Woods Megan: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 26 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1997. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is not with pleasure that I take a call on another piece of legislation amending the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act. This is not the first time that this House has had to come and play fix-up on what was a badly drafted piece of legislation to begin with. The Labour Party will support this legislation the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill going to the select committee. We will support it so there can be scrutiny of the legislation. We will support it so that we can hear from interested parties and communities. It does give us a chance to examine this legislation in the context of what we think is actually a much larger and looming issue and that is further changes to this legislation that may be coming down the line within the next year or so. I will address that more fully later in my speech.We heard the Minister telling us that it is inevitable with legislation such as this that there will need to be amending legislation and there will need to be some fixes made to a reasonably complex regulatory regime. Well it is not inevitable that this Parliament and the previous Parliament have had to play fix-up on a botched piece of legislation. If we have a look at when it was first passed in 2012—it is not legislation that has been on our statute book for very long—it was full of errors. It required a major redrafting at the select committee. This was done through very hard work by the Local Government and Environment Committee and I commend the select committee for that. But even after that more errors were found and the responsible Minister at the time the Hon Amy Adams had to put forward a 14-page Supplementary Order Paper to fix it.So this is a badly drafted piece of legislation a rushed piece of legislation which from the very moment of its beginnings we have been trying to resuscitate and fix. But only a month after the exclusive economic zone legislation was passed the Government had to pass another 37 pages of amendments to it as part of the Marine Legislation Bill—another 37 pages. This simply is not good enough and it is not good enough for Minister Upston to call it inevitable. I would not want to be holding up this level of amendment as a shining light as inevitable or as something that we should aspire to in our law making. It simply does not meet the standard and it is not good enough.Then even after the 37 pages of amendments that we saw in the Marine Legislation Bill there were several more Supplementary Order Papers from the Minister in charge—in that instance it was the Hon Gerry Brownlee. This is now the second piece of fix-up legislation we are seeing in the last 3 years and I am concerned after hearing the Minister today brush this off as inevitable as to how many more times we are going to be here. How much more time of the House and how much more select committee time is going to be chewed up by fixing this piece of legislation which was flawed from its very beginning? It is another sign of this Government’s incompetence in handling legislation. It is another example of how this Government is passing bad law into our statute book and we are using so much of our time trying to rectify its problems. It was badly drafted it was weak law and it was rushed through the House without proper consideration.The number of fixes that we are having to do is testament to shoddy process and what that brings about and now we are having to sit through yet another debate on a bill to fix it. The Minister called it inevitable and said it was a shame that Shell and Todd Energy did not get their application in in time to allow for appeals but that is actually not taking the responsibility that needs to lie with the Government for the bad piece of legislation that allowed this circumstance to arise.What was reasonably inevitable was that there were no adequate transitional provisions in order for companies that had existing consents to transition to the new regulatory regime. It is another example of the how the Government did not think through properly what needed to be in the legislation. So as the Minister has outlined this piece of legislation that we are here talking about today is essentially to allow an existing operator to keep operating while its consent is processed and operate not only while its consent is processed but also while any appeals may or may not be lodged in regard to that application. This is something that could have been foreseen.We have a limited number of existing consent holders that needed to transition into the new regulatory regime and the primary legislation which was passed only 3 years ago could have accounted for this. Instead we have a Minister who is blaming the consent holder for bad legislation in her contribution in the House today. What we have is a Government that has put a chunk of New Zealand’s gas supply at risk if this legislation is not passed and this mess is not cleaned up. The Government needs to take responsibility for this and not simply blame other people.This legislation does give us cause to wonder what it is that the Government is planning next for the Act. What we have seen is a great deal of chatter if you like following the Chatham Rock Phosphate consents being declined only a few weeks ago and claims now that the Government is supportive of reforming the law to ensure that projects like that could be consented. Nick Smith has not ruled out changes to suit the seabed mining industry and we will be watching very carefully at the select committee to make sure that this legislation is not an attempt to fundamentally alter the legislation and to get in through the back door the changes that we know that the Government wants to do. We expect that these changes will come in yet another piece of amending legislation so next year we will have another amendment bill to deal with I would imagine. The House will have to turn its attention to this issue again because the primary Act does not do what the Government wanted it to do which is enable economic activity rather than act for environmental protection—which actually the Environmental Protection Authority has been able to do in regard to this.After the Chatham Rock Phosphate decision we have seen a great deal of posturing from a number of people who talk about the changes that need to be done. We are told by the chief executive officer of Chatham Rock Phosphate that he has actually made a number of suggestions as to how the legislation needs to be changed. So when this bill goes to the select committee we may need to consider other changes that the Government is considering to the primary legislation. Passing an amending piece of legislation if we are going to be presented with yet another piece of amending legislation in only a very short space of time will be something that we will have to consider very carefully on this side of the House. We will have to ask some very serious questions about when the next piece of amending legislation is due before this House and the Local Government and Environment Committee where I am assuming this bill will be going.Hon Member: The Minister said.Dr MEGAN WOODS: That is what the Minister said thank you very much and these will be questions that we will be asking when we get the chance to examine this.This is a Government that needs to lift its game in many respects but it needs to lift its game in the quality of legislation that it is passing. It is passing shoddy legislation it is passing hurried legislation that does not go through proper process and—surprise surprise—we are getting mistake after mistake after mistake. Too much of this House’s time is spent fixing up this Government’s mistakes and too much of our energy is spent doing that rather than doing something proactive. To have the Minister blame the company as she did in the House today—she said it should have got its consent in earlier—just does not take into account the poor legislation.We have a Government that in 2012 passed legislation that did not have proper provisions. It could have put at risk a vital piece of our energy supply in this country and it could have put at risk 300 jobs in the Taranaki region because the original intent what we are doing here was not properly spelt out in the primary legislation in 2012. We will support the bill going to the select committee but we will be asking some very serious questions of the Government.