Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. I congratulate my colleague David Seymour for his insightful contribution. One of the attributes that you failed to mention sir of the qualifications along the Government benches is business experience and that's woefully lacking on the other side of this House. If there was any—if there was even an iota of business acumen—on the other side of this House we wouldn't even be having this debate.I got a late call to speak to this bill and I sat down to prepare and I was absolutely lost. I was lost because I just didn't know where to start. The ammunition for arguing against this bill is rife. This is the most despicable piece of legislation that we have ever had to debate in this House and the theme that has been coming across from this side of the House is about process. This bill has been devoid of process and if it had followed due process we would have heard from the people in the sectors we would have heard from the people in the communities and we would have a much better-informed debate. But no we did not and it's an absolute disgrace that we are at this point.Now we should have known we were going to be in for this when this Government chose to make this announcement to a roomful of university students here in Wellington and how is it that this Government has never had the gumption to turn up into Taranaki and talk to the people whose lives are going to be impacted? This morning I was subbed on to the Environment Committee and here they were this morning agreeing to travel to the West Coast to talk about whitebait when they couldn't travel to Taranaki to talk about the most important industry in their region. Whitebait is bigger than the whole of the Taranaki region's community! Well that is another disgraceful—oh!So when did this Government decide that they were going to refuse to hold their select committee in Taranaki? Nobody knows the process that has been followed here. This was never signalled to the communities prior to the election. This was never mandated through the election. This here is an ideological idea that got a great headline in Paris.I have to say how do we look these people in the eye? They can't look me in the eye. Look at them. They can't look me in the eye. They have no answers for the people of New Plymouth. They've got no answers for the people of Waitara or Inglewood or Hāwera or Pātea. And do you know the difference between those communities and the likes of Westport Greymouth or Hokitika? The difference is you haven't got to us yet but I know that you're coming and we're going to be ready for you.How many cycles of economic devastation do you need to see? How many of these devastating economic cycles? I sat in the select committee at the beginning of this debate and they were absolutely resolute in their resolve to run roughshod over democracy. Now democracy needs informed citizens if it's going to survive but it is not a democracy when you truncate the submission process to the point that it was. You had absolutely no consultation with the sector prior to even writing the bill. You have eliminated the expertise. There were countless calls from submitters. They were asking Please consult more broadly. Give us more time. At the very least give us the statutory time not this truncated process."We've heard about the submission from the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand. They are a membership organisation that represents businesses producing 95 percent of New Zealand's petroleum. They have valuable expertise in this field and it's a highly specialised field. They could have contributed in a valuable way to the writing of this bill. They could have contributed and helped inform the consideration of this bill but instead they had to limit their submission. But they did note in their submission that had they had more time they would have included a lot more information—and I quote from their submission. They would have talked to the unintended flow-on effects to the onshore sector and the broader economic effects of the decision that the regulatory impact statement covered. They would have talked to the consequence to the downstream energy sector and they would have talked to the implications for shipping emissions from increased reliance on imports.This is a sad day for this House and I can tell you that the fears up in Taranaki are exactly the same fears that my own community on the West Coast have at the moment. We have seven working coalmines down on the coast with two producing coal for export for steel-making. They employ 843 people including the sub-trades. They produced 1.2 million tonnes of coal last year and the estimated value of that was $334.5 million. There are five domestic coalmines employing 147 people producing 285000 tonnes with an estimated value of $42 million and another mine yet to be started has $72 million worth of value.Now with the power that is available to this Government private individuals and organisations are being forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to them. There was no mandate for that Government to take this course of action. This Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill was decided on on the back of an envelope by three leaders and then I suspect they told the rest of their caucuses.I heard on the select committee the testimony or the submissions from people like Bill Simpson. Now he's a man I understand who is very well-connected in his community of Waitara. He drove for four hours to make his submission but what he didn't realise when he got there was that the select committee resolved at the beginning of the meeting to reduce the speaking time for all the submitters that were waiting in the waiting room to make their submissions that they had prepared. So they reduced the organisations down from 15 minutes to 10 minutes and they had cut in half the submission time for individuals. They were prepared for their 10-minute submission and they got five minutes. This Government was begged at the time by Bill Simpson and he asked them what they are going to do for his town of 7500 people with unemployment already at 58 percent. He was rudely cut off after five minutes and then the committee spent two minutes arguing about whether he could finish his last sentence. One more sentence to go and he was cut off.I have two more issues that I'd like to bring up. One is what happens when you truncate a process and you do not allow time. Even in the departmental report at the final draft there were still mistakes being realised that were being amended. What other mistakes have been made that we don't know about or haven't had the time to have a look at?I have one last visual: this photo here. This is what that Government lot over there hang their hat on and it's a source of pride to them. But when I look at this photo what do I see? I see "Stopping this" "Stopping that" "Stopping that" and "Stopping that". This Government is all about stopping stuff but what it's done is stop the development of communities. It has stopped the economic viability of some communities and they do not survive. They do not thrive. You are spelling the death knell of the Taranaki. You are damaging New Zealand's reputation internationally—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Please don't bring me into the debate. Don't use "you".MAUREEN PUGH: Sorry Mr Assistant Speaker. That lot over there are damaging New Zealand's reputation. They're damaging our economic viability going forward. I say shame on them not only for the decision but for the way the decision has been made. This is a very sad time for this country. We cannot reverse some of the damage that is being done but we live in hope that the term of this coalition Government is limited."