Parliament's Environment Committee has released a report on the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill. It recommends that the bill be passed with amendments.

The bill provides for a minor and technical amendment to the principal Act. It proposes to allow the Minister to recover from an applicant the actual and reasonable costs incurred in relation to a board of inquiry appointed under the Act to decide an application for marine consent.

The committee says the Act was previously amended by the Resource Legislation Amendment Act 2017 to include a board of inquiry process for marine consents.

"Those amendments largely mirrored a similar existing process under the Resource Management Act 1991. However, cost-recovery provisions were not included. This bill will therefore align the cost-recovery process under the principal Act with that of the Resource Management Act. It will also ensure that the process for conferring a private benefit is at a private, rather than public, cost."

The committee has also noted a cross-referencing error in the bill, which it recommends be corrected.