Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill

I move, That the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill be now read a second time. This bill responds to a regulatory gap that has meant New Zealand does not currently have a comprehensive regime in place to manage and mitigate the environmental effects of development activities in our oceans. New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf hold significant economic potential. The Government wants to unlock this economic potential in an environmentally responsible way. Environmental organisations and industries are agreed on the need for legislation to do this and most submitters supported the bill with amendments.

The bill as reported back reflects the Local Government and Environment Committee’s agreement on the majority of amendments proposed and its response to issues raised by a wide range of submitters. I wish to stress from the outset that this bill will not duplicate or extend existing legislation. The bill is not about oil spill response, mineral allocation, marine reserves, fishing, or shipping. These are all addressed under other existing legislation. Activities covered by the bill include seabed mining, the building of construction platforms for oil and gas exploration and drilling, marine farming, energy generation, carbon capture and storage, seismic surveying, and cable laying. The Environmental Protection Authority will make independent decisions on marine consent applications, balancing the environment and economy with input from the public and from iwi.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the chair and members of the Local Government and Environment Committee for their work in considering this piece of legislation. I also greatly appreciate the in-depth knowledge and support to the committee provided by my officials in the Ministry for the Environment and the Environmental Protection Authority. My thanks also go to the submitters for the efforts and thought that went into their submissions.

This is a multifaceted piece of legislation, but the contributions made at the select committee have been vital in making it a more workable and high-quality piece of legislation. Altogether the select committee received 125 submissions, and a number of positive changes have been recommended for the bill, including clarification of what decision makers must consider, stronger recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi, wider reference to international obligations, increased enforcement powers, and more workable transition provisions. I would now like to take a moment to elaborate on these improvements in more detail.

So when read as a whole, the bill is clearly environmental legislation, and requires far more than a cost-benefit analysis. The select committee has recommended strengthening the requirements in the bill that outline the matters decision makers must take into account and to favour caution and environmental protection where information is unknown or uncertain. To do this, the committee has recommended structural changes to the bill and amendments to ensure that decision makers consider a range of relevant matters.

This is not about pitting the economy against the environment. It is about balance, and responsible management of our oceans. The select committee has recommended amending the reference to the Treaty of Waitangi in clause 14 to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi through the listed provisions. This is a stronger requirement than the previous wording that the Treaty be taken into account. Let me be also clear that this bill fully complies with our international obligations. This has been confirmed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s own legal team and confirmed by a number of legally qualified submissions to the select committee, including that from the New Zealand Law Society.

The international law of the sea gives New Zealand the right to explore and exploit marine resources in our exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, but it also provides the obligation to preserve and protect the environment. The point here is that the law of the sea must be looked at holistically. No single provision should be read in isolation. The juxtaposition of competing rights and obligations in the convention assumes that States will attempt to strike an appropriate and reasonable balance between interests before undertaking an activity. However, the bill also seeks to give effect to international obligations other than the law of the sea, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. To clarify this intention, clause 11 of the bill has been amended to refer more generally to New Zealand’s international obligations in the marine environment.

The select committee has recommended that a wider range of enforcement tools be available to the public as well as to the Environmental Protection Authority. The committee has recommended that any person be able to apply to the Environment Court for an enforcement order to remedy or address any breach of the legislation. The committee has also recommended that the Environmental Protection Authority’s enforcement officers be able to issue abatement notices for minor breaches of the legislation. I commend these recommendations, and I do believe that they will achieve greater compliance with the proposed law.

Finally, in terms of substantive amendments, the committee has recommended new transitional provisions for the bill. Submitters made us aware that there may be some activities that will already have made significant investments prior to the bill coming into force that were not covered by the original transitional provisions. The Government is committed to making this legislation workable. The select committee’s recommended amendments will enable a smooth transition to the new regime. But to make sure that there are adequate environmental protections in place in the short term, the bill has also been amended to require an impact assessment be prepared by oil and gas companies during that transitional period. This will mirror the requirements once the legislation is in place, and, in fact, is part of best practice employed by most modern petroleum operators already. Once the transitional period has ended, all new activities will need to fully comply with the new regime.

I would like to conclude by addressing an issue that has been raised at the select committee, and repeatedly in the media. A number of people have asked why we do not just extend the Resource Management Act to include the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. It is the Government’s view that the complexity and planning framework of the Resource Management Act would be overkill in our relatively uncrowded offshore marine environment. Furthermore, under the law of the sea, New Zealand does not enjoy the full sovereign rights that we have on land. It would be very difficult, therefore, to apply the Resource Management Act in light of the rights, duties, and responsibilities other countries have in our exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. It is our view that this bill provides an appropriate balance not only of environmental and economic interests but also of public participation and streamlined, cost-effective processes.

I am grateful to the submitters and the select committee, whose changes have served to further improve this long-overdue piece of legislation. This bill reflects the Government’s balanced approach to environmental management. It provides a strong and effective framework to ensure that processes are in place to assess and manage adverse environmental effects in our oceans, to provide greater certainty to investors and existing interests, to meet New Zealand’s international obligations, and to do this in the most efficient and effective way possible, without further delay. I am very pleased to commend the bill to the House.

Labour Party members want to say absolutely clearly that we believe that this is an area where legislation is indeed needed. New Zealanders rightly expect that we will have robust regulations, certainty, confidence about those who wish to work and use resources in the exclusive economic zone, and, for New Zealanders, confidence that the environment around them will be protected. Unfortunately, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill fails to do those things. Labour Party members are very pleased that we voted against this bill—the only party to vote against this bill—on the first reading. We did that then because we believed the bill was too weak. It did not provide sufficient protections and enhancement for the environment, it did not meet our international obligations, it does not provide certainty, and it does not provide an inclusive process. Sadly, though the Local Government and Environment Committee has changed one or two things, none of those issues has been adequately addressed, and we remain consistently opposed to this bill.

Before I get into any more detail on the content of the bill and the concerns we have, I also want to thank the select committee and the officials for the work that they did. I particularly want to acknowledge, on our side of the House, Moana Mackey for the work that she has done on the committee.

💬 Jacqui Dean: So why isn’t she speaking?

I have not been able to attend all of the meetings that I would like to, so Moana Mackey has done an excellent job in that regard, and will, as the bill goes on, I am sure, make a number of contributions. I wonder whether Jacqui Dean might make some contributions. Somehow I doubt that that is going to happen. But Moana Mackey is certainly somebody who was able to bring a rigour of analysis to this work during the committee, and I am very grateful to her and to other committee members for what they did.

The problems with this bill start first and foremost in the purpose clause, clause 10. Despite what the Minister for the Environment might like to think, what the purpose clause does in this bill is create the pitched battle between the economy and the environment that the National Party seems determined to see continue right across our society, right across our economy—that the environment and the economy are in a battle to the death. Of course, in the National Party’s picture, the environment must be defeated in the cause of the economy, not realising, of course, that in fact the only way that the economy can grow sustainably is by protecting and enhancing the environment.

That notion of the importance of the environment to enabling sustainable economic development is what is embedded in the international agreements around these issues—in particular, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. That is why people have been concerned throughout this process that this bill simply does not meet our international obligations. The Minister might like to just claim that it does, but, actually, submitter after submitter who came to the select committee told us that it did not. And these were not just any old people coming to a select committee with an axe to grind. These were people who work every day on these issues, who understand the legal ramifications of these issues.

Let us start with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who actually came and managed to bring out the clause of the Convention on the Law of the Sea to make sure that we were absolutely aware of it. This is what the convention actually says: “States have the sovereign right to exploit their natural resources pursuant to their environmental policies and in accordance with their duty to protect and preserve the marine environment.” The parliamentary commissioner went on to say: “we can pursue economic development, but we must protect the environment. The former—economic development—is optional. The latter—environmental protection—is not.” That is the point of our international obligations.

To make it even clearer for the Minister, who seemed to think that legal experts around the country were agreeing that this bill was somehow magically now consistent with our international obligations, I refer her to the submission from the New Zealand Law Society to the select committee, which makes it absolutely clear. This is from the Law Society’s submission: “The right to develop resources within the EEZ and on the Continental Shelf (conferred under the LOSC and customary international law) is subject to obligations to protect and preserve the marine environment,”—subject to those obligations.

This is not a question of some imagined balance or some imagined battle between the economy and the environment. The conventions to which New Zealand has signed up—the conventions that govern how our marine environment actually operates and is used—say clearly that development of resources is subject to the obligations. That has been lost in this purpose clause. Without bringing that back in, this is not only inconsistent with our international obligations, it is also wrong. It is wrong because it does not bring into the law the expectations of New Zealanders that we will protect and preserve our marine environment.

We also have to make absolutely clear—and the Minister herself picked this up but drew the opposite conclusion from the Law Society—that the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf are actually not part of New Zealand’s sovereign territory. We exercise our rights over them pursuant to the Convention on the Law of the Sea. So to put forward, as the Government has done, legislation that actually contradicts that Convention on the Law of the Sea makes this legislation wrong on all those fronts: wrong because it contradicts it, wrong because our right to be able to make this kind of law is actually pursuant to the Convention on the Law of the Sea, and wrong because we know that New Zealanders want to see us protect and preserve our marine environment—the very clause that comes out from the Convention on the Law of the Sea.

So the purpose clause of this bill is wrong. It needs to be changed. The Labour Party and, I am sure, other parties—the Green Party and New Zealand First—will be proposing amendments through this process in the Committee stage to ensure that we actually get a purpose clause that reflects our international obligations and actually reflects what New Zealanders want. New Zealanders have seen oil spills such as that in the Gulf of Mexico, they have seen the damage that can be done out in the exclusive economic zone, out beyond the 12-mile limit, and they want to see robust protections. They want to know that our environment will be protected if people are going to be using resources in the exclusive economic zone. This bill, through its purpose clause, completely fails to do that.

There are a huge number of other issues that I could deal with, but I do want to pick up the Minister’s comment around consistency with the Resource Management Act, and also to point out that once again during the select committee process, submitter after submitter came to us and said that we need more consistency with the Resource Management Act. The delineation between the 12-mile limit, inside which the Resource Management Act operates, and the 200-mile limit, in which this new legislation, which is not consistent with the Resource Management Act, will operate, is merely a line on a map. It is not actually a specific place; it is not a specific thing. We need to ensure consistency. Again, this is not just Opposition parties saying this. This was submitter after submitter from all sides of the debate—

💬 Jacqui Dean: It’s not true.

—from the regional councils who came to us and said they want—Jacqui Dean says it is not true! The Taranaki Regional Council came to the committee and said it wants consistency on this. It was not just environmental groups; it was actually submitters across the board wanting to see this kind of consistency. That is in part because the concepts within the Resource Management Act have been tested. There is case law there. People understand what is meant by sustainable management. Under this process new concepts and untested concepts will find their way into the law, and that will be difficult for people to manage. Nobody is saying this will be exactly the same as the Resource Management Act, but it should be consistent with the Resource Management Act.

There are a range of other issues, and I am sure my colleague Moana Mackey will take up a number of them as we go on. I want to specifically, in this last couple of minutes, mention the question around Māori and the relationship with iwi. I think this was an area in which universally iwi came to the committee and said that they were extremely upset by the lack of consultation. That clause has now been amended, but I think it actually can be improved even more. But also I want to put on the record that the Labour Party will be proposing amendments to include specific recognition of Moriori. That was an issue raised with the committee. We believe that is appropriate, given the role of Moriori, particularly around the Chathams. So we will be proposing amendments in that regard.

This bill is flawed. We need quality legislation that provides a robust framework that New Zealanders can have confidence in when it comes to the management of our exclusive economic zone. New Zealanders want the confidence that we will protect and preserve the marine environment, as we are obliged to internationally, and as we should. We will be bringing up many, many amendments because this bill fails to give New Zealanders the confidence they should have, fails to give certainty to those who want to work in the exclusive economic zone, and fails to provide a process that people can participate in. This bill should have been significantly better than this. It should have given that certainty. We will work with the Government on good amendments to improve this, to make sure that we actually have a bill that is internationally consistent, that provides robust regulation, and that supports New Zealanders in their concern to uphold the environment. This bill does not do that, and we cannot support it at this stage.

Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. I rise to support this Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill, and I am delighted to support this bill. It has been long-awaited. I think we have been discussing this for probably near on 20 years. This bill is particularly significant because once it is passed, there will for the very first time be a framework for environmental protection in our exclusive economic zone.

As has been mentioned tonight already, the size of our exclusive economic zone in the marine environment is enormous. It is about 20 times the land mass of New Zealand, and our exclusive economic zone is the fifth largest in the world. I say “our” exclusive economic zone because under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea we have sovereign rights over this area and the continental shelf. That sovereign right under the convention provides us with the opportunity to access the natural resources in this area, but it also makes the requirement for responsibility and obligation to conserve and preserve the natural environment. And this bill does just that.

It has been very interesting to hear the discussion from the Opposition members in the House, who are convinced that the bill does not meet our international obligations. However, we have had strong advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I note that the ministry actually negotiated this convention. It spent months and months for years negotiating this convention, and it believes that this bill meets our obligations.

But let me make this clear: this is only one bill. There are 14 other Acts that cover this area. This bill covers activities such as seabed mining, energy generation, carbon capture and storage, and marine farming, and also some aspects of petroleum exploration and extraction. But right now the most common use of the EEZ is in terms of shipping and fishing, and other Acts cover that. For example, the Maritime Transport Act 1994, which regulates shipping, also regulates marine pollution, oil-spill planning and response, and also dredging and the dumping of waste. In terms of fishing, the Fisheries Act 1996 manages both the fisheries and fishing activities. Other Acts such as the Crown Minerals Act 1991 and the Continental Shelf Act 1964 will continue to operate, and they will be involved in the resource-allocation regime for petroleum and minerals. There are also two other environmental Acts, the Marine Mammals Protection Act and the Wildlife Act. But what this Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill does, this long-awaited bill, is that it provides an environmental management framework similar to the Resource Management Act to assess, to manage, and to control activities in the EEZ.

There was an enormous amount of interest in this bill. That is no surprise. The Local Government and Environment Committee had 125 submissions and we heard 37. I have to say that every single submitter supported the bill and was pleased to see that it had come to the select committee. There was of course a variety of comments and shades of opinion about the detail of the bill, but every submitter was pleased to see that we had a bill that dealt with the environmental effects in the EEZ. There were an enormous number of important issues raised by submitters. We worked our way through those submissions, and numerous changes were agreed to by the whole committee, and they have been made to the bill. However, there were some differences of opinion that we could not reconcile, and that will make for great debate during the Committee stage.

I would like to thank everybody who was on the select committee, because regardless of our differences of opinion, we were all very aware of the importance of the bill and worked hard to get the best possible outcomes. I would also like to thank the officials from the Ministry for the Environment and from the Environmental Protection Authority. They worked very hard, they were well-informed, and they did good work for us. I also thank the drafters of the bill. It was a complex bill, it did require a lot of rethinking, and we appreciate the work that they did. I commend this bill to the House. It is time that we had legislation that provided the environmental framework that we need for our EEZ, and this bill will do the job. Thank you.

Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. I want to start by saying that I do not think that you would get any disagreement in this House that legislation monitoring and governing what happens in our exclusive economic zone and continental shelf is needed. What we on this side of the House are saying is that this bill, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill, simply does not achieve the Government’s stated aims of allowing that economic activity to continue whilst protecting the environment in which it occurs. New Zealand has the fifth-largest exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in the world. The only reason that we have any right to, for example, exploit resources in that area is that we are signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. But in signing that convention we also signed up to an obligation to put in place legislation that would allow any activity in that area to occur in an environmentally sustainable way.

I have to put on record our concern and disappointment that the Government has decided to charge ahead with the exploitation of mineral resources in our exclusive economic zone before this bill has even passed through the House. I think it shows a level of arrogance. It shows that the debating process in this House, the Committee stage that is coming up, and the select committee process is just a rubber-stamping exercise, because members opposite are so sure it is just going to get rubber-stamped by the parties that are supporting it. At the first reading it was more parties, and we are very happy now that the select committee process has highlighted the inadequacies of this piece of legislation, but now it is going to be rubber-stamped by ACT, rubber-stamped by United Future, and rubber-stamped by National, and, in fact, we are not going to have the proper debate that we need to have. All the while the Government is going out there and saying: “Please come in here, go into the exclusive economic zone, exploit those resources. We have got a voluntary regime in place.”

On the first reading of this bill, I put to the then Minister for the Environment, Nick Smith, the case on the East Coast, with Petrobras coming in and carrying out oil and gas exploration. He said to me: “No, we guarantee that nothing can ever happen until the bill is passed.” Well, that is actually not true. There is a voluntary regime in place that the Government is asking people to subscribe to, but if this bill does not meet our international obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, then certainly a voluntary regime does not meet our international obligations. We think that perhaps the Government should just have waited until we had legislation in place before allowing those activities to go ahead.

The issue has been raised about whether or not this meets our international obligation, and clearly there is disagreement. It is not true that we were told by all submitters that it did meet our international obligation. We were astonished that the Government had not even bothered to get a legal opinion on this bill before it got to the select committee, and the reality is that we are never going to know until it is tested in the court. That is a reality. But we could have made certain that it met our international obligations by simply using the language that the convention uses. What the convention says is that it is not a balance between economic development and environmental protection. We have a right to exploit the resources in our exclusive economic zone, but that comes with an obligation—a duty—to ensure environmental protection. That is not a trade-off; that is a right with an obligation. Environmental protection is the bottom line.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said in her submission: “we can pursue economic development, but we must protect the environment. The former—economic development—is optional. The latter—environmental protection—is not.” That is what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment told the select committee.

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: We don’t want jobs, eh? That would be terrible. No jobs. Don’t want the jobs.

Well, Minister Joyce can make fun of it. It will be great when the Government is in court defending this weak piece of legislation just because he would not put in a simple purpose clause that showed that we were consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and that left absolutely no question as to whether or not we had met our international obligations.

Now I come to the issue of the regulations, because one of the other issues that was raised at the select committee was that so much of this has been done by regulation. This is a pattern we are seeing with this National Government, particularly on contentious pieces of legislation: put as much of it as possible into regulation as you can, and then it does not see the light of day at a select committee and it does not come to the House to be debated. Before me is the discussion document on the regulations on this legislation. As you can see, it is not insubstantial, and what submitters said to us was: “It’s really difficult for us to know how effective or ineffective this piece of legislation is going to be when we have not seen the regulations.” The regulations were released only after we heard submissions at the select committee, so they said: “Either keep the bill in select committee until we have had time to review the regulations and maybe come back to you with a supplementary submission—we do not have to be heard in person; it could be a written submission—or send the bill back to the committee once the regulations are released.” This is a discussion document, but we know how discussion documents go with the National Government. Basically it is: “This is what we are going to do. We are going to put it on our website and invite you to waste your time reading it and writing and telling us what you think, despite the fact that you know a lot more about it than we do. Then we are going to ignore everything”—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

I am sorry, Mr Speaker. Then they will ignore everything that those submitters say, and do exactly what they were going to do in the first place, which is implement it. So submitters know that these are the regulations that are going to ultimately be in place, and they would just like the opportunity to go back to the select committee, take account of the regulations alongside the legislation, and advise the committee and this House on what the overall impact of the bill is going to be. But obviously they were not given that opportunity, and, given how quickly the discussion document was released after the bill came back from the select committee, I do not think it would have been too difficult to have slowed down that process a little bit to allow that to happen. Clearly it was a deliberate attempt to not let that happen.

We have also talked a lot about the Resource Management Act. What National members try to make out is that Labour members say they should just extend the Resource Management Act. Well, that is not at all what we are saying. What we are saying is that the line that occurs at 12 miles is jurisdictional only. It is there only because within 12 miles that is our sovereign territory, and on the other side of 12 miles it is not. That is why the line is there. It has got nothing to do with science, it has got nothing to do with resource allocation, it has got nothing to do with the environment; it is jurisdictional. So why would you have a completely different regime in the exclusive economic zone compared with inshore?

💬 Jacqui Dean: Because we don’t have sovereignty over the exclusive economic zone.

Jacqui Dean says it is because we do not have authority in the exclusive economic zone. Our shipping laws occur—

💬 Jacqui Dean: No, no. Sovereignty.

Sovereignty in our exclusive economic zone. Then, Jacqui Dean, how can our coastal shipping laws occur in the exclusive economic zone? How can our health and safety laws work in the exclusive economic zone? How can our fisheries laws work in the exclusive economic zone? And how does the Biosecurity Act manage to operate in the exclusive economic zone? Apparently the only piece of legislation that is completely incapable of working in our exclusive economic zone is the Resource Management Act. So that is why we cannot have a bar of it. What a load of garbage!

One of the energy companies that came to speak to the committee said to us: “We support this, because it is going to be far more permissive than the Resource Management Act.” And that is the reality. Why would you create brand-new legal tests in the exclusive economic zone? Why would you not call on 20 years of Resource Management Act case law and put in place language and legal tests that are well tested, well understood, and that councils use now? The Taranaki Regional Council told us at the select committee that it would rather have tests and processes that it already knows. It has allowed oil and gas exploration to go ahead in Taranaki under the Resource Management Act; it has not stopped it. So why would you not use that, instead of inventing this new term “favour caution”? No one knows what that means. This bill is an absolute boon for lawyers. They are really the ones who are going to benefit out of this piece of legislation, because these are all untested—

💬 Charles Chauvel: It’s not all bad, then.

Mr Chauvel says it is not all bad, then. It is untested and there is no reason to have two completely different regimes side by side, one far more permissive than the other, especially when you consider that some of these activities are actually going to cross that barrier. So they will go through a Resource Management Act process and a process to get a marine consent in the exclusive economic zone. Both those processes are completely different. With one you can appeal to the Environment Court; the other one you cannot—you can go only to the High Court on points of law. It is an absolute mess, and all because the Government wants to make it as easy as possible for this activity to go ahead without the environmental protections that the Resource Management Act has provided in our territorial waters. That is the reason: to make it more permissive.

Yet, arguably, the marine environment that we are talking about is far more dangerous than the exclusive economic zone. It is deeper. The Raukūmara Basin is 3,000 to 4,000 metres deep, where Petrobras is doing its exploration. The Gulf of Mexico is 1,400 metres deep. That is far more dangerous, far more risky, and, arguably, we should have legislation that is far more robust when we are deciding to let that activity go ahead.

Let us be clear. The concern with this legislation is around oil and gas exploration. There are a number of other activities, as members point out. At the Local Government and Environment Committee the chair kept saying that this was not about oil—this was not about oil. She kept saying to submitters: “Don’t talk about oil.” But if the activity does result in an oil spill, then it is about oil—it is about oil.

There are a number of things that Labour members will traverse through the Committee stage. For example, we are concerned about the provisions for penalties and cost recovery. There is actually nothing in this bill that, realistically, would require a company to have the money to be able to pay for the entirety of cost recovery, in terms of bonds or insurance. The penalties are incredibly weak. They are not going to be any kind of disincentive. The processes in the bill are massively stacked against people submitting on an application and are stacked in favour of those making the application. As I said before, being allowed to appeal only to the High Court on points of law instead of being able to appeal to the Environment Court raises natural justice issues, and this will actually clog the system up, rather than make it any easier.

Labour members would like to work with the Government to make this piece of legislation workable. We obviously want to see legislation in place. This bill does not do what the Government says that it is going to do, and it is crucial that we get it right.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Talofa lava. I rise to take a call on the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill. The Green Party has long recognised the need for an environmental management regime for the oceans, and we support the intent of an EEZ bill, but we cannot support this weak, flawed, and overly permissive bill.

💬 Chris Hipkins: I thought they voted in favour of it.

It is vitally important we get this right. The regime we establish is likely to remain in effect for years and, like with the Resource Management Act, we need a durable solution to provide certainty for business, for iwi, for communities, and for Kiwis.

New Zealand has got the fifth-largest EEZ zone in the world. It is internationally significant and it is an environment we know so little about. We New Zealanders love our oceans. They are where we fish, where we play, and where we get our spiritual sustenance from, and we take pleasure from the animals and the environment. It is an environment, though, where drillers hope to drill deep, deep, deep for oil; where Chatham Rock Phosphate wants to literally suck up kilometres of the sea floor to find phosphate. It is where other companies want to start mining the hydrothermal vents and methane hydrates.

As, I think, the member Chris Hipkins was interjecting there, it is true that the Green Party supported the bill in its first reading, because we support the intent of EEZ legislation. We have been calling for it for 12 years. It is good to finally have it. We tried to make the bill better in the select committee. We supported the numerous submitters who supported, like us, the intent of the bill, but not the bill as it was drafted and not the bill that we have seen come back from the select committee. Ultimately, our economy depends on our environment, and this bill is all about—it is all about—facilitating activities like risky deep-sea drilling to occur. This bill is called the “EEZ Bill”, but really it should be called the “Eee-zee Drilling Bill” because that is what this bill is facilitating.

There are numerous reasons why the Green Party is opposed to the bill. There is the fact that it fails our international obligations; it prioritises economic development over those environmental considerations; it fails to take into account climate change, full stop; it contributes to uncertainty around the drafting, along with the precautionary approach; it fails to meet our Treaty of Waitangi obligations; it fails the principles of natural justice; it contains woefully inadequate penalties, meaning that the taxpayer is going to have to pick up the tab when there is an accident; and it simply ignores marine protection.

Before I go on to the bill I would like to thank the submitters and the officials who worked on the bill, and I would like to acknowledge the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, Nicky Wagner. But I have got to lament the select committee process. Here we saw the six National members almost uniformly vote against any amendment put forward by an environmentalist, a legal expert, or the Green Party, yet when you look on the other side at all the amendments supported by industry, it was tick, tick, tick. It was an absolutely biased process. And they call it a balance, which is the most shocking irony of the whole process.

As we saw, there was a split vote on the select committee among the six National members, the three Labour members, the two Green members, and the one New Zealand First member. We saw the bill reported back from the committee and not supported by the committee. All the amendments the Government wanted to put forward simply could not go through because of that split vote. So I acknowledge everyone who engaged, but I would like to point out that it was a deeply flawed process. We have not seen a better bill come out of the select committee as a result.

The first critique of the bill is the bill’s weighting in favour of economic development over environmental responsibility to protect and preserve. The bill makes deep-sea drilling almost certain to be approved—I have not heard any member from National say anything to the contrary—and this brings with it the spectre of a catastrophic oil spill. It is not academic any more for New Zealanders, because, as we have seen after the Rena, oil on beaches is something Kiwis have tasted, they have smelt it, they have seen it, and they have touched it.

The Government, in a very surprising move, is currently consulting on the regulations for this bill, which is at only its second reading now. The Government is consulting on a bill that has not even reached the Committee stage. What the Government is proposing to do is make risky deep-sea drilling a discretionary activity.

But I have to point out that no rules, no amount of consultation, and no amount of Government legislation are ever going to plug a deep-sea well blowout and the corresponding catastrophic oil spill. The only way we can protect our waters, our tourism, our aquaculture industries, and our beaches is to make risky deep-sea drilling a prohibited activity. As the petroleum lobby group in New Zealand says, the only thing we can do when facing an oil spill is focus on beach clean-ups. This legislation is not going to stop a spill; in fact, it is going to make it more likely, as it simply makes deep-sea drilling “eee-zee”.

The Minister, I think, pointed to our international obligations incorrectly. Numerous submitters—I would say the majority—including the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, said the bill is not consistent with our international obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The only reason we get to use our EEZ and continental shelf is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. With that right comes the responsibility to “protect and preserve”—those three key words—our marine environment. The drafting changes made at the select committee in fact make the bill weaker. We need to be explicit. If the Government wants to be consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, then let us say it. Let us say: “This bill is consistent with our obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.” If that is the fact, the Government should not be scared of putting it into the legislation.

The key clause in the bill is clause 10, which sets out the purpose of the bill. The bill tries to enshrine this National ideological fixation with balance, which is the whole idea that you can balance a bit of environmental degradation against a little bit of economic development. For us it is a false dichotomy. A healthy economy relies on a healthy environment. It is that simple. The bill fails to acknowledge entirely there are any environmental limits or that there are any environmental bottom lines. As Simon Terry points out, the bill is a bit like a jellyfish. It is a bill that has got no spine. There is no bottom line.

A key couple of phrases in the drafting of the bill is that decision makers are required only to “take into account” matters such as the protection of biological diversity and the integrity of marine species, ecosystems, and processes. They are not required, as they under the Resource Management Act, to “recognise and provide”. These are key drafting terms, because to “recognise and provide” is a lot stronger than to simply “take into account”, as the National Government would have the Environmental Protection Authority board do when it is considering its applications. The bill essentially leaves all the key decisions up to the board. This is the board nominated by the National Government, and I have no confidence in a National Government - stacked board to make the right decision when it comes to our precious marine environment.

In an astounding move we are seeing that perhaps the most dangerous part of the bill is the complete failure to take climate change into account. In fact, the bill specifically prevents the Environmental Protection Authority board from considering the effects of discharging greenhouse gases. Here we have got the most pressing environmental issue in the world facing us, but this Government wants to drill more than 3 kilometres deep, dig up literally thousands of tonnes of oil, and the Government does not want to take into account greenhouse gases. It is the most short-sighted and dangerous part of this bill. It shows that this Government has got its head in the sand over climate change.

As we saw in the estimates in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which this Government should be absolutely embarrassed about, the emissions trading scheme costs, under the estimates today, $1.5 billion—$1.5 billion is the annual cost of the emissions trading scheme recently revealed by this Government. It is a shame. It is a tragedy. This bill, as it is drafted, treats it as if the planet just did not matter.

I am going to quickly race through for my last 2 minutes. We see the precautionary approach replaced with this novel term, just plucked out of nowhere: the “favour caution” language used in the bill. It will simply lead to increased uncertainty. It will be a feeding frenzy for lawyers, as we ditch the internationally understood and case-law developed precautionary principle.

We saw some changes to the Treaty of Waitangi clause. We did not go far enough to commit to the Treaty.

The bill ignores natural justice. There is no ability to—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.