Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour): It's with a great sense of honour that I rise to support the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill. We're an island nation. We certainly rely upon maritime transport for many aspects of our economy and it's very important that we absolutely get this right. Before I begin my speech though I'd just like to defend God for a moment here. The Opposition member Alastair Scott talked about putting the fear of God into people into employees. Now I'm sure God appreciates being brought into this debate. I've heard he avidly watches Parliament TV—religiously—but the key thing the member needs to remember is that man was made in God's image. There's an aspect there around respect for people and dignity. Genesis 1:27: … God created man in his own image … male and female created he them." However possibly some more in his image than others but that's not for me to judge. But it is about—Rt Hon Winston Peters: What about the Hon Steven Joyce section of that—Genesis—"The seventh day I rested."JAMIE STRANGE: Ha ha! Yes indeed. There seems to be a lot of resting going on there Mr Peters but I won't talk about that.So this is yet another example of an improved bill that was brought to the House by the National Party. Labour New Zealand First and the Greens have made amendments and improved the bill. And it's good that we have because as I said we're an island nation and it's important that we get this part of our policy correct. There are key areas here around efficiency effectiveness and safety. Now as a child I used to go on the interisland ferry quite a bit. Every Christmas time we'd get up at 2 a.m. in Hamilton drive to Wellington hop on the ferry and head across to have Christmas in Collingwood. We certainly relied upon the staff doing a good job.The background information to this bill here the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill is it amends the Maritime Transport Act 1994 to improve like I said the efficiency effectiveness and safety of the maritime transport system. Proposed changes to drug and alcohol management and coastal shipping provisions of the bill were identified through the select committee process. As the final speaker on this bill I would just like to summarise some of the key points here that have come forward. We heard from Julie Anne Genter who is the Minister who put this bill forward. She spoke about increasing compensation around oil spills. All of us will remember what happened with the Rena disaster and it's important that we are compensated for these disasters as a country. She spoke about some miscellaneous amendments that I'll get to soon. She spoke about drug and alcohol aspects about removing the requirement for mandatory drug and alcohol testing and these amendments she talked about they certainly improve safety. We heard from another member about the drug and alcohol testing after our amendments being just right. She believes the balance is correct and I believe that too—the oil spill compensation increasing from $411 million to $1.45 billion in order to adequately compensate our country.We heard from Mr Jones about the removal of some of the red tape which is something this Government is committed to—morality associated with compulsion. He spoke about treating employees with dignity. Employees have rights under the law and like I said we're all created in God's image—that aspect of respect. Small operators need a fit-for-purpose law. Mr Jones spoke about the Rena around the full costs not being borne by the shipping company at fault and how this bill enables us to act in the best interests of all New Zealanders. Regulation can be burdensome. Compulsory random tests—small operators will struggle with this as we've heard from the submissions. We also heard from my colleague Paul Eagle who's left the building about the Chatham Island amendment—about the importance of this amendment and the fact that allowing foreign vessels to visit the Chatham Islands created an uneven competitive environment. We heard from another colleague particularly from an employee point of view around mandatory compulsory testing creating division in the workplace between employees and employers. Now just picking up on the Chatham Island aspect again—see this bill in its original form sought to amend the definition of "coastal cargo" in section 198 of the Maritime Transport Act in order to ease restrictions on the carriage of coastal cargo between mainland New Zealand and non-mainland locations including the Chatham Islands. The operation of section 198 for shipping between mainland ports will be unaffected. With respect to the proposal to amend section 198 Chatham Islands and coastal shipping interests noted that foreign vessels are not subject to a number of compliance requirements that domestic vessels are subject to such as GST and New Zealand labour law thereby creating an uneven competitive environment. Coastal shipping interests were also concerned that the amendment could be a forerunner to a general liberalisation of coastal shipping regulation. Evidence to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee from the Chatham Islands Enterprise Trust and Chatham Islands Shipping Ltd supported the contention that such competition could compromise plans to commission the building of a replacement vessel for the one currently operating between the Chatham Islands and the mainland. Such an outcome would run contrary to the intention of the amendment which was to provide greater surety of service provision to the Chatham Islands and offshore islands.I'd like to close by just going through some of the miscellaneous amendments that the Associate Minister of Transport brought up. One of those is around improving the flexibility of empowering provisions for the making of rules under the Maritime Transport Act. The second one talks about allowing regional councils to retain fees from infringement offence notices issued for breaches of maritime rules and I know the regional councils support this. It gives them a certain amount of autonomy in order to redirect the funds in the way that they see fit. An amendment enables territorial authorities to transfer responsibilities for harbour works and maritime activity and clarifies that powers transferred to a public authority can be varied or withdrawn. Another key amendment here is around clarifying that the director of Maritime New Zealand may issue guidelines consistent with ballast water convention requirements and procedures. An amendment clarifies the definition of marine protection product for the purposes of marine protection rules and extends on-board limitation of liability provisions to remote pilotage.This is certainly a significant piece of legislation that will support maritime safety and tackle pollution. The bill will ensure that in the event of an oil spill from a tanker there is significantly more compensation made available to deal with any clean-up. This is about ensuring that those responsible for oil spills cover the cost not the New Zealand taxpayer. The bill increases the potential compensation from around $411 million to just over $1.5 billion.The new Government made some changes to the bill to reflect feedback during what we heard in the select committee process. That includes removing proposed amendments that would have allowed foreign-flagged vessels to start carrying cargo to the Chatham Islands which as I said before would have created unfair competition. We know that the industry is already undertaking drug and alcohol testing where this is an identified risk but forcing all small businesses to undertake testing would have been costly and impractical.Hon Shane Jones: Red tape.JAMIE STRANGE: As a member of Government who looks to reduce red tape rather than tie businesses up in red tape I absolutely commend this bill to the House. Thank you."