Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. The Green Party is pleased to support the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and it certainly supports the provisions in the bill that will enable New Zealand to access much more financial compensation in the event of an oil spill—up to $1.39 billion. Of course New Zealand is one of only five OECD countries with a coastline—not including the United States—that has not acceded to the Supplementary Fund Protocol of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) which the IMO adopted more than 13 years ago in 2003. So this bill is overdue given that the oil tankers that operate around New Zealand generally carry between 55000 and 100000 tonnes of oil as cargo. The advice that officials have provided is that a spill of between 10000 to 20000 tonnes—if it should ever happen—would easily exceed that $377 million compensation.It is ironic that the Government is introducing this bill in the same week that the world's largest seismic testing vessel the Amazon Warrior has arrived in New Zealand waters to start seismic testing for oil along our eastern coast for the Norwegian company Statoil. It is really disappointing that the Government has ignored the huge opposition to this. When it is well known that we have got to keep oil in the ground to protect our climate the Government has in fact allowed Statoil to take over Chevron's permit and then to have seismic testing with these big airguns blasting the marine environment from now through until May next year. The Government is really short-sighted in allowing that in the same week that we have got this bill.The other major concern that the Green Party has with the bill is that the Government is allowing through this bill foreign-flagged vessels to carry cargo between New Zealand and our offshore islands like the Chatham Islands. It shows an absolute lack of commitment to a thriving coastal shipping sector to force the New Zealand coastal shipping to compete with foreign-flagged vessels. In Budget 2015 we finally got the Government committing to investing $51 million in a new wharf on the Chatham Islands. That is long overdue. Given the rusting metal in the concrete on the wharf at Waitangi the Chathams need a new wharf. But this bill by allowing competition from foreign-flagged vessels will potentially be undermining the south-east shipping and the community-owned Chatham Islands Shipping and their ability to service the Chathams' wharf. Why when they finally get a new wharf on the Chathams is the Government allowing foreign vessels to use that and undermine our own coastal shipping companies? That is likely because we know that there is overcapacity in the global shipping fleet and that has resulted in what some commentators have called zombie ships". They offer out their services at rates that are just enough to cover the interest on the vessel. They do not cover the capital costs and so they will be undercutting our own coastal vessels.We need a thriving coastal shipping sector. As the earthquake events in Kaikōura have shown we need to use what Julie Anne Genter calls the "blue highway" to move freight around New Zealand because transport greenhouse gas emissions are a major component of our climate emissions. We can reduce those if we invest in coastal shipping but this bill and its provisions which undermine the services to the Chathams will potentially cut right across that. So we will be very interested in submissions from the Shipping Federation from our own coastal shipping services and from people in the Chatham Islands and the council there because this legislation potentially cut across there.In respect of the provisions around drug and alcohol testing given that each week I put my trust in the pilots in Air New Zealand to land in Wellington Airport in often difficult conditions assuming always that they are fully functioning—and I am sure they are—I say that this bill is likely to help reduce the incidence of alcohol and drug impairment in people providing commercial transport services."