Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill

I move, That the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill seeks to clarify elements of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 and to rectify omissions in the transitional provisions applied to existing privilege holders who were granted mining licences under regimes prior to the Crown Minerals Act 1991 coming into effect.

The responsible development of our petroleum and minerals resources is a key element of this Government’s Business Growth Agenda, which will improve employment opportunities and living standards for all New Zealanders. I have visited a number of petroleum and minerals operations and I can tell you that I have seen at first hand the high-quality opportunities that these businesses can bring to a region—not just the highly skilled, highly paid jobs in the industry itself but the flow-on employment that comes with the necessary support industries. These all add up to make a big difference. But it is not just regions such as Taranaki and the West Coast that benefit from increased activity in this sector. All New Zealanders benefit, as we collect billions of dollars in royalties, which will go to fund new schools and hospitals and the like.

By proposing these amendments I am seeking to ensure that the new regime for the improved management of the Crown’s petroleum and minerals resources is applied effectively in order to enable us to focus on attracting and retaining world-class operators who have committed to managing and reducing operational risk and to working with the communities in which they operate in a responsible manner. During the development of the Act extensive consultation was carried out with iwi, local communities, industry, and other regulators. I am confident that the intentions within the Act were clearly communicated. I consider the proposed amendments are necessary to ensure consistency and clarity of application. I commend this bill to the House.

This is the part of urgency when we pretend that a bill has just been to a select committee, because normally we would be doing the second reading speech after a select committee has been given the opportunity to actually scrutinise the bill, to make sure that it does what the Government intends it to do and to make sure there are not any unintended consequences. Instead, here we are, giving second reading speeches a matter of about 30 or 40 minutes after we gave the first reading speech. Unfortunately, such is the way with this Government; it does not really care about the unintended consequences. All it knows is that this is the only plan it has—this and asset sales and pokie machines. That is it for the economy. If this does not work, it is kind of screwed—it is kind of screwed. So it is going to do anything it can to grease the wheels and do everything possible to make sure this stuff happens, regardless of the risks to the environment—regardless of the risks to the environment—because it does not have a plan B. The Government talks about jobs. Does it realise that there are actually other industries in New Zealand that create jobs and that are desperate for Government assistance, like, say, the manufacturing industry, or like, say, the cleantech and renewable energy sectors? There are actually other industries that could be used to create jobs.

I want to comment on what Mark Mitchell and also Jonathan Young said, when they talked about Taranaki and about how great this industry has been for Taranaki. You do realise that that happened under the existing regime. All of that development happened under legislation that actually provided adequate environmental protection. It does not need this shabby, weak—weak—legislation in order for it to go ahead. If the existing legislation was so difficult that the oil and gas industry would never be able to operate, then how did the industry in Taranaki happen in the first place, Mr Young? I look forward to your speech answering that question, just like you answered all the other questions.

The reality is that it can go ahead under the legislation that is already there, and Mr Young knows it. It is just that those members want to make sure that stuff that perhaps might not have got through that legislation because it is too risky does go ahead. On that balance, it is too environmentally risky and risky with regard to health and safety, but they are quite happy for that stuff to go ahead because this is the only plan they have got, and that is the sad reality of what we are passing in the House today. As I said in my first reading speech, you know, the body is not even cold yet on the original bill, which we passed 3 weeks ago, and we are here having to clean up the mess that the Minister of Energy and Resources made and fix all the mistakes he made in that piece of legislation.

One of the things that the Minister is doing in this piece of legislation—and he is pretending that he meant to do it the first time round, but apparently he just accidentally left out 1.7 million square kilometres in the original bill, and there is a minor technical amendment to make sure it is included in this one. Well, the Minister might say that it is about ensuring health and safety, and ensuring safety on the high seas. Well, if that is the case—I asked this question all through the debate on the original bill and I would like an answer, please, from the Minister or anyone else—and if safety is the issue, then why does it not cover every vessel? Why is it only vessels that are protesting, and then only vessels that are protesting against oil and gas operations? If it is about safety, then surely that should apply to every vessel, in which case, instead of this bill, or maybe as well as this bill, why did we not have a bill extending the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act, which deal with the issue of dangerous behaviour in our territorial waters, into the exclusive economic zone and maybe the continental shelf—even though there are questions about our ability to do that? Why did we not have a bill in the urgency motion doing simply that?

I want to put on record my disappointment with the industry and how it has responded to this particular clause. I was really disappointed to see the Petroleum and Exploration and Production Association come out in support of it, because I have got a lot of time for that association. It is engaging, it is representing its industry—good on it. I was really disappointed to see it come out and support this, rather than saying “We think that the existing regime in the territorial waters should be extended out, so that everyone is subject to the same standards of behaviour and we are not just targeting one group.” It would have been a good response from the industry to say “Yes, we want this dealt with, because it does need to be dealt with, but we want it to apply to everyone and not just apply to only vessels protesting against deep-sea drilling.” That would have been a good response from the association and I have to put on record my disappointment at the position it took over that.

But I want to thank Dennis, who has Facebooked me since my first reading speech to point out something that I had not picked up on, which was, in fact, another change. It is not just extending it into the continental shelf; this same targeted regime now applies in our territorial waters, and our territorial waters are not all, actually, above the continental shelf. So this takes this protest ban right up to the beaches—right up to the beaches—in New Zealand, and that was not the case under the amendment that we passed 3 weeks ago. So I want to thank Dennis for Facebooking me to point out that I had missed that, because that is a very good point. This bill does not just extend it further out into the high seas, but it actually extends it right up to the beaches—right up to the beaches—and that simply is appalling. Not only that, but what it means is that in our territorial waters above the continental shelf we now have two regimes in place. Which one are the police going to prosecute under? Are they going to prosecute under the Maritime Transport Act and the Crimes Act, which is what the position is currently, or are they going to prosecute under this new law that we are bringing in, which targets just protest vessels? Which one? Which one are the police going to use? That is just the most ridiculous situation to find ourselves in.

The final point that I want to make is that no member on that side of the House—no Minister, no National Party member who has spoken—and I am glad Tau Henare is here, because he will be able to inject a bit of clarity into the debate, and maybe answer these questions that his colleagues are refusing to answer. On the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website it makes it quite clear that New Zealand has no rights to legislate in the column of water above the continental shelf. We do not have any rights to manage the fisheries, and the ministry actually says that we do not have any rights to manage any activities, such as shipping. So if we are not allowed legally—and I am glad that Mr Tim Groser is in the House, because he is an international expert. He operates at the highest levels of international negotiations. This is a man who knows what he is talking about. We are so grateful to have this visiting international expert in the House tonight. I would hope that he would take a call—

💬 Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Oh, be kind.

I am being very kind. That is in all sincerity. I would hope that he would use—

💬 Simon O’Connor: That’s not a word we use on Labour.

Mr Groser, it is your own members who are laughing, assuming that I am joking. I am not actually joking. I would hope that Mr Groser would be able to provide some clarity, because what we are being told by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr Groser, is, in fact, that we do not have any right to legislate this way in the waters above the continental shelf. If we cannot legislate to control shipping activities, how is it that apparently we are allowed to legislate to control shipping activities that are protesting? I really look forward to an answer to that question, because this is a serious issue for New Zealand’s reputation. I mean, we are going to look like idiots if we start passing laws in parts of the world that we do not have any right to pass laws in. That is embarrassing. Then we will be back here in another few weeks, passing the third Crown Minerals Amendment Act Amendment Act Amendment Bill in order to fix up all the mistakes from the last Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. I mean, it just gets to be farcical.

This is why bills like this need to go to a select committee. Mr Lotu-Iiga might not think that it is a serious question, to know whether or not we are actually overstepping our jurisdiction as a Parliament in passing laws that actually might not be legally enforceable and might make us look completely idiotic on the world stage, but on this side of the House we take those things very seriously. Mr Lotu-Iiga might think that it is OK to have two completely separate regimes in place in our territorial waters so that police will not know which one they are meant to apply when dealing with a complaint—in fact, maybe he could tell me now. Which one would it be? Will it be the Maritime Transport Act, or will it be this bill? Nod and smile, Mr Lotu-Iiga, nod and smile. That is right. That is the National Party approach to everything—smile and wave, nod and smile. This is an utter mess. It really is. The more you look into it, the more you peel back the layers, the worse it is.

What makes this even worse is that the reasons we are doing this are not laudable at all. They are not because the Government wants to see safety and good practice. That is not why we are passing this. We are passing this because there is a current permit that the Government is considering between a Chinese company and Shell that is over the continental shelf between New Zealand and New Caledonia. That is why we are passing this. I would like the next National Party speaker to assure me that a deal was not done with those groups, that this is not being done because they asked for it in return—

💬 Hon Chester Borrows: A deal, or a grubby little deal?

Well, you have to say it is a hell of a coincidence, Mr Borrows, that here we are passing a bill to ban protesting on the continental shelf, which we do not even have the power to do, right at the time when we have our first permit for prospecting on the continental shelf. That is a hell of a coincidence, Mr Borrows. I am afraid I am a lot more cynical than you are. I am afraid that I believe that where there is smoke there is fire, and in this case I definitely think it is not a coincidence. The sad thing is we are doing this because the Government has no plan B, and it wants to make sure its plan A goes ahead no matter what the risks are.

The previous speaker, Moana Mackey, talked a lot about reputation and about people looking foolish and things like that. Let me tell you that I would have liked to see a particular bill go to a select committee; it was called the Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill, which passed under urgency in 2 days. It was to cover off $800,000 of spending that the previous Labour Government did on the pledge card. That lady was there and she voted for it. So all of this talk about reputation and looking like an idiot—come on! The pot is called black.

Coming back to this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, and what—

💬 Moana Mackey: Is that the best you’ve got?

💬 Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Confess. Confess.

Come on! Come on! No, no, no—hey, hey, hey. Obviously, the member over there has had a brain fade and cannot remember about—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Order! Order! I do want to hear what the member is saying, so please quieten it down.

Thank you. I was saying that the member obviously has a brain fade and cannot remember what is happening. This bill touches on some important aspects of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act. One of the particular areas that I want to raise is this area regarding iwi engagement. During the select committee process this was very important. It was raised by a number of submitters, and is something that New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals is taking extremely seriously. We believe that, in going forward in terms of petroleum exploration and mining, iwi engagement is a very important part of that process.

We know in Taranaki that the companies that operate there have developed very good relationships with iwi, and this is setting a model for other parts of the country. We know that these aspects of inclusion in our society—

💬 Andrew Little: How are the residents of Tikorangi feeling?

I would like to just remind Mr Little—thank you very much for your assistance in pronunciation—about a couple of your comments around Taranaki just last week. I think you really need to understand that crude is not carried across Mount Messenger as you stated. So if you do not mind, that is a reminder about some of those accuracies in terms of your knowledge of Taranaki. That is good to know. By the way, the 30 metres of bridge that we are fixing up there is actually 5.3 kilometres of road as well.

💬 Andrew Little: There’s another 100 kilometres to go, Jonathan. That’s the problem.

Well, we are always working on that, let me tell you. We have to say that part of the answer—

💬 Hon Chris Tremain: Does that member know where Taranaki is?

I do not think so. I do not think he does. Part of making this country prosperous and positive is legislation like this, and we are pleased and proud to make sure that every “t” is crossed and “i” is dotted. Thank you.

I call—[Interruption] Order! I am calling the Hon Maryan Street.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and thank you for calling for order. It is obvious that when the party opposite gives the women the night off those members do not control themselves quite as well as they usually do.

💬 Andrew Little: Bring back Jackie Blue.

Bring back Maggie Barry! Rising to speak to the second reading just a very few minutes after I have spoken to the first reading of this amendment Act amendment bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, I want to pick up on a few comments that have been made.

Although it was absolutely irrelevant to the debate in hand, I think it is only fair, because the previous speaker, Jonathan Young, introduced it, to give some rebuttal. Jonathan Young referred to a piece of validating legislation that he thought would cause us to cringe, but can I just say that we paid back that money, not like the National Party, which did not pay its GST on its expenditure. So let us just be clear about who is the greater sinner in this competition. Let us put the record straight. Labour paid the money back—Labour paid the money back—and the GST on the National Party’s bill in that election still has not been paid, to my knowledge. It forgot to calculate it, and then it did not cough up when it was told it should. However, that is the end of that irrelevant interjection from Jonathan Young, as far as I am concerned.

The only reason the Government is pushing through this amendment to an amendment to an Act is that it has very little in its tool box with which to energise—and I use the word advisedly—this economy. If it is going to pick up this economy, it has three strategies only. One is pokies. We can get money from pokies, says Mr Key, and that will be a fillip to the economy. Secondly, it can allow any multinational that wishes to, any multinational that is prepared to engage in extractive industry in this country and gives us a sideways glance, to come into this country and to take advantage of whatever laws have been sold most recently for the privilege of them to do so. The third strategy the Government has, of course, is asset sales. It is pretty impoverished when it comes to a plan to lift this economy: asset sales, pokie machines, and multinationals for whom we will prostitute our legislation at every turn, according to John Key, because a deal is a deal is a deal.

And so we have this tawdry little amendment bill coming in to amend an amendment Act, which was passed only a few weeks ago, which will facilitate all and any extractive industry, multinational, to come in and take as much as they can—in the course of which Jonathan Young assures us there will be lots of jobs created. Well, the jobs are going to be created on the basis of the risk to the environment that this shabby piece of legislation represents; or at the risk of infringing international law, which this shabby little bill also represents; or at the risk of watering down health and safety standards so there is no guarantee for workers who engage in the extractive activities, and particularly the ones that go on beforehand—surveying activities, seismic surveying, which goes on prior to any exploration.

This legislation that I mention risks breaching international law, and that is unacceptable. The Minister of Energy and Resources has, for much of this debate tonight, been in deep in conversation with the Hon Tim Groser, who, of course, is a great expert in international law, especially as it relates to trade. However, he is not such an expert, I think, in other international law. When the amendment bill was first introduced, a legal opinion provided by the international environmental lawyer Duncan Currie raised serious concerns about consistency with New Zealand’s international obligations and with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

What we had in that process, apart from the fact that any other or contradictory legal opinion is never taken into account by this Government, was again the Minister playing ducks and drakes with the process. That is a kind way of putting it, because what he was doing was basically covering his own incompetence. He did not mention the proposed changes that would violate international law—that is, the protesting ban—until the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill came into the House during the Committee stage. So this big abandonment of civil liberties and the right to protest peacefully was taken away by a Supplementary Order Paper, introduced by the Minister late in the piece.

Either the Minister does not know the rules, or he is deliberately flouting them, because now we have another process that says that this piece of legislation to amend the amendment Act has to go through under urgency and has to proceed in double quick time. That is evidenced by the shortness of the speeches that the National Party members opposite have been instructed to give.

The point about extending the ban to protest is the point about overreaching our jurisdiction—that suddenly we seem to be able to pass laws that cover not only our economic zone but an additional 1.7 million square kilometres. The Minister says that we are quite wrong about the denial of human rights. Well, I would like to say once more to the Minister that if, out in the waters over the continental shelf—which I think this Minister mistakenly thinks we can legislate about; however, I will leave that one there for now—there is a standoff between a drilling ship and a protest ship, and the protest ship stops at the requisite 500 metres from the drilling rig, and the exploratory or drilling vehicle ship moves towards the protest ship, then who is to be at fault? Who is infringing the 500 metres? Will they simply say: “The protest ship clearly is not staying 500 metres away from us, and we are going to keep advancing until we drive them back on to the shore.”? Who, then, is the culprit, and who infringes the 500 metres, Mr Bridges?

This is sloppy legislation. This will have to be corrected again when the Government wakes up and realises that there are people who know about international maritime law, even though our Minister does not. This will have to be amended again. So the amendment bill to the amendment Act will have to be amended further. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call in the second reading of this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. Obviously, we had the first reading wrapped up only about 20 minutes ago, so under urgency and under the auspices of the Budget this Government has decided to ram through the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill.

In this call in the second reading I want to talk about the lessons. Obviously we are not learning the lessons of why it is important to have a deliberative, considered approach to passing legislation, because we are going and fixing up the messes Mr Bridges saw in the original Crown Minerals Amendment Act. But I want to talk about the lessons we should learn from our petroleum and gas history in New Zealand.

Let us learn the lessons of McKee 13 and the well blowout we saw in Taranaki. Let us learn the lessons of the Kapuni soil and groundwater contamination we see affecting Taranaki right now because they decided back then, in good old Kiwi fashion, that when you have got produced water containing toxic chemicals and hydrocarbons, you do not need to store it in a metal drum or store it in a secure facility. They dug a hole—a blow-down pit, they call it, or a frack pit—and they just stored the produced water and the toxic chemicals in the pit. Surprise, surprise, now we have groundwater contamination that cannot be remediated, and literally hundreds of cubic metres of soil are being trucked to Wellington to be remediated.

Let us learn the lessons from the lack of inspectors, which has had tragic consequences in our country’s history. After the Pike River tragedy the Government announced it would be increasing the number of well and oil and gas facility inspectors. Up until then, when it comes to oil and gas, we had one inspector covering the entire country—one inspector covering all the onshore and all the offshore oil and gas facilities in this country. The Government, of course, raised it to three. I understand that this is still woefully inadequate. When you look across the world you see Australia has one inspector for every three installations, Britain has one for every two, and Norway has an inspector for every single facility.

So if we are going to learn the lessons of some of the bad and shoddy practices we have seen in this country and actually come together to have stronger regulations, stronger protections for our cities, our towns, our environment, our people, and our workers, let us have that conversation. Let us learn the lessons from when practices have been done badly.

And that is the tragedy, because under urgency this Parliament could be introducing legislation to make oil and gas activities in New Zealand safer. We could be passing legislation to be introducing relief wells, so that one was on hand if an accident happened. As we have seen in Australia, as we have seen in America, this is the only way a deep-sea well blowout or a well blowout has been contained. We could be talking about introducing liability, because although the Government put the liability bill on the operators, it requires them to carry only $30 million worth of insurance. When you look across the world, oil spills have cost tens of billions of dollars, yet the National Government says operators need to have only $30 million of insurance. We could be talking about increasing the penalties. Despite lobbying from the Green Party, we have seen the exclusive economic zone legislation penalties being increased to $10 million, which is still woefully inadequate when you talk about a potential $40 billion bill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Resource Management Act still has a maximum corporate penalty of only $600,000.

Why are we not talking about insurance? Why are we not talking about penalties? Why are we not talking about making sure that capping technology is on hand to New Zealand and that we have adequate oil pollution funds building up for when accidents happen? Why are we not talking about signing up to international conventions like the bunker convention and the new series of conventions we could be signing up to in order to protect the taxpayer from liability?

That is the ultimate tragedy: we are not talking about those things. We are talking about making it easy for cowboy speculators to come down to New Zealand and drill and risk our environment. This is why I am opposed to deep-sea drilling. I am not opposed to on-shore or shallow drilling. The Green Party is not opposed to that. It is not in our policy. We would obviously like to see a transition to real jobs for Kiwis and a transition strategy because we are concerned about the environment, but we are not opposed to those things. We want to see good regulations for those workers, who are mostly in Taranaki at the moment.

But when it comes to deep-sea drilling, when you are drilling past 200 metres, and maintenance and dealing with an accident can happen only when you have advanced robotics or submarines, we are talking about a different kettle of fish from what we have done in Taranaki over the last 100 years. When you are drilling past 200 metres, which is what Anadarko is going to be doing off the New Zealand coast this year—of course, the very same company that recently paid out $4 billion for its involvement in the Gulf of Mexico spill. Let us have a conversation about risk and whether we are prepared to deal with a spill.

The Government and the industry cannot guarantee we will not see a catastrophic well blowout in New Zealand’s waters. What we are talking about when you are drilling down as deep as 1,500 metres—which is what they want to do off my coast in Wellington, in the Pegasus Basin—is close to freezing conditions where the pressure would crush a person in an instant, where it is completely black. Yet this is where the oil is gushing out at close to boiling point, where the oil has to be heated across literally kilometres of hardened, strengthened cables—because, of course, otherwise the cables would snap under the fantastic pressures of that depth—and where you are having to heat the oil so the methane crystals do not crystallise and break the cables. We are talking about operating at the frontiers of technology, at the frontiers of geology, and at the frontiers of geography in some of the most hostile marine environments in this country.

So let us talk about what we are doing to prepare ourselves, to get ready if an accident happens, because when you look across the world, accidents have happened. As the presidential commission in the United States pointed out, it is akin to the nuclear industry when you are doing deep-sea drilling in the sense, of course, that not every well is going to have an accident, but when an accident happens, the consequences are catastrophic. What would a spill in New Zealand mean, when 65 percent of our population lives within, I understand, 5 kilometres of the coast and when our entire economy depends on the environment—our fishing, our tourism, and our aquaculture?

When we look across the Gulf of Mexico, the exclusion zone from their oil spill was almost as large as the entire North Island. Imagine that happening and oil washing up at Pīhā or the Bay of Plenty. Of course, they already know the effects. It is not academic to people in the Bay of Plenty. They have seen it, they have touched it, and they have smelt it, and that was only 300 tonnes of oil. What we have seen in the Gulf of Mexico was 600,000 tonnes of oil. What we saw in America was that they had more than 46,000 people working on the spill response. New Zealand has 400. They had 46,000; we have 400 trained responders.

When you look across at America, they had more than 1,000 vessels working on that spill. I am sure the Minister can tell us how many boats Maritime New Zealand has. It has got three skimmers the size of dinghies, and it refuses industry and union calls for a multi-purpose rapid response vessel. Look at the difficulty we had dealing with 350 tonnes of oil from the Rena and the requirement of flying in literally two aeroplanes full of extra equipment. The Gulf of Mexico spill saw 600,000 tonnes of oil, yet this Minister’s oil preparedness plans are prepared to deal with a spill of only 5,000 tonnes. That is the figure the Government has nominated to be prepared for. It is not on, because it cannot guarantee the risks when operating in hazardous environments, where every extra hundred metres you are going magnifies the consequences and the difficulty of dealing with a spill.

But let us talk about the economics, because this is what the Government likes to focus on, of course. Let us talk about the economics, because what we know is that under National we have got the fourth-lowest royalty plus tax rate in the world. Under National it will be easier to bring in foreign workers. We know the oil sector has got the lowest job-producing potential per percent of GDP of any sector of this country’s economy. What we know—and the Government’s own reports say this—is that it expects 90 percent of the profit to flow offshore. So for all that environmental risk threatening our economy and our environment, we are going to see hardly any jobs, hardly any taxes, and hardly any royalties, and most of the profit is going to flow offshore.

It is not a smart economic strategy, so let us talk abut how we can develop a smarter strategy. I am glad to see the Minister of Finance in the Chamber. I see him doing the numbers. Of course, the National bench is obviously a bit worried for his position after that dire Budget, because what the finance Minister said was that we are going to see our current account deficit blow out to 6.5 percent of GDP, second only to Turkey in terms of the lowest grade in the OECD, and we are predicted to be the worst. We see debt almost hitting—blowing out to a net level of more than $200 billion. That is $43,000 for every single New Zealander. We are seeing more debt, more assets being sold, and more deals for the mates. The only thing we are not seeing is more jobs.

So this is what we should be having a conversation about: how do we grow a prosperous economy? The answer is not looking to the past. The answer is not looking at the bottom of the ocean and hoping that someone from a foreign country will drill and not damage our environment. Let us look at the clean-energy potential we have got. I mean, this is what PricewaterhouseCoopers says is a $22 billion opportunity. This is what Pure Advantage says is a $6 trillion global industry that we can get a slice out of. This is an industry where we could be building tens of thousands of jobs—building exports and sustainable jobs. What we know is that clean-energy jobs have got four times the job creation potential of dirty old fossil fuels. We are going on the wrong path, and this bill is a huge step backward, a huge missed opportunity. Let us look to the future, not to the risky old, dirty past. Kia ora.

We just spent the last 10 minutes listening to a Chicken Little speech that was bereft of ideas, bereft of vision, and bereft of any plan for this economy and the people of New Zealand. This gentleman who just sat down, Gareth Hughes, said: “Where are the jobs?”. Well, I called up Clint before I got here, and I asked him: “How many jobs are there in New Zealand?”. The answer is there are 2,300,000 jobs currently in New Zealand, the most people that have ever been employed in this country in our history—the most in our history. Gareth Hughes asked where the jobs are, and, if you look at the SEEK website, there are over 15,000 jobs available in this country. The unemployment rate has dropped from 6.6 percent to 6.2 percent. He talked about frontiers and how this bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, needs to push the frontiers of oil and gas exploration. Well, let me share with that member some facts—a few simple facts.

Petroleum is the fourth-largest export earner in this country—the fourth-largest export earner. Of the $37 billion of exports every year—and that is the estimate for 2012—$1.8 billion in revenue comes from the oil and gas industry. It employs—and Mr Young here knows—over 7,000 people across this country. This Government is out there trying to create jobs through convention centres, through creative industries, through the dairy industry, and through wood, meat, fish, aquaculture, horticulture, and agriculture. There are many industries across this country that actually produce jobs and export revenues for New Zealanders—for New Zealanders. If he took the time out to get away from his sheltered chardonnay socialist habitat here in Wellington and came and visited the provinces, or if he came and visited the cities like Auckland, he would realise that there are people out there making things work, producing things, and earning a living for this country. This bill supports the Business Growth Agenda of this Government. This bill supports job opportunities and employment for our people to support their families and to support their kids. So I support this bill, and I commend it again to the House because it is an important bill going forward.

I take a call in the second reading of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. This is becoming bigger than Texas, effectively. It has been blown out of all proportion, and all sorts of spurious arguments are being thrown in the mix when, basically, what we are talking about here is sorting out a piece of legislation that, unfortunately, was originally drafted with an oversight in it. That oversight now needs to be rectified so that the original legislation, which is to come into effect on 24 May—next week—can come into effect in the correct manner. If it is not, it impacts on the original legislation, and it means that the original legislation is left wanting. It means that New Zealand and our economy and the opportunities within it are left wanting, as well.

If we could just sort of simplify it down, what the original legislation overlooked was the fact that in exploration, in mining, in looking for resources, often, there is the equivalent of a rugby team or a soccer team or a football team in respect of talent scout - type organisations that are looking for the potential and the opportunities in this particular industry. They are the sort of scouts—the ones who are going out there in advance—who are looking at what is the potential of the minerals or of the resources. But they themselves do not necessarily have the full capacity, the full technical ability, or, indeed, the financial strength to undertake the actual mining, drilling, or exploration that subsequently ensues. What they do is they set the parameters, perhaps secure the permits, and do all the initial exploration, the initial findings, the research and geotechnical investigations, and all these various things to ascertain whether there is a future. If there is a future, things can then be escalated. Then, as it says here in this legislation, you have farminees and farm-outs. Then it might go to the next stage, where a much bigger operator will come in and take over and take it to the next stage.

Unfortunately, the original legislation did not allow for that exploration-type work to be approved under the original legislation. Effectively, therefore, on 24 May, in a week’s time, many of those exploratory companies will not be able to continue to operate in this manner, and it would be an impasse. That would not be good. That would put a great deal of uncertainty within the industry, and, indeed, it could pull the rug out from underneath some opportunities that are occurring, in terms of mineral exploration and research in this country.

So this amendment bill improves the legislation. It gets it right. It sorts out what was an error in terms of the original drafting. The original legislation was here in the House only 3 or 4 weeks ago. New Zealand First supported it at that time. We do believe in economic development in this country. We do believe in sustainable, responsible development of our resources. That would not be the case if this amendment bill was not passed, because it would simply kneecap the original legislation if this bill was not passed, and it would make it very difficult for the original legislation to proceed as it was intended by this House. So New Zealand First will support this bill. We do believe that it is in the interests of the New Zealand economy and New Zealanders that this bill does proceed, that this is sorted out and put on a correct footing, and that the interests of the overall economy are put first in this.

The bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, which we are debating tonight is because of some of the omissions that were made in the transitional provisions of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act. This bill is another bill that is in line with National’s Business Growth Agenda. This will provide opportunities for New Zealanders, and we want to ensure that permit holders are confident that what they are doing is backed by the Government. We are in the early stages of development of our oil and gas natural resources, and I hope that this bill will ensure that confidence to the permit holders. I commend this bill.

Again, I rise to take a call on this very important Crown Minerals—it has got so many different names and amendments to it that it is confusing. I take a call on this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. As my learned colleague Moana Mackey has pointed out, we are amending a piece of legislation that we passed barely 2 months ago, such is the nature of the management of legislation by this Government in this House. But what we have heard so far in this second reading debate are the trite, old National Party platforms that are vacuous rhetoric, ill-informed, with no evidential basis at all. Of course, it is compounded by the fact that we have a Government that is so terrified, so scared, of the citizens of this country that it is now routinely ramming important legislation through this House without any proper oversight from select committees, and without the ability of members of the New Zealand public to have their say. We should not be passing legislation on the oil and gas industry, on Crown minerals, and on the extractive industries without the assistance and the input of the industry and of those people affected by it.

Jonathan Young talks long and large about the good people of Taranaki. There are people in Taranaki who are starting to express concern—grave concern—about some of the oversight of the industry and the way it operates in Taranaki. The people of Tikorangi are expressing concern. Jonathan Young knows what the issue is with the Kōwhai C well, and he knows what the residents’ concerns are, but they do not get a fair hearing. Well, they do get a fair hearing from one person—the list MP who works in Taranaki, and that is me. At least Taranaki has the benefit of one MP who spends his time up there listening to the citizens and what the people have to say. I spend a lot more time in Taranaki than the Minister of Finance spends down in Dipton, I can tell you that much. I do not have multiple houses to show for it, either. The people in New Plymouth are lining up at my constituency office there in New Plymouth, ready to meet me and talk to me and tell me their concerns.

Most of those concerns are their anxieties about a Government they perceive as failing them—failing to provide them with the assurances and the oversight that they, as responsible citizens, are entitled to expect of a Government that is truly acting in their best interests. They have now realised—many New Plymouth residents, many Taranakians—that that is not the sort of Government that we have. If it was a Government that was genuinely interested in the public interest, we would not be having important legislation on important industries rammed through this House in a matter of hours, and without the benefit of the input of the citizens, and, indeed, of the industry. I would want to hear from Schlumberger and from Shell and from Halliburton and from Todd Energy. I would want to hear from them about the impact of this legislation, whether it is, in fact, any use to them to have a two-stage approval process for their permits, as they go from prospecting to exploration. Let us hear from them, because we certainly do not have a regulatory impact statement we can refer to, apart from Moana Mackey’s very helpful one. It is certainly more helpful than the one we saw earlier today.

I myself went looking for a regulatory impact statement on this bill earlier today, and I could not find one, but what I did find—and I cannot find it now; look at that. One comes to this House so well prepared! I went looking for a regulatory impact statement and I found this blank document. Then I realised, of course, that it is not the regulatory impact statement; it is the list of achievements of this Government over the last 4 years. That is what we are dealing with, because this Government does not care, and we have seen it so often. We saw it at the beginning of last week, we saw it last night, and we are seeing it again now. This Government does not care about due process.

We should not take lightly the issues that are in this bill. They are issues, firstly, of health and safety, and that is a matter that is very dear to my heart. I know that there are members in this Government, there are former members of Cabinet in this Government, who took the issue of health and safety very seriously. We are yet to see whether the present Cabinet, and whether other members of this Government, take health and safety seriously. But this bill, and the roughshod manner in which it is being rammed through this House, does not give me any comfort and will not give comfort to the many workers in the oil and gas industry, the many men—they are men—who work on the rigs and do the dangerous work at the top of the derricks and out on the high seas. They will not be reassured by the way this Government is handling this piece of legislation.

The best that Sam Lotu-Iiga could come up with, by way of comparison, was the wine industry—that somehow the oil and gas industry is comparable to the wine industry. Well, there is a big difference. When they talk about strings in the wine industry, they are talking about the things that prop up the grapes. In the oil and gas industry, the strings are the lines—the pipes that go down into the well as part of the drilling system. That is the difference. You know, we are not talking about winemaking here. This is tough work. It is hard work. It is complex technology. It is dangerous work, and the workers in that industry are entitled to know that the oversight of it and the oversight of health and safety in the industry are the best available as world’s best practice. The Government has set a standard, an ambition for itself, or at least the committees reporting to it have—the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and the recent health and safety advisory group that reported, which was chaired by Rob Jager, the head of Shell New Zealand, who himself understood that health and safety in this country is not good. The industry is entitled to know that this Government genuinely wants world’s best practice when it comes to health and safety oversight. This bill does the opposite. This bill treats it shabbily. This bill treats health and safety cheaply. It is not a good sign. So we do not take comfort that this Government and this neophyte Minister of Labour, parading as a Minister of Energy and Resources tonight, understand the fundamentals of health and safety, either.

Of course, the other aspect of this bill is its extraordinary extension of jurisdiction across the continental shelf, as it relates to its previous anti-protest, anti-dissent law that now extends its coverage as well. And it just illustrates what this Government is all about. This is a Government that, sadly, has taken us back to 1951. It hates dissent, hates anybody with an alternative view, and cannot bring itself to collaborate with any other interests, because it thinks it knows best. So it comes up with laws that are badly drafted. It comes up with laws that are so badly drafted that 6 weeks later we have to amend them—yet again—before the original law has even been enacted, and it is so contemptuous of dissent that it does not want to hear alternative voices. Well, Mr Bridges and members of the National Government—that party over there—the modern world now depends on collaboration. We live in a world of modern relationships. There is a sense of mutual respect where it is OK to talk to others with whom we disagree, and to share ideas and to find the common ground. It is on that basis and only on that basis that we will come up with good quality legislation—not the roughshod stuff that we are being fed day in, day out under this Government. It is hastily managed and shabbily done, as it is all the time.

This bill gives us no comfort. It will give the industry no comfort, and it will do our international reputation no good in an industry upon which this Government is staking so much and banking so much for our economic future. For those members opposite who talk about the economic management of this country, I say that we know that this is just a small part of the economic management of this country. The real challenge is building our economic base for the next 20, the next 50 years, and this will not be it. This will not be it. We should get this right, but this is not the economic panacea that it has been played up to be by members opposite. We need an economic strategy that is about broadening our economic base and that is playing to our innovation advantages—our strategic advantages in manufacturing high-tech goods and supplying the rest of the world. That is where the future will lie. But if we have to rely for the medium term on the extractive industries, we want the best oversight and the best regimes governing those industries that we can possibly get. This bill could do a lot better. It does not. We will not have the chance to give it a proper debate in the select committee and have the benefit of the wisdom and insights of those in the industry, and that is why we will remain opposed to this bill.

The previous speaker, Andrew Little, talked a lot about Taranaki, so let us talk about Taranaki. I visited Taranaki a few months ago, and it was absolutely clear that the people there overwhelmingly support the economic policy of the Government—

💬 Hon Members: And Jonathan Young.

—and Jonathan Young. Taranaki is a great example of how mineral exploration boosts the economy and creates jobs. Mineral exploration contributes $2 billion to the Taranaki economy, second only to agriculture at $4.6 billion. Exploration sustains 5,090 jobs in Taranaki alone, compared with 3,720 in agriculture. And the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research estimates Taranaki’s GDP per capita as $50,145 as at June 2012—well above the national average of $47,304 for the year ended December 2012.

Continuing world demand for oil and gas provides New Zealand with a major economic development opportunity, as they made a significant contribution to the New Zealand economy. Oil is our fourth-largest export after dairy, meat, and wood, and each year $400 million in royalties and $300 million in company tax is collected from oil and gas. Oil and gas industries sustain 7,700 jobs nationally, so I support this Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill and commend it to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call.

Correct, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch—a 5-minute call each. One of the questions that came to my mind when the member resumed his seat was why this bill is going through this process as part of the Budget. Why is this bill being taken through all stages without its normal referral to a select committee to listen to submissions, consider the bill properly, and report back to Parliament, and then take it through the next stages? Why is this bill going through all stages under urgency as part of the Budget? Well, I think that is a very good answer from the Government—absolute silence. There is no proper answer to that question. Nobody has bothered explaining it. The Minister is sitting so far down in his seat you can hardly even see the top of his head.

I would really like to have some better understanding so that when we finish here tomorrow night, fly back to our respective homes on Sunday, and on Monday morning turn up at the office and people say “What did you do after the Budget and why?”, we might have some explanation. Why are we putting this through this process? What is the Budget relationship? And what is the urgency? I think the answer is none, actually.

We have also heard a lot from National Ministers about how important the minerals industry is, how important the oil industry is, how important exploration is for jobs. I agree with that entirely, but I do not think the National members are serious about it. If they gave a toss about any of those players in the industry, this bill would have been referred to a select committee and the industry would have been given the respect it deserves and been given an opportunity to make a submission. We could have learnt from it. Members of Parliament do not know everything; often industry players know a lot more about what works and what does not than people in this building, who are a step removed. No matter how hard we try, we are not nearly as knowledgable as people within the industry itself.

By ramming this bill through all stages of the parliamentary process in one go, we are being quite insulting to the industry and saying that, actually, its opinion does not matter at all, and we know best in this Parliament. That is what Minister Bridges is saying: “I know better than anybody, and we are just going to go on ahead and pass this bill.” It is quite a different way from the way the former Minister of Energy and Resources acted. The Hon Phil Heatley actually approached Labour, and I am sure he approached the other parties as well, and talked about the original Crown Minerals Amendment Bill. He asked whether we would like to work on it together: we could tell him the things that we disagreed with or agreed with, and he would consider them. He did not give us any commitment to rectifying anything that we had concerns about, but he gave us an honest understanding that he would give them proper consideration.

So we supported that bill going to select committee, and the rest is history, of course. That Minister went elsewhere. Minister Bridges came in—boof! There goes the process—entirely gone. It was just foot down, flat on the accelerator, and away we go. So then we ended up with this bill that we did not support, even though we really would have liked to have support across different parties for the legislation. But it was not in a shape we could support. It was also in a mess, and we said that at the time. It was not corrected during the Committee of the whole House stage of the legislation, so we ended up with a bill riddled with mistakes, with a very narrow parliamentary majority, which is a very bad sign to the industry. And now, a matter of just a few weeks later, before the Act has even come into force, we have got amending legislation before us going through under urgency. I think it is quite a stunning process.

Tēnā koe. It feels very strange to be here at this time on a Friday night, which is actually Thursday in the parliamentary world. But it is more strange to be here speaking on a second reading without the benefit of having read submissions on the bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill, without having had an opportunity to question and engage with submitters, and without having had an opportunity to ask questions of the officials to tease out some of the rationale for the bill. So it feels very strange indeed to be passing legislation like this without having had any public input, which always makes a bill better when Government members are prepared to take account of the concerns raised in submissions.

But it also feels very strange to be here, because of the damage that this Government is continuing to do to New Zealand’s international reputation. It has done that through its dismissive attitude to climate change and to the Kyoto Protocol, and now in this bill we are seeing similar disdain for international law. That is because of the way in which the bill purports to interfere with freedom of navigation on the high seas by applying this 500-metre exclusion zone around vessels, when the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea enables such zones only around oil well installations and expressly preserves the rights of navigation.

This bill potentially breaches international human rights by disallowing protests at sea, and purporting to prohibit that. I would just like to quote Duncan Currie in his legal opinion on the Anadarko amendment. There he went to some lengths to show how New Zealand had stood up, through the International Whaling Commission and at other forums, in advocating for resolutions to uphold the right to legitimate and peaceful forms of protest and demonstration at sea. As he says: “… New Zealand took an important and active role in preserving the right to peaceful protest in the resolutions.” at the International Whaling Commission.

It is worth noting that so many of our important environmental initiatives have come from protests at sea: the Mururoa protest, the boats going to sea against that; protests against commercial whaling, which achieved that moratorium; protests that ended the dumping of waste at sea; and the ban on the use of driftnets. Peaceful protest at sea is legitimate, and this bill, by the noxious clause 14 and its controls over the continental shelf on such protests, is interfering with that and with the freedom of navigation. It is cutting across the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Government does not care about that, such is its disdain for due process in pushing this bill through under urgency, and such is its disdain for international law.

This bill is also about a “Drill, baby, drill!” approach to exploration because of this whole regime around conditional permits, so that means that in areas like the Great South Basin, where we have got extremely challenging marine environments, we would have operators without experience, without expertise, being encouraged to proceed with drilling. That sounds to me like the Government is encouraging cowboy operators to apply for and to be granted exploration permits. Do we really want operators learning on the job how to drill? The Deepwater Horizon was an exploration well and it highlighted just how wrong things can go.

This bill is really problematic because of that—this whole notion of inexperienced operators being pushed to drill or to sell off their permits. It is also going to make things very complicated legally, in terms of defining responsibility when things go wrong, as they will. The whole issue of sorting out liability issues around the Rena disaster will seem like a cakewalk when you have got operators having to onsell part of their permit or the whole of their permit for somebody else to actually go and do the drilling. Who then is responsible when an accident happens? That is this Government’s attitude—do the drilling as fast as you can, do not care about the environment, but have a regime that just weakens the protections for the environment and encourages exploitation as fast as possible.

I am pleased to take a call in the second reading of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. The previous speaker, Eugenie Sage, spoke about accidents and safety issues, which are extremely important. I would just like to talk about some of the achievements that this Government has had in that area. We have established the High Hazards Unit within the Department of Labour, a dedicated unit of inspectors who oversee and regulate health and safety practices on oil and gas platforms, in geothermal installations, and in mines, tunnels, and quarries.

There has been a targeted review of health and safety regulations that apply to well-drilling operations, both onshore and offshore—the Government’s response to the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy. There has been Maritime New Zealand’s recent review of oil spill preparedness, the Ministry of Transport’s proposed review of minimum insurance requirements for offshore oil installations in the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone, and the Inland Revenue Department’s review of the specified minerals tax regime. So it is very clear the amount of work this Government has been engaged in to make sure that we do develop an oil and gas industry where safety and health is a priority. I am very happy to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.