Crown Minerals Amendment Bill

Part 1 of the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill is one of the less controversial parts, because it is mainly technical and relates to issues surrounding permits granted under the Crown Minerals Act. It is Part 2 that is the hugely controversial part of this bill. That said, there are some issues in Part 1 that do relate to the controversial issue, as well. I would like the Minister in the chair, Chris Carter, to advise the Committee whether I am correct on that, so that we can make our voting judgments accordingly, because some of the clauses—3, 4, 5, etc.—relate to quite technical issues in respect of permit-holders.

I have checked through the principal Act, and a number of those issues do not appear to be of great substance; they appear to be more technical. However, clause 9, “Unit development”, provides that section 46(1) of the principal Act be amended “by inserting in paragraph (a), after the words “2 or more permits”, the words “or existing privileges”. The Committee needs to know exactly what that means if we are to vote sensibly on that provision. If we look at Part 2, we will see that certain matters are still to be determined by the court—the Court of Appeal or, ultimately, the Privy Council—in respect of property rights under mining licences issued under the old Mining Act of 1971 or the Coal Mines Act of 1979, where applications have been filed to renew, extend, or vary those licences. I suspect that Part 2 of this legislation will preserve certain privileges for those who happened to get those applications in prior to the Hon Harry Duynhoven making his announcement at 5 o’clock on 20 September 2002. The Committee needs to know whether the reference to “existing privileges” under clause 9 is a reference to the fact that those property rights have not yet been resolved by the court. If I am right in presuming that that is what is meant by those words, it again emphasises the untimely nature of this legislation.

The Hon Pete Hodgson is not an unintelligent Minister. I would like him to cast his mind over the fact that it would be totally unfair if “existing privileges” referred to those who ignored advice and applied for licence renewals, licence extensions, variations, and whatever, prior to 5 p.m. on that fateful day in September 2002. It would be unfair on those who believed a Crown agency that said they did not have the right to do that, when maybe they did have the right to do that, and when in talking about “existing privileges”, this legislation is presuming they might have had the right to do that. It would be patently unfair for this legislation to be saying that those who ignored advice and made such applications prior to that date have existing privileges, but those who took advice from a Crown agency and did not seek to renew such licences do not have existing privileges.

This Parliament cannot consider that to be fair, but in respect of those amendments to Part 1—in particular the amendments under clause 9 to section 46(1) of the principal Act—I would be only too happy for the Minister in the chair to take a call and say: “Lockwood, you’ve got it totally wrong. The existing privileges being referred to have nothing to do with the matters before the court”. I am prepared to accept that if the Minister says that is correct. But if it is not, we need to know.

Lockwood, you’ve got it totally wrong! Nothing in Part 1 has anything to do with Part 2. The issue that the member raises is about unitisation, where rights are being divided between licences and permits.

We would encourage the Minister to take a call to expand on his explanation, because we would hang on to every word he says. Mining industry operators had the same experience with officials of the Crown Minerals unit. For a number of years they were told that the 1991 Act extinguished their licence rights. Some of them took that at face value and did not even think about challenging the statements made by the officials. It was only when Glenharrow took the case to court that they started to realise that they were being disadvantaged by taking the officials’ words at face value for all those years.

So instead of giving a brief statement to answer the question raised by the Hon Lockwood Smith, I encourage the Minister to take a call to explain the matter in detail and put the whole issue to rest. [Interruption] Exactly. The question is what are these “existing privileges” if they do not relate to permits, or if they are nothing to do with Part 2. Although Part 1 was, on the surface, only a technical amendment to clarify some administrative procedures, the Minister could understand the anxiety of Opposition members after listening to mining industry submitters to the Commerce Committee. They have taken statements made by officials and Ministers at their face value, only to find subsequently that they have been disadvantaged. I ask the Minister to take another call to explain to us in detail why he believes that these “existing privileges” have nothing to do with the permit at all.

When the Hon Paul Swain introduced the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, he claimed that Part 1 had gone a long way to simplify the legislation, removing compliance costs. When I looked through the commentary on the bill, I realised that there was absolutely no compliance cost statement attached to Part 1, and I am not too sure how the mining industry can be assured that Part 1 has managed to simplify its compliance costs. All that industry knows is that Part 1 is the part of this bill that seeks to extinguish their licence privileges. I do not think they agree that Part 1 has gone a long way to assure them that compliance costs have been simplified—if indeed there are any—to compensate for the loss of their property rights.

Looking at clause 18, “Reports to Secretary”, it was interesting to find that: “Nothing in subsection (4) or subsection (7) requires the Secretary to send or make available any records, reports, information, or returns relating to the calculation and payment of royalties by permit holders.” What if errors are made? What if the permit-holders do not agree with the calculation and payment of royalties? How do they go about seeking that information?

The Green Party supports Part 1 of this bill, as it does the whole bill, which, after all, just seeks to implement the original intent of the Crown Minerals Act, which was later shown by the courts not to have quite the legal effect that was intended at the time. So this is just Parliament picking up where Parliament was more than a decade ago. It is part of a trend over several decades to stop giving mining prior status over all other land uses. It has not quite achieved that yet, and I will come back to that later. There is still some way to go. In replacing the Mining Act, the Crown Minerals Act got rid of the outrageous situation we used to be in, where a landowner could be forced to allow access over his or her land to minerals under that land, completely disrupting other land uses—farming operations, or whatever—and had no right to say no. The landowner’s right was instituted by the Crown Minerals Act in 1991, and that was a step forward.

The notion of rights to perpetual renewal of leases, licences, or permits is inappropriate when dealing with public resources. The perpetual right of renewal—such as has been the case for pastoral leases in the South Island, for example—has effectively led to privatisation of public assets. Those leasehold lands change hands as though they were freehold. It is virtually impossible for the Government to end the lease, even though no capital payment was ever made in the first place for the occupation of the land. The Opposition is talking about property rights, and seems to believe that property rights over the access to public resources should be in perpetuity. The Green Party does not agree with that.

The vesting of pounamu in Ngāi Tahu was part of the Crown’s efforts to honour the Treaty of Waitangi, and we do not believe it is appropriate for a company to try to undermine that effect of the treaty. Pounamu is a very special mineral. Its value in spiritual and cultural terms is at least as great as its economic value. We note that the bill still protects the legal position of Glenharrow Holdings.

We support mineral exploration companies having to relinquish at least 50 percent of the area covered by their exploration permits, should they wish to extend the term of those permits from 5 years up to 10. That should increase the efficiency of mineral exploration. By the time companies have been exploring for 5 years, they should have narrowed down a little bit the area where minerals are likely to be, and where they are not. It will give them an incentive to get on with the job—if they do not use their licence, they will lose it.

This bill, however, misses two opportunities to remedy a couple of defects in the original Act. The first one is the anomaly in the Crown minerals legislation that only national parks created before it was passed in 1991 are covered by the fourth schedule, and so are protected from applications to carry out minerals prospecting, exploration, or extraction. In its 2002 manifesto, Labour said it would ensure that the Conservation Act and the Crown Minerals Act provided adequate protection from mining activities for areas of significant conservation value. It is odd that land of equal status under the Conservation Act is treated differently, depending on whether it got there before or after 1991.

Secondly, the Government has not used the opportunity to further remove the special status of mining. Labour’s policy stated that it would amend the Crown Minerals Act and the Conservation Act to establish an appropriate public process for the consideration of prospecting, exploration, and mining applications on conservation land not covered by the mineral activity ban—as occurs with other commercial activities such as tourism and recreational concessions. There is still no process for the public to be involved when—

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It would be helpful for those of us who are following this debate closely if the member speaking could give us some guidance as to which particular clause in Part 1 she is referring to. It sounds like she is reading a second reading speech, and she has not referred to any particular clause in Part 1 at all.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): That is a debatable issue.

I am speaking on issues in Part 1 such as clause 4, “Record of permit”; clause 5, “Change to permit”; clause 6, “Revocation of permit”; clause 7, “Surrender of permit”; clause 8, “Transfers and other dealings with permits”; and so on.

Just to finish, because I think I must be almost out of time, I was saying that there is no process—as there is for other sorts of concessions on the conservation estate—for mining to be open to a public process. We believe there should be.

I move, That the question be now put.

After listening to the Green Party spokesperson on this bill I think the Committee could be confused, because it is clear that the Green Party’s policy is a total close-down of mining in this country. Regrettably, that party has had some spectacular success. The whole of the Coromandel Peninsula is closed down to mining, and Jeanette Fitzsimons is proud of that. From her perspective I can understand that, but from New Zealand’s perspective I am appalled. We know from the report prepared by the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences that this country has an estimated $86 billion of mineral wealth under the land.

Progress reported.

The House adjourned at 9.55 p.m.