Chen NaisiNAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker and I too join with my deputy chairperson Glen Bennett in thanking the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee for the hard work that we've put in especially the officials that have worked on this bill. I note similarly to my deputy chair that the submissions were extensive the submissions were really in depth and the submissions had a lot of different views to show to us. I walked away from that process with this overwhelming impression that those who submitted to our select committee care deeply for our environment and that is an impression that will forever be ingrained in me. The amount of people individuals—young people especially; I remember this one young female individual who talked about the fact that New Zealand needs to have a regulatory system that looks after the overall wellbeing of our environment. Through this bill this is another part of making sure that we have the right regulations and a suite of legislation in place to make sure we balance that. I just wanted to address some of the comments that the ACT Party member Simon Court made about economic wellbeing coming from our minerals or from our mining sector. I think that is one very very short-sighted and singular vision of how we need to develop our economy. New Zealand trades on our image of being clean and green. 100% Pure New Zealand" is the slogan of this country. When we go out there on to the global stage and we promote our products we promote tourism to New Zealand. If we don't keep going with decarbonising our future if we don't keep producing the high quality products of being a low-carbon economy low-emissions economy we are going to lose our advantage that we have on the world stage. When I visited China with the Prime Minister earlier on last month we knew that New Zealand's products had an edge in that market because we had the reputation that our products were produced in an environment that was clean and green—that we had high standards of regulating our economy and the way that we produce our goods. So this is a bill that has a lot of foresight into what kind of economy we want to be in the future—how New Zealand has a comparative advantage on the world stage. This is one step in that direction. I'm also really proud to bring iwi and hapū engagement into this bill as well making sure that there is a little bit more clarity when we bring in the wisdom and the knowledge that our mana whenua has of our land when they engage with us in that process and give us the best of their knowledge in this entire process as well. The last part of this bill which I think seldom got acknowledged was also the decommissioning part—tidying up the last bit of that part. We know now that the Crown had to foot the bill for the decommissioning of the last failure of the private company who just walked out the door with actually no obligation; it was the taxpayers who had to front up with that bill despite a private company making all of the profit in that process. So we know that this is a real-life example where we as Government need to step up and make sure that if you're going to make money from New Zealand from our precious minerals and our precious natural environment you need to be held accountable for that responsibility back to New Zealand taxpayers to make sure that there are stringent laws and regulations on how we assess and grant permits. Yes this is also another bill that we've already passed into the House. But this bill—this amendment to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act in 2022—will just tidy up and close all of the loopholes in that respect as well. So this is a great bill and I commend it to the House."