Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time. The purpose of this bill is to implement a settlement agreed between the Crown and the commercial seafood industry, concerning the under and over-recovery of conservation and fisheries costs by the Ministry of Fisheries since 1994, and to make technical amendments to the offence provisions to ensure that the law reflects the original parliamentary intent. The bill does not alter existing policy frameworks.

The bill was referred to the Primary Production Committee on 6 November 2003, and I thank that committee for its careful deliberation. I also thank those who took the time to prepare and submit written and verbal submissions. The comments suggested by the committee are minor and technical, and are within the purpose of the bill. The bill’s amendments to the Fisheries Act 1996 are grouped in three parts. Part 1 seeks to validate and implement a settlement agreed between the Crown and the commercial seafood industry, concerning the under and over-recovery of conservation and fisheries costs. The settlement involves an agreed sum of $24.6 million, to be returned to commercial fishing levy payers by way of a non-discretionary reduction in future levies, the validation of historic levy orders, and the cost recovery rules for a specified period. The bill also confirms that, as Minister of Fisheries, I have fulfilled all obligations with regard to costs under and over recovered from 1 October 1994 to 30 September 2002.

This bill implements, through legislation, the settlement of a longstanding issue, to the satisfaction of industry stakeholders and the Crown. It is the intention of this bill to provide a full and final resolution of all cost recovery issues, up to 30 September 2002. This ensures that each and every levy order, relating to any period on or before that date, may not be the subject of any legal challenge, on any basis. This bill will, consistent with the intent of the cost recovery regime in the Fisheries Act 1996, provide a benefit to the commercial seafood industry.

The second function of the bill is to amend section 233 of the Fisheries Act 1996, to ensure that the law reflects the original parliamentary intent. This section contains the Act’s highest band of offence provisions, and is aimed at serious offending, including poaching, black market, and fraud offences. Recently, the Court of Appeal concluded that section 233 was largely ineffective in respect of poaching and black market offending, due to a drafting error. The Court of Appeal decided that there has almost certainly been a drafting mistake, which has the unfortunate result of making the offence provision ineffective, and recommended that early consideration be given to legislative clarification. The amendment would ensure that people who knowingly contravene the Act—including through the black market and poaching—to obtain a benefit, or act with intent to obtain a benefit, commit an imprisonable offence.

Finally, this bill includes a technical amendment to place beyond doubt that the word “Act”, as used throughout the Fisheries Act 1996, includes rules and regulations made under the Fisheries Act 1996.

A number of pragmatic and minor comments were suggested by the committee—in particular, regarding the clarity of the wording of section 265A(4), and the validation of the Fisheries (Cost Recovery) Rules 2001, in respect of the future operation of the rules. The Government supports those suggested amendments. The Government supports this bill as amended by the committee, and does not currently intend to move amendments at the Committee stage.

In summary, this bill will implement a settlement agreed between the Crown and the commercial seafood industry, concerning the under and over-recovery of costs, and will make technical amendments to the offence provisions to ensure that the law reflects the original parliamentary intent. The bill does not raise any issues relating to recreational or customary fishing. It will contribute to the effective and efficient management of New Zealand’s fisheries.

The National Party will support this bill, and it is a great pleasure for me to inform the new Minister of Fisheries what this bill is about. This bill ensures full and final settlement of historic under-recovery and over-recovery of levies that were underspent by the Ministry of Fisheries and the Department of Conservation over a number of years. Fishers have given money to the Department of Conservation, and the department has made out it has done lots of work shifting paper and running around the countryside pretending to shoot possums. The department has also involved itself, it says, in fisheries issues, but actually it has never done the work. That has been discovered, the Government has admitted it, and it is quite happy to pay back $24.1 million. We support that. We think there is justness in that.

I remind the new Minister of Fisheries, who clearly does not know a lot about this bill, that the cost-recovery regime was first introduced into fisheries legislation in 1994. That regime allows the Crown to recover the costs of fisheries services and conservation services associated with commercial fishing. Those are research services to do with commercial fishing and monitoring services—such as how many seabirds, if any, are killed, how many marine mammals are killed by fishing industry craft, and that type of thing—and they were able to charge levies to pay for that work. The Minister of Fisheries in each year has to have regard for how much levy was collected in a previous year, how much work was actually done, and whether less work was done and the money was not spent, as, in that case, in the following year, the levy charged has to be less. If in a particular year, more work was done and more money was spent, then in a following year, less has to be charged. That is what is in the legislation. Unfortunately, during those particular years—most of them, I might add, just quietly, under a Labour Government—too much levy was collected and never spent, but the levy was not reduced in following years. [Interruption] That is basically the Labour Party’s approach to tax: tax too much, bank it, do not spend it on the taxpayer, and certainly do not pay it back.

There was recent recognition of a failure to consider historic under-recovery and over-recovery of levies in previous years. We have acknowledged that. Unfortunately, because it had already happened, Parliament had to traipse back in 2002 and pass the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Act, which confirmed that the collection of those levies was legal, and the deal done behind the scenes with the fishing industry was: “We’ll pay you back the $24 million as long as you can say you agree that we can say it’s legal.” We were happy with that. National supports the bill. It fulfils an agreement coming out of that Act, and it has wide industry support. Certainly, arguments put forward by the Seafood Industry Council on behalf of the industry were very sound, and we support the bill for that reason.

Opposition to this bill has come from those who believe that the distribution of the levies—the redistribution in future years of the $24 million—should go back to those who paid the levies in the first place. In other words, a whole lot of fishers paid the levies in past years, and we are paying the money back, so we should go back to those individuals and give them the money back, individually. On the face of it, that sounds fair enough. However, the argument for that ignores a whole lot of things. It ignores that the settlement we are making is consistent with the cost recovery regime, whereby levies are collected in a present year and paid back to levy payers in a future year. In other words, if a fisher is no longer a levy payer, that fisher does not get the refund—but also does not get the charges. So if the fisher has got out of the industry in the meantime, even though he or she has paid those levies, the fisher does not get the money back, but, also, that fisher does not have to pay back any debt. We get that situation all the time. Members will recall situations when local electricity trusts have paid out capital funds to those drawing electricity from the grid. We know that those people consuming electricity on a particular day received a cheque. It might have been a $500 cheque from their electricity trust. It was not the person who owned the house 2 weeks previously, 2 years previously, or 20 years previously who received the cheque; it was the person who was drawing electricity on the day and who paid the accounts. That is the way things are done in New Zealand. That is the first issue—with the cost recovery regime, under-recovery is to be debited or credited to a future period. Everyone in the industry understands that.

Further, the Act takes a holistic view. It is concerned with the benefits that the conservation and fisheries services give to the whole industry. In other words, levies are charged to benefit the whole industry, so fisheries research is not made on an individual fisher but on the whole fishing industry—whether on snapper fishers, oyster farmers, deep sea fishers fishing for hoki, or whatever. The point is that levies are collected to benefit the whole industry, not an individual fisher. Consequently, levies are drawn for the whole industry and are returned to the whole industry—not to an individual fisher. The services certainly were never for individual fishers, and the cheque is not, either.

Also raised at the select committee—and I thought it raised a reasonably fair argument—was the matter of those who are still paying off fisheries-levies debts. In other words, they were charged a levy, they could not pay it at the time, and they are still paying it off today. We have suddenly found out that those levies should never have been paid in the first place. Fishers were over-charged. Should they still be paying back that debt? We know that the debt was generated by a levy that was unfair. Yet we are making fishers today pay the debt back. That seemed like a fair argument. I asked the Minister of Fisheries to tell me the total owed by businesses or individuals who are paying cost recovery levies in arrears to the ministry, due to levies incurred during that period when they should not have been charged.

The debt is about $37,000. I asked what the highest debt was; it is about $9,000. I asked what the lowest debt was; it is $11.20. Should they still be paying back those debts that were generated and incurred? Interestingly, the Ministry of Fisheries has outstanding debts of $351,000 currently, and no interest, at all, is charged on that, and $37,000 of that is on these levies that were drawn during that time. Should we write off the debt? The select committee and the National Party agreed that we should not. Our reasoning was that there are a whole lot of people who did pay those levies. They might have borrowed from a bank to pay those levies. They might have sold their houses to pay those levies. Why would we forgive those who have bad debts and are paying them back now, yet not forgive those who did actually pay those levies?

We agree with the Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2). National will certainly be supporting it. We believe that these levies were collected for the industry as a whole and should be paid to the industry as a whole. We believe that these levies were drawn in a past year and should be returned in a future year to current levy payers. We believe that those levy payers who have outstanding debts should still pay back those debts, simply because others have paid theirs. Why should those who have not paid back the debt be forgiven when a lot of others have paid the debt? We support the bill.

I am pleased to support this legislation. I will comment on a couple of points that my colleague on the committee, Phil Heatley, raised. It is true that the industry was over-levied; it is true that some of those people are no longer fishing, and it is true that some of those people are still paying off a debt to the Ministry of Fisheries. However, I would point out that there were other people who paid the debt immediately by taking out loans, by borrowing, and by mortgaging their houses.

There is one other point I would make, though, and that is that most of the people who were paying the levies were fishing off individual catch entitlements. They paid that levy only on the fish they caught. But obviously there was another group that was fishing off a quota species. Those in that group paid the levy on their quota, as opposed to the number of fish they caught, so if they did not go fishing that year, and they held quota, they still paid that levy. The easy answer would be to say that we will wipe that debt, but we cannot do that, because it would be manifestly unfair to all of those fishers in the industry who paid the debt in the past. The other point I would make is that would be consistent with the levying regime in fisheries generally.

It would be improper, I believe, for the select committee to have recommended any other alternative. We understand the position that some of those people find themselves in, but that is the way that quota has been allocated in the past. It would only create confusion if the committee had sought any other remedy.

I thank my colleagues on the committee. The bill was dealt with expeditiously, and I look forward to its passing.

Believe it or not, because it is relatively new in New Zealand, the cost recovery regime, and matters relating to any sort of tax, or levy—or whatever it is called—on individual fishers, are still seen by them as a huge imposition and something to be challenged every step of the way. We are dealing with a very litigious industry here.

The cost recovery regime, as we heard from previous speakers, is an unders-and-overs one. It is not an exact science, and it has been challenged and fought against numerous times. It is true that this particular cost recovery, or payback, was rather large, and quite a bit more than what should have been levied on these people, so paying back that levy in light of the reduction of future levies has become somewhat controversial.

Earlier on in this saga, retrospective legislation was passed through this House that made some of the previous levies legal. There were challenges to that. There were all sorts of arguments, and some of our colleagues on the select committee were quite strong in their views about whether collecting levies at that time was legal. Even after the retrospective legislation was passed, there were arguments over whether it was legal now. The majority of the committee members thought it was, and we have heard previous speakers say that we intend to proceed as the bill was put to us, with a few minor amendments.

I will speak for a moment about the work that was done in respect of these levies. In this case, some of it was not done, but we will not go into that. It has been the view of fishers throughout history that they are the ones who buy the boats, take the risks, and go out and find the fisheries. That is all true, but as we move into more modern times there are also issues surrounding quota, and an understanding that one cannot continuously take whatever one wants from the sea. There is an understanding that what was once considered to be an infinite food source is no longer infinite.

We have ships the likes of which the early fishers could not have contemplated even in their wildest dreams—bigger than any waka we have ever seen, and with fishing techniques that could be related to hoovering the sea floor and sucking up vast tonnages of fish. This has meant that, through the Government, industry organisations have had to come about, and because that has had to happen, they have obviously had to be levied.

I wanted to cover that because even though fishing has gone on since before the time of Christ and beyond, and is one of the oldest industries known to humans—

💬 Hon David Carter: What do the Greens want to do?

R DOUG WOOLERTON: What the Greens want to do does not bear thinking about. I want to congratulate Mr Carter on working through some very tricky issues on that select committee.

💬 Hon David Carter: I couldn’t have done it without the member’s help.

R DOUG WOOLERTON: There we go—we are being too kind to each other.

Fishing is an old industry, but in the current context it is relatively new, and certainly the quota management system is quite new and quite unique. It is being copied by other regimes throughout the world, and in the long term it will be very successful. Fish is not an infinite resource; it is a finite resource. Therefore we have to get into quotas; therefore we have to get into levies to administer those things. Therein lies the problem, and it has been resolved in this case by paying forward and taking the cost recovery off future levies.

I commend this bill, and New Zealand First will be voting for it.

I rise on behalf of my colleague Ian Ewen-Street, who is a member of the Primary Production Committee, which has heard submissions on the Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2), but is not able to be here right now.

The Greens unreservedly support one part of this bill, but we have reservations about aspects of the other part, which I will detail. Primarily, the bill is concerned with closing a loophole in the law and resolving the conflict that has arisen between fishers and the Ministry of Fisheries over the collection and use of levies. Frankly, it appals the Green Party that all of the careful, time-consuming, and undoubtedly dangerous, work that was undertaken as part of Operation Pacman—the operation into the illegal taking of paua—has come to virtually nothing, on account of a single word. That word, or course, is “benefit”. It baffles us how selling illegally taken paua could be construed as anything other than obtaining a benefit.

Interpreting the law is obviously the role of others who are expert in these matters, not ourselves, but we very much doubt that the interpretation that has been made is one that was intended by this Parliament. We fully support the amendments to section 233 of the principal Act. We hope they will ensure that people caught taking paua—or any other resources—illegally and threatening the livelihood of those who observe the law, as well as the sustainability of the biological resources themselves, will not be able to escape the law in future.

As for the levies, we are greatly aggrieved that any money collected for fisheries research and enforcement has not been used for its intended purposes, and Jeanette Fitzsimons will be speaking more on that at a later opportunity. We agree in principle with the agreement between the Government and industry concerning the need to compensate fishers in some way for their overpayment of levies over a period of years, but we take issue with the process by which those levies are to be returned to fishers.

Although the Ministry of Fisheries claimed to have consulted the industry, the reality is that this so-called consultation was confined to forming a working-group through the Seafood Industry Council—a body that by and large represents corporate fishing companies, rather than small family operations. The net effect is that small fishers were not part of the so-called consultative process—a very narrow consultative process—their voice has not been heard, and we consider that to be a real concern.

The outcome of crediting future levy payments until catch histories equate to credits is a fine one for large fishing companies that have paid their levies and are still around to have them paid back—at least in part. But a number of small fishers are severely disadvantaged by this process. These are the people who have paid their levies, and who have, for one reason or another, now left the industry. They are not eligible for any kind of refund for levies they paid in good faith, and which were not fully utilised. In effect, these fishers are having their payments refunded to a third party.

That, we believe, is not fair. It is analogous to the tenant of a house who, on moving out, realises that he or she has been overpaying the rent for the last 8 years. The landlord then looks at the accounts, agrees that the tenant has been overcharged, but instead of repaying that tenant, decides to give a rent reduction to the incoming tenant. Most people would agree that that would be a grave injustice and that the money should be returned to the outgoing tenant. We believe that should apply here.

In respect of this legislation, the Ministry of Fisheries does not seem to agree. It has decided that it would be administratively difficult to do that, although it does agree that it would be possible. We should not forget that it was the ministry itself that raised the levy and failed to ensure that it was fully spent on the activities it was intended for— despite fishers raising the issue many times.

There is no question that fisher people were entirely blameless for what can only be described as a stuff-up. In our view, it is incumbent on the Ministry of Fisheries to correct the injustice it has perpetrated on fishers—not to perpetuate and exacerbate that injustice. Surely it is not too difficult to work out just how much each fisher is due, and ask them whether they want a cash refund or an exemption from future levies while their credit is drawn down.

The Greens call upon the Government to see that justice is done, ensuring that individual fishers who have now left the industry can be refunded in cash the amount of their levies that were not spent, rather than having them, in effect, refunded to a third party. If that is done, the Green Party will fully support this bill. Otherwise, we will reserve our decision.

I rise to speak on behalf of United Future on the Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2), and recall an earlier time—at least in my term in Parliament—when this issue, although it goes back many, many years, began to arise in the House during the passage of a Statutes Amendment Bill. The previous Minister of Fisheries came down to the Chamber and gave his word that he would address the issues that had arisen in that statutes amendment legislation, and that a full and final settlement would be worked out with the fishing industry.

I commence my address today by commending him for bringing this bill to the House and for getting it to this stage in its passage. It is pleasing to see that the Minister kept to his word in that regard. There were protracted and complicated discussions with the industry, and it is pleasing that he has arrived at some settlement. United Future also extends a vote of gratitude and thanks to all those who have worked hard towards this settlement. It has not been an easy thing to resolve. We have heard many issues raised by speakers here today, and all of that adds weight to the fact that it has not been an easy process. There have been a lot of complicated issues to deal with.

I wish to remark briefly upon two aspects of the bill that I believe are the most salient, whose measures to amend are the most common-sense, and will improve the lot of all New Zealanders who adhere to a code of fair play and preservation of our natural resources. The first is the move to validate and implement the settlement agreement between the Crown and the industry in respect of the under-recovery and over-recovery of costs. As I said, we have heard a great deal on that issue. It has been a complicated one but it is one that is needed to follow due process. United Future is satisfied that the final product has been largely resolved to the satisfaction of most parties concerned. Some of the members may still have some concerns about small issues, but in these sorts of matters it is necessary to arrive at a compromise that is addressing the concerns of most.

This is an important issue, which I am pleased has been addressed in a way worthy of this House. It corrects past inaccuracies and allows the fishing industry to move forward. United Future makes the point that it is important the fishing industry is able to move forward because it is vital to our nation’s economy. We believe that this bill is assisting in that process.

United Future supports the recommended amendment to justify the rules that apply exclusively to the period covered by this settlement, which brings finality to the historical levy orders. This will bring a benefit to the industry. We have always held that settlements should have sunset clauses, whether they relate to the issues pertinent to this particular bill, or to other aspects of the settlement in other areas that we are yet to deal with.

The second aspect relates to a very small part of the bill, but a very important part. It closes the legal loopholes involving illegally obtained seafood. In recent times that has related particularly to pāua. This issue, as it relates to this bill and as it relates to other areas, is one that United Future feels very strongly about and seeks to remedy. This abuse and flagrant contempt of those who breach the law for the ill-gotten gain of one or a few, at the expense of law-abiding citizens and the future of one of our greatest natural and economic resources, is of grave concern to us as a party. We believe that if this practice is left unchecked it will undoubtedly spell trouble for us and for future generations.

Many members of the public have seen the television programme Coastwatch over recent weeks, and it is beginning to raise a number of issues that New Zealanders are becoming concerned about. The programme, just last week, covered the issue of pāua poaching and it showed how difficult it is for Ministry of Fisheries people to actually monitor and apprehend those who are making a very, very lucrative profit from abusing our laws and regulations in this country. United Future believes that it is important that the Government begins to take seriously the need to expand our surveillance ability, and our monitoring and enforcement ability, on our coastal areas in this country, because it is enabling, at the moment, the establishment of organised crime in a poaching syndicate that, I believe, should concern us all.

We see organised crime in this country developing in the gangs in respect of the production of P, whereby they are getting their hands on an incredible amount of money through that illegal trade. The same is possible, and is actually occurring, within this poaching of our seafood on the coastal areas of our nation. We believe that it is in the national interest that we should apply more resourcing, in the absence of having a proper coastguard service, which we believe would be a very excellent thing to look into. We need to see at least some more resources go towards the Ministry of Fisheries so that it may employ more people to monitor and enforce what are some very, very good fisheries regulations and laws that need to be enforced, otherwise they are accorded very little concern and people begin flagrantly to ignore them.

This bill closes an illegal loophole that was allowing poachers to escape prosecution because of inaccurate legislative drafting. Zero tolerance is in order here, and that should be applied to all. So we support the move to more clearly define the language as to the trade in illegally obtained seafood.

United Future supports the objective and the principle of the bill, as it now stands, with Primary Production Committee recommendations included. We thank the select committee for the work it has done in listening to submitters and making some minor adjustments to the legislation. The end result will be of benefit to an industry in need of clear, precise rules and regulations that apply to all and leave no people able to escape prosecution, if they choose to breach the law, whether or not they are ignorant of it. It allows the fishing industry to move on, in the knowledge that past wrongs are righted and there is a measure of good faith between the Crown and the industry.

I rise in support of the Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2), and point out that in the debate on the previous bill I omitted to congratulate our new Minister of Fisheries, the Hon David Benson-Pope. I wish him well in his job. This bill—fancy having two fishery bills on the Order Paper!—is one that the industry itself has indicated support for.

The very critical aspect that the bill will correct is the eliminating of the illegal take of our fisheries. I am thrilled the bill corrects that anomaly.

As we in Parliament again discuss more fisheries legislation, which I do acknowledge the National Party will be supporting today, I want to clarify the very reason that we are debating this tonight. If people look at the commentary on the bill, there is one very important sentence that sums it up: “We accept that the Fisheries Act 1996 was not implemented as contemplated by Parliament in relation to cost recovery.” That is the very reason we are here now addressing the issues of the over and under recovery of fishing levies.

I want to congratulate the Ministry of Fisheries and the industry on finding a mature way around this problem. Too often this industry has had a reputation for being very litigious, and on this occasion we saw a constructive, mature response to which the Government was then able to draft legislation and move from a situation where a mess had developed because the original legislation was not enacted as we intended it to be. We moved to sorting it out instead of having the industry against the ministry in the courts as we have seen with other issues time and time again.

I also want to take this opportunity of congratulating Peter Murray of the Ministry of Fisheries, and his team, on the way they helped the Primary Production Committee through this legislation. At all times Peter Murray’s answers were very clear and very concise. I think that it was his input to the select committee that enabled us to get to grips with the issues relatively quickly, progress the legislation, tidy it up with some amendments pointed out to us by submitters that the ministry and Peter Murray quickly acknowledged were required, and present the legislation back today in far better shape than it was when it first arrived in this House. We will be supporting this legislation—the Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2).

As my colleague Phil Heatley said, the levies we are talking about are collected from the industry as a means of monitoring fishing services and conservation. Having set those levies, clearly some of that work was not undertaken, and that was not credited by the ministry and the Minister as he set the levies for the forthcoming year. We have had a period now since 1996 where the anticipated collation of levies on an annual basis has not occurred. We are before Parliament today passing legislation that means a massive settlement on this issue requires a payment of $24.1 million, plus $493,543 as recognition for the fact that once the industry and the fisheries come to a solution it will take some time to draft the legislation, put it before the House, take it before a select committee, and pass it into law for those payments to be recognised and credited in the future.

I want to spend a little bit of time talking about a number of submissions we received from smaller fishers, particularly the scallop and tuna fishermen. It was acknowledged by the committee that the joint working-group, which worked on and established this final figure, was one made up of the larger players in the industry. A number of small players came before the select committee, many of whom had operated through the time and had paid the levies back almost 8 years ago. Perhaps some of them left the industry voluntarily. People appeared before the select committee who had been adjudged bankrupt and obviously been forced to leave the industry.

These people explained to the committee that in their mind one of the reasons they had exited the industry was the high level of levies that had been set against the particular species they were fishing. The committee was certainly moved by those stories. People appeared before us who still owed these levies. They had not paid them in the year in which they were due, and they still owed the levies to the Ministry of Fisheries. Yet here we are acknowledging that the levies had, in effect, been set too high, and looking at a way to redistribute the recognised surplus that has been collected. These people, because they were no longer part of the industry, were not able to share in their opportunity to reap some of the benefits of the settlement. It was a sad situation for the select committee members to cope with.

But on further investigation I think the select committee arrived at the only fair solution, which was to acknowledge that while some people had not paid their levies on time and therefore continued to owe a debt, the great majority had paid their levies—and we were unable to obtain information as to whether those people had had to go to the banks, or mortgage the house, etc., to raise additional money at the time to pay their levies. Why should it be that, for the few people whom we could now identify—I think the amount concerned totalled $37,662, with 15 fishers—we have found a way by which those people, who had not paid on time, should be credited an amount of the approximately $25 million, and that therefore those who had paid legally and on time would not receive that particular bonus on the same basis?

It was an issue that the Greens recognised, and at one stage they suggested to us that they would not be supporting the legislation. They did argue that there was a means by which the individual amounts could be accredited out of the $25 million, but as the officials pointed out to us, and I fully accept their argument, the costs involved in trying to individualise that, and trying to find the people who had perhaps left the industry and not appeared before the select committee—and that would be a significant number of people—would mean most of the $25 million was chewed up in administration, so at the end of the day, many, many people would have got next to nothing. When one considers that argument, there was only one way to advance the issue, and that was to accept wholeheartedly the recommendation of the joint working-group, and that is certainly what the majority of the select committee did.

I suggest that when Parliament considers the commentary in future years, a precedent is created, in that at the time the Green member said he would not be voting for the legislation. He then asked whether he was allowed to include a minority report, and the committee agreed to accept a minority report from the Green member, and that is included in the legislation and the report back before the House today.

Subsequently, the votes will show that the Green member actually then did support the legislation. I acknowledge that Sue Kedgley has said today that the Greens reserve their position. I took the opportunity to check with Keith Locke perhaps 30 minutes ago, and he assured me that they would be voting for the legislation. However, I think that Parliament has before it the very first commentary reported back from a select committee that will have a minority report, but will see all members of the select committee vote for it—and shortly, I suspect, the whole of Parliament vote for it. I just take the opportunity to make sure that members realise that they are observing history today.

I shall talk briefly of the other aspect of the clarification of the legislation that was associated with Operation Pacman, which was a very good exercise that was carried out. A number of people were involved in illegal fishing, and on that occasion they went before the courts. According to the judiciary, because of poorly drafted legislation passed in the first place, most of those people have been either discharged or acquitted and have been able to get off scot-free from that operation. It is a lesson for Parliament that we as parliamentarians, and our officials working for us at the select committee process, must be very vigilant about the way we draft legislation, so that we do not have a situation like this with amendments having to be enacted that clarify it for the judiciary.

Bill read a second time.