by the Finance and Expenditure Committee. The ayes have it. I call
on Government Order of the Day
No. 2. Exclusive Economic Zone
and Continental Shelf (Environmental
reading. I call the Hon David Parker. I move
that the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf
(Environmental Effects) Amendment
Bill be now read a second time. The
bill corrects an error
in legislation that governs the
management of activities in
our offshore environment and ensures
that a cost recovery regime
that charges the applicant can
fairly operate. A new board of
inquiry process for dealing with some marine
consent applications was added
to the Exclusive Economic Zone and
Continental Shelf
Continental Shelf environmental affects act, which I will
shorten to the ENZ act in future that end was
added in 2007 through the
resource legislation Amendment Act and an
additional provision is
needed to allow recovery from an
application from the board of inquiry costs that
are applied under
that act. Now members who were in the House
during the last term will remember
that there was quite a controversy
around that piece of legislation. It
had a shambolic passage through the
House. It lay around at select
committee for about a year because
the Government couldn't put together the
numbers for
Government couldn't put together the
The chair of the committee was Scott Simpson and he was having to turn
up time and again
Simpson and he was having to turn up
he had to turn up time and again because his minister didn't have the
numbers for the bill because it was
opposed not just by
the Labour Party but also by New Zealand
First, by the Green Party and by two of their
then Coalition
then Coalition partners, United Future and the ACT Party. They
couldn't even get support from the
Maori Party for it until they did
a trade on some other legislation. Now
throughout this the bill was
lampooned as being overly
complex and
lampooned as being overly complex
of many examples of where it was flawed.
of many examples of where it was
effect of it was that taxpayers were left footing the bill in respect
of applications for consents within
the EEZ area that went to
a bard of inquiry. This bill fixes that,
relieves the
of having to do that in the future. The select committee has
now heard this and can I thank the
Environment Committee for doing that
and the scrutiny that they gave it, at the
end of which the
committee has unanimously recommended that the
bill should be passed with one
minor amendment which corrects a cross
reference. Can I also acknowledge
the New Zealand law society who
wrote to the Environment Committee
and to me about another area that
they've
They've suggested that it would be easier to follow the legislation
if there was another provision put into
the act by this amendment bill to
make it clear that existing
cost recovery provisions in the EEZ act
will continue to apply. And
we're intending to do that
at the committee stage of the House. There
are other issues that
are more substantial of me in respect of
the EEZ legislation that are not
in this legislation. I find it hard to
understand why we have a different
legal rule and a different legal
test and different set
of rules applying to sea areas out
to the edge of the territorial
sea compared with the rules that apply within the
EEZ. It is unnecessarily come plex
to have two different sets of
legal principles and two
different processes that apply inside
and outside that boundary of
the territorial sea. It
makes no sense and that has been made clear in some
applications that have had
to make applications at the same
time for consideration under
consideration under the Resource Management Act out to
the territorial sea boundary and a
separate application for the seam
activity in respect of the portion
of the sea outside the territorial
sea to the EEZ. We can't fix that in
this bill but it does point to
more work in the future. The bill
also sets out criteria. The
minister must have regard to when recovering costs
from an application, those who have
sat on the Regulations Review
Committee in recent years will have
seen complaints from
applicants where some of the board of
inquiry costs have run to millions of
dollars and they
haven't felt like they have had an
they haven't felt that the board of inquiry has had appropriate controls
on the way in
which they incur costs, which are eventually
recovered from the applicant. I
don't think anymore needs to be
said other than that. After
this amendment passes through
subsequent stages, applicants will be
subject to the cost recovery
provisions they ought to have been subject
to. I make the point that we're
not applying this
applying this retrospectively and anyone who has filed an
application before this law comes into effect,
effectively does so at the
cost of the taxpayer. So that the
appropriate given that we ought not
to be imposing these things Rhetto I
commend this bill
to the House. The question is that the motion be
agreed to. I call the Hon Scott
Simpson. I just want
to acknowledge the, I thought, very thoughtful
contribution of the
minister in whose name this bill
appears before the House. It is a pleasure to
rise and take a brief call in the
second reading in this
Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf
(Environmental
(Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill which the minister prove
Yates just to