Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I just want to acknowledge the—I thought—very thoughtful contribution of the Minister for the Environment in whose name this bill appears before the House. It's a pleasure to rise and take a brief call in the second reading of this Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill which the Minister abbreviates just to the EEZ bill and I think that's probably a right thing to do.This is a technical tidy-up. The original piece of legislation as the Minister said in his comments related to work that was done in the previous Parliament around the Resource Legislation Amendment Act. That was a very significant piece of legislation. It ran to over 700 separate clauses and some 250 pages in the statute book. So it was a pretty grunty piece of legislation by any measure and it had a vast array of moving parts in it. There were lots of pieces of the Resource Management Act (RMA) that were amended and changed and modified and it also made amendments to the Conservation Act the Reserves Act and the Public Works Act. So there were many moving parts to this legislation.I don't blame at all the hard-working and diligent professionals at the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) who actually have to draft all this stuff get it finely tuned interpret and understand the directions that come from both the Minister driving the legislation—and that comes through a process of Cabinet approval and Cabinet minutes and Cabinet notes—but then also the directions and interventions that are made at select committee and the various submissions that are made. It's a very big job.I think the other thing to remember is that when the good folk at the Parliamentary Counsel Office are drafting legislation of this sort it's usually not just one piece of legislation that they have on the go at one time. Most of the time they've got multiple pieces of legislation and I think it takes a very special kind of educated brain to actually do that work and do it as thoroughly as they do. Now notwithstanding that praise for the good work that the PCO officials do in this instance a mistake was made and through a human drafting error a direction that was made by Cabinet approved by Cabinet and that had the intent that is being achieved by this amendment bill today was simply omitted. Now that's a kind of human mistake that can be made from time to time and I don't want to apportion any blame for it but a mistake none the less was made and so Parliament needs to just address that issue and that's what we're doing.I think a very good question that arose during a truncated select committee process was why we needed to have a special piece of amending legislation to achieve this outcome. Parliament will very shortly consider what's known as an annual Statutes Amendment Bill and that's usually the place where errors of this sort that occur from time to time are fixed and are resolved. A special piece of legislation is usually not required in its own right to be made to take up the time of the Parliament in sitting time or indeed the time of a select committee. But in this case the Government decided to do that.So at first reading the Opposition acknowledged that it was an honest mistake an error in drafting and we were prepared to simply move the changes through all stages at first reading. That invitation was declined by the Government and we then moved to a select committee process. That process was truncated shortened and at select committee there was agreement amongst select committee members—it was a unanimous decision—that we wouldn't take submissions but that we would actually invite the New Zealand Law Society to give us the benefit of their views and opinions on the changes that were proposed.Then before we had had an opportunity to receive that advice and submission from the Law Society the Environment Committee in its collective wisdom decided to report back to the House and the committee did that in terms of where we thought it was. We had received advice from PCO draftspeople that told us that what we sought to achieve was being done by the amendments that they had proposed. Then subsequent to the report coming back to the House the select committee received from the Law Society a very useful and helpful submission that actually went beyond what we had expected I think from them in the first place. Then as a result of that having reported back to the House we found ourselves as a select committee having to say Well actually the Law Society makes some pretty jolly good points. Maybe we should reconsider a couple of those things."So we find ourselves now with an amended amendment slightly—and again not the fault of anyone in particular. I think the intention and good will of the select committee was well-made. I don't think there was any malicious intent at all; I think this is just one of those things where it's been a bit of a comedy of one thing on top of another.So the Law Society made a submission to us and they suggested three things: firstly that the proposed new board of inquiry cost recovery provision actually differed from what was in the RMA and that was of course what we had designed this amendment to do. We wanted it actually to essentially be a cut and paste and to apply a board of inquiry cost recovery model that was replicated in other statutes and other parts of the legislation. We found that that actually hadn't occurred and it was the Law Society that drew that to our attention. The Law Society considered that there was a need for a greater alignment and that that would be appropriate in terms of fulfilling requirements of the legislation. So that was one area that they brought to our attention.The two other areas that they brought to our attention—the first related to cost recovery criteria. Although this piece of legislation is designed to ensure that people who are making applications for marine consents in the EEZ essentially for a private gain should pay. The logic of that I think is fair and reasonable but the Law Society pointed out that that might not always be 100 percent the case—that there may be a public good from a resource consent a marine consent in the EEZ and that the bill should actually accommodate that in some meaningful way. They used an example of perhaps a private enterprise that was seeking to lay submarine pipelines for instance. Now that's essentially a commercial enterprise but the net result of it provides a degree of public good in terms of public service and betterment of public usage from the installation of such a pipeline. Now what the Law Society suggested was that that should be somehow recognised in the bill. The Minister's indicated that he wants to address that at the committee of the whole House stage and I think that's a sensible thing.The third point that the Law Society made was in relation to an objection process. They said that at present and unlike the RMA there's no formal objection process enabled in the provisions of this bill and the Law Society I think made a good argument on the basis of reasonableness that an objection process should be included. It's my hope that the Minister will consider including that suggestion from the Law Society also by way of Supplementary Order Paper at the committee of the whole House stage.So on this side of the House we support this bill. It's a minor technical tidy-up but it's been a little bit of an adventure and a bit of a learning curve for us all I suspect. I commend it to the House."