Sage Eugenie: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10279. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Colleagues have suggested a number of other titles for the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I think it should be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act (Ignore International Conventions particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) Bill”.Here is a very interesting parallel with another piece of legislation that the House has passed the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act. On that bill we had a similar debate about insufficient account being taken of our responsibilities under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and there it was about preserving and protecting the marine environment. Certainly there are a number of matters in the exclusive economic zone Act that decision makers such as the Environmental Protection Authority have to take into account and they include the protection of biological diversity but that has got to be balanced off against economic benefits to New Zealand. Of course these two pieces of legislation are parallel because the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill which we are debating today is all about the allocation of block offers and space whereas the exclusive economic zone Act is all about the applications for marine consents to actually do the extraction.It is interesting that in both of them we have had this major issue with the Government failing to take account of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Here in this bill that is because of clause 14 the extension of the no-protest clause which the Minister introduced with his late Supplementary Order Paper into the principal Act. It is interesting that the Australian legislation has no equivalent. Certainly there is a 500-metre safety zone around an oil installation—a well—but there is no provision of any safety zone around a vessel and there is a very good reason for that which is that the convention does not allow for safety zones around vessels. That is in complete contrast to the provisions around oil rigs where those are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of States. But as Duncan Currie noted in his opinion on the Supplementary Order Paper to the principal Act if you have safety zones around vessels that creates very confusing zones of coastal State jurisdiction around foreign-flag vessels.So this Government in this bill is overriding the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and it shows the contempt with which the Government views international conventions. It is potentially passing legislation that it has no jurisdiction to do yet this bill is being pushed through the House and we have not had the benefit of the Law Society or of other submitters who could provide their informed opinion on the impacts of the bill.So I think the bill should be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Take No Notice of the International Conventions like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) Amendment Bill”. That is quite a distressing step because it is showing that New Zealand is risking being a pariah on the international stage that the Government thinks it can pass legislation that applies on the high seas and that it thinks it can ignore conventions that have been carefully negotiated taking into account all of the interests of the parties. And why? To suppress the right to protest. That is despite the International Maritime Organization and others and a whole raft of international treaties recognising the right to freedom of association the right to protest at sea and despite the tradition that we have in this country of taking to sea to express our wish to protect our oceans against the dumping of waste against drift-netting and againstnuclear testing. This bill is overriding that by extending the provisions in the principal Act to make it an offence to be within 500 metres of an oil exploration vessel and to impose the potentially quite stiff penalties of imprisonment and very severe fines.Because it goes in breach of international law this bill is a bad bill. It is undermining New Zealand’s reputation as well as our protection of our oceans.