Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill

The House is resumed. When we broke last night, there was a debate on the instruction to the committee in relation to the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill. The Hon Michael Woodhouse was speaking, and he has four minutes, 21 seconds remaining.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very pleased to take those four minutes and 21 seconds. I must say, the Hon Paul Goldsmith was very exercised at the fact that I got the call ahead of him late last night, and I know that he will be wanting to make a contribution to this debate, as will Jonathan Young—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Is he out of bed yet?

—you can’t reference that—that hard-working member for New Plymouth, and many others, I have no doubt. This could be a very robust debate.

💬 SPEAKER: OK, all right. And what we’re going to get to straight away is relevant matters. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. When I started my speech last night, I made reference to an amazement that I had at the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway’s comments in explaining why the Government is moving this motion. I paraphrased it, and he looked very confused at my confusion. So I went back, and I had a look at what Mr Lees-Galloway actually said. He said, “The shorter than usual select committee process will allow the public and the industry to have their say on the proposed changes to the Act”—that was the bit that confused me. That needed to be read in conjunction with what he then said, which was it “will ensure [the] tender documents for the block offer can be made available in early 2019.”

The presumption there is that it’s absolutely imperative that this legislation be passed by early 2019, and the best that the Government can do is have a shortened select committee process. Now, what that presumes is that there is no choice but to pass this legislation in a hurry.

Now, I contrast that with the comments of Dr Megan Woods in her first reading speech, when she railed against the history of ramming change through. She talked about the Thatcher Government in the 1980s.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. We are now on a very narrow motion—a very narrow motion. I listened to the debate last night, and I think it’s fair to say that my deputy was kind and generous to members, including a very senior member of the House. This is a very narrow debate. It has gone on much longer than is normally the case, and I’m going to ask the member now to get right to the question before the House.

The question for the House is this: if the Government is so keen to avoid the ramming through of changes and taking, as Dr Woods said, a 30-year time frame for this—a measured change—what on earth are we doing in urgency on a Thursday morning debating a shortened report-back date on a bill that the Government says is going to set the agenda for the 21st century? Those were the Government’s own words.

I cannot believe we’re doing that. It’s an outrage, and that’s why, at the end of this intervention, I will be proposing an amendment to the motion, which is to extend the report back to change the words from “29 October 2018” to “1 March 2019”, because that is five months. Actually, as Mr Seymour said, what we probably should be doing, given that we are talking about a change that will be for the 21st century—for the next 30 to 40 years, as Dr Woods said—is giving the public a longer period of time, not a shorter period of time, in which to debate this extremely important bill. It is going to change things in Taranaki, and it is going to change things in Otago, where there are massive gas reserves that would create a very important contribution to a transition to a carbon-free economy in the second half of the 21st century. These are vital things that we need to hear about, and it is without doubt, because it is already affecting people’s jobs and livelihoods—the very thing that the Government said, in a 30- to 40-year time frame, they wanted to avoid. We have to give the public the chance to contribute to this and hear from them about why that is important.

So, for that reason, I move, That the date “29 October 2018” be replaced by “1 March 2019”.

That is the shortest possible time within which we can hear from the public, give them the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to this extremely important change, and make improvements to the bill, because that’s what the select committee process is about, and I cannot see how we could possibly do that in four weeks.

Thank you, sir. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this motion to have a report-back date of 29 October.

💬 SPEAKER: Oh, sorry. I should actually have put the question. We’re now speaking both to the question and to the amendment, so the question is that the amendment as well as the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I do support the amendment of 1 March 2019. I believe that the shorter period is going to restrict the opportunities for New Zealanders not only to have their say but for the Environment Committee to be able to analyse and request any further information that they may require in order for them to make, I believe, responsible recommendations back to this Parliament.

What we understand in this industry is that it is highly technical. We noted just a couple of days ago how the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Energy and Resources were struggling to understand the analysis that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment had made regarding potential losses of revenue. The Minister said it’s like gazing into a crystal ball. How is it possible for the committee to fully understand the technicalities of analysis of projected earnings, not only for the Crown but also for the industry, in such a short period of time? The select committee process is not just for the public and the industry to have their say; it’s for the committee to be able to investigate what they do say, and I think that is incredibly important.

I think it’s important to say at this point in time that the industry—led by the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ), who viewed the debate yesterday evening—have come out to say that they do not want to participate in the 2018 bloc offer without a thorough democratic process. So if the rationale for shortening this process is to be able to present a 2018 bloc offer, then they’re not going to participate in it, because they want that process to be factually based and scientifically analysed, they want people to have their say, and they want the committee to be able to do a thorough job on this.

It is highly technical. Since the April announcement, it’s been a torrid time in this particular area, and I think it does not serve our democracy well—nor does it serve this Parliament well—to rush this through too quickly. I understand that the Government wanted to be able to offer a 2018 bloc offer. Ordinarily, a bloc offer would come out in March or April. The last one was March 2017. So if the Government are going to present the 2018 bloc offer in January 2019, what’s the process for the 2019 bloc offer, especially since they have said there’s—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Thank you, sir. I understand what you’re saying.

💬 SPEAKER: No, no. The member has to sit down when I stand up. I think, from the look I’m getting from him, he does understand that I’m going to rebuke him for going beyond the questions before the House now.

I understand that.

There are elements of this bill which are going to require quite significant investigation, and those elements of the bill are going to be around the fact that other regions outside of Taranaki are now going to be excluded from being able to have permits. So you’ve got regions like Southland, Northland, and the East Coast, where there’ll be industries who would want to submit and there will be councils—district councils and regional councils—who will want to submit, one way or the other, that now, given this new unexpected addition to the bill, will want to gather information, will want to have it analysed, will need to call council meetings, and will need to have debates, perhaps also engage with their communities, and to come to a position on whether they want to submit to this process. When we look at the Taranaki region, as you know, the results of having this industry there has brought great benefit.

These councils—regional district councils—may wish to submit and say that they object to their region being excluded. Now, this provision in this bill was not forecast, and so this is something that has now come to their attention unexpectedly. So to give them—it’s not just a four-week chance for submissions; the committee have to report back within four weeks. That means that they’re going to have to have departmental reports prepared. That brings right down a constraint of time for councils to be able to do the work that they want to do in a very rational, reasonable, and responsible way. For that reason, and also for the reason of PEPANZ’s comments, I actually think a 29 October report-back date is unreasonable for such an important piece of legislation.

Can I also say that another aspect of the bill, which was a surprise addition, is the referral to conservation land. It means that for the industry in Taranaki to be able to analyse all the conservation land and all the different portions of conservation land from the schedules in the Crown Minerals Act and also schedules in other Acts which the bill refers to—and ascertain whether they have any seismic information on that, perhaps even go and physically inspect, to see whether it’s actually high-value conservation land or whether it’s just land that the Department of Conservation received back in 1987, when they were formed, that is unwanted land, and whether there is prospectivity there.

If you talk to anybody in the industry—you can’t do that in four weeks. It’s impossible. So, what this provision in this bill does is it just automatically creates an exclusion, and that is unjust. There needs to be a natural justice in the process, where people are given the amount of time that they need—not sitting on their hands, but actually, if the time is so truncated that they cannot do the necessary work—whether it’s a district council or a regional council, and whether it’s to have a reasonable and thorough investigation of land that the Crown owns and whether that has any prospectivity on it. So what it does is it actually makes this process look like it’s an exclusion all the way through, rather than actually putting it before the public and saying “This is what we are proposing. We want the committee to have the time. If they need to ask officials for further information, then the officials have got the time to collect the information.”, so that we end up with an informed decision, so that we don’t end up with statements—“You are burning up the earth.”—that sound to everybody just a complete bias.

We want to have a Parliament that the people of New Zealand can respect the process of. It needs to be sound, and rushing through things like this that do not give people the adequate time to do the work, to present the information—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m now going to warn the member, having listened to the debate last night. He is now becoming quite repetitive. I want new argument.

Thank you, sir.

Finally, in my closing couple of minutes, I do think, and I would like to say, and I think it needs to be said—even if it’s repeated, sir—that this Parliament ought to be respected by this nation. I think that’s a serious statement. I do think that this bill, or the process through it, from the announcement through to the claims of consultation, has brought great disrespect to the process. I was strong enough to say that it was systemic disregard, and I would not like that to be known about this Parliament. So if it is, in fact, the case that the sector are not going to participate in Block Offer because they feel that it’s undemocratic, then why would not the Government actually decide to—for example, coming back to Michael Woodhouse’s proposal—have a report-back date of 1 March 2019 and just have a Block Offer 2019 and forget 2018. The 2018 bloc offer has been just a misery of an absolute, I guess, travesty of process.

So in my final comments—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Now the member once again is debating the bill and not the motion.

Well, the reason why I said that is because this is why I believe we need to extend the report-back date. I support Michael Woodhouse’s amendment and commend that to the House. Thank you, sir.

I move, That the question be now put.

Yes, I’m absolutely convinced that the members know which way they’re going to vote on this and the House has heard a lot of argument.