Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First as we look to amend the Crown Minerals Act with this Crown Minerals Amendment Bill. This bill seeks to I guess change the framework around issuing permits to prospect to explore or to mine. Of course New Zealand is a very mineral-rich country. We've got gold silver uranium even covered in this and phosphate.Simeon Brown: Oil and gas?MARK PATTERSON: Oil and gas are covered in this and we will not let this particular contribution be sidetracked like some of the previous ones were by going down that rabbit hole. It also covers phosphate and I note that there's a massive deposit of phosphate off the Chatham Rise that is in a state of play; companies trying to get at that. So there's a wide spectrum of things that this bill covers.The substantive part of this is I guess a stricter management regime. It gives the Minister powers to revoke a permit if a tier 1 holder—the ownership of that company has changed to under 50 percent for that particular entity. It also means the Minister has to approve if a tier 1 company changes or sells that particular ownership stake to a smaller company and I understand this is quite prevalent.I'll come to a real life example actually of this in play. I think this is a really important aspect because these tier 2 companies need to have that oversight because we need to know that they are capable of remediating any issues that may occur particularly environmental ones.I note Gareth Hughes' example of the Rena and while this wouldn't be covered under this particular arrangement it does show that when brown stuff hits the fan it hits the fan and you want somewhere to go. So the Minister has got the power to oversee this to be the fence at the top of the cliff rather than running around being the ambulance at the bottom. He also has the power to delegate. Now we had a little bit of a look at this. We weren't quite sure exactly where that delegation went. We went back to the 1971 legislation which says that goes to the Secretary of Mines which we would assume is maybe the chief executive of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment but maybe that's something that we will seek some clarity on through the committee stage.It also raises the penalties to a maximum of 800K. That seems a sensible provision again. Again the example of the Rena was used where there was only a very small $150000 maximum under that particular Act that covered that which was totally inadequate so $800000 seems a more appropriate figure and it does show that there are some consequences also for not complying with the Act in terms of notification of the ministry. This has also as has been noted been widely consulted with the industry: Petroleum Exploration and Production Association New Zealand the significant commercial players—Greymouth Petroleum and the like.There are also significant regulatory gaps and inconsistencies within the current regulations and particularly it clarifies access arrangements between permit holders and landholders and also particularly on schedule 4 land which we know is conservation and sensitive land. For example Section 53(1) of the Crown Minerals Act—let me just have a look at this—outlines that for minimum impact activities no access arrangement is required. Then just below that in section 53(3) it states that an access arrangement is required for minimum impact activity. So this clarifies what is clearly a very basic and fundamental error. This is a bill that probably is not going to make many headlines but it's a bill that's not particularly significant until it is. If something goes wrong it will become really important that the people that are responsible have the capacity to cater for whatever eventuality might come particularly in the environmental space. I'd like to give a recent example that I have actually been involved in myself. In Southland we have the smelter at Tīwai Point and recently we have had to deal with the aftermath of the aluminium dross—the by-product of smelting which contains a variety of by-products including some aluminium—for which the smelter had subcontracted another company. This particular company was taking the aluminium out and was processing the balance into fertiliser for agriculture which was something that was seen to be a positive development. It was a good use of a by-product. The smaller company which could be likened to a tier 2 player within this current legislation promptly went broke leaving the mess to be cleaned up. The product was stored all around Southland including in a warehouse right by the Mataura River which has regularly flooded—three times in the lifetime of the local mayor. This was an environmental disaster waiting to happen. The water out of this stuff is incredibly toxic and it would have taken the river out. With water it was giving off ammonia and putting the local population in peril. So that just shows you how important it is that we can't just assume that because a contract's been written a change of ownership of that company has the capacity to deal with the fallout. Interestingly in that situation it had also happened in 2006. The taxpayer at the time—as we have been asked to do this time—and the local council were asked to step in and take some of the financial hit and of course the ratepayers were very unhappy about that as were the taxpayers. But certainly the warehouse owners who have also had to dip into their own pocket after having been out of pocket already are less than impressed as well. So maybe there's some work we need to do in regulations that affect those situations. In the case of the smelter I will say that they did front up as they should have. This was an entity that had been given $30 million during the global financial crisis and I very much hope actually that when that particular incident happened David Bennett and Brett Hudson were crying Socialism!" and crying from the rooftops about private companies being bailed out by the Government because I've heard a fair bit of that since I've been here. But their Government was pretty keen to give Rio Tinto $30 million at the time. So the least that the smelter could do in that situation was to repay the faith of the New Zealand taxpayer and the New Zealand people and when we have been there in their hour of need they were a contributor when we came knocking. So that is I think just a real-life example of what can happen when we allow—not the initial permit holder who may have the capacity but this piece of legislation will make sure that the Government the Minister or the delegated authority by the Minister is able to oversee and be the fence at the top of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom when we've got a catastrophe particularly if it happens to be an environmental catastrophe. So that's I think a significantly important part of this bill. Whilst it might not be such a high-profile bill it is very very important—if it is ever needed—that we know that the people that are in charge of these assets will have the capacity to deal with that. So New Zealand First looks forward to supporting this bill seeing it go through to the select committee and taking the advice of the contributors on it and we commend this bill to the House. Thank you. Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee."