Beaumont Carol: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10258. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): How very kind of you Mr Chair. Having sat through the previous bit of legislation and now the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill it does raise some very fundamental questions about why we are here in urgency. In this case clearly on the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill it is because as others have said the Minister of Energy and Resources was so determined to push through the legislation that he left it riddled with mistakes and now he has had to come to this House in urgency to fix up those mistakes.In Part 1 which we are talking about now we are looking at this concept of conditional exploration permits. Those proposed conditional exploration permits pose we believe a risk of creating a loophole in health and safety and environmental rules. These are serious matters as others have commented. New Zealanders are concerned about these sorts of issues as we should be. It seems that under conditional permits applicants no longer have to show that they have the ability to comply with health and safety capability or environment tests associated with exploratory drilling if at the time they do not intend to carry it out. So it is splitting the process in two. Others have been asking and yet we have received no response from the Minister why this change has come about. What is the need for this change? Who has lobbied the Minister? What is the purpose of this change? And what analysis of the risks has been made?For the legislation that we had earlier in the day we had a regulatory impact statement that was absolutely blacked out most of the way through. You could not actually read the advice but there was a regulatory impact statement none the less. In this case there is no regulatory impact statement. So under urgency we are being asked to push through legislation that initially we were told was merely technical changes and yet it has this provision for conditional permits which the Minister has failed to explain the purpose of. He seems unwilling to answer any questions is sitting there reading magazines and other things and is failing to follow this debate. Members on the other side of the Chamber have not taken a single call and have merely tried to close down this debate. What is going on here? Why are members opposite not taking calls? Why is the Minister not answering questions? Why is there no regulatory impact statement?There is a substantial change being proposed here in Part 1 and we have the right on behalf of the public to ask what it is about especially when it is being forced through under urgency here tonight. So I ask the Minister to actually get up on his feet and start to address the questions if for no other reason than that New Zealanders have the right to expect that legislation is put to some scrutiny in this House. And we have a whole process for doing that which includes the select committee process. The Minister in this case made mistakes after the select committee process which was part of the reason we are here now but then furthermore is trying to add in additional provisions to this amendment bill. There is no intention to take the bill through the select committee process there is no regulatory impact statement and nobody from the National Government is commenting on this bill at all. I say to people listening to this debate that surely that must raise alarm bells. What is going on here? There is the potential for hugevested interests in this area. We are talking about potentially very large sums of money involved but we are also talking about very significant health and safety and environmental risks and so it is incumbent on the Minister to address those questions.We see that taking account of the environment and growing our economy are flip sides of the same coin. We need to be doing both and the concern on this side of the Chamber is that members opposite are so focused on pushing through their mining and extractive industries at the expense of safety controls and environmental controls that we will see real risks for our environment. So again I urge the Minister to get up and answer those questions.