Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill

I am pleased to be able to take what is probably going to be the final call in the Committee stage of the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill on the title and commencement—

💬 Moana Mackey: For you.

For me; I am sure that other colleagues will want to make a contribution as well. The first query I want to raise—and I do hope that the Minister in the chair, the Hon Chris Tremain, is better able to answer questions that are addressed by members of the Committee than the other Ministers who have been sitting in the chair—is in relation to the commencement date. This is actually a really unusual situation. The original provision was that any provision that has not been brought into force earlier comes into force on the day that is 2 years after the date on which this bill receives the Royal assent. I know that the Hon Maurice Williamson is very attentive to detail, and I would encourage him to take a call and tell me whether he has ever heard of such a rigmarole of commencement as that—any provision that has not been brought into force earlier comes into force on the day that is 2 years after the date on which this bill receives the Royal assent. It is a bit of a challenge. The next bill that we are debating, the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill, fortunately has a much more straightforward commencement provision, which is some time in the past. It may be equally contentious, but it is quite different.

The commencement provisions in this bill we are debating are very unusual. I would really appreciate the Minister of Conservation making a contribution in regard to that original proposed commencement date and then on why it was replaced with, again, a very complicated regime: “This Act comes into force on the earlier of the following: (a) the date appointed by the Governor-General”—not, as is usual, on the date of assent but—“by Order in Council: (b) the day that is 2 years after the date on which the Act receives the Royal assent.” Again, it is quite an unusual provision. So that is my first question to the Minister, and I strongly encourage him to take up the mandate of sitting in the chair and answering the question.

He could answer the earlier question that I posed to Minister Adams in relation to proclamation, because that was not answered either, or he could answer the earlier question that I put to the Minister who is primarily responsible for this legislation, the Hon Simon Bridges, in relation to any legal advice he received on Supplementary Order Paper 205, which he dumped on the country on Easter Sunday. Simon Bridges did not answer that question either. They are all important matters. It is the only opportunity we get in this Chamber, and, frankly, I wonder why some of these Ministers draw their salary. They sit in the chair, read the paper, fill out the crossword puzzle, or read some important briefing papers that are significant to the future of the country, but they do not take up what should be their responsibility and answer questions from members in Parliament. If they are not up to the job, I consider that they should swap with somebody who is. The Hon Maurice Williamson is sitting there, and I have never known him to resist an opportunity to make a contribution to a debate, even if he is obviously unaware of any detail in relation to the particular matter. It has never stopped him from taking a call in this House before.

I now want to refer to the title of this bill. This bill sounds pretty much like it will not do much harm. It is the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. Well, I think the title overlooks one of the biggest concerns that we have had with this bill. The title does not refer to it at all, and it should. This bill is about the muzzling or bulldozing or sidelining of the Minister of Conservation in regard to significant matters of decision-making power, and that should be reflected in the title. It should be called something like the “Bulldozing of the Minister of Conservation Bill”. That would not be far from the truth. It could refer to the outcome of this legislation, because what is going to happen is that our conservation values are going to be put aside, and the economic benefit test—where money is made for some company not even necessarily based in New Zealand or contributing to the New Zealand tax system—will win out over our conservation values, which we have held so dear as part of the fabric of New Zealand society for so long. So we could just call the bill the “Money Over Values Bill”, because, actually, that is going to be the outcome. What I think is a bit of a cheating of the New Zealand public is having a title of a bill that does not in any way refer to the outcome, which will be, as I said, those conservation values getting trampled over, and the Minister of Conservation having his or her throat squashed to the point where just a squeak will come out, not a strong, clear advocacy voice as we have had in the past.

I am disappointed that the Minister in the chair did not take heed of what my colleague Ruth Dyson said in answer to her question about the commencement date. I think it has been disappointing this afternoon that we posed a number of questions to the Ministers in the chair and all of them have sat there like dried arrangements and done nothing. None of them have gotten up on their pins and actually answered the questions. That is actually what the Committee stage is meant to be about.

This bill, the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill, is a very, very serious piece of legislation. It has very, very serious implications, not just for the conservation estate but for the general public and their ability to oppose the Government’s plans to ramp up deep-sea oil and gas exploration, and what it means for the Minister of Conservation. So it is disappointing that the Minister has chosen not to answer my colleague’s question about the commencement date, but he will, of course, have an opportunity in this part.

Well, I too do not believe that the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill adequately reflects as a title what this piece of legislation actually does. I think that if I had to rename it, I would probably start by calling it the “Crown Minerals (This Is The Only Plan We Have) Bill”, because that is the reality of what we are doing here. Regardless of what you might think of oil and gas exploration and mining—some people are for it, some people are against it, and some people are in the middle—I do not think that there is anyone who would believe that this should be the only thing that we do in terms of economic development and jobs. I do not think there are many people, even in Taranaki, who would say that this is the only thing that is happening in Taranaki and that this is the only thing that creates jobs. But to listen to Government members, you would think that it is the only thing, because they have put all their eggs in this one basket. This is it. If this does not work, they have no plan B. So if all these jobs and all this money that they have been saying for years is going to flow from more oil and gas exploration and more mining—if that does not work, they do not have a plan B.

There is no other plan for economic development and, in particular, regional economic development. That is why we are seeing the kind of legislation being passed today—currently there is the Resource Management Act legislation and the exclusive economic zone legislation, but today there is the Crown minerals legislation—where the Government is trying to undermine this legislation in terms of its protections for the conservation estate and its protections for the environment, in order to make it as easy as possible for industry activity to go ahead regardless of the consequences.

I suspect that this bill could also be called the “Crown Minerals (This Is Going to Cost a Lot More Money Than the Government Seems to Think It Is Going to) Amendment Bill”. The reality is that New Zealanders largely have faith in the process that is currently set out under the Crown Minerals Act, and the Resource Management Act is another example. The minute the public loses faith in that process, it actually becomes a hell of a lot more expensive for industry. When people feel that they have to engage now, they have to appeal, and they have to protest, because they no longer feel that the systems that their Government puts in place are systems that they can trust, that will uphold the highest levels of health and safety, and that will uphold the highest levels of environmental protection, and ensure that the preservation of the conservation estate is paramount—as soon as the public loses faith in that process, then it becomes more difficult for industry, not easier.

When the public feels that the process is fair, they will let the process play out. They will play their role in it if that is what they want to do. A lot will not; many will not. But this is a false economy. This bill could be called the “Crown Minerals (False Economy) Amendment Bill”, because this is opening up so much scope for far more legal challenges and far more judicial reviews than under the current system, which has worked well. Members opposite like to talk about Taranaki as being the crowning example of what this activity could achieve for the rest of the country. Well, all that happened under the current Crown Minerals Act. And all that happened under the current Resource Management Act. So why do we have to, really, completely undermine these pieces of legislation when all that is going to happen is it is going to result in it being more difficult for industry, given that we now have processes that the public do not trust?

So, as I said, this is all the Government has. This is why we are taking so much out of the Crown Minerals Act—because it wants to make it as easy as possible. I do not think it is going to have the outcome that it thinks. I think it is actually going to have the perverse outcome of doing the opposite. What we could rename this bill—and we did not know that this was coming up, of course—in relation to the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 205 to stop protest vessels in the exclusive economic zone from interfering with installations or with vessels, would be the “Crown Minerals (Some Dangerous Behaviour Will Be Outlawed, but the Rest Won’t) Amendment Bill”, because the ridiculous situation that we find ourselves in is that the Government is saying that this is about safety and about complying with our international obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Well, that is all very well and good, but then why does it not apply to every vessel in the exclusive economic zone?

If it is about safety, then why should we not apply the same standard to commercial operators of any kind, whether they be petroleum exploration or fisheries or cruise ships or protest vessels? Why should everyone not have the same level of scrutiny and legal obligation as we are putting on these protest vessels? Currently, under what we are passing here, an activity that would be deemed illegal in our territorial waters under the Maritime Transport Act is not covered by this, unless it is a protest ship and that protest ship is protesting specifically against petroleum and mineral exploration. That is the ridiculous law that we are going to pass here, and no member of the National Government has stood up and addressed that particular point.

Then we had Minister Finlayson. I was embarrassed to see the Attorney-General come down to the Chamber to defend this. We thought he must have a legal opinion. We thought that he must have got a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet to challenge the legal opinion produced by Greenpeace and the group of New Zealanders who have supported it, and he had not. He had nothing. We could call this legislation the “Crown Minerals (The Legal Opinion You Have When You Don’t Have a Legal Opinion) Bill”, because two Ministers stood up and basically implied that they had legal opinions that supported that Supplementary Order Paper. When they were asked to table them, neither of them could, because they do not exist.

This Supplementary Order Paper is not compliant with our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This does not comply with our international obligations. It is an embarrassment, and that is because this Government has mishandled the issue of oil and gas exploration, particularly in the exclusive economic zone, so badly—it has mishandled it to such an extreme—that the public are taking to the seas in protest because that is the only way they feel they can get the Government’s attention. And they got the attention of the Government, all right. The Government is now legislating away the public’s right to oppose what the Government does. That is completely outrageous and it is an embarrassment for an Attorney-General, whose job it is to uphold the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, to come down to the Chamber and defend it. It would have been better if he had just ignored it, and not come down here and put on the petty show that he did, attacking Geoffrey Palmer, attacking Dame Anne Salmond—New Zealander of the Year—in a display that can be described only as waspish and not becoming of our Attorney-General. And then, at the end of it, to not even have a legal opinion—apart from his own opinion; I guess he is a lawyer and that is a kind of legal opinion—and to not actually have done the work to back up what he was saying, that is a shame on this country that our Attorney-General does not take his very important constitutional role far more seriously.

My colleague Ruth Dyson talked about the fact that powers have been taken away from the Minister of Conservation. I remember that press conference where Gerry Brownlee sat next to Kate Wilkinson and said: “This will be a shared decision-making power.”, and the visual image just said it all, really. Minister Wilkinson sat there and said absolutely nothing and was completely dwarfed by Minister Brownlee, who was the Minister of Energy and Resources at the time and who completely ran the whole press conference. He ran the show. So this could be called the “Crown Minerals (No One Really Believes It’s a Shared Decision-making Power) Bill”, because the fact is that the Minister of Energy and Resources is now in charge of determining whether or not mining will go ahead on conservation land. We know that will then skew the current balanced approach towards industry, regardless of the impact on our very, very valuable and precious conservation land.

This is a very important role that the Minister of Conservation carries out on behalf of the people of New Zealand. The Minister of Conservation is the custodian of the Department of Conservation estate, and it is entirely appropriate that that is the person who determines whether the impact on conservation land is such that an activity should go ahead or should not go ahead, and now that has been stripped out. Now it is this shared decision-making power. As I said, no one believes it is a shared decision-making power. This is, once again, a National Government that is so bereft of ideas to create jobs and to grow our economy that it is having to make these kinds of changes in order to smooth the way as much as possible for these activities, regardless of whether they are carried out responsibly. Where they are carried out responsibly and with minimal environmental impact, that is fine. That is what the current system allows for, and that is absolutely fine. But that is not what is happening here. Now we are saying: “Actually, that goes out the window.”, and the impact on this conservation land—and we will see, I think, more mining projects on schedule 4 land, because companies are out there right now, having a look at what is out there, prospecting. You do not pay the money to look, unless you have been told that you are going to be allowed to go in and get. That is the reality. So that is a broken promise. This could be called the “Crown Minerals (Schedule 4 Promise Broken—Surprise, Surprise) Amendment Bill”, because clearly the industry has been told that schedule 4 will be opened up or relaxed.

Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call in this Committee stage of the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. We are looking now at the title and commencement clauses of this legislation. In earlier calls I talked about how it could be called the “Petrobras Law Bill”. Perhaps we could call Supplementary Order Paper 205, which now will be included in this legislation, the “Anadarko amendment”. I also suggested that we could maybe call it the “A Bridge Too Far Bill”, because of the way it tramples on our constitutional and human rights and the freedom to protest, which successive New Zealand Governments and generations have held up as an honourable tradition and a key part about what it is to be a New Zealander—someone who sticks up for our values and our principles on the world stage.

In earlier calls the Minister directly levelled a number of questions around economic management in my direction, and that is why I would contend that, actually, this legislation should be called the “Crown Minerals (Lazy Economic Gamble) Bill”. I say “lazy economic gamble” because this is the heart of the Government’s economic strategy. We have seen the worst economic performance in 50 years, yet—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: 51, I think, now.

—51 years, Ms Dyson says—all the Government can point to is oil and gas as its strategy. We have seen some economic benefits in Taranaki, and I am the first to say that the Green Party is not opposed to shallow offshore drilling. We are not opposed to onshore drilling. We think we should have a transition strategy, because, look, even the International Energy Agency—hardly a bastion of radical green thought—is saying that we need to leave 80 percent of the oil that we already know about, not discounting the stuff we do not know about, which Anadarko and Petrobras were prospecting for, in the ground. We have to leave 80 percent of it in the ground if we are going to avoid runaway climate change. So the Greens are not opposed to onshore shallow drilling. We think we should have a transition strategy.

But, look, this is not an economic strategy for the country. We have got such a high unemployment rate at the moment, yet when we look at Taranaki, it has got the lowest job-creating potential of any sector in that economy. When you look at its economic statistics, for every $1.2 million of GDP, you see only one worker employed in the oil and gas sector. In agriculture it is 15, and in retail it is 33. I am the first to acknowledge there are many high-paid jobs, but if jobs is your question, oil and gas is not the answer to building a large number of workers. Take the Government’s East Coast oil and gas report. The most likely scenario there said we might see 199 jobs. I would love to see 199 extra jobs on the East Coast, because that region is really struggling under this Government’s economic stewardship. But this region has lost more than 900 jobs in manufacturing alone in the first 4 years of the National Government’s term. Even if the most likely scenario went ahead and we saw dozens of fracking wells up and down the East Coast, the region is still going backwards under National. So if jobs is the question, and it rightfully is, oil and gas is not the answer.

It is a lazy economic gamble, because the entire premise is the hope that some foreign offshore company will come down here, find something, and sell it offshore. There is hardly any value-add. There is hardly any benefit for our economy. We have got the fourth-lowest royalty plus tax rate of any oil-producing nation in the world. We are going to benefit less than most other nations in the world. Simon Bridges’ predecessor, Phil Heatley, made it easier to bring in foreign offshore oil workers. He amended the immigration rules and made 11 oil worker positions able to be expedited through the skilled shortages list. We know there are going to be fewer New Zealanders working in the sector, so this is why I think the bill should be called the “Lazy Economic Gamble Bill”. It is lazy. There is no innovation, there is no plan, and there is no strategic thought. There is no sense of where the global economic trends are going, how New Zealand can shape its economy, how we can turn this direction, and how we can address some of the structural imbalances in our economy.

It is lazy, because clearly the trends are moving away from oil. This is what the International Energy Agency says, and this is what the IMF says. In the last month we have seen reports from HSBC and others, such as Standard and Poor’s, saying that, actually, with the risks of climate change and global high energy prices, we are seeing a similar occurrence to the subprime mortgages in the States. Essentially, these oil assets that some of these big oil majors have are toxic, because they cannot be developed at the moment. All the trends are going in one direction. When you look at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance report from 2011, it showed that for the first time ever more money was invested in clean energy than fossil fuels—the first time ever, in 2011. This is the direction we should be taking our country. So instead of the “Crown Minerals (Lazy Economic Gamble) Bill”, we should have a new energy bill to focus on the current century’s economic trend.

This is what PricewaterhouseCoopers says when it says we could have a $22 billion economic opportunity in clean energy. It is what the likes of Pure Advantage says in its recent report on the green economy—that we could see 3,000 jobs, which the energy Minister says we could see if we develop an entire new petroleum basin. Of course, that is direct and indirect jobs. But we could see 50,000 green jobs in New Zealand if we embraced clean energy. You see the likes of Greenpeace saying 100 percent renewable is possible. We could be saving $600 million per annum. We could be reducing that $8 billion fuel import, which I contend is one of the most significant strategic threats to our economy. The Government’s deficit is of a similar order of magnitude. Making a dent in that $8 billion fuel import bill would make a huge difference to the Crown’s books, instead of a lazy economic gamble that bets it all on the hope that foreign offshore oil companies find something, which, again, is still up in the air.

I understand that in our exploratory wells there is in the order of less than half the likelihood of offshore averages of striking oil. We are called a frontier region to the offshore oil zone. What we know, of course, is we are going to see hardly any royalties, hardly any taxes, and hardly any jobs for New Zealanders. All the profits are going to flow offshore, but then we are going to face 100 percent of the environmental risks. This is what my motivation is, because I do not want to see oil washing up on our beaches. I do not want to see our agricultural sector, our tourism sector, or our horticultural sector devastated by an oil spill.

What we know is that the exploratory drilling phase, which is what we are talking about with this Government, is the riskiest phase. A month ago the European Union put out a report saying that exploratory drilling is the riskiest phase. What we are talking about with deep-sea oil drilling is operating at the frontiers of geology, geography, and technology. We are talking about an environment that is a kilometre deep or deeper. Just off my home town of Wellington, the permit the Government has recently given to the very same company that had a 25 percent stake in the Deepwater Horizon $40 billion oil spill, Anadarko, is 2.7 kilometres down. There, the pressure would crush a person in a second. It is pitch-black and close to freezing, yet the oil they are prospecting for is coming out close to boiling. It is the frontiers of geology and technology because we just still do not know what is down there, despite advances in a modern seismic 3-D survey and computer mapping tools. You can still have an accident, and that is what we have seen in Azerbaijan, that is what we have seen with the Montara oil spill in Australia in 2009, and that is what we have seen with Deepwater Horizon. The spill there had an oil exclusion zone almost as large as the North Island.

Tragically, I do not think we were well enough prepared for the Rena oil spill. We struggled with 300 tonnes of oil entering our marine environment there. With the Deepwater Horizon deep-sea oil blowout, we saw up to 600,000 tonnes of oil entering the environment. The US Government had a thousand vessels and 40,000 people working on that spill. Maritime New Zealand in New Zealand has got three vessels—well, they are really dinghies. They are a similar size to the skimmers. We have got approximately 200 to 300 staff. Our oil spill response capacity is minuscule compared with the US Government.

We are a frontier region, far from international oil infrastructure. The only solution to the Deepwater Horizon blowout was the relief rig, which drilled a relief well to take off the pressure so it could be capped. This is possibly the most worrying factor for New Zealand, because this Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill does nothing about protecting us by having a relief rig in New Zealand waters. I got the Parliamentary Library, in December last year, to map where relief rigs capable of drilling to the depths of where we are planning to drill exploratory wells in New Zealand were located in the southern hemisphere. I understand there were three in the entire Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. We could be waiting weeks or months for a relief rig to finally travel to New Zealand, if it could be found, if it could be contracted, to finally drill a relief well and plug a well.

So until we can get a guarantee from this Government and until we can get a guarantee from the industry that we will not see oil spills—similar to shallow drilling in New Zealand, which has been done, on the whole, pretty well—and until we can see similar safety standards, the Green Party is going to say no to deep-sea oil drilling. But we are going to say yes to clean energy, we are going to say yes to clean energy jobs, and we are going to say yes to an accurate and fair carbon price that has a level playing field. We are not going to pick winners in oil and gas, which is what the Government is doing. We are not going to throw tens of millions of dollars at seismic surveys. We are not going to literally call out the navy and change the laws when people get in the way. The Green Party is going to have a smart, future-focused economy. We are not going to introduce legislation that could—

The previous speech was very interesting, with a lot of facts provided by the member, Gareth Hughes, who, indeed, identified some of the many concerns we have. I will talk on the title and the commencement clauses of this bill, the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill. There are a couple of issues here that I would like to raise.

The title of the Act is to be the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Act 2012. The bill deals with a lot of issues, there have been Supplementary Order Papers come up, and the Commerce Committee recommended a few amendments. The most valuable contribution that this bill provides, in my view, is the implementation of better health and safety standards and requirements at every level of the permitting regime.

There is one thing I would say with regard to the title. Given that the Pike River disaster identified and alerted us to huge flaws, problems, and systemic failure in the regime that oversees minerals extraction in this country, probably the least we could have done was acknowledge the changes that are being made as a result of that disaster and, I guess, give recognition to the terrible loss. It might have been fair to consider changing the title of this bill, which will become an Act, to recognise that some of the key provisions and the greatest advancements made by this bill will be in the area of health and safety.

It still will not guarantee the implementation of the standards, because unless the Government and the Minister carefully read the report provided yesterday to the Labour Group of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, accept it and admit total systems failure, right from the top to the bottom, and revamp and resource it, the changes made in this bill will not mean as much as we think they might or as much as they should.

So the title, which we are debating at the moment at the latter stage of debate on this bill, could perhaps have been changed to better reflect and recognise the reason that we are making some of these changes here. We are making these changes because of health and safety. We are making these changes for the protection of miners—protection of their lives, and protection of their health and safety—and for their working conditions.

I am, I guess, asking the Committee and the Minister whether we could perhaps have thought better about this. Rather than just plough on with the same title that was delivered to the select committee, changes should have been made to reflect the significant incorporation of Supplementary Order Paper 152, which was a direct result of the report of the royal commission to the Government. And I acknowledge the Government’s taking of that report, reading it, and making the changes necessary.

Another significant change to the title could have been made on the basis that this bill is putting huge pressure on the Department of Conservation. Although it is permitting, it should also be protecting Crown land. What New Zealanders expect and what any landowner wants is the right to have a say over what goes on their land, what occurs on their land, and the rights that they have. As I have said before in the House, although there will be some who think this is a wonderful step forward for the mining industry, the compromising of landowners’ rights—that is, the compromising of the rights of the Minister of Conservation to oversee the land for conservation purposes—sets a precedent that should worry any other landowner as well.

If the Government is so blind and ignorant to the realities of the world that it thinks it can plough ahead with mining at all costs—even though it was challenged over the issue of schedule 4 land and stepped back from that—in an unbalanced way, without proper protections for individuals and without proper protections for natural and environmental values, then it is dreaming. It will undermine the progress that the mining industry has made over the last hundred years in terms of better awareness of environmental protection. I applaud the industry for the progress it has made. But a Government that drives inappropriate change will drive appropriate reaction, and that may very well make it harder for the mining industry to progress some of the projects that it has. So it is a warning about trampling over the rights of landowners, as was the case prior to 1992, when the Crown, which owned the rights to the minerals under the ground, was able to override the rights of the people who owned the ground. We find that rather abhorrent now, but it was the situation until the early 1990s.

The Government has reintroduced some of the principles of that here on the conservation estate, where the landowner—the Minister—does not have the right to have the final say, and there is in fact a compromise situation. Some may see that as comfortable. It is just a warning for other landowners. So the title could have been changed to better reflect some of the significant things that are happening in this bill.

The other issue I will raise is around the commencement date. It will be 2 years after the date on which the bill receives the Royal assent. I guess that families and other people who are connected with the Pike River tragedy would say: “Why the delay?”. Indeed, it is upon us to implement as quickly as possible the changes to ensure proper health and safety. The Government will say it has done that, but, actually, if you have a look at what has happened with the resourcing in the Labour Group of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, you will see that it is pretty pathetic. It has got a few more people on the ground, it has got a bit more resource, but whether it is sufficient is a question that I leave open because the damning report into the Labour Group’s systems would say that a total revamp is needed, not just a few people added into the system.

So the delay that the commencement date allows could do two things. It might allow the Government to go away and properly resource it to ensure that the provisions in this bill will be upheld and policed, but it might just mean that the Government carries on with an inadequate regime of health and safety and oversight in the mining industry. I hope the latter is not the case. We need to make sure that any miner who goes underground—be it for prospecting, be it for mining purposes, or be it for the maintenance of a mine, as is the case in Spring Creek—is going to a safe environment and that all the conditions laid down by the company, by the ministry, and by the miners themselves are at the top end of international safety standards.

I have made my points regarding these two issues. I just hope that the progress here in health and safety does indeed deliver us a world-class system of protection of workers as they go into any mining environment, and I have to say that that does not mean just an underground mine; it includes open-cast situations, as well. I have been mining in Australia myself and I understand the dangers. They are not present just in underground mining, and I hope that the Government resources the provisions laid out in this bill to ensure that they indeed can be policed.

It is customary to come up with parody titles when you are debating the title and commencement clauses of bills in the Committee stage. A parody title that I would like to suggest for this bill, the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill, is the “Crown Minerals (Lawmaking at its Worst) Bill”, because what we have seen, I think, is a pretty shocking abuse. I use that strong word in a considered manner, because I believe that it is an abuse of the process. What we have seen is lawmaking at its worst. It is as if Simon Bridges has been looking at the tributes to Margaret Thatcher in the last few days and has decided that that is what he is going to model his legislative style on—the most intransigent, iron-willed nature of that formidable Prime Minister.

What we see here is a Minister who has introduced a substantive amendment, which international and legal experts and eminent New Zealanders have said has significant constitutional impacts and is an attack on rights. The Minister introduced this amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 205 on Easter Sunday, when everyone, rightfully, was opening up their Easter eggs and spending time with their family and maybe not watching Q+A in the morning. The Supplementary Order Paper introduces a substantive amendment, but, of course, by being introduced as an amendment it had no select committee scrutiny, it had no Attorney-General New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet, and it meant that we have seen this amendment—the “Anadarko amendment”, it has been called—introduced and a week later voted on.

The Government would have liked to see the third reading of the bill today. That was not to be the case, so we have another week to organise, and I see that the cyber-petitions are rolling in. There were 10,000 signatures in the first 24 hours, so I am sure there will be a lot more. It is lawmaking at its worst, because by avoiding the select committee hearing you cannot hear from the public and you cannot hear from the experts.

Another bill that I saw raced through the legislative process was with regard to ultra-fast broadband, where $1.35 billion of taxpayers’ money was on the line. That resulted in some embarrassing snafus from the Government’s perspective, and now we are seeing Chorus with a $300 million blowout. If you do not have that public and expert ability to submit, and the ability for the select committee to amend legislation, you have bad consequences. If you do not have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet, I believe that you can have much more severe impacts, not just on the bottom line of a company but on fundamental values that we hold dear—that is, human rights.

I call this bill the “Crown Minerals (Lawmaking at its Worst) Bill” because we should not be addressing legislation to amend the law to benefit one sector. Simon Bridges, in the earlier calls in the Committee stage, was alleging that the Greens would have pro-protester laws. I say that, no, we have laws in New Zealand and they apply to all New Zealanders. But what we see in this legislation is laws specifically targeting one company. You can do the very same thing against a fishing boat and not face the same charges as you will under this legislation when it is finally commenced. It is only one sector that gets impacted. I do not believe that that is lawmaking at its best. We should not be writing laws to benefit one sector.

This legislation contains arrest and detention powers for the military. Again, we should be using these considerable constitutionally important powers sparingly, only in extreme circumstances. We should not be turning the New Zealand Navy into the private security company for the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.

I know that you all read the Green Party blog, Frogblog, and what I have proposed there is—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: You have got to be joking.

Parliament’s IT expert, Mr Williamson, is not a reader of Frogblog, and I am immensely surprised.

💬 Andrew Little: I thought everybody read it.

Yes, apparently, no one reads it. Not many people read it, when you look at the blog rankings. Anyway, I put up a blog there where I posted my proposal. I am going to take it to the Standing Orders Committee. I am going to introduce it and support what David McGee recommended to the Standing Orders Committee in 2003 with the Wellington District Law Society, which is that we should actually have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet for substantive Supplementary Order Papers. I think it is important. We have, obviously, a unicameral House and considerable legislative powers without the controls that you have in other overseas legislatures. I believe that it is important that we have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act overview over substantive Supplementary Order Papers, and I hope that other parties would support a move in that direction. I think it would be a positive step. What we do not want to see is Crown mineral lawmaking and, worse, legislation passing. We want to see lawmaking at its best, and that is what I believe New Zealanders demand of this House. Kia ora.

I move, That the question be now put.

on behalf of the Minister of Energy and Resources: I move, That the Committee divide the bill into the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, the Conservation Amendment Bill (No 2), the Continental Shelf Amendment Bill, the Reserves Amendment Bill, and the Wildlife Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 208.

I move, That the report be adopted.