Mackey Moana: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10286. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Well the National Party sent the Hon Dr Nick Smith down to do the spin because the incompetent Minister of Energy and Resources Simon Bridges—who passed the original bill into law a mere 4 weeks ago and we are already back having to fix it—is such an embarrassment to the National Party that it has sent down its once-proud Bluegreen champion to set the spin for Simon Bridges and for the Government. Dr Nick Smith should hang his head in shame because he has been shown as the charlatan that he is. Bluegreen—what a joke. This bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill is absolutely appalling for the environment. Dr Nick Smith said that it sends a message to industry that this is a “supportive regime”. Well that is the understatement of the year. It is more than supportive; it is a developer’s charter. Actually what it is is a litigator’s dream. That is the reality because it is so full of errors it is so full of loopholes that it leaves the Minister wide open to judicial review. So although the Government wants this to be a developer’s charter in fact I suspect that it is going to find that it is somewhat of a false economy in that regard.There has been much mention of the Taranaki District throughout this debate and certainly the oil and gas industry has been very very good for that district. But do you know what? It is doing just fine under the existing regime. Taranaki did not require complete destruction of laws protecting our environment for it to do as well as it has done. So why do we require this legislation and previous legislation that completely undermines the protection of our environment unless it is because we want to start carrying out activities that previously would not have been allowed because they are too risky they are too dangerous and they do provide too much of a risk to the environment? That is why we are doing it. It is because the Government has no plan B. This is it. This pokies and assets sales—that is it. So if this does not deliver the benefits promised then the Government is kind of screwed. That is why it is deciding that it would rather screw the environment and that is an absolute shame.The incompetence of Minister Simon Bridges is incredible. Not only are we back having to pass an amendment bill weeks after we passed the original amendment bill before that bill has even come into force but he sat there in the chair during theCommittee stage like a dried arrangement and did not take a single call to answer very very serious questions that the Opposition was putting to him. I do not know whether he does not know the answers whether he is just too arrogant to think that he should have to give answers on his quarter-of-a-million-dollar salary or whether actually he has no answer. I suspect that it is the latter—that actually he has no adequate answers to the questions that we were putting because this is a seriously flawed piece of legislation.What this bill does is it extends the protest ban that was introduced by amendment late in the piece—it did not go to a select committee in the original amendment bill—to ban protesting against deep-sea oil drilling in our exclusive economic zone. The Minister said at the time that it was about safety. Maybe the Hon Dr Nick Smith can answer this. If it is about safety then why is every vessel that engages in dangerous and reckless behaviour not covered by it? Why is it only protest vessels and only protest vessels that are protesting against deep-sea oil drilling? Dr Smith? Yes exactly—exactly. Because if that is what it is about we could be here in urgency passing a bill that extends the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act which cover dangerous and reckless behaviour by vessels in our territorial waters into the exclusive economic zone. Why did we not do that? That would have covered everyone. That would have meant that no matter who you are no matter what reason you are doing it for if you behave in a dangerous way that puts lives at risk you will be held accountable. Well under this Government’s law they are not. In the exclusive economic zone you can threaten people’s lives and it is legal. An activity that would be illegal in our territorial waters is legal in our exclusive economic zone because the Government cares about dangerous and reckless behaviour only if it is opposing deep-sea oil drilling. How completely completely repugnant is that? Why are we not passing a law that covers everyone? I would like one National Party member to actually answer that question. This is nothing more—nothing more—than an anti-democratic Draconian piece of legislation that we should all be ashamed of.What it does this amendment bill is it extends that ban out into the continental shelf into the waters above the continental shelf and for the first time right up to the beaches. So protest activity is banned from the beaches out into the high seas. The problem that we have and the second question I would like an answer to—and maybe the Hon Dr Nick Smith can answer this one—is that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade tells us and the United Nations convention on the continental shelf tells us that we do not have the right to pass legislation on the water column above the continental shelf. We have the right to exploit minerals in the continental shelf we can drill into it and we can tunnel into it but in the water we have no jurisdiction. The example the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade gives is shipping activity. It says that New Zealand has no right to pass laws regulating shipping activity in the water above the continental shelf. So here is my question. How is it then that we have the right to regulate shipping activity that is protesting in the water above the continental shelf? We do not. It is humiliating that the Government is sitting here passing law that we have no right to pass. You might as well pass a law on Mars because you do not have jurisdiction there either.So here we are putting the Government at risk because if it decides under this law it is passing which we actually have no right to pass that it is going to take criminal action against a vessel that is operating out there in the high seas and that vessel then turns round and challenges that because New Zealand has no right to pass those laws—those laws have no legal enforcement—then we leave taxpayers open. Actually it is just really bloody embarrassing quite frankly that the Government cannot even work that out. This is why the bill should have gone to a select committee. We would have got answers to these very very important questions.My third question to which there was no answer is about the fact that we now currently have two criminal offence and penalty regimes operating in our territorial waters for vessels that are protesting. We have the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act which are already in place and now we have this new protest ban. Mr Brownlee maybe you can answer this question. When the police are called out to arrest someone for dangerous activity in our territorial waters under which regime do they operate? Do they flip a coin? Which one gets precedence? It is a very simple question. Do you have an answer? No I did not think so. No I did not think so. I did not think so because this is such a shambles such—Hon Gerry Brownlee: What a load of grandstanding rubbish.MOANA MACKEY: Oh Mr Brownlee is very very grumpy that he has to be here on a Saturday morning. Well he should not have put such shoddy legislation into the urgency motion then. This is just so utterly ridiculous and embarrassing that it defies belief. I want to know where the Attorney-General is on this. Where is Chris Finlayson? We have had no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet on this legislation. We have had no regulatory impact statement. We have had no ability to scrutinise the legislation at a select committee to see whether or not it is consistent with international law. Where is our Attorney-General? He is meant to be the protector of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in this country and he is derelict in and absent from his duty. We even had to be subjected to the spectacle of our Attorney-General coming down in the second reading debate giving a speech defending this legislation and insinuating trying to give the pretence that actually it had had a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. When we asked him to actually table it it transpired that there was not one. It was all just a show to try to make it look like the Government had done the work it should have done when it had not.On top of that we do not have any regulatory impact statement for this piece of legislation. All we got was a regulatory impact statement for the previous bill. We do not know what the risks are so I took it upon myself to draft a regulatory impact statement on behalf of the Government. It reaches the standard of quality that we have seen in the other statements in this urgency motion. This is it—this blanked-out document is what I think the regulatory impact statement on this piece of legislation would have looked like. It is very informative—very informative. It took me a long time to draft it. It is an official legal opinion. It is of far higher quality than any information any Government member has brought into the House during this debate. It is of far higher quality than any information our Attorney-General has brought into the House on this debate and the debate on the previous amendment bill. This is about the same level of information that we have had. This is about the same level of quality of information we have had on this piece of legislation. This is a shameful shameful day for the House and the Government should hang its head in shame.