Mackey Moana: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — Referral to Commerce Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — Referral to Commerce Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 10 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9249. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): What a disappointment it was that the Minister of Energy and Resources himself declined leave for this bill to go back to the Commerce Committee so that the proper scrutiny could be applied to Supplementary Order Paper 205 which the Minister decided to produce on Easter Sunday a mere couple of weeks after the committee had reported back to this House. The Minister of course has then gone on to say that he has been thinking about this for a long time and that it was well flagged. My question to the Minister in the chair is why was it not flagged at all with the select committee? At no point during the process was the select committee told that this was being worked on that this was being proposed or that this was needed. Why when the Local Government and Environment Committee was considering the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill where we had broad-ranging discussions about our international obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was this never raised as an issue in terms of being compliant with our international obligations? Why was the select committee not given the ability to scrutinise this particular Supplementary Order Paper? What was the Minister afraid of that he needed to hold on to this keep it secret until the select committee had reported back to the House? Well I think we know the answer to this. It is an utter dog of a Supplementary Order Paper. There really is no other description for it.We have got this National Government which presided over the worst economic record in 51 years and which has no plan for the economy apart from oil and gas exploration and mining. That is it. Regardless of what you might think of those activities it makes sense to be doing other things as well. This is the problem the National Government has. It has put all its eggs in this one basket. If this does not fly—and so far it has not flown in the way that National thought it would. We have had Exxon Mobil pull out we have had Petrobras pull out and we have had Apache Corporation pull out. This is a high-risk area. The likelihood of finding commercial returns is very small. It is incredibly risky. In fact the Government is negligent in its duty to the people of this country by putting all its eggs in this one basket. This is all the Government has in terms of economic development. It is not doing anything else. So if this does not work then the Government is kind of stuffed and it knows that.What the Government is doing is attempting to grease the wheels as much as it can to reduce standards to reduce not even the difficulty but to make it as easy as possible for these activities to go ahead regardless of the outcomes. So the environmental impacts do not matter. Safety does not matter. Regardless of the outcomes this National Government is ripping the guts out of existing legislation and is introducing new legislation to make it as permissive as possible a regulatory environment for these activities to go ahead. We have only to look in our own country at what happened in terms of Pike River overseas in terms of the Gulf of Mexico disaster and our own ability to clean up after theRena disaster. It was not because of a mining activity but oil in the water is oil in the water and no matter where it comes from we need to be able to deal with that. You have only to look at those risks to realise that what we need is robust effective legislation. What we need is legislation that protects the environment and ensures as much as we can that where this activity goes ahead it is done safely and it is done to the absolute highest standards.Instead what we have in the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill is the opposite. The Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 205 which is about stopping people from protesting against oil and gas exploration in the exclusive economic zone is an absolute outrage of a Supplementary Order Paper. If it was not then the Minister would not have announced it on Easter Sunday and he would have sent it to the select committee. His own behaviour shows us that this is not something that he wanted to be scrutinised on. He has consistently refused to front up to media to do interviews on it to talk about it—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: He’s on the TV all the time. Every time you switch it on he’s there. What are you talking about?MOANA MACKEY: Jonathan Coleman is jealous that apparently Simon Bridges is getting too much TV time. Unfortunately Mr Coleman Mr Bridges is not talking about the issue of Supplementary Order Paper 205 which is what people wanted to talk to him about.Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Who’s interested in that for God’s sake?MOANA MACKEY: Who is interested in that? How about the 10000 people who have signed up in support of the Greenpeace legal opinion in 24 hours?Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: The sad lefties.MOANA MACKEY: Mr Coleman calls them the sad lefties. People who want to protect the right to protest are sad lefties. They are probably knuckleheads as well. Well that shows the arrogance of this National-led Government. I see the Attorney-General hovering there ready to jump to his feet no doubt in some defence of Minister Bridges. But the reality is that when you look at the legal minds who have said that this is an outrage it is clear—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The honourable Moana Mackey.MOANA MACKEY: Thank you—a very good decision Mr Chair. When you look at the legal opinion that Greenpeace produced it is clear that at the very least this Supplementary Order Paper needs to go back to the select committee so it can have proper scrutiny. If this was about safety—the Minister says it is about two things. It is about safety and it is about meeting our international obligations.Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Yep.MOANA MACKEY: Well if that was the case Mr Coleman why would we not extend the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act which cover this activity in our territorial waters into the exclusive economic zone? Then it would cover all vessels and all dangerous and illegal behaviour for any reason. Oh now he is reading something. He is pretending to read. I am sorry. I will not interrupt you. I will not interrupt you while you are pretending to read Mr Coleman.But the reality is that this applies only to protest vessels and it applies only to protest vessels that are protesting against oil and gas exploration. Yesterday when the Minister was doorstopped by the media he said as much. “I don’t know why they’re complaining that this is a breach of people’s rights because it is only protesting against oil and gas exploration that we are stopping. The anti-whaling stuff can go ahead. The antinuclear stuff can go ahead.” Well actually that is the problem. If this is about safety and if this is about bridging a gap in our international obligations—apparently the Minister thinks that we are not compliant with the convention. Well actually the convention talks only about installations. It does not talk about vessels at all. The convention is also very very strong on the rights of navigation. So what the Minister is doing here with his 500-metre zones where these boats cannot go in is actually contrary to the convention. But in reality the National Government really does not care about the convention otherwise it would not have passed the exclusive economic zone legislation. We know that that is just a smokescreen.But here is a very simple question Minister. If this is about safety and our international obligations why would we not extend the regime that exists in our territorial waters into the exclusive economic zone and cover every vessel and every incidence of dangerous or reckless behaviour? That absolutely should be addressed. Why are we targeting only one group of vessels? Silence—there is absolute silence. The reason we are targeting only one particular group of vessels is that this is all about sending a very strong message to the oil and gas industry that this Government is prepared to do anything for investment. We have legislation for sale once again. The Minister said that yes he had been lobbied about this and he had met with companies that had complained to him about what had happened around Petrobras on the East Coast.I tell you what. No one from the Government ever fronted up on the East Coast to the public meetings or to the community forums. One was run by the chamber of commerce—hardly a left-wing or green organisation—and no one from Government not even our local MP would turn up to those meetings. There have been plenty of protests onshore. Minister Bridges said we should go and protest at Petrobras’ headquarters. Well they are in Brazil so it is a little bit difficult. There have been protests. There have been numerous attempts to get the Government to listen and the arrogance of this National-led Government has meant that not a single Minister or MP has fronted up to those community forums. So then yes protesters have taken their protests to the seas to try to get the Government’s attention and to tell the Government that they are concerned that the regulatory regime under which these activities are going to be operating is not sufficient to protect our marine environment to protect our local economies—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Why don’t they just send an email?MOANA MACKEY: Minister Coleman says they should just send an email. Well they did actually. They have been sending hundreds and hundreds of emails telling people they are concerned about this but the phone is off the hook with this National-led Government because this is all they have. This is it. All the eggs are in this basket.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.MOANA MACKEY: As I was saying before the dinner break this is bad legislation made worse by a very bad Supplementary Order Paper in the name of the Minister of Energy and Resources Simon Bridges. Why Labour objects to this legislation—we did welcome the approaches that were made to us by the previous Minister of Energy and Resources Phil Heatley to try to see whether we could find some common ground on this because we would like to be able to get as much certainty as possible but we were unable to for a number of reasons. The main ones being that the shared decision-making power between the Minister of Energy and Resources and the Minister of Conservation is we believe entirely inappropriate.Once again as I was saying before the dinner break the National Government has no other plan—other than oil and gas exploration and mining. That is it. That is the sum total of its economic development plan and if it does not work it has nothing else. So this is not about not liking oil and gas exploration or not liking mining; this is about saying that we need to be doing other things as well in case this does not pan out. As I said we have had Exxon Mobil Corporation leave we have had Petrobras leave and we have had Apache Corporation leave. This is not an area where we are certain that firstly they are going to find anything or secondly that what they find is going to be in commercial amounts that are able to be exploited. So a sensible Government even if it was as keen on oil and gas and mineral exploration—