Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I move That the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 11 June 2018 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions) during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area despite Standing Orders 191 193 and 194(1)(b) and (c). The Standing Orders require there to be a debate in the House where there is a truncation of the normal length of a select committee hearing. There are good reasons for that. We in New Zealand have a unicameral parliamentary system so we don't have the effective ability of an Upper House to have a look at legislation that's passed by the House of Representatives. There's quite a lot of power that rests in the New Zealand system—effectively in the executive. Therefore if the executive like me come down and say Look we think there should be a shortened select committee process." then it's good that the House gets the opportunity to consider whether truncating the normal processes given the absence of other checks and balances in the system—whether that shortened period of referral to select committee is justified. There's no general proposition that you should never shorten select committee periods and indeed the rules of the House even allow things to be done under urgency without any reference to select committee. The judgment of the Government in respect of this issue is that we need to fix it within a relatively prompt period of time. There has been some limited consultation with industry and affected parties in advance of putting this legislation into the House. If I could summarise that the result of that consultation was that they agreed that this was a mistake and that the underlying policy objective of reinstating a cost recovery right on the part of the Crown for the reasonable costs that are incurred by the Crown in dealing with an application in the exclusive economic zone—that it ought to be fixed—when the Government had decided that this isn't an appropriate case for retrospectivity. So the people who currently have an application—there's only one current application and that is effectively getting an exemption from cost recovery at the moment. We believe that there should not be retrospective effect in respect of that application but we are concerned to bring this into effect within a reasonable period of time so that taxpayers aren't meeting the cost of additional boards of inquiry. It's obviously possible for someone to bring an application before this comes into effect and so there is some additional risk to the Crown in that regard. We think the appropriate balance is by seeking this to be reported back to the House by 11 June 2018 so that this loophole can be closed. The bill is a simple one. It has about seven clauses one of which is an amendment to the schedule in respect of transitional provisions. The main provision is set out in the proposed new section 52A in the underlying legislation inserted by clause 5 of the bill. It's readily understood. It will be readily understood by submitters. The relevant select committee as the Opposition has pointed out actually hasn't got a lot of existing business on its agenda and so it's well placed to put all of its attention—Hon Scott Simpson: It's a filler. Hon DAVID PARKER: —into this. "It's a filler." said the Hon Scott Simpson. It's actually not. It's fixing a mistake of the prior Government. I won't go through that again. I would suggest to the House that it is appropriate that we have a shortened period of select committee consideration to enable this to be reported back by 11 June 2018."