Falloon Andrew; Tolley AnneANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker it's a pleasure taking a call on a Crown minerals bill that the entire Parliament can support. It's really fantastic to hear the Greens are supporting it and I can only assume that David Seymour will be as well so congratulations to Parliament on supporting a Crown minerals bill. I can only surmise that the reason for that is because it was prepared by a former National Government.It's a very straightforward bill as has been said this afternoon by a number of speakers. The primary requirement in it is that parties seek consent for a change in control of a tier one permit three months before the change is intended to take place. It also sets a number of requirements or tests that a Minister needs to be satisfied that are met particularly around health and safety and also the Maritime Transport Act.So we did as has been said receive a number of submissions on the bill. I sat on the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee that considered this bill. One of the other changes that is also contained in the bill that we considered—or at least I considered at length—is in relation to how the bill Clarifies … an access arrangement is needed for access to Schedule 4 land for minimum impact activities." That intrigued me a bit because as has been said by Gareth Hughes there has been a lot of discussion quite a few years ago now about the level of the activity that should or does occur on schedule 4 land. So I went off and did a bit of research around that just to see what is meant by that provision and what already exists on schedule 4 land. I was intrigued to find there are at least three mining permits on schedule 4 land already. One was granted in 1996 for public recreational gold mining on the West Coast; another one was granted in 2000 and relates to underground mining for quartz gold silver and clay at the Broken Hills in the Coromandel; and the third one is from 2005 where a consent was granted for gold and gemstone mining on the Hart River in the Paparoa National Park. So there is I guess despite what Mr Hughes has said previously already a level of activity that does occur on schedule 4 land.We did receive 11 submissions on the bill. A bunch of those were from industry players including OMV New Zealand Ltd Shell Bathurst Resources Ltd OceanaGold and also the industry group Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ) but we did receive one from the Law Society and also one from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. This one interested me as well a little bit because it did talk at length about the Health and Safety at Work Act and also the Maritime Transport Act. It did note that neither bill contains any reference to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. That of course was outside the scope of what our committee considered but I think in future that might be something that future parliaments might want to consider.As I've said they were predominantly industry groups but there were a bunch—or a couple at least—from environmental lobby groups as well and I think Gareth Hughes has touched on that. The first one of those was from Protect Karangahake Incorporated. They were concerned that there had been insufficient consultation on the bill. They go on to say that there was no consultation with "any environmental or public interest groups" in relation to the bill. That comment was I was going to say echoed but it was also voiced by a group called Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand (ECO) which is an umbrella group of 48 environment and conservation groups. They said that they were disappointed but not surprised at the insufficient level of consultation. Well I have to tell both those groups that that's what a select committee process is for. That was the consultation. We went out for a very lengthy period of time sought submissions from submitters. We had 11 which was probably no surprise—it is a reasonably non-controversial bill. But that was consultation. They were able to come along to Wellington and speak to their submission and make their views known on the bill which they did. As Gareth Hughes has mentioned the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee did consider their submissions and did make some changes actually based on their submissions and so I thank them for that.I do have to contrast that process though with—I made reference earlier to a previous Crown minerals amendment bill. We had a very lengthy period of time on this Crown minerals bill—quite a few months we took to consider it. We went out we sought lengthy submissions from submitters and that unfortunately didn't happen with another Crown minerals amendment bill. I know the Deputy Speaker is looking at me now because I have to stick to the current bill which I will but it did just really highlight to me that it was a very non-controversial bill that we had a full select committee process on—several months that we considered the bill for. And there was another Crown minerals amendment bill which was far more dramatic and had nothing like this select committee process—in fact only a matter of weeks. So I think the Government should reflect on that and perhaps when they do bring controversial legislation to the House they do give it the period of time it deserves. This bill is non-controversial and so I don't want to delay it any further and I commend it to the House.DEPUTY SPEAKER: This next call is a split call and I call Jo Luxton."