Woods Megan: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is subject to correctionWoods Megan: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4530. Text is subject to correction.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram):I am happy to take a call on this very short piece of legislation which actually only has four clauses but does something very important. Before I get under way with my speech I would like to acknowledge the work that the Local Government and Environment Committee has done on this bill. And I would like to acknowledge the work of the chair of that select committee Scott Simpson on this because I think actually this legislation that we are here debating in the House which Labour does support is actually an example of how a select committee can have a very good influence on a piece of legislation and can improve legislation that comes before it. Although this is a very short piece of legislation there is one clause of substance that being clause 4 which amends section 162 of the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Act. What this bill does in effect is it allows for the continuation of oil and gas operations for four specific operators that were in existence before the legislation was passed in terms of the exclusive economic zone legislation that was passed in 2013 both while they lodge their applications and while there may be appeals against those applications.So what we are here doing is actually playing fix-up again. We are playing fix-up on a piece of legislation where the primary piece of legislation needed to be sent back to the select committee for a major piece of redrafting. That piece of legislation then came before this House in the previous Parliament with a 14-page Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister because so many changes needed to be made to what was a very flawed piece of legislation. One month after the passage of that legislation there was a 37-page amendment bill in the Marine Legislation Bill—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Clause 1 title.Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes it is clause 1 that is right and that is the title clause which is around the exclusive economic zone. So it is the “Exclusive Economic Zone Fix-up Bill” that we are talking about here the piece of legislation that has had to play fix-up on the primary legislation and not for the first time as I was cataloguing there. We had the 37 pages of amendments to the Marine Legislation Bill brought in by the Hon Gerry Brownlee. But here we are again with the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill—or the “Exclusive Economic Zone Fix-up Bill” as I prefer to call it. Here we are yet again because if we were not doing this fix-up bill what we would be doing is facing the closure of one of our main sources of natural gas at the end of this month. This legislation is required because this Government did not put in place adequate transitional arrangements into the principal legislation to allow for existing operators to transition into a regulatory regime. It would not exactly be rocket science to think: we are putting in place a new regulatory regime we have got some existing operators and we need to bring them inside the regulatory framework. Instead that was just left silent and there was a big gaping hole that could have led to huge economic costs to the country.We in the Labour Party absolutely believe in the need for a managed transition away from fossil fuels but simply shutting down a platform with no planning around it because the Government has made a mistake in legislation is not the way to do that. This is fix-up legislation and whose bungle are we fixing this time? Because when we came to look at this legislation this again was poorly drafted. So we are here doing a Nick Smith fix-up in the Chamber and the Committee. I guess the one thing we can be grateful for is that there were no provisions in the legislation for either power transfer stations or cemeteries to be put on the Māui platform because that is the kind of bungle that Minister can make. We are here because we are working on the very good work that the select committee has done and because of the fact that we would have had very open-ended legislation. So in talking to clause 1 of this bill it being the exclusive economic zone fix-up legislation—if it were not for the work of the select committee we would have been back here in only a very short period of time.