Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am speaking again to Part 5 and the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act and the changes to that. The Green Party like others shares concerns about the provisions in this particularly in new section 53 about the Minister appointing boards of inquiry for publicly notified section 20 activities.While the Minister has explained that there is a desire to make this similar to the Resource Management Act there is a huge possibility of there being quite a politicisation of the process here with the Minister both appointing the board of inquiry setting the terms of reference—though the select committee did change this slightly to require that the terms of reference be only in relation to administrative matters rather than generally. But there is still a problem there because if the terms of reference are to relate to administrative matters potentially they can limit and constrain the budget for the board of inquiry which would then limit its ability to truly inquire into the environmental effects and ways of avoiding remedying and mitigating those.Because there is no ability to appeal the import of inquiry decisions to the Environment Court there is not a sufficient check and balance. Again we come back to what the rationale is for these changes to the Act. The Minister explained in relation to policy statements for exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that it was his idea but I would just like to remind him of what the Ministry for the Environment said in the regulatory impact statement. It said that one of the problems that new section 37A in relation to these policy statements was drafted to address: The mining industry and allied business interest groups have also expressed concern that there is not national direction on a number of matters relevant to the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act in particular there are concerns that the intent of the requirement to favour caution as currently drafted is not sufficiently clear and is leading decision-makers applicants and submitters to focus inappropriately on inadequacies in information rather than on the scale and significance of the effects of the activity." And of course it was that precautionary principle in section 61(2) that led to those two seabed mining applications being declined. So there is concern around the politicisation of boards of inquiry by those being appointed by the Minister.There is also concern that this part of the bill replaces sections 35 to 58 of the principal EEZ Act with a range of new sections. One of those new sections is new section 46 in clause 188 about non-notified activities. I ask the Minister whether he could expand on what sorts of activities are going to not be notified because in the principal Act in section 45 there is a mandatory requirement—because it uses the word "must"—that when the Environmental Protection Authority is satisfied that an application for a marine consent is complete it must give public notice of the application. That is because of the important principle that our oceans are a common property resource. They are there for all of us and they are being managed on behalf of all of us. It is not like private land. So that is why in the principal Act there is this emphasis on public notification so that the public can get involved in these critical decisions particularly when they are for things like seabed mining. As we saw with Trans-Tasman Resources and Chatham Rock Phosphate there was huge public interest and involvement in those activities. Yet this new section 46 is talking about non-notified activities. Does the Minister intend through one of his policy statements or through regulation to provide much more guidance on what constitutes a non-notified activity and again where the public is being shut out of the ability to actually have a say on what happens in our oceans?"