Hughes Gareth: Antarctica (Environmental Protection: Liability Annex) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Antarctica (Environmental Protection: Liability Annex) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7087. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Speaker.Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support the Antarctica (Environmental Protection: Liability Annex) Amendment Bill. Antarctica is a special pristine place. The health of the world can be measured in the ice kilometres thick of Antarctica. It is a place that New Zealand has a special relationship to both historically and environmentally and as a pioneer of protecting it internationally.Unlike some of the members who have touched on the debate who have been privileged enough to travel to Antarctica I have not been fortunate enough to be down there but I have seen some of the amazing cinematography in the filmThe Last Ocean. This is a powerful film which I urge all members of Parliament to see by an esteemed and now award-winning New Zealand film-maker who uses the film to argue quite coherently quite logically and quite passionately for protection of a region that is of special significance to New Zealand which is the Ross Sea. New Zealand unfortunately has pioneered and is leading the exploitation of the dangerous and I believe unscientifically based current toothfish fishery down there. I guess a special point for you Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch is that I am disappointed that I have not been able to show this film to members of Parliament despite repeated requests. Unfortunately the Green Party along with New Zealand First and the Labour Party has not been able to screen this film. Despite my challenge to numerous National members to join us so that we can show this film I hope you Mr Assistant Speaker can allow this special film which is a real New Zealand art work to be shown. I think that if more of us had been able to go down there or had seen this film we would know the importance and the challenge that we have facing us.Antarctica quite plainly is under threat. It is not just climate change which we have heard about today.Shane Ardern: Is the member going down in a sailboat?GARETH HUGHES: I will respond to the interjection: I would love to go down in a sailboat. I would go down tomorrow if you would give me a berth. I would love to go down and I think that every Kiwi should get the chance. But this is one of the problems. Now we have tens of thousands of people going down to Antarctica every year. It is not just the climate change it is not just the fishing boats; it is those tens of thousands of tourists. What we have seen are numerous concerning incidents.Just looking through some of the history what we have seen in 2008 is theMV Ushuaia running aground. We have seen theOcean Nova grounded. We have seen in the last couple of years theJung Woo 2 theSparta and tragically theNo. 1 In Sung which lost 22 lives down there. We have seen the Japanese whaling ship theNisshin Maru explode and catch fire which resulted in the loss of life. We have seen theArgos Georgiadrifting for 15 days when it lost power. We have seen a litany of accidents happening down there many of them avoidable so it is good that we are debating this legislation which deals with some of those real growing threats facing Antarctica and the oceans around it.So what this bill does is implement annex VI to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. This annex was adopted in 2005. It establishes the liability regime. It has a financial limit. It requires New Zealand operators that give rise to or discover an emergency to notify the New Zealand Government and it provides penalties and offences for failing to take prompt and effective action. We would have preferred something stronger. This is not a criticism of the previous negotiators who we believe did do a good job but what we do believe is that we actually do need acomprehensive liability regime. What we have seen over the course of theRena was that New Zealand was not prepared. Our liability regime was capped under the Resource Management Act to $600000. What we know is that theRenahas cost New Zealand taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. It is a good example of where we need to have legislative forethought to prepare for liability when we know accidents will happen.I would like to touch on our special relationship with Antarctica. We obviously were the jumping-off spot for many of the discoverers. We were an original signatory back in 1959 and it is important that we do pass this legislation because our turning this bill into an Act does help turn this annex into reality when 28 Antarctic Treaty nations all do likewise. So what we are passing today is the missing piece of the environmental Antarctica protocol which was negotiated in 1991 and came into effect in 1998 and it is good that New Zealand is playing its role in protecting the Antarctic continent.We share Labour’s concerns about the slow response by the Government benches as the bill has been on the Order Paper for an awfully long time. But I guess when you are the Minister of Conservation Kate Wilkinson you are currently sitting on what is the second-longest bill ever to languish in a select committee—the Marine Reserves Bill which is coming up to I think its decade anniversary at a select committee—and I guess if the Marine Reserves Bill is your benchmark she is not doing too badly with this one. I guess the question the Government benches have not answered is why it has languished so long. I do not agree with Labour; I do not think it is just poor management. I think poor management of the House does play a role but I think what we have seen in this current term of the Government is the Government take a very decidedly anti-environmental tack. It has come down very hard. We have seen it walk out of the Kyoto Protocol. We have seen it attack scientists personally. We have seen it wax lyrical about the “clean green” brand likening it to McDonald’s. If there is anything so fatty and sugar-coated and not what it makes out it should be such as a McDonald’s burger I think we are likening it to what the National Party’s vision of the “clean green” brand is.What we have seen is a Minister who is prepared to act as an accessory to the extinction of theMāui’s dolphin so although John Hayes talks about our “clean green” brand we are running it through the dirt. We are seeing the Government take a decidedly anti-environmental turn. Those members are acting as if they were environmental vandals.So we are happy that we are finally getting progress on it. We urge progress likewise on the Marine Reserves Bill. But what we think we need to do is have a discussion now about how we do make this regime more comprehensive. Just lastly I welcome the call by the Labour benches that we should have a cross-party agreement when it comes to the protection of the Ross Sea. It was embarrassing for New Zealand to walk out of the negotiations with the United States Government on protecting the Ross Sea. It was embarrassing that we were seen to be there at the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources negotiations protecting our own narrow small vested fishing interests. We are talking about 0.17 percent of our fishing and our Government was prepared to run that “clean green” brand through the mud but I guess the Labour member Shane Jones knows all about that.It would be good to have cross-party support for protecting the Ross Sea. I think we have a special opportunity now that the Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources has agreed to a second negotiating period next year. This is a real opportunity for New Zealand to now show some leadership. I would love to see the Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully do some active lobbying around theworld. We do have an opportunity. I think the world does want to see greater environmental protection in the marine reserves down there. I believe we can see it happen.So all in all we welcome voting for this bill. We think that extended hours is a good use of the House’s time. Perhaps this could have been adopted earlier. We would like to go a bit stronger and we would open that discussion in the future but it is good to be passing this legislation today. Kia ora.