority. It does not allow enough time for appeals to be considered but it is a significant improvement on the bill as introduced. We thank submitters for drawing their concerns to the committee’s attention and we thank officials for their work.Although the Environmental Protection Authority has recently granted consent to Shell Todd Oil Services the next of the existing operators that would be likely to use this provision in the Act is Tūī. Its existing permit and privileges expire in November 2025. We hope it will getits head around the processes well before then.One of the things that was really disappointing was that Shell Todd Oil Services did not make a submission. It did not come to the select committee and we were not able to question it about the extent to which the Māui gas supply would be disrupted if the bill did not go through. We certainly do not want Kiwis going without gas but now that Shell Todd Oil Servicesis a swing producer for that field it is no longer the dominant producer of gas. So potentially a temporary stop in production could be met by supply from other operators. But we did not get the chance to ask it that.One of our major concerns in the whole marine space is that the same Minister who is responsible for this bill has been talking repeatedly about introducing new marine reserves legislation but that is yet to come to this House. This bill can be introduced and put through the parliamentary process fairly quickly yet we have been waiting over a decade for new marine reserves legislation. The Māui A and B platforms are 33 and 38 kilometres offshore respectively. We do not have any deep-sea marine reserves. We have got a Government that is encouraging more exploitation of oil and gas even though there is strong scientific evidence that we cannot burn up to 50 percent of our existing reserves without frying the climate. We need to have more marine protection rather than an encouragement of more oil extraction. This Government needs to bring a marine reserves bill to the House so we can have some deep-sea marine protection and not just accommodate the oil and gas industry. Thank you.