Sage Eugenie: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 28 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15589. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Happy New Year to you Mr Deputy Speaker and to other members of this House and their families. I am pleased to take a call on the Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill which as Gareth Hughes explained the Green Party will be strongly supporting.I congratulate the Minister of Conservation on his stewardship of this bill on getting it to the House and on his commitment to establishing a record number of marine reserves this year. But we would also like to see progress on the marine reserves legislation because as Phil Twyford pointed out it is outdated and it is cumbersome. There have been a number of promises by National and by the previous Minister of Conservation to introduce a new marine reserves bill. One has languished before the select committee for over a decade and not progressed. Given that collaborative processes are the flavour of the month now we would like to see some collaboration around that legislation.In a former life I was a member of the West Coast Marine Protection Forum which made a number of recommendations to the Government on the reserves that are now going to be established. The reserves that conservation groups would have liked to see were somewhat larger than the ones that are being established but that collaborative process was very valuable in getting everybody around the table—iwi conservation groups commercial and recreational fishers divers and others—to actually work out where the common ground lay to understand others’ points of view and to understand what the areas were that were favoured by fishers.Again here in this bill it is the result of a collaborative process and a forum that was established to look at marine protection in the subantarctic. That is a process that was triggered by the Marine Protected Areas Policy which was introduced by the formerLabour Government but there have been very few of these collaborative forums established under National until quite recently when one was established I think in Otago. They are a good process—Hon Dr Nick Smith: And in Auckland.EUGENIE SAGE: Thank you Minister—and in Auckland. With legislation that is establishing protected areas and a review of the Marine Reserves Act it would be useful I think when we are dealing with law that is creating benefits for present and future generations and that is protecting biodiversity for its intrinsic values that there should not be the party political differences. We should be able to establish common ground. So it would be valuable Minister if there was some discussion between parties before the legislation was introduced to see whether and what sort of consensus could be agreed on for the Marine Reserves Act given that it failed before because of the widespread different views around it. So Minister we would encourage the Government to look at similar consultation and a similar commitment to collaborative processes before new legislation is introduced and to that sort of collaboration that it is endorsing at a regional level in investigating individual marine reserves.Turning to this bill we are pleased to support it. There is only one marine reserve in the Subantarctic Islands at the moment and that is around the Auckland Islands. That was established in 2003. The islands are really important. They do have World Heritage status because they are some of the least modified islands on the planet.This bill is a step forward in giving us a marine reserve around the Antipodes Island and some protection around the Bounty Islands and Campbell Island. But—I do not want to disappoint the Minister—the Green Party believes that the bill could go further and could take on board the submissions by Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand Forest and Bird the Southland Conservation Board and others to protect the full extent of the territorial sea around the Bounty Islands and around Campbell Island because the very strange boundaries around those islands are to ensure that the ling fishery continues and to allow for a speculative potential deep-water crab fishery. There have been investigations in the 1970s and the 1990s of that crab fishery. Nothing has come of it. Given the distance to the subantarctic and the cost of diesel it is unlikely to be profitable.The Green Party would see a proper commitment to marine conservation and marine protection by establishing the full extent of the territorial sea around those islands as marine reserves. That would recognise their internationally important values and World Heritage status. Nevertheless this bill is a step forward. Thank you.