Fiordland (Te Moana o Atawhenua) Marine Management Bill

The Green Party has an amendment to clause 4, “Interpretation”. We want to ensure that the primary Minister responsible for the Fiordland (Te Moana o Atawhenua) Marine Management Act and for that area will be the Minister of Conservation, not the Minister for the Environment—not that we have anything against the Minister for the Environment. In fact, the whole reason why the Minister for the Environment is the primary Minister involved is simply that the Guardians of Fiordland’s Fisheries and Marine Environment got funding from the Ministry for the Environment to do the work it did.

All other marine reserves are the responsibility of the Minister of Conservation. The Department of Conservation and the Minister have the greatest level of expertise and existing responsibility, and know best how the marine reserves process works. They can see the whole marine reserves structure throughout the country as a single whole. There is absolutely no reason why the Fiordland marine reserves should be treated differently from other marine reserves in this country in any way. So we strongly advocate that the Minister of Conservation be primarily responsible for ensuring that the reserves are treated the same, afforded the same level of protection, and given the same respect and position as other marine reserves.

Of course, these marine reserves ought to have that same level of protection and respect throughout the community, and from Ministers and from this House, because this area is incredibly precious and valuable to the whole of the community. It is absolutely unique, so it is entitled to the same level of protection. That is one of our major concerns with this bill as a whole—that so many of the provisions in it treat the Fiordland marine reserves as if they are different from others, but they simply are not.

We urge the Committee to support the amendment.

Just very briefly, with regard to Part 1—and in particular, with regard to matters that have just been raised—I think it is one of the strengths of the bill that, for the first time, it recognises the need for an integrated management, albeit at this very limited stage. When we read in clause 4 that the Department of Conservation, the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Ministry of Fisheries, and the Southland Regional Council are all involved, along with the Fiordland Marine Guardians, we can see that this is an excellent model that we should be endeavouring to pursue. I know that the Fiordland Marine Guardians, in particular, welcome this model. In actual fact, they favoured that the regional council should be the lead agency, and I can quite understand why. A regional council should be a lead agency, but for various reasons that was not to be.

This is the first stage, as I said earlier. There is a recognition that in legislative matters there is not yet the ability to go beyond this first cooperative stage. This bill takes into account existing arrangements, statutes, and facilities, and New Zealand First strongly supports this first step in what we see as a development, in years to come, not only for the Fiordland area—as important as it is—but for any marine park reserve area in the rest of the country.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Metiria Turei to clause 4 be agreed to:

to omit from the definition of “Minister” in subclause (1) the words “for the environment”, and substitute the words “of Conservation”.