Street Maryan: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10234. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Thank you very much Mr Speaker and thank you for calling for order. It is obvious that when the party opposite gives the women the night off those members do not control themselves quite as well as they usually do.Andrew Little: Bring back Jackie Blue.Hon MARYAN STREET: Bring back Maggie Barry! Rising to speak to the second reading just a very few minutes after I have spoken to the first reading of this amendment Act amendment bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill I want to pick up on a few comments that have been made.Although it was absolutely irrelevant to the debate in hand I think it is only fair because the previous speaker Jonathan Young introduced it to give some rebuttal. Jonathan Young referred to a piece of validating legislation that he thought would cause us to cringe but can I just say that we paid back that money not like the National Party which did not pay its GST on its expenditure. So let us just be clear about who is the greater sinner in this competition. Let us put the record straight. Labour paid the money back—Labour paid the money back—and the GST on the National Party’s bill in that election still has not been paid to my knowledge. It forgot to calculate it and then it did not cough up when it was told it should. However that is the end of that irrelevant interjection from Jonathan Young as far as I am concerned.The only reason the Government is pushing through this amendment to an amendment to an Act is that it has very little in its tool box with which to energise—and I use the word advisedly—this economy. If it is going to pick up this economy it has three strategies only. One is pokies. We can get money from pokies says Mr Key and that will be a fillip to the economy. Secondly it can allow any multinational that wishes to any multinational that is prepared to engage in extractive industry in this country and gives us a sideways glance to come into this country and to take advantage of whatever laws have been sold most recently for the privilege of them to do so. The third strategy the Government has of course is asset sales. It is pretty impoverished when it comes to a plan to lift this economy: asset sales pokie machines and multinationals for whom we will prostitute our legislation at every turn according to John Key because a deal is a deal is a deal.And so we have this tawdry little amendment bill coming in to amend an amendment Act which was passed only a few weeks ago which will facilitate all and any extractive industry multinational to come in and take as much as they can—in the course of which Jonathan Young assures us there will be lots of jobs created. Well the jobs are going to be created on the basis of the risk to the environment that this shabbypiece of legislation represents; or at the risk of infringing international law which this shabby little bill also represents; or at the risk of watering down health and safety standards so there is no guarantee for workers who engage in the extractive activities and particularly the ones that go on beforehand—surveying activities seismic surveying which goes on prior to any exploration.This legislation that I mention risks breaching international law and that is unacceptable. The Minister of Energy and Resources has for much of this debate tonight been in deep in conversation with the Hon Tim Groser who of course is a great expert in international law especially as it relates to trade. However he is not such an expert I think in other international law. When the amendment bill was first introduced a legal opinion provided by the international environmental lawyer Duncan Currie raised serious concerns about consistency with New Zealand’s international obligations and with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.What we had in that process apart from the fact that any other or contradictory legal opinion is never taken into account by this Government was again the Minister playing ducks and drakes with the process. That is a kind way of putting it because what he was doing was basically covering his own incompetence. He did not mention the proposed changes that would violate international law—that is the protesting ban—until the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill came into the House during the Committee stage. So this big abandonment of civil liberties and the right to protest peacefully was taken away by a Supplementary Order Paper introduced by the Minister late in the piece.Either the Minister does not know the rules or he is deliberately flouting them because now we have another process that says that this piece of legislation to amend the amendment Act has to go through under urgency and has to proceed in double quick time. That is evidenced by the shortness of the speeches that the National Party members opposite have been instructed to give.The point about extending the ban to protest is the point about overreaching our jurisdiction—that suddenly we seem to be able to pass laws that cover not only our economic zone but an additional 1.7 million square kilometres. The Minister says that we are quite wrong about the denial of human rights. Well I would like to say once more to the Minister that if out in the waters over the continental shelf—which I think this Minister mistakenly thinks we can legislate about; however I will leave that one there for now—there is a standoff between a drilling ship and a protest ship and the protest ship stops at the requisite 500 metres from the drilling rig and the exploratory or drilling vehicle ship moves towards the protest ship then who is to be at fault? Who is infringing the 500 metres? Will they simply say: “The protest ship clearly is not staying 500 metres away from us and we are going to keep advancing until we drive them back on to the shore.”? Who then is the culprit and who infringes the 500 metres Mr Bridges?This is sloppy legislation. This will have to be corrected again when the Government wakes up and realises that there are people who know about international maritime law even though our Minister does not. This will have to be amended again. So the amendment bill to the amendment Act will have to be amended further. Thank you.