Wagner Nicky: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wagner Nicky: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 September 2011. Volume:675;Page:21218. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 I rise to support the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill at its first reading. It is very appropriate that in this week Conservation Week we debate this bill’s first reading. It should have been done under Labour. All New Zealanders are keen to protect and conserve our natural environment. We understand that our natural resources are precious and that they offer us opportunities but also that they impose responsibilities. We Bluegreens in the National Party believe that the economy and the environment can and must go hand in hand. 
It was interesting to hear Labour saying that the continental shelf designation happened only in 2008 and that nothing could have been done before then. That is absolute nonsense. Labour certainly could have introduced legislation on the exclusive economic zone and just added the information about the continental shelf later. More drilling was done under Labour in 2005 2006 and 2007 than has been done in the last 3 years. 
We have robust legislation in the form of the Resource Management Act to care for our environment on land but that legislation covers only 12 miles out into the ocean. The exclusive economic zone—the area of sea seabed and subsoil—goes from that 12-mile limit to 200 nautical miles offshore where New Zealand has jurisdiction. As we have said it even extends to some places beyond those 200 nautical miles because of the continental shelf but that would not have stopped legislation being passed while Labour was in power. 
New Zealand has one of the biggest exclusive economic zones in the world. It is an area of ocean that is 20 times the size of our land mass and up until now there has been no legislation to protect it. We are introducing this bill because it is our responsibility to manage this huge area well. This much-needed legislation will fill a gap and will give effect to New Zealand’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to manage and protect the natural resources of this area. 
The new law will work in tandem with existing laws to manage the exclusive economic zone and the environmental effects of activities like petroleum exploration and mining. We do not want to see in New Zealand the sort of environmental disaster that was seen in the Gulf of Mexico. I make the point that one of the reasons that this bill is being introduced later in our term is that after that disaster we commissioned a review to make sure that we got it right and learnt from what had happened before. 
This bill sets up a general framework for our regulatory system and will make the Environmental Protection Authority responsible for consenting monitoring and enforcing activities within the exclusive economic zone. It will set up a consenting regime to regulate activities and it will require public notification and consultation on regulations and consents. All consents will require an environmental impact assessment and there will be a responsibility on consent holders to avoid remedy or mitigate any adverse environmental effects. The enforcement of penalties will be aligned with the Resource Management Act. 
This is good legislation. We have developed it responsibly. It has taken a little longer than we had hoped because of additional research and because of that interest in what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. But we have worked on it steadily and responsibly. We have heard from iwi that it is too fast. We are now hearing from Labour that it is too slow. I think it is probably in the right time. New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone needs to be managed well and this legislation will set the framework to do just that. It will give us world-best environmental practice. I commend this bill to the House.