Street Maryan: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — Referral to Commerce Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill — Referral to Commerce Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 10 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9253. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I do not wish to dwell on this too much in the short time I have but I would like to note that as the previous speaker Hon Chris Finlayson has said words are incredibly important and the words on the page are very important. But delivering sarcasm and dripping bile and venom against people who are not in this Chamber to defend themselves is not what one would call parliamentary behaviour. And I think that that kind of behaviour against people of great standing—let us just remember that just recently Dame Anne Salmond was made New Zealander of the Year. I did not hear the Attorney-General object to that and I think it was a very appropriate award to give her. To come into this Chamber and use that style of venom to which we are accustomed from that member is beneath him and that patronising attitude that he takes does not advance the words on the page to which I come.I come to the words on the page because the words on the page are inadequate. Let me speak about this. I want to talk about Supplementary Order Paper 205 in the name of the Minister of Energy and Resources and I want to draw attention to a possible interpretation of Supplementary Order Paper 205 that I do not believe the Supplementary Order Paper intends or covers adequately. It comes to the words on the page Mr Finlayson. The words on the page that I am reading which is printed in the Bills Digest say: “the area of the non-interference zone to which the activity relates”—and we are talking about the banning of protest activity within this non-interference zone of structures or ships to which the activity relates; in other words those that are working at oil exploration and such activities—“(which may be up to 500 metres from any point on the outer edge of the structure or ship to which the activity relates or if there is any equipment attached to the structure or ship 500 metres from any point on the outer edge of the equipment);”.Given that the National Party is so well-endowed with lawyers I wonder whether the Minister could address the issue of this non-interference area of 500 metres. If for example Greenpeace in the course of its lawful activity protesting against oil or mineral exploration in the deep sea were to pull up within 500 metres of a ship that was engaging in that activity and that ship itself decided to breach the 500-metre limit and move towards Greenpeace in a threatening manner as we have seen Japanese whalingships do in the face of protests on the high seas then where is the Minister’s law and words on the page? Who is breaching the 500-metre limit in that instance?If they try to provoke democratic and legitimate protesters into activities that they will not resile from—in other words they have done what the law says and pulled up within 500 metres of a ship that is carrying out this activity—and that ship itself then broaches the 500-metre limit who is at fault? Who gets the $100000 fine? Where does that responsibility lie and why has the Minister not got the words on the page right? He has got the “archbishop of words on the page” sitting on his right hand and really quite frankly I would think—Hon Christopher Finlayson: Cardinal.Hon MARYAN STREET: Cardinal-something—cardinal-something. I might come to that in a later speech on another subject perhaps—cardinal-something. However on this matter the man who sets himself up as the one with the greatest knowledge of the words on the page should surely have counselled his junior colleague and said: “I’m sorry. You haven’t got the words on the page quite right.” But in addition to that carelessness that sloppiness of drafting what we see from this—because the words on the page are not accurate are not sufficient—is the actual design of this Supplementary Order Paper 205.I would have supported Gareth Hughes’ procedural motion earlier this evening which was not allowed by the Committee to have this Supplementary Order Paper referred back to the Commerce Committee so that people could tease it out and see whether or not it was appropriate. But this Minister clearly did not want public scrutiny of this because as Paul Buchanan said of the Prime Minister just last week when he was talking about the Prime Minister and his poor oversight of the Government Communications Security Bureau: “This behaviour may be appropriate—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Members can use examples but I just need to say right at the start that we are actually debating the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill and we are not going to extend into other debates.Hon MARYAN STREET: I was not intending to. I simply wanted to quote Paul Buchanan because he said that the Prime Minister’s cavalier behaviour might be appropriate for the chief executive officer of a private company but it is not appropriate for the Prime Minister of a democratic nation. I think this is the point that the Minister is missing with this Supplementary Order Paper. He thinks—because he is being tutored by his colleagues by some who think that the private sector rules and that the private sector rules are OK—that it is adequate to put up a curtailing of legitimate democratic expression without taking it to the public for comment without putting it through a select committee process where the public can make submissions and to bring it in through the side door because he might have had a phone call from a company that said: “Oh by the way we’ll come and prospect and drill for oil around your borders in your economic zone if you make it easy for us because we’ve heard from our friends at Warner Bros and we’ve heard from our friends at Skycity that this is how the New Zealand Government does business.” It is really just one private chief executive officer talking to another private chief executive officer.Well if this junior Minister thinks that that is the way to run a country somebody needs to tell him that it is not the case. There are democratic principles at stake and there are democratic rights of protest that people have. Yes there should be safety on the high seas and in that case why does this Supplementary Order Paper not morph into a piece of legislation that applies to every vessel on the high seas and not simply to those who are going about their business of protesting legitimately in a difficult area?Of course we do not want accidents at sea. We do not want Japanese whalers splitting protest boats in half. We do not want them threatening life. We do not wantthat kind of lack of safety on the high seas. But if it is good enough to bring this in for protest boats it should be good enough for every vessel on the high seas. There should not be any tolerance of health and safety threats on the high seas.So I would ask that the Minister goes back and gets the words on the page right tutored by his superior counsel—superior in so many ways—Chris Finlayson. I would ask that he gets some advice about how to write this properly to say what he means to mean what he says and to make sure that this is not simply an isolated exception which could be something applied to every vessel on the high seas.This is a democratic country. We do prize our democratic right to protest. We do guard that jealously. This is not a private company to have rules dictated by the chief executive officer. This is a democratic country and it should be run with that in mind.