Fisheries Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Fisheries Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I move, That the Fisheries Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Can I begin by thanking select committee members from all parties, including the chair, Jo Luxton, for their constructive participation in consideration of the bill. I appreciate the time the Primary Production Committee spent to understand this bill and the complexities of the fisheries management system. Can I also acknowledge the officials who worked with the committee, and, of course, those who took the time to submit on the bill.

The bill is needed to strengthen and modernise New Zealand’s fisheries management system. Our fisheries management system has at its heart the quota management system, and it has served New Zealand pretty well, but it does reflect the science, technology, and management approaches of the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, technology has developed in ways which gives us more choices. These choices both enable some of the changing technologies which this bill proposes to utilise, but it also enables us to meet the increasing demands of consumers to know where their food comes from, and to utilise these technologies in a way that provides consumers in all parts of the supply chain with greater assurances that our fisheries are managed sustainably.

The bill proposes key changes that will address issues that are quite old now. They were brought to light under the previous National Government in 2016, when a report was commissioned from Michael Heron QC into controversies in respect of some operations that had been run by the fisheries division of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), which were called Operation Achilles and Operation Hippocamp. The Heron report and those underlying reports that the Heron report looked into showed that discarding and high grading was a longstanding problem in New Zealand. The then Government proposed that we introduce cameras on boats and as is sometimes the way, we’ve had to wait a while for those technologies to mature and also to find the money to do it.

New Zealand’s not unique in trying to address these concerns. Fisheries management systems around the world grapple with them. I was recently in Iceland and it was notable to me that they are dealing with similar issues around illegal discarding that were exposed recently in Iceland through the use of drones. They were surprised by the scale of that discarding, just as I think New Zealand Ministers were surprised following Operations Hippocamp and Achilles. So the bill proposes to tackle the issue of high grading, or the discarding of unwanted fish, by improving the incentives for better commercial fishing practices. It does this by both the introduction of on-board cameras and these rules around discards which support a change in fishing behaviour, because fishers are incentivised to more selectively target the fish they want and to maximise the value of the fish that is caught.

So the bill proposes that all fish that are caught, whether they are a quota management system species or not, must be reported. All quota management systems species must also be landed, except if there is an exception provided for in regulations. The exceptions process will be evidence based and takes into account that some fish are best returned to the sea. There are three exception categories. The first is that the species have an acceptable likelihood of survival when returned. The second is that the species if retained would damage other catch on board—for example, ammoniating sharks, if they’re kept, can ruin the rest of the fish in the hold. And the third area is species-specific returns for biological, fisheries management, or ecosystem purposes. An example of that is a female rock lobster with eggs.

We know that there are concerns about the impacts of these proposals, especially amongst some inshore fishers, and the Primary Production Committee listened to a range of issues. I would emphasise that there is some flexibility for live fish to be returned to the sea to support the ecosystem. Decisions on an acceptable likelihood of survival will be guided by new factors, including the sustainability status of the stock, the fishing methods used, and relevant cultural, social, and economic considerations. Fishing methods are developing, including some new harvest techniques which make it more likely that the fish will survive if released. The proposed rules aim to incentivise fishers to avoid catching fish they don’t want. This can be achieved in part through a change in fisher behaviour, and also through the use of new technology. There’s also a range of new technologies available or being developed, including, as I’ve said, the new types of nets, alternative methods such as potting or longlining, and the use of cameras on nets.

The bill proposes a four-year implementation period to ensure that fishers have got time to transition to the new rules by changing behaviour, using new innovative fishing methods, and developing new markets. Some of the current exceptions to what fish can or must be returned to the sea will continue as they meet the new rules. Other current exceptions will be reviewed in consultation with stakeholders and Treaty partners to see if they fit under the new framework or whether they should be revoked.

The Government has committed to review 75 percent of the sub-minimum legal size returns and 95 percent of live release exceptions in the first two years. So this will provide certainty to the fishers about what exceptions remain and which ones will be revoked early on in the implementation period. If a decision is made to amend or revoke an exception, implementation is delayed by between three and six months to ensure fishers have time to adjust. And an indicative review schedule has been developed and will be made available shortly to stakeholders for feedback, which will, again, provide more certainty about the next steps.

The tightening of landing and discard rules is supported by the roll-out of on-board cameras. Cameras provide more accurate information about fishing activity, better evidence for a responsive management system, and they also encourage a change in fishing behaviour and reduce unwanted discards and waste. They’ll also support measures to reduce the bycatch of birds and sea mammals. The bill supports broader use of on-board cameras, which has been tested with the fishing industry, who are broadly supportive of the initiative.

When introduced in 1986, the penalties regime was based on the low probability of detecting illegal discarding, with high penalties when offending was proven. So it was pretty hard to catch people under the old system, and, therefore, when you did, you had to hit them pretty hard in order to act as a disincentive to that behaviour. While prosecutions will remain available as a deterrent for serious offending, the bill introduces a more graduated offences and penalties regime that can now be implemented because we have cameras on boats. There is a 50-fish limit, or a threshold, for the proposed infringement regime. That has been the subject of some scrutiny. To a certain extent, any limit is arbitrary as to where you draw the line, and we thought that was the right place to draw the line. In addition, the bill makes infringement regulations available for lower-level offending that doesn’t justify the full imposition of the criminal law.

When determining an appropriate prosecutorial response to non-compliance, the MPI enforcement officers will have a prosecutorial discretion, and they will, as with other prosecutors, consider all factors of the offence, including whether the act was intentional or accidental; the nature of the offending, including the species and quantities involved; and previous behaviour of the fisher. The proposed regime will allow commercial fishers to be penalised more proportionately and appropriately, relative to the level of their offending.

In conclusion, the select committee process has made a number of changes to strengthen the bill. There will be a small number of changes, by way of Supplementary Order Paper, as we continue to polish the bill. There are mainly technical in nature. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. A pleasure to rise and take a call on the Fisheries Amendment Bill this evening. As we are getting late into the evening I am hoping we can keep everyone focused with their attention after that first riveting contribution by the Minister. Just a couple of aspects that I wanted to touch on here. Ultimately, what we’re talking about is trying to improve the sustainability of our fish stocks and the intent there is good. That’s something that National certainly supports: enhancing that protection of fish stocks, the sustainability and, indeed, our track record speaks to that, having established 11 marine reserves over our nine years in Government. Interestingly, this Government have not yet established a single one in five years of Government, the longest period since the 1980s in which no new marine reserves have been established—but I digress.

So the intent here, as I say, is good. We will be supporting the bill at its second reading, but we do still have some concerns with it, and I’ll touch on those throughout this contribution. It stems, in part, from the quota management system (QMS)—ultimately our current model being relatively good but starting to show cracks. In my mind, it seems it’s not quite as effective or as responsive as it should be to enable us to have confidence that we are indeed protecting those fish stocks appropriately, in a timely manner, and are able to respond to any significant changes in biomass throughout our 642-odd fish stocks that we have around New Zealand. What we have seen in some of those, and we can look at the recent data from the Ministry of Primary Industries around their fish stock assessments, is that some 20-odd percent of the stocks that they assess—and they only assess a fraction of those 642—were overfished at the last assessment. So, to me, that suggests that we have some real concerns that must be addressed.

It is my intent, hopefully, through this legislation, that we will see an improvement in some of those areas, whilst at the same time actually helping to give our commercial fishers a bit more confidence. Because what we’ve seen again through the QMS process is that we have significant fluctuations. At times we can have changes of more than 100 percent increase or decrease to a particular fish stock when it is eventually assessed because there’s suddenly found to be a significant increase or decrease in the biomass of that particular fish stock. And so on that basis, it can have a significant impact on a potential business operation if you are suddenly having your total allowable commercial catch limit decreased drastically off the back of one of those fish stock assessments.

So my concern here, though, particularly for the smaller players, is around whether or not the implementation of this bill and the costs associated with it are going to outweigh the benefits. Here I am—my third contribution on three pieces of legislation where we have seen in each instance a Government that is just happy to continually impose costs on businesses. We had it with the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Fonterra Capital Restructuring) Amendment Bill—there’s millions of dollars more of additional cost going in there—we had it with the Deposit Takers Bill put forward earlier today, and now with this one. In each of these instances, it just seems that the Government have no regard whatsoever to the increased cost that their potential changes or their proposed changes will have on business. That’s simply not good enough. Business underpins our economy and we need to make sure that we are supporting it.

Of course we need to continue to evolve and to adapt, and I think we can see those expectations from our markets starting to demand different management practices with regards to fisheries, but also across the food and fibre sector more broadly. The perception around the sustainability or the traceability that people demand with their purchasing decisions, particularly from a food and fibre perspective, is absolutely critical. So we must continue to evolve to adapt to that changing demand as well, and that’s something we’ve had a really good history of here in New Zealand. Our food and fibre sector has always continued to innovate, to evolve, to adapt, and to remain profitable. So I have confidence that our commercial fisheries operators will be able to do so in this particular piece of legislation, and it’s encouraging to see that they do have a four-year transition period, as the Minister mentioned as well.

But, and I put that “but” out there again, cost is a big concern for us, and I’m not confident yet that enough was done to actually address the concerns raised by stakeholders through what was, again, another truncated select committee process. This Government seems to think, again, it knows best and doesn’t need to consult widely. We’ve seen it time and time again, and the risk is, I think, that we are not seeing an appropriate level of consideration given to the concerns raised by a number of stakeholders, particularly around that cost aspect. Yes, technologies are evolving, and it is getting easier to put some of that on board, but there are still impositions. And of course, some of the interpretation of how these main provisions will be brought into play is a real concern for these commercial operators as well, because, ultimately, what we’re being told here is “Trust us. We’ll put it all in the regulations. Just trust us, and we’ll operationalise it from there.”

Well, that’s not good enough, and that is one of the areas that we really would like to see a much clearer focus on, because, even with regards to some of the main provisions around the graduated penalties and offences, what fish can be landed and what must be returned to the sea, some of these aspects that are now going to be fleshed out through regulations, when we’re being told by officials that they are working on it and they’ll come up with an appropriate framework, well, we have seen, as I say, unfortunately, too many instances of legislation imposing significant costs on businesses without seeming to have any regard to what that ultimately means or what the unintended consequences of that may be. So that is a real concern that we on this side of the House have with this piece of legislation and the potential risk it provides to our commercial fishers whilst, of course, wanting to ensure that we are improving that sustainability aspect.

So, on those main provisions, amending the rules of what must be landed and returned to the sea—repealing Schedule 6—yep, that all makes sense. One of the aspects that I haven’t heard addressed, though, that I really would like to hear from the Minister on through the committee of the whole House stage is not just around, obviously, the first aspect—acceptable likelihood of survival; that’s fine, and negative economic value being some of the exceptions for potential discard. But research purposes is an area that I’ve had raised that, I understand, is quite niche, but I wonder whether or not that has come into consideration with regard to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd vessels, for example, being able to continue to discard. Are they then captured by these carve-outs or not, and what are the implications for them undertaking research purposes where, in some cases, they, obviously, as a part of the research process, have to land significant volumes of fish which they don’t have capacity to store on the vessel and would have to discard? So I’m interested in whether that fits within this particular carve-out for what can be returned to the sea.

I also have a concern around the graduated offences and penalties regime, and this is an area where we did push in the select committee to try and get some more change, because, whilst we support having a graduated system rather than just the blanket approach we’ve seen, or edge-of-a-cliff type of approach that we’ve seen previously, what we’re seeing now is that the graduated system is only focused around the volume of fish rather than the value. So, when we look at the discard thresholds for those penalties, if a discard of less than 50 in excess to the limit—less than 50—is discarded on any day, that’s a $10,000 fine. Over 50, it’s is a $100,000 fine. Now, that sounds like a graduated process, but, actually, if we think about the types of fish stocks that might be part of this, actually, if we catch 50 southern bluefin tuna over and above what we’re entitled to catch—50—that is a significant value of fish, then we are only liable for a $10,000 fine. But if we catch 51 pilchards—tiny little pilchards; a very low-value fish—we are liable for a $100,000 fine. So that seems clearly to be out of proportion with the level of the offence. And so it shouldn’t just be a number on that basis, but should indeed be focused around the value of those particular fish.

Then, lastly, on the streamlined decision-making process of catch limits, I think that’s actually a good aspect. It gives a bit more flexibility. The Minister then is able to be more responsive to those aspects I touched on at the start, around significant fluctuations in fish biomass that can result in a need to change the fish stock or the commercial catch limits before a formal fish stock assessment can be completed, which can take 18-odd months to do. Anecdotal feedback from commercial fishers could suggest that needs to happen earlier. So some of those aspects are good. Overall, though, we do still have significant concerns, and we are likely to be putting forward a Supplementary Order Paper at the committee of the whole House stage, but we support it for now. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this piece of legislation as the chair of the Primary Production Committee who oversaw the submissions, etc., of this piece of legislation after the first reading.

Before I begin my contribution, I just want to acknowledge my fellow select committee members, who worked really well and in good faith on this piece of legislation, and, in particular, Todd Muller, who was the lead Opposition member on this. The committee worked really well together; it wasn’t easy. There were some differing views—quite strongly differing views—but we did come together and come out with a second reading piece of legislation that I think is quite reflective of most areas in which we agreed. I’d also like to acknowledge and thank the advisers who worked really well with the committee. We had several meetings outside of parliamentary hours and early mornings, etc., and everyone worked well and contributed really well to that.

I’d also actually really like to acknowledge the submitters that we heard from. Some of them were actually quite heart-wrenching and emotional stories that some of our submitters told of the effects that COVID has had on their businesses, and I don’t think that we’ve stopped and perhaps thought about that so much. We’ve talked about how our farmers, our agricultural farmers, but also, actually, our commercial fishers were severely impacted during that time of COVID, when they were unable to operate. Fisheries is an important part of our economy. It employs over 13,000 people and contributes $4.2 billion to our economy overall, with $1.35 billion in export revenue, so it is a very, very important piece of our economy.

The Minister traversed many of the changes that we’ve made to this piece of legislation, but one of the things I wanted to touch on was just the importance of this piece of legislation allowing having cameras on board, and I know that some of this was initially thought of and begun under the Hon Nathan Guy. So it will be really good to see this come to fruition and have these cameras on boats. I think that’s going to be important to ensure that we do see more transparency and that it does encourage better fishing practices.

We’ve heard comments around the infringement regime, and the previous speaker talked about there being a $10,000 fine. I think that the words he didn’t include were “could be”—“could be”—but not necessarily, and I think, from what I understand, there is going to be consultation with the sector, and further decision-making around how things might look will be based upon those findings.

But we did hear that the demerit point system is going to be introduced, which I think is really good. It’s important that it is relative to the offending as opposed to one-size-fits-all, and the infringement notices that will come into force—we did have discussion around what that might look like. Is it going to look like when you get a speeding ticket or a parking ticket? So that’s my understanding of how that’s going to be, and they will expire after three years, which I think is really good because sometimes people do things without perhaps realising, unintentionally, or sometimes intentionally, but it does give people the opportunity to redeem themselves.

So, again, I just want to thank and acknowledge my select committee, who worked really well on this piece of legislation, thank the Minister, advisers, and all those who submitted to it. So I commend this bill to the House.

Members, the House is suspected, and I will resume the Chair at 9 a.m. tomorrow for the extended sitting. Good evening.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 9.55 p.m. to 9.a.m (Wednesday)