Eagle PaulPAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and it's a pleasure to take the call on this—a very important bill in my view for the people of the Chatham Islands. Before I start I'd like to commend the Associate Minister of Transport for getting it to the stage that it is but more so commending her for proposing to remove the amendment to section 198 of the principal Act. That was essentially to introduce competition to shipping in the Chatham Islands. So I'm very thankful for Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 4 which came through.I know for those who have been to the Chathams that it's a 1½ hour trip approximately from Wellington to halfway between Christchurch and Wellington and a whole lot of kilometres out that way and voila you land in a part of New Zealand that really takes you back to the 1960s. When I first got on the plane back in June or July the Hon Annette King the former member for Rongotai said to me You can turn that off." It was my cell phone and I thought "Well I was going to Annette." She said "No no. You can turn that off for the whole trip." It sparked then that I thought "Wow the infrastructure and the know-how in a part of New Zealand that dare I say it has almost been forgotten is limited."But the journey continued. We landed without fuss. I did note though that the plane was modified to have freight because getting goods and services out of there and back in there are real problems. So it was pretty noticeable first up from my first ever trip that there were issues with infrastructure.I want to acknowledge the Hon Christopher Finlayson who has spent many a month working on a wharf—a $58 million wharf. The locals will tell you that once concrete and tools and machinery land on that island they probably would have liked to have spent half that and spent the rest of it on doing other things. But you get a picture now of how important this SOP is and the reason why the amendment needed to happen.I met with the Chatham Islands Enterprise Trust. You can barely get them on a website but when you find out who they are and what they do you'll find that they are actually the owners the guardians the administrators of most of the island's infrastructure. Here's an island with 650 people and some more during tourism time Christmas time. I do want to talk to the Minister for Regional Development about an airport extension but that's for another time and he's left the room so I won't engage with him here and now.The Enterprise Trust established back in 1981 has invested over $5 million into establishing the island's first 100 percent community owned and operated shipping service purchasing its own ship. So allowing foreign vessels to visit the Chathams to pick up to choose freight and selected revenue endangers the economic viability of that community shipping service.I think when you look back at the rationale that they presented—and can I acknowledge the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—there have been 15 years' worth of reports. This reminds me of local government actually; they keep just doing reports. Since 2002 there have been one two three four five reports looking at shipping needs. That's probably four reports too many considering they all really said the same thing. When I looked at the summaries and their conclusions they talked about things needing to be reliable frequency minimising freight rates and the security of service.It's a history there. They've had shipping there for over a century but they had good rationale in there about their history around what competition did. They had two ships there was intense competition the market prevailed and you were meant to get everything delivered on a platter but instead both operators failed over competition.Also if you look at the 650 people who live there and do business there the rates for freight were far too high. Dare I say it the residents really don't have a good understanding—or to be kinder they have little understanding about what effort and skills were required to run and manage a shipping service. However they trusted their own Enterprise Trust to deliver a reliable service something that they knew was going to run on the same day at the same time and deliver what goods they had—billions of dollars' worth of freight really.Once this wharf is opened there will be several Ministers competing on this side of the House for the opening rights; MPs diving for those 40 seats on Air Chathams to get down there for it probably in March to be part of what will be a successful enterprise that gets built.I want to just comment on the concerns with section 198. When Chatham Islands Shipping purchased a boat back in 2012 there were several issues that came from that but what they did manage to do was say that if that was what was being proposed then they wanted to be heard by the select committee and ensure that their opinions were given due reason. One thing they did was say that because of the small size and scale of the island they know that experience and history showed them that there was a high probability that no private entity would invest into a sustainable and affordable shipping service. They also noted that many shippers have come and gone over the last century. The boom the bust; they come they go—no one stayed around. But what they also noticed was that the potential is unbounded in terms of livestock fish and tourism and this is why they set up their own community shipping service. It almost seems old-fashioned and outdated. It almost takes you back to municipal electricity departments water services run by in-house units rather than council-controlled organisations but in the Chathams it works and that's what's most valuable.They also talked about the significant investment that would be required—and that's happened and that's the wharf. In conclusion to what they wanted to put together in terms of their amendment they talked about a request. I think they were very polite in terms of saying to the committee that they didn't support the amendment that they wanted something that acknowledged that they already had the know-how to run their own shipping service and they wanted to make sure when the decision was made around coastal cargo that although the intention was to enable a greater surety of shipping services it didn't in fact do the opposite.So thank you to all of those who have put in the work required. I'm proud to see that the Supplementary Order Paper will ensure that the section will be amended. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker."