Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): I'm rising to take a call on the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill. It's a real privilege to speak to this bill as it will support marine safety and tackle pollution. This bill reads that it amends the Maritime Transport Act 1994 to improve the efficiency effectiveness and safety of the maritime transport system. This bill will increase the amount of compensation available to meet the cost of a major spill from an oil tanker in New Zealand's waters.In the legislation as it currently stands there are limits on the amount that the New Zealand Government can claim back in the case of an environmental disaster such as we saw in 2011 with the grounding of the Rena. The result of that was that in the end the taxpayer ended up paying for cleaning up that mess. The limitation of liability under the international convention prevented the New Zealand Government from recovering from those at fault. The member for Hutt South last night during his slot on the Trusts Bill referred to this bill as a cracker—tried to make out that spending our time on this bill was misplaced and that it wasn't an important enough bill to get finalised. I find it rather ironic that the other side of this House is criticising this Government for progressing as a matter of priority some of the bills that we have seen come through this House in the last fortnight.With regard to this piece of legislation—this cracker of a bill as the member for Hutt South has called it—it's hugely overdue when you consider that the major maritime incident of the Rena happened in October 2011 which is more than six years ago. So my question is: why has it taken that many years to get legislation to Parliament to ensure that the New Zealand Government can recover compensation from the owner or owners of the vessels that have caused the damage to our environment? I believe the other side of this House is doing New Zealanders a real disservice by continuing their negative broken-record narrative when all this Government is doing is cleaning up the bills clearing the deck—no pun intended—of all outstanding matters so that we can actually get on with getting the next pieces of legislation through this House.Now back to the bill. As I said it will ensure the recovery of significantly more compensation from those responsible for environmental disasters such as oil spills so that the cost is not borne by the New Zealand taxpayer. This bill increases potential compensation from approximately $411 million to just over $1.54 billion.This bill however is not the bill as it was put forward by the previous Government. This bill is not a National bill; this bill is a greatly improved version of the bill as it was drafted under the previous Government. This version of the bill has taken into consideration the many submissions from those affected by it and turned it into a Labour bill. During the select committee process it became clear that a couple of proposed amendments were not supported by the vast majority of submitters to the bill.Madam Chair if you permit me I would like to delve a little bit more into both of these arguments. Firstly the mandatory drug and alcohol tests were unnecessary counter-productive and objected to by employers as well as employees. Unlike the statements from the member for Botany—who obviously didn't read all the material—it wasn't just the unions who were opposed to the drug and alcohol testing. Several operators submitted it would be too costly and difficult to comply with mandatory testing. The great message that came out from the submitters on this bill was that employers in particular felt strongly about the need for employers and employees to work collaboratively on this issue. Officials commented in the regulatory impact statement as follows: We do not have the data to know the true scale of the problem or if there is a problem … Until we know the true extent we will not know what the appropriate level of intervention is." Now I say that without evidence there is actually a problem to address. The provisions as drafted are onerous and impractical as well as costly for the mostly small businesses in the maritime sector. The important thing to note here is that the risk that is being mentioned by the other side—[Bell rung]—of the House is about impairment something random drug-testing doesn't—The CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I call Marja Lubeck. MARJA LUBECK: The important thing to note is that the risk that is being mentioned by the other side of the House is about impairment and impairment is actually something that random drug-testing does not actually test. There are however already checks and balances on risk in place with the health and safety at work and the maritime safety system requirements and the bill on top retains provisions for the Director of Maritime New Zealand to carry out non-notified drug and alcohol testing of workers in safety-sensitive roles. So there's no evidence of any need for a costly and onerous system of mandatory drug and alcohol tests.I actually personally would argue there is much more of a need to investigate the effects of fatigue in the transport sector as the extent of fatigue in incidents and accidents is largely unknown. But I'll come back to that hopefully another day.Back to the testing. So the improved version of the bill has removed the contentious aspect of the testing. The second aspect of this improved version of the bill is that it also has removed another contentious part which was allowing foreign-flag vessels to carry cargo to the Chatham Islands. This would have created unfair competition because foreign vessels aren't subject to the same conditions as our domestic vessels. I am thinking about things like GST and labour laws. They would have had an unfair advantage over our own domestic services likely putting them out of business. The people affected by this spoke at the select committee stage. All of them stated they did not support the foreign operators to come on to this route.So this Government has cleaned up the bill to the point where we can support and commend it. As a new member of Parliament I thought it was really heartening to see that many of the bills such as these which have gone through the House have been a cross-party exercise—a result of collaboration between all the members of the House. I understand the other side isn't very happy about the fact that these are now passed as Labour bills but there it is.Our speakers at many times have acknowledged that many of these bills—like these bills—are the result of parties working together constructively because that is the kind of MMP Government we aspire to be and in the best interests of the people who have put us there to do the best job for New Zealand some members on the other side of the House could try a little harder to show that they're here for the right reasons. It's not about point-scoring; it's about doing what's right. Do your homework—like we all have to—read all these bills all the reports and all the facts and figures and provide insight to the people that are listening into the how and what.So just to repeat this Government has done its homework and cleaned up the bill to the point where we can support and commend it to the House. Thank you."