Bennett David: Marine Legislation Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett David: Marine Legislation Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8746. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 This Marine Legislation Bill is a good bill which all parties in this House apart from probably the Green Party are going to support. It was very disappointing to see that last speaker Iain Lees-Galloway trying to politicise it. I know he is a new member to this House and has little experience but he needs to actually understand how you work together with other parties. I must admit that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee— 
Dr Cam Calder 
: I hear he’s on the committee. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: He is not on the committee. He is a recent member on the committee. He got promoted to the committee from something or other that I think was meeting at 8 o’clock in the morning; now he is headed to a full meeting. He is learning but it is very disappointing to hear that member say those things. 
I want to just make one point before I go on to a few points about the bill and that is that the Labour Government did not put that convention through. The Labour Government at that time was so busy trying to sort out the shambles around election laws and trying to save its butt around illegalities in the electoral system that it had promoted that it did not put this bill up. It is rich for the Labour Party to come into this House now and say that the National Government should have done it. The Labour Government had it on its books and did not do it and the reason it did not do it is that it was trying to buy votes in an election as it always does and it did not work. So those members should not come into this House and now blame the National Government for this. The Labour Party is the party at fault. It was the one that was in Government and should have done it at that time. It did not and it is a bit rich for that member to come in here—I know he is a new member but it is a bit rich for him to come in and say those things at this time. 
This is good legislation. This is legislation that even the Green Party and the National Party worked together on. We worked together and got a solution around fracking and things like that and it would be good to see the Green Party actually support this legislation today. But I am sure it will find some minute detail that makes no difference and that will be its reason to not support the legislation and that will be very disappointing. 
But there are some big parts to this bill. There is another part that the last speaker mentioned and that is the alcohol requirement. OK it is at a lower level than the driving requirement but it is for only 80 vessels as that member identified. The vast bulk of vessels or seafarers you could say are not covered. This covers only commercial seafarers in that sense. It relates to international seafarers’ boats that have international crews coming in and out on a commercial basis so it is consistent with that. That member was making reference to things that are not the case. It is not an approach that is different from what we do in the sense of our roading network because— 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: You’ve got one for the roads and one for the sea. What’s the difference? 
DAVID BENNETT 
: It is because a lot of people on the sea do not actually have any limit because there is a zero limit for all other sea captains unless you are in a commercial enterprise. 
 The other thing I wanted to go through was the role of regional councils—I think this is a very important part of this Marine Legislation Bill—having the ability to set some of these rules around harbour masters and the rules and regulations around their maritime activities in certain areas. It is a good example of how Government can work with local bodies. There were some submissions from different regional councils that felt that we should do it in different ways and I know the Deputy Speaker represents an area that has strong views as well. In the end this is a good balance where we are showing that central government and local government are working together. So I think that is another good part of the bill. 
Effectively this bill does change two major pieces of legislation and it does it in a way that shows members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee have worked hard to try to accommodate the interests of all parties and reflect the advice we received from officials. I look forward to this bill passing through the House. We look forward to the Labour Party actually supporting this bill not only in vote but in spirit in the way that the select committee worked and that would be good to see. It would be good to see this bill pass through the House unanimously. Thank you.