Fenton Darien: Kaikōura (Te Tai-o-Marokura) Marine Management Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Kaikōura (Te Tai-o-Marokura) Marine Management Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 20 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16922. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a real pleasure to take a call on the Kaikōura (Te Tai-o-Marokura) Marine Management Bill and offer Labour’s strong support for the bill. And as my colleague Ruth Dyson has spelt out we want to congratulate the Minister of Conservation and the Government on bringing this bill to the House.I am excited about the description of what will come out of this bill. It is exciting for any New Zealander and I cannot imagine there will be a single person in this House who does not feel thrilled about the development of these marine sanctuaries and the reserve because we all feel very strongly about this. We all have close connections to the sea. We are a seagoing nation. We are a nation that likes to fish. Many of us come from traditions that have strong connections to the coast. Actually I am a Pisces so that gives me special connections to fish and the sea and I always feel very excited whenever I get close to the sea and smell the sea air.Mike Sabin: Have you got gills?Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor: Don’t be rude.DARIEN FENTON: It is all right; I can take it. Anyway the bill establishes management measures for the coast and sea around Kaikōura. It includes a marine reserve a whale sanctuary a New Zealand fur seal sanctuary—where access will be prohibited except by permit—five customary fisheries areas an advisory committee and fishing regulations that are specific to the area. I think the previous speaker Nicky Wagner gave a very good description of what this area looks like. For a North Islander for someone who comes from the city of Auckland it was very helpful to be able to envisage what this is going to look like. I am sure that others who are closer to the area like my colleague Maryan Street will be able to describe what it means to the people whom she knows and lives and works among in her area.One of the things that is very important and that was acknowledged by the Minister is marine tourism in Kaikōura. It is a significant economic earner for New Zealand that is increasing annually. Revenue from whale and dolphin tourism increased from $72 million nationally in 2004 to $80 million in 2008. International visitors have voted whale and dolphin tourism 45th out of the 131 activities and attractions surveyed. Kaikōura is the main centre in which these activities take place.One of the things we have to be really careful about when creating beautiful marine reserves adventure activities and wonderful places for tourists to come to is making sure we get all of the processes right—all of the rules around this bill and also all of the rules that apply to the tourism experiences that we offer to overseas visitors. And on that note I have to tell the House that there is a big botch-up going on at the moment with adventure activity tourism. It has been in the news a little bit in the last few days. It came about because the Prime Minister promised the country tourism operators and the population of New Zealand that he would do something to make sure that adventure activities are safe. He promised there would be new regulations and the then Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson got stuck in to it and brought about some regulations that finally came in at the end of 2011.The next Minister of Labour after the previous one had been sacked then announced there were going to be three providers that would provide the audit that was going to be required to ensure that these adventure activities are safe as indeed the Prime Minister had assured the country and had assured tourists they would be. So the regulations were developed and they require a provider to audit the activities. Those audits have to be done by 1 November this year. It will be illegal it will be unlawful for any adventure activity provider to operate without that audit specifying that it is safe under the health and safety regulations that have been created.What the Minister has failed in and the Prime Minister has failed to oversee is ensuring there are actually the resources to provide the audits that are going to have to be carried out—something like 600 and many I am sure are in this area of Kaikōura—and support the companies the providers that are carrying out these audits. Initially the Minister announced there were three providers. What he did not tell us of course was that they were all NGOs so they were not in it for making private profit. They were NGOs carrying out their business. Two dropped off very quickly and the last one that was left Outdoors New Zealand—which is also a not-for-profit charitable trust not a commercial organisation—has said in the last week that it can no longer carry on. It said it had done its best to implement the outdoor safety regulations of 2011 to make sure that our outdoor adventure tourism is safe throughout the country. However it expected that the Minister and the Government would provide some support—that it was not going to just be able to be established and audit 600 providers without some support from the Government—but that support was not forthcoming.Outdoors New Zealand has now suspended audits saying that it has a cash flow problem and it cannot continue. What that means is there are 600-odd organisations that are in limbo and do not know whether they will be able to operate after 1 November 2014. So that means those organisations including those in Kaikōura will not be able to take forward bookings until this mess is sorted out.It is also a very bad message for our international tourism market because this health and safety audit came about because of a couple of awful accidents in adventure tourism. That is why the Prime Minister made the promises that he has been unable to keep. One of the reasons he said we needed to do that was not only for the safety and health of people but also for our reputation. Tourists want exciting adventure activities but they want to know they are safe and that we have in place the most stringent regulations to ensure that is the case—that every provider has been checked has been audited and has plans in place so that we can give assurances to people not just overseas tourists but also domestic tourists that these activities are safe. So there is a huge problem right now.Although it is great to celebrate this bill I really hope that by the time it comes back to the House the Prime Minister has come home from China and sorted this mess out because we—and I mean we as a country—have a terrible problem to deal with right now that will affect all of the hard work that has been done by Te Korowai o Te Tai o Marokura. It will affect the reputation of organisations in Kaikōura. It will affect every other adventure tourism operator throughout the country. It will affect our brand which is so important to all of us. All of the hard work that is going into this could be lost because of the carelessness of the Prime Minister in making promises he could not keep and the carelessness of his Ministers like the Minister of Labour who has not paid attention to this issue and who has not supported the organisations that have to provide these audits.Right now there are angry operators up and down the country. They are furious with the Government about this because on this rests so much not just the lives and the health and safety of people but our reputation as a nation—our international reputation. So all of the work that has gone into this fantastic marine reserve —wonderful work wonderful collaboration—and all of the things that preserve so much of our national identity the things that we are proud of and the things that we value as a nation are currently on the line because the Prime Minister has not done his job. He is busy over in China doing something else at the moment when he should be here fixing this up really quickly. The Minister of Labour has not done his job either—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: What a silly thing to say. That’s just silly.DARIEN FENTON: That member Jonathan Coleman—he is silly. He might think it is silly—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Yes it is silly.DARIEN FENTON: So that member thinks 600 adventure tourism providers with their businesses on the line—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Well saying that the Prime Minister shouldn’t be in China is bonkers.DARIEN FENTON: Oh yes! So anyway to finish—look we are delighted to support this bill. Jonathan Coleman probably needs to study the issue a little bit more before he starts shouting out things about being silly but we are delighted to support this bill. Thank you.