Headline: Joyce backroom deal led to sea protest ban
Steven Joyce has made yet another backroom deal with big corporates – this time working with Shell to create a ban on protesting in the exclusive economic zone, says Labour’s Energy and Resources spokesperson Moana Mackey.
“Steven Joyce is the master of backroom deals and crony capitalism. Hot on the heels of his pokies for convention centre deal, papers obtained by Labour under the Official Information Act show that the ban on protesting at sea was forged in a meeting with Shell.
“On 4 September last year Steven Joyce had back-to-back meetings with Shell’s New Zealand chair Rob Jager and business advisor Chris Kilby as well as David Robinson from PEPANZ.
“Shell provided a paper to Mr Joyce expressing concern that there was ‘insufficient legal authority’ to clamp down on offshore protests and that the Government ‘has no teeth beyond 12 nautical miles to protect legitimate commercial activity’.
“Within a month work began on the changes.
“The papers show that Simon Bridges met again with Shell on 14 February this year, just two weeks before he took the Cabinet Paper on the protest changes to Cabinet.
“In a cabinet paper from Simon Bridges, MoBIE officials specifically stated that ‘the upstream oil and gas industry has sought a more robust government response to threats of, and actual, direct protest action.’
“That same paper noted ‘there has been no public consultation’. That typifies the approach of the National Government. It only acts for vested interests rather than for the people of New Zealand,” says Moana Mackey.
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