Lees-Galloway Iain: Maritime Transport Amendment Bill Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Maritime Transport Amendment Bill Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 15 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13866. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I rise to speak to these two bills the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill and the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill that previously made up the Marine Legislation Bill. Labour wants to make it clear that although we support the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill which has come from what was originally Part 1 of the Marine Legislation Bill we are opposed to the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill which falls out of Part 2 of the original bill. My colleague Moana Mackey has gone into considerable detail about why Labour is opposing the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill so I aim to discuss some of the matters involved in the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill.The purpose of the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill is essentially to implement a number of international treaties that really the Government has taken an awfully long time to sign up to. This goes all the way back to 2008 prior to the 2008 election. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee during that term of Parliament recommended to the Government that it implement the various conventions that this bill implements. The select committee took its time to consider the implications of the International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage and the changes to the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims. All the hard work had really been done by that select committee. It made its proposals to the Government and the then Labour Government was ready to accept those proposals and implement them in legislation.We then had an election the Government changed and it fell to the National Party to carry on the work that had already been carried out.Carol Beaumont: Five long years.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Sadly the National Government failed to implement the recommendations of the select committee and sat on this legislation for not quite 5 long years but long enough in fact for theRena disaster to occur before this legislation was implemented. Had the Government been up to the task had the Government been on to it and had it been prepared to prioritise the safety of our waters around our shoreline—it required nothing more than to follow up on work previously done—then New Zealand the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand taxpayers would not have been liable for the millions of dollars of costs associated with theRena disaster. In fact the costs to the Crown were over $50 million.Carol Beaumont: How much?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: $50 million. Had this legislation been implemented before theRena disaster then the Crown would have been liable to pay around about $11.3 million. That is still a significant sum but it is considerably less than the $50 million that it has cost us. That cost was absolutely avoidable. It was nothing more than negligence and frankly laziness on the part of the Government that meant that this legislation was not implemented in time. After months of negotiation the Crown was actually able to get a reduction in those costs. They did end up being less than $50 million. But again the real cost that the Government should have borne was significantly less.It is good news that this legislation is being passed but a bit behind the time. But we know that in the future should another disaster like theRena occur—and of course we hope that it will not and we hope that the Government has actually taken the steps tohelp ensure that a disaster like theRena is not able to occur again or is less likely to occur again—then taxpayers will not have to carry the burden. It will fall where it ought to which is with the shipping company that owned the vessel—a foreign company. Once again it is not unusual for this Government to be doing things that take the burden of cost off large foreign multinationals and place it on the New Zealand taxpayer. I am not for a second saying that it did it deliberately this time. There are plenty of other examples where it did do it deliberately but it was not deliberate this time. It was just basically laziness and negligence on behalf of the Government.This bill actually does something else that is incredibly positive. It sets the blood-alcohol limit for seafarers in charge of a marine-going vessel at 0.05. Why does it do that? Well again this is about signing up to international conventions. This is about following international best practice. I want to congratulate the Government on promoting legislation that sets a blood-alcohol limit of 0.05 because we know that that is the medical definition of intoxication. Once somebody has a blood-alcohol level of 0.05 or higher they are not capable of good decision-making they are not capable of operating a marine-going vessel or any form of machinery and they are not capable of operating a vehicle on the road.It would be an excellent thing for New Zealand to adopt a 0.05 limit not just for seafarers but also for drivers on the road because we know that drink-driving is one of the key causes of serious road crashes in New Zealand. The evidence is incredibly strong. It does not matter what piece of evidence you look at the evidence supports what this bill does which is to reduce the alcohol limit for seafarers from 0.08 down to 0.05. If we look at the number of incidents that making this change will impact it is around about 20 incidents a year. So it is helpful but it pales in comparison with the impact that we could have if we applied the 0.05 limit included in this bill across a range of other activities including drink-driving. Around a couple of hundred people die on the road every year. That itself is strong evidence of why we should support the 0.05 limit in this bill. A limit of 0.08 for adults allows seafarers drivers or anybody else for that matter to have around about six standard drinks in an hour. In fact I saw a report just last night where someone consumed eight beers in around about an hour and a half and they were still below the level of 0.08. I think we would all agree that nobody should be in charge of a marine vessel when they have consumed eight beers. That is why we are so much in support of this initiative to reduce the limit.The other thing for seafarers is—because I know that seafarers have downtime on the ship; there is not necessarily a lot to do and heading to the bar is one of the favoured activities—because they know they are coming on to watch shortly they aim to get to about 0.079 and to come in just under the limit. Once they get over 0.05 they will find it very difficult to judge exactly how intoxicated they are. Often seafarers like drivers will find that they are actually well over the limit because they have lost their ability to judge how intoxicated they are. Lowering the limit for seafarers will ensure not only that we eliminate those seafarers who are between 0.05 and 0.08 but also that we reduce the number of seafarers who are extremely intoxicated when they are in charge of a marine vessel. So we on this side of the House congratulate the Government on promoting legislation that does that. We believe that 0.05 is the correct limit for anybody who is operating a vehicle or machinery that has the potential to cause harm to themselves or to other people should their intoxication end up causing an incident of any kind.So with that I just want to reiterate that Labour is in support of the changes to the maritime transport legislation but we will oppose the changes to the exclusive economic zone legislation.