Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

It is indeed a pleasure to rise and speak on this bill, the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Good things take time, they say, and this issue has taken some time to be resolved. In fact, there are a few members over there—and the chairman of the Primary Production Committee, who I acknowledge handled this situation very, very well. He was around in 1996, I believe—

💬 Shane Ardern: 1998.

Oh, he came in 1998. Well, indeed, I was here in 1996 when the Fisheries Act was passed. To lay some groundwork for this, I want to acknowledge the sterling effort of my previous colleague, the honourable Graham Kelly, who was the champion for New Zealand fishermen. He, in the passage of the bill under the previous National Government, fought—and it was a hard fight—to ensure that people working on boats in New Zealand waters were at least entitled to the same terms and conditions of any ordinary hard-working Kiwi, regardless of what nationality they were and regardless of what boat they were on.

He won that argument at the time. It was implemented in the Act in 1996, but it became apparent that, in fact, the implementation of that law was not occurring. In fact, when we came into Government in 1999 it was thereabouts—and, Mr Deputy Speaker, you would probably recall this yourself—that we then did a review of the situation. It asked the question: is this law and are these terms and conditions being imposed? The fact was that they were not. The Department of Labour—it has been doing it in a few areas, I have to say, since then, as well as back then that day—was not, in fact, checking on the conditions of people working on these boats.

Then there was, again, an extended period before we had some action. I can applaud the Government that finally, following the sinking of the Oyang 70 boat in the Southern Ocean, it saw the need to investigate this further. There was an inquiry. Again, a previous colleague, the Hon Paul Swain, conducted that inquiry and came up with some recommendations that were effectively put into legislation.

The select committee has looked at this. The proposal was to effectively flag all the vessels as New Zealand vessels and to ensure that anyone working catching fish in New Zealand’s economic zone—and it is a very big area—are on New Zealand boats or boats flagged under the New Zealand flag and that they are entitled to the terms and conditions that any good Kiwi would expect.

It is not an easy life out there. I can acknowledge the great work done in my home town of Westport where a fishing school trained young Kiwis, who were a bit lost, into the fishing industry to earn really good money on New Zealand boats, out catching New Zealand fish. We want to see that continue.

What we had, of course, with the allocation of quota to smaller iwi groups—and we have got, of course, iwi owning the biggest chunk of quota in this country, effectively caught through Sealord. But there were smaller iwi groups, of course, and other bigger companies that were relying on the foreign charter vessels to catch either highly migratory species or fish that came in over short seasons and, as I say, smaller groups that could not afford to go out and catch fish or buy a boat.

If I can go back one step to “New Zealandisation”, which was a term used through the 1990s to encourage New Zealand quota owners in the fishing industry to buy boats owned, controlled, and crewed by New Zealanders. It was a very patriotic and a very visionary approach that ran well for a number of years but then ran foul, I guess, of short-term management thinking, cost pressures, or whatever. And so though we had built up a reasonable fleet of New Zealand boats, in fact we have seen that shrink back and the increasing use of foreign charter vessels.

On these boats, arguably we have people who are working in slave-like conditions. There is no other way to say that. We have heard numerous reports from crew who have come into New Zealand ports, walked off their boats, and demanded to have payment from the owners of the boats. They have described to colleagues, both on this side of the House and that side of the House, atrocious conditions that no person can tolerate, let alone a Government that is mandated to ensure fairness and some kind of equity and some human rights in this country. Indeed, we had people catching fish in the New Zealand economic zone who were treated like slaves, who had no guarantee of receiving payment and salaries and remuneration for their efforts when they got back home. They were effectively held to ransom on a boat in the middle of the Southern Ocean or the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That is not a great place to be.

This bill, when it proceeds, will ensure that all those boats catching fish will be New Zealand - flagged, with the exception of some research vessels. That was not the proposal in the bill. In fact, it is not the proposal in the copy of the bill that I hold in my hand. But the Associate Minister for Primary Industries has said that she will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper. That has come about as a result of last-minute interventions that no one on the select committee had any idea how they had occurred. I have my suspicions that the Government succumbed to some lobbying from the Māori Party and some iwi groups; that they sought an exception—

💬 Andrew Little: Too busy hosting them for dinner.

Well, that is probably one of the discussions that came out of one of those dinners, no doubt. Paying $5,000 to go to a dinner and get this exemption put in a bill like this is certainly a good investment. That is probably how it happened. But I am not going to dwell on that issue. I think it is all very clear and apparent to anyone who has got half a brain, actually, what happened here. None the less, the Government, through maybe another dinner, held by another group of people from the fishing industry, no doubt, was convinced that the exemptions put up for iwi and for other groups were, in fact, unsustainable. That is, it was going to be difficult if not impossible to ensure that the spirit and objective of the bill—that is, to ensure proper wages and conditions for people working on these boats—was upheld if we had exemptions for foreign charter vessels for pretty much any reason.

So the Minister, in his or her wisdom, and Cabinet in its wisdom, or not—or because of a dinner or something—have done an about-turn on this. We should not criticise the Government members because for once in their lives they have finally made the right decision. I think the members of the select committee from all parties could see that this bill needed to be passed. No fair-minded Kiwi could continue to accept the conditions on these foreign charter vessels. They are nothing but floating dungeons. As we saw with the Oyang 70, that is indeed what happened for too many of these poor fishing workers.

The Government has done an about-turn. We welcome that. We are not going to question why. But this will now enable the fishing industry to catch its own fish. We hope and we expect to process that fish in New Zealand or on New Zealand boats, and to add value here in this economy and get out and sell this high-value protein to the rest of the world. At this point, the fishing industry is not doing a great job in that area. It has to be encouraged and assisted, maybe through things like accelerated depreciation or whatever, to get new, modern boats to catch fish, freeze them down quickly, process them, and have the highest quality fish protein for the world’s most discerning markets.

That is the objective we must have from what is one of the biggest exclusive economic zones in the world, and one of the biggest areas of fisheries available to any country. We have got this jewel. It is run by a reasonably good quota management system—but it is not perfect. This bill enables everyone working on those boats to have at least a decent wage, to live on a boat that is not a dungeon, and to actually adhere to and uphold the conditions that were laid down in the Fisheries Act 1996 fought for by my colleague. Indeed, New Zealand wages and conditions are owed to anyone working in this country.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Following on from my colleague on the Primary Production Committee, Damien O’Connor, some of the points that were made are absolutely correct. The history of this bill or gestation period of this bill, if you like, is a long one. As I remember it, Graham Kelly introduced a member’s bill, so it actually was not a Labour Government bill. It was a member’s bill that Graham introduced as a member who was concerned about these issues. It has basically morphed from there. I am not exactly sure of the passage of that bill, where it went, or what happened, but ultimately we are here today as a result of the concerns raised way back then. Successive Governments, including the previous Government over its whole 9 years, were not convinced that there was sufficient evidence of wrongdoing on these foreign charter vessels to introduce such legislation as we have now. But just recently, a ministerial panel was set up based on the amount of anecdotal evidence that had come forward that clearly there was something that we needed to look at.

If you think about the opportunity for New Zealand fisheries with our exports of high-quality protein from New Zealand, I think, probably as much as anything, a reputation issue was starting to develop about what actually was being used or what sort of terms and conditions these people were working under in regard to the harvesting of what is a potentially strong and growing industry for New Zealand. It already is in the billions of dollars’ worth of exports. So the select committee was charged with a number of issues to look at. One of the biggest concerns we had, I guess, was if we were to force all foreign charter vessels to have a New Zealand flag, what potential effects that could have on some of the smaller and developing fisheries in this regard. Many submitters had a concern that if we were to go where we have gone now, it would potentially close down some of these smaller industries. Obviously, that was not in the best interest of New Zealand Inc. or what the committee was trying to achieve. So an enormous amount of consideration was actually put into that.

Ultimately, we arrived at a position where it has been concluded that reflagging all of these foreign charter vessels is the only way to ensure that the people who work on these vessels will come under New Zealand terms and conditions in terms of employment. Reflagging will ensure that New Zealand observers will be able to be on these boats in sufficient numbers and on regular enough occasions to be sure that what is being put forward in various log books etc. is reasonably accurate and that they will be able to look at other things as well, such as environmental pollution through oil spillage, etc. It will also ensure the treatment of staff or the crew on these boats. As the previous member who has resumed his seat said, these conditions are tough. This is a tough environment and a hard place in which to work. These observers would be able to have a look at and observe the conditions in which they work.

There was a reasonable amount of evidence that recruitment agencies from overseas were recruiting people who were in unfortunate circumstances, clicking the ticket, if you like, or taking from them substantial percentages of their pay—in fact, some of them were not being paid at all for long periods—and leaving a lot of families and a lot of people destitute. By reflagging and bringing these foreign charter vessels under New Zealand jurisdiction, all of that behaviour now can be stamped out to the best that it is possible for that to happen.

Some submitted that other countries had various other mechanisms that did not require the full reflagging. In fact, some submitted that in the case of a vessel that broke down, or had some mechanical problems, engineering problems, or other such problems and would need to be replaced by another boat quickly to capture the migratory species that they were trying to capture under quota management, reflagging would be too much of an imposition on them and they would not be able to do it in time, and therefore that fishery opportunity would be lost. The committee was not, on balance, convinced of that. We certainly spent a lot of time thinking about it and, ultimately, we have ended up where we have ended up.

The Primary Production Committee agrees that the bill is necessary to ensure the health and safety requirements of all fishing vessels in New Zealand and, importantly, we also agree that the bill will ensure that the human rights of crew working on these vessels will be protected to a standard that is acceptable to maintain what we see as human decency and what we see as being in the best interests of New Zealand’s reputation. I look forward to the passage of the bill.

It is a pleasure to take a call in this second reading and to register Labour’s support for this bill, the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, as we, hopefully, begin to draw to a close a very shameful period of worker exploitation in New Zealand waters. It is to the Government’s credit that a ministerial inquiry was established to investigate and find solutions to this stain on our nation’s economy and reputation. It is also to its credit that it adopted the recommendations of the inquiry and went further, with the requirement in this bill to make it compulsory that every fishing vessel operating in our waters, including in our exclusive economic zone, is flagged as a New Zealand ship from 1 May 2016 and, as such, will come under the full jurisdiction of New Zealand law. This brings New Zealand’s treatment of foreign fishing vessels into line with the rest of the developed world. The only other countries that do not require reflagging are Namibia and Brazil.

It is also to the credit of the Minister for Primary Industries that, as he has outlined tonight, he will be introducing a Supplementary Order Paper at the Committee stage to firm the bill up again by removing the majority of exemptions proposed by the Primary Production Committee that would risk undermining the intent and effectiveness of this legislation. I was not part of the select committee process, but I have taken a great deal of interest in this issue in my former role as labour spokesperson and immigration spokesperson. Indeed, I have met with some of these workers over time and also the people who are caring for them. I know that the members on the select committee will have heard from many of the people who helped expose what has been described as modern-day slavery in our waters.

I just want to pay my respects and acknowledge them, if I may. I acknowledge Darren Coulston, who has relentlessly advocated for crews’ wages to this day, including the unpaid minimum wages still owed to families of the drowned seamen from the Oyang 70; Glenn Simmons and Dr Christina Stringer, who produced that now infamous report called Not in New Zealand’s waters, surely? Labour and human rights abuses aboard foreign fishing vessels; the Maritime Union and the faith-based organisations that have taken abused foreign crew under their wing when there was no Government support or agency willing to listen or to help; and the Service and Food Workers Union, which has campaigned for years on this issue on the basis that New Zealand jobs are affected and undermined by this scandal, and has campaigned for a value-added approach to our fishing industry, as opposed to this low-cost model of foreign charter vessels.

I also want to pay my respects to Peter Talley. It is not often that I do that, but Peter and Michael Talley have been adamantly supporting the reflagging proposals for some time. They have been very outspoken against foreign charter vessels and their abuse, saying that they have no place in New Zealand waters. They have been great advocates for change and I really acknowledge them for that. There are many others, and we should be grateful to them, because it is not acceptable to Labour or, I am sure, to the rest of the House that we have an industry that has been surviving on the exploitation of vulnerable migrants working in conditions that no one in New Zealand would accept.

I also want to pay tribute to the many Indonesian and Korean fishing crews and fishing crews from other nations who have been brave enough to walk off their ships to tell their stories of abuse, sexual and physical assault, inhumane punishment, critical underpayment of wages, and, in some cases, debt-bondage. We have not treated them that well. Some who came off the ships were deported immediately—mercilessly, I would have to say. Those who were able to remain had to rely on the charity of the community. For many of these crew, little has changed since the ministerial inquiry. Most of them still wait to be paid what they were legally entitled to under New Zealand law at the time, which was the minimum wage plus $2 an hour, and that includes, as I mentioned, the families of the six seamen who were drowned in the Oyang 70 sinking in 2010. The coroner’s inquest into that sinking found that systemic failure of ship management and safety practices, together with routine violations of maritime rules and seafaring practice, were responsible for what led up to the sinking. The coroner also criticised aspects of New Zealand’s ship safety management process, and that is something that Maritime New Zealand needs to front up to.

There is no doubt that there was a systemic failure to ensure standards and processes put in place by the 2006 code of practice, which has been discussed tonight, which required minimum wage plus a premium to be paid and New Zealand conditions to be observed. Rotten practices have been permitted to take hold in this industry, and I put a lot of that down not to the good intentions of politicians who have tried to address this through codes and now legislation but to a lack of enforcement by under-resourced agencies—immigration, labour, and fishing.

Darren Coulston told the select committee that he estimated the amount of underpayment of wages to the tens of thousands of crew on foreign chartered vessels as being in excess of $200 million. Those workers still have not been paid and they still hope for justice today. You do have to ask what has happened to those missing millions. Although the Government kept a very small number of crew in New Zealand to make submissions to the inquiry, it quickly sent them home once that was completed. We have heard the stories of what has happened when they have gone home. Their families have been threatened. They have been unable to find other work, yet there is money owed to them that we have not been able to recover.

I do not believe that any Government agency is working to deal with this redress, and, in my opinion, passing this bill will not put an end to those injustices until every cent owed to these fishers is recovered and paid. So although we support the bill, and it is critical to addressing the appalling human rights abuses, safety concerns, and issues around the illegal dumping of fish from these foreign chartered vessels, we do have one or two things that we would have liked to see. The bill stops short of securing opportunities for Kiwi workers and Kiwi jobs. Foreign chartered vessels will still be able to use entirely foreign crew, which will continue to see New Zealand workers shut out. Labour’s policy on this has always been clear. We would encourage maximum participation by New Zealanders in our fisheries and seafood processing, moving towards a minimum of 50 percent New Zealand crew on any vessel fishing within New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone.

We are also questioning the Government’s decision to delay the introduction of reflagging for 4 years to allow foreign chartered vessels and their partners to come to terms with the changes. A 4-year transition is a very long time and it gives a lot of room for an awful lot of abuse. One of the things I remain concerned about is the lack of resources and commitment made to enforcing these changes. We all know that labour, immigration, and fisheries inspectors have been under repeated restructuring, and they will struggle. The Government has given no assurances that we can expect to see a stepping up of enforcement, and particularly in the area of observers on foreign chartered vessels. That is not an easy job. That is a tough job. Some people have proposed that they should not have to go to sea on their own, and I tend to agree with that. The intimidations and threats against the families of crew, together with language barriers and difficulties of access to New Zealand support institutions, continue today, despite the updating of the code that the Government brought in a couple of years ago. This means that abuses of fishing crew are likely to remain under-reported.

So although we want to see this issue resolved, I have doubts, unfortunately, that we will see it resolved unless the Government commits to proper inspection and enforcement of this new law. I have no doubt that this House is serious about eliminating this most evil of exploitation. When that is matched by intensive resourcing, inspection, and prosecution, we may begin to hope that acceptable and equitable New Zealand labour standards will finally be applied in all fishing vehicles operating in New Zealand waters.

I rise to speak to the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. It seems ironic that as I rise to speak to this bill tonight, in Nelson the annual Roger Award is being announced. Many of the people here will know what the Roger Award is about. It is about the worst transnational corporation operating in Aotearoa New Zealand in any particular year. It is always looking at the year back. The reason why it is so ironic is that last year the winner of the 2012 Roger Award was Taejin Fisheries Co. Ltd, the foreign chartered vessels operated through United Fisheries. That was incredibly well scrutinised. It was up against all sorts of multinationals that have done all sorts of atrocious things—wages, conditions, pressure on the Government, and a range of things. We had Rio Tinto Alcan and we had King Salmon from the Marlborough Sounds, but the winner in this was Taejin Fisheries.

The analysis went right down through the history, and we have seen a lot of the history come through the submissions to the Primary Production Committee as well. As successive Governments over a very long time had been turning their eyes and turning their backs on these people and on the abuses, at the same time we were devaluing New Zealand’s worth. We were devaluing our brand, for sure, and that is what has been the turning point, I think, in this whole debacle. We were devaluing the actual value of our resource—the fisheries stock. Every time we sell that cheap and every time we cut corners to get it at a cheap price, we are lowering the price. We are going down to the worst commodity price possible. We started in the 1990s with this, and it carried on for some time.

We have had deteriorating fish stocks ever since we got foreign chartered vessels in to help plunder the total allowable catch. We have had problems with the estimate of biomass, but we are still going out there and using dirt cheap labour, putting New Zealanders out of work and New Zealand fishing companies out of work. All the time successive Governments were looking the other way. So we are very pleased that the Government has done a backtrack and recanted on its giving exemptions to either its friends or to anyone to allow this sort of practice to carry on.

We fought against it. I think of the Green Party minority report on the bill, which talked specifically about the tuna exemption, because we were not able to do much about the other main exemption because it was dropped on the select committee at the very last moment. We are very pleased that the Minister for Primary Industries has seen his way through to remove these exemptions. I am disappointed that we do not actually have the Supplementary Order Paper in front of us so that we can actually see that in print. We are talking about something we are waiting to see, but we can do that with a lot of confidence, I think. The Green Party will do another Supplementary Order Paper, and that will be to reduce the time so that it is not 1 May 2016 when finally we put this dirty piece of fisheries history behind us. We will be looking for that to happen next year, in 2015.

David Cunliffe was, I think, Minister of Labour at the time and worked with industry to get a code of practice. He quoted it as mandatory and worked deeply with them, acknowledging that there was an issue at the time, but then it seems everybody ignored that and kept looking the other way until there were deaths and until overseas in our markets we got the turn-round, which is when we actually started to squirm and change. That is so typical of things that go through this place, that go through the ministries. Only when forced, only when it is a trade issue when we may actually lose some sales, do we start to honour human rights and the respect that we should be giving to everybody, whether they come from Indonesia or New Zealand. We are disappointed that this has taken so long, but we are still grateful.

Where is the vision? I have got to ask where the vision is for New Zealand. Where is the vision for fisheries in New Zealand? The vision, we think, should be that all parts of all caught fish are used and all ships and boats are crewed by New Zealanders. We still have significant unemployment and it is disappointing that some people who sought exemptions have great unemployment within their own ranks. So it will be good that these exemptions are removed and the tension moves back towards some improvement in New Zealand staffing.

It was very interesting to see the level of submissions that came in. It was good to see academics from the University of Auckland. They were mentioned before. Christina Stringer, Glenn Simmons, and others have put forward their papers about the forced labour in the New Zealand fishing industry. They reported on the sinking of the Oyang 70 on 18 August 2010, with the loss of six lives. They went and delved, dug, and looked into, and talked to and interviewed Indonesian, Burmese, Chinese, Korean, and other key informants around the world. They put that effort in. They put in more effort than the fishing companies represented still, unfortunately, in this House, which chose not to. They chose to leave it over to different people who would employ these people and force them and cajole them into contracts they did not even understand, and then get out in the seas and get abused in all sorts of ways, and then even have their money so restricted that they could not pay back the fees that they had paid just to get the job that they were promised would be so good.

The University of Auckland and the various agencies that are concerned with the welfare of people in New Zealand that joined in and helped bring this to this position we need to acknowledge and be very grateful for. We will be speaking more on this. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to take a call during the second reading of the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, and it is clear from those speeches that have gone before mine that no one takes credit or pride out of what has been allowed to occur over a considerable period of years. We found this quite a complex bill, because there were quite a lot of variable approaches as to how quota management and allocation is administered within our economic zone. So from that point of view, the mandatory reflagging of all foreign charter vessels in New Zealand is long overdue. That having been said, it is alarming that nothing was done under a Labour Government apart from an inquiry and good intentions.

Also, from the point of view of my colleague the learned Green member Steffan Browning, who has worked very hard in this area, it is quite concerning that although, in actual fact, the Talley family were on the side of the angels, the Green Party, but not necessarily the Green member Steffan Browning, actually tried to paint them as the villains in the situation around the tuna catch. Having talked to Steffan, I think that the media got the wrong end of the stick—that is correct, is it not? In actual fact, the Talley family were on the side of the angels, and they were strong advocates for the flagging. They probably would have wanted to go further and see New Zealand crews have the capability to fish that quota.

I started off by saying that nobody can take credit about the way that this has played out. However, in saying that, there are many other sides of the debate that need to be thought through. Some of the business models that were being adopted were going to take time to adjust to the requirement of reflagging. But I will make the point, in conclusion, that it is a National-led Government that has taken the initiative to make sure that we do get this right and that we can hold our heads up high when addressing labour conditions on foreign charter vessels. I look forward to unanimous support from all our members, especially the next speaker from New Zealand First. Thank you.

I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on the second reading of the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First supported this bill’s referral to the select committee in the first instance only because, although we were generally in agreement with the stated aims and intentions of the bill, we did have some concerns regarding certain aspects of it. In addition, we were eager, as I indicated during the first reading of the bill, to hear the views of both the public and the fishing industry, and of other interested parties, on the particular concerns that we did have and on other aspects of the bill. Now that the bill has returned from the Primary Production Committee and having seen the nature of the changes contained in the Minister for Primary Industries’ proposed Supplementary Order Paper, I am happy to report to the House that New Zealand First will continue to support the bill in the form in which it will proceed, with the Minister’s amendments in place.

The Primary Production Committee examined the bill in considerable detail and listened to many submissions from both industry and other interested parties. The committee—on which I am privileged to sit as an observer—under the very able chairmanship of Mr Ardern, performed sterling work. Mr Ardern has been a fine shepherd of this bill, and I am sure that Minister Guy and his predecessor in the role, Mr David Carter, are both most appreciative of that fact. He is a very fine member, indeed. Mr Ardern is well regarded across the House, and I am sure that members will agree that his retirement at the upcoming election will be accompanied by the reflection that Parliament will be the poorer for his passing from it. Parliament’s loss will be the Taranaki dairy industry’s gain, as Mr Ardern moves his focus back to his farming roots, and we wish him well.

I have digressed just a little—justifiably, I believe—but in returning to the bill itself, I am drawn back to the objectives of the bill with regard to foreign charter vessels and the reflagging of those vessels to the New Zealand flag, thereby bringing the vessels and their operations fully under the jurisdiction of New Zealand law.

The objectives of the bill in this regard are to protect New Zealand’s international reputation and trade access, to maximise the economic return to New Zealand from our fisheries resource, and to ensure that acceptable and equitable New Zealand labour standards, including safe working environments, are applied on all fishing vessels operating in New Zealand’s fisheries waters. These are principles that are entirely in line with New Zealand First’s objectives for the fishing industry, although it is fair to say that we have further objectives pertaining to fisheries in general that this bill does not address. That is not a crucial matter at this point, and I am sure that all members are also well aware that after the election in September, New Zealand First will be very much in a position to be able to promote several more of our priorities as far as the fishing industry is concerned, along with many other areas of policy initiative.

One of the concerns that New Zealand First held when this bill was introduced centred on shark finning. We wondered whether this bill might provide an avenue through which the practice of shark finning might be addressed, and so we are most satisfied that the Government has chosen to address it by flagging the implementation of a ban on shark finning in New Zealand waters separately from the passing of this particular bill. I say “flagging” because it is, of course, flagging with which this bill mostly concerns itself.

New Zealand First has been supportive of the drive to see all vessels fishing in our waters operating under the New Zealand flag since long before the inception of this bill. Indeed, it is no secret that the “New Zealandisation” of the fishing industry is of prime importance to us, and we welcome this bill as a valuable and tangible milestone on the road to that very achievable goal. Acceptable and equitable New Zealand labour standards and safe working environments are but two of the enormously important benefits that reflagging will bring to the mostly foreign crews aboard the foreign charter vessels fishing for quota in our waters. Until now—and it remains ongoing—we have had the distasteful and unacceptable reality that too many of the crews on too many of the foreign boats working our fishery have had to endure massively substandard living and working conditions on boats that, in many cases, should probably not even have been on the water. Floating rat-holes is how they have been described by more than one observer—rat-like living conditions and slave-labour wages, accompanied by physical abuse and, worse, it is at the hands of owners and officers.

This state of affairs simply could not be allowed to continue, and with the passing of this legislation, it will not continue. Foreign charter vessel owners will be required to reflag their vessels to the New Zealand flag, bringing wages and living and working conditions into line with the requirements of New Zealand law. One of the concerns we held regarding this bill, prior to the select committee process, was the time it was proposed to take for the reflagging exercise to be undertaken within, and by that I mean the time frame that was to be allowed for boat owners and quota holders to complete the reflagging process. Four years was the suggestion, and our response was that we could not understand why it should take so long and why it should be allowed to take so long. We called for the process to be completed within 1 year.

Having listened to the submissions of the industry during the select committee process, I now understand the reasons behind this. We now know that the process of reflagging a vessel from one nation’s flag to that of another nation is by no means a swift or easy undertaking. It involves a not insignificant administrative exercise and no small monetary cost. It is also a time-consuming operation and, in some circumstances—notably in respect of the United States—once done it cannot ever be undone. It is for these reasons that the process known as deeming operated by some countries, including Australia, has presented as being an impractical option for New Zealand.

Deeming is a mechanism whereby foreign vessels are deemed to be flagged as if they were operating under the flag of the nation exercising jurisdiction in the fishery in question, if they are able to prove they are able to meet the minimum requirements of that nation. Invariably, however, it will be only boats from nations whose standards exceed our own that will be acceptable as deemed vessels.

💬 Ian McKelvie: Oh, are you thirsty, Richard? You’re talking too fast.

A wee bit, then—it is thirsty work, this. We are heartened that the Minister’s proposed amendments will remove all but one of the exemptions suggested from the reflagging provisions of the bill. The bill as proposed would have offered exemptions for iwi and for foreign boats chasing highly migratory species, such as tuna, from the 4-year time frame within which all foreign charter vessels must be reflagged.

The use of foreign charter vessels in the New Zealand fishery was only ever meant to be an interim measure. It was a step on the road to the fishery becoming completely “New Zealandised”. It has now been in place for around 20 years and, frankly, we believe that that is plenty long enough. Arguments by iwi that the inability to access low-cost labour in the form of foreign charter crews for the purposes of harvesting their settlement quota will diminish the value of those settlements are not arguments with which we agree. The reluctance on the part of some iwi members to take an active role in crewing boats harvesting iwi quota because of personal reasons or because of a disinclination to go to sea for the required period is not, in our view, a suitable reason for wanting others to have to live in floating rat-holes and subsist on slave wages. New Zealand - owned boats do offer good living conditions and good wages, and they do so profitably.

We see no reason why iwi cannot operate a similar model to the one already proven by other New Zealand companies. In the case of highly migratory species, and tuna in particular, we are persuaded by arguments that there are enough New Zealand vessels available or that if the fish are there, there will be enough boats to harvest such tuna as move through our waters during the period of the season as it presents.

New Zealand First does support the exemption for vessels carrying out research sanctioned by the Ministry for Primary Industries because that strikes us as being eminently sensible. We trust that they will not be Japanese boats undertaking research on whales.

In conclusion, New Zealand First is fully supportive of the Act that this bill will become when it is passed with all the proposed amendments, and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

You can tell that the chairman of the Primary Production Committee, Shane Ardern, had a great deal of entertainment trying to manage the speed of Richard Prosser’s speech and the steadiness of speech of our friend from the Greens, Steffan Browning. None the less, we got there in the end. This Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill was really quite fascinating in the select committee process for someone who has only ever really caught a couple of cups of whitebait in the Rangitīkei River in the past. To go into this process and learn the history, I guess, of foreign vessels chartering and the treatment of the people who ran them was really quite an interesting process for me.

I kind of liken the outcome of the bill to a couple of neighbours: one who has got a 30-year-old lawnmower that he spends all the time fixing and most of the time not mowing the lawns, and the neighbour who has got a brand new lawnmower and gets the lawns mown in 5 minutes and is very efficient. I think that is the result we will see for the fishery industry as a result of this bill. Although there will be some short-term pain from the changes that will be implemented by this bill, I think that long term it will be extremely positive for the industry. I wished at times that we might be able to put a bill like this in place for the meat industry. I look forward to the progress of this bill through the House. Thank you.

Ā, kia ora anō tātou. Ngā mihi ki ā tātou i tēnei pō i a tātou e whiriwhiri i tēnei take e pā ana ki ngā ika kei te kōpua, me pēhea rānei e haohaongia ai. Me kaua tātou nōki e tuku i ngā tāngata o rāwāhi kia tutuangia. Ā, me pēhea rānei te wāriu ō tātou ika kei te kōpua o te moana, e hopukina tikangia, ā, ka whakamahia e tātou hei taonga hokohoko ki ngā wāhi. Me pēnā taku whakamārama.

[And greetings once again to us collectively. Salutations to us this evening as we consider this matter about deep-sea fishing and how it should be fished. We should never allow people from overseas to desecrate them. And how should our deep-sea fish be valued, harvested correctly, and turned into treasured, marketable items by us for other countries? That is how I should explain it.]

I stand to acknowledge the work that has been done in this area. I want also to acknowledge Paul Swain, a colleague of ours who in the past was Minister of Immigration, who almost had his parliamentary career truncated because he had an illness. He survived that and went on to hold a number of the commerce portfolios within the Helen Clark Government. He was appointed along with a diplomat, whose name, fortunately, I have forgotten. I think he was the former ambassador to Tokelau or some sort of auspicious position like that, and a lawyer. They considered the issues pertaining to the usage of foreign-owned vessels and whether or not the New Zealand deep-sea fishing industry would suffer some extreme injury if access to those vessels was essentially declined. That made its way, if I am not mistaken, to the table of Phil Heatley, before he discovered that his ability to shed tears was greater than that of the athlete currently on trial in South Africa and who is enjoying the attention of the courts.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Oh! That’s a bit nasty.

I can say that because he was one of the few people who unwisely made fun of me in my little dramas. As my colleagues on the other side of the House would know, there is nothing like karma. I think it was the Book of Ecclesiastes that said that which you do to others will be done to you. Rest assured I know about that because I have suffered it myself. But, anyhow—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Cheek-turning.

Looking in a mirror. Anyway, it then got to the table of the current Minister for Primary Industries and made its way through the system in the form of a bill, and came to the Primary Production Committee. Our committee functioned well. I do want to acknowledge the quality of chairmanship. I join in that with my colleague from New Zealand First Richard Prosser. Most of us on that committee have some connection with provincial New Zealand. We have grown up enjoying hunting, shooting, fishing, or whatever rhymes with that, and we need to be very careful that we do not lose that connection with the provinces and the regional economies of the country, because, whether we like it or not, more and more of our MPs are being progressively drawn from metropolitan New Zealand.

However, we have worked on the bill. We did consider whether or not the bill could be improved by providing an opportunity for those groups that complained about being penalised. That was an element of the Māori deep-sea fishing community, those people catching pelagic species. At the end of the day, it has proved to be the case that such exemptions will not stand the test of either time or the current political climate. I say that because there is now a new standard. I would be the first to admit the standard was not there in the 1990s. In those days I was in the fishing industry and there were no great questions raised as to whether or not deep-sea fishing vessels owned by foreign interests should be used, and we relied exclusively on foreign-provided labour. But there is a change, and on this side of the House, no doubt, all of my colleagues realise that new labour standards will be introduced. It is up to the fishing industry, whether they be Pākehā, Māori or anything in between, to work out a capital response as to how vessels can be upgraded or how quota can be brought together in the deep-sea fishing community and put on vessels that will hopefully employ more New Zealanders.

I would say this: the fishing industry has been easily stigmatised. In the unlikely event that I am ever the Minister of Immigration again, I will never agree on us relying on foreign labour to man the freezing works of New Zealand. There are enough men and women in New Zealand who should not be unemployed who can go and work in the freezing works. It is good enough for the fishing industry to have that access terminated, it is good enough for the dairy farmers to be made to employ Kiwis, and it is good enough for the horticulturalists to be made to employ Kiwis before they rely on foreign labour, with the exception of the people of New Hebrides, now known as Vanuatu, which I am quite partial to, given that I went to school at Saint Stephen’s College with many of them. My point is that if we are going to pick on the fishing industry and say that foreign labour is not welcome in the fishing industry, then I am very keen to apply that to the dairy industry, to the horticultural industry, to the freezing works industry, and to various other sectors that are quick to complain to politicians that they cannot find Kiwis to do the mahi.

So we on this side of the House are going to support this bill. Although I have not seen the Supplementary Order Paper, I have been briefed about the Supplementary Order Paper. As I have indicated to the chair of our select committee and to the current Minister, they will get no grief from me. I say that as someone who chaired Sealord and who chaired the Māori Fisheries Commission. I will not hide from the fact that over the years Māoridom have had their quota placed on vessels that had been crewed by workers not only from Indonesia but from other sources of labour throughout South-east Asia.

The challenge for the fishing industry is whether or not it can catch it in a form that makes money. That is really at the heart of the challenge: how do you manufacture raw material food in New Zealand and still make a profit? Milk is slightly different. Although, you could say that fish is not too different from milk—unless it is processed very quickly, it smells like the proverbial. So I think that milk is in a slightly different situation—i.e., it has to be processed very quickly. Fish can be headed and gutted at sea, frozen, taken up to—in my time—Dalian in northern China, to Shenzhen in southern China, and processed and sold to Long John Silver’s or sold to McDonald’s as protein before it is destroyed by the Americans who douse it in sauce so that it no longer tastes like fish. That is why they enjoy orange roughy.

I know I have got a few more minutes, so let me entertain the House. Actually, orange roughy became known to the Americans when that great television icon J R Ewing ordered New Zealand orange roughy in the context of a show called Dallas. Not long after that—and I kid you not—quite a few queries came to New Zealand: “Tell us about this orange roughy fish.” As a consequence, a lot of effort went into developing the orange roughy fishery as a source of protein for the American market, and in particular the lent season. Over the years we have made millions of dollars for the New Zealand economy by selling enormous amounts of orange roughy into what the Americans call the lent season. Orange roughy is a particularly sought-after fish in the States because when they eat it, to them it does not taste like fish. That is after they have covered it in condiments, which is essentially what the National Government is going to have to do with its policies—cover them in condiments, if its members have got any dim prospect of winning the next election, which is diminishing by the day.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: It’s comedy week.

I could say it is confectionery week, when I look at Hekia. But I do not want to be ordered out of the House, etc., and yelled at by the Ngati Porou. They should spend their time yelling at Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust. They should spend their time assisting Hekia to tidy up Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust. But that is another matter. A change of Government will be needed for that particular miracle to take place. Orange roughy is a type of fish that is very dense, so it should actually appeal to the National Party colleagues—not all of them. In particular, those who are on the committee that I share—there is nothing dense about them at all. They are far-sighted. It is just that they are not valued by their own party, unlike myself, I think. Yes, I realise I am being called to give an account. I stand to assure the House that we will support this bill. Kia ora tātou.

My profound and sincere thanks to the member, Shane Jones, who has just resumed his seat, for the classical references that spanned from Dallas through to a number of other miraculous occurrences, like the dim prospect that there might be a change of Government come 20 September. When I look at legislation like the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, it is one that I recall very well, although I am not on the Primary Production Committee. Certainly there are a lot of people in my North Shore electorate who are very interested in this. I recall when the allegations of mistreatment of foreign fishers were really brought to a head. About 4 or 5 years ago, we started to hear about the underpayment of foreign crews working on foreign charter vessels and the recommendations of that ministerial inquiry. That is the background to this legislation. I listened to the sponsoring Minister for Primary Industries, Nathan Guy, put that through in some detail a little earlier, so I will not recap on it.

But I would have to say it is a very serious issue and it is one that does seem to have united at least the members of the select committee. Certainly it would seem to me that, as a country, New Zealand really needs to be very serious about the treatment of fishing crews, the safety of vessels, which is paramount, and also our international reputation for ethical and sustainable fishing practices.

I am pleased to see that this bill enjoys widespread support. I think also that reflagging will further strengthen compliance with New Zealand laws and provide more transparency. I therefore recommend it and commend it to the House. Thank you.

The next call is a split call. Andrew Little—5 minutes.

Lo and behold, there you go. Shane Jones talks at length about orange roughy in the debate, and then someone from the National Party caucus stands up to address it as well. It is a night of great coincidences.

I do not want to go much further without adding to the observance we have already made of the passing of the late Rt Hon Sir Owen Woodhouse, who will go down, I think, as one of the very small number of truly great New Zealanders for the contribution he has made in so many respects. But here we are, exactly 40 years and 2 weeks on from the introduction of the accident compensation scheme, and we hear the news this evening about his passing. I think that is a matter that no doubt this House will take greater note of in the next day or two.

Turning to this bill without wanting to take up too much more of my time, the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill is a good bill because it addresses what has been a very shameful aspect of our primary industry. That part of our primary industry has involved overseas operators as well. Even more disappointing is that some of those overseas operators have been here at the behest of domestic companies and indeed even of iwi and Māori organisations. It is good that following the inquiry conducted by the Hon Paul Swain, after he had left this House, of course—they check out but they never really leave, these MPs—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Just like “Hotel California”.

Just like “Hotel California”. The conclusions of that inquiry were quite damning of what was happening in this industry. We actually knew it was happening. The stories were legend. We knew the harm caused to working people, migrant workers, was absolutely shocking. This bill is a step towards addressing that. I acknowledge the work not only of Paul Swain but also of the previous fisheries Minister, David Carter, who had the courage to announce that this was the direction that was going to be taken and took the initial steps of getting this bill drafted.

But I do, however, share with my colleague Darien Fenton just one point of caution. We know that at the heart of this bill, in clause 4, are the amendments to section 103 of the Fisheries Act 1996. Section 103 sets out a number of conditions that have to be met. The chief executive of the Ministry for Primary Industries has to be satisfied they are met before allowing a foreign vessel to operate here. It includes, amongst other things, labour standards. But section 103(5)(d) and (e) of the existing Act also refer to labour inspectors under the Employment Relations Act being able to do inspections and enforce those rights. But the reality is that our labour inspectorate has been so badly run down under this Government—our labour inspectorate is an 0800 number; that is all it is. It is not going to be good enough for migrant crews, when they come here under this new regime, to be issued with a cellphone and asked to ring an 0800 number when they are on the high seas. That will not help.

We need to know, and in the remaining debates on this bill we will be seeking assurances, that the department will be properly resourced so that inspectors can be placed on these vessels so that these labour rights are properly observed and respected. These workers coming here to work in New Zealand do so knowing that they are coming to a country that proudly upholds its reputation as a country of good labour standards, but that reputation is under threat for reasons other than just migrant labour on our fishing vessels.

But let us be clear about it. When we have migrant workers coming here to work, whether on land or offshore, they have to know that if they are mistreated or if their conditions, statutory or contractual, are breached, there is a means and a mechanism for them to have those conditions enforced. The Maritime Union does some of it, under the auspices of the International Shipping Federation, but that is not enough. We need to be sure that our own domestic inspectorate is capable of enforcing these rights and upholding their dignity.

I am delighted to take a second short call for the Greens. We will be supporting the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill’s progression through the House. We will be supporting it because this bill seeks to address the human rights and working conditions of workers on foreign-owned vessels in our waters, it seeks to improve the management of vessel safety, and also seeks to set in place improvements to manage our fisheries more sustainably.

Although we support this bill, we are also of the mind that we should be introducing the provisions of this legislation in the earliest time frame possible. The first Ministerial Inquiry into Foreign Charter Vessels was completed 2 years ago, and the recommendations were very clear. We urgently need to address the fact that the foreign charter vessels fishing in our waters are committing human rights abuses in many cases, and employment rights abuses, and taking enormous risks with the health and safety of their crew and with the fishing vessels themselves. They are often using dodgy fishing practices that threaten the very sustainability of our fisheries and our international reputation.

Although I acknowledge that we are taking steps now to address the problems associated with foreign charter vessels, the proliferation of these ships must be tracked back to the deregulation of the coastal shipping industry stemming from the late 1980s, which first allowed foreign-owned rust buckets flying flags of convenience to undercut and undermine our locally crewed and frequently locally owned shipping companies. This neo-liberalism spread through to the fishing industry as well. So, instead of investing in the development of local fishing crews and boats to take up the quotas, the desire to reap a profit resulted in local quotas being fished by Korean, Russian, Indonesian—you name it; whoever was cheapest, they picked up the work. I am told that there are roughly 2,000 foreign workers working on foreign charter vessels in New Zealand waters and their work could have gone to New Zealanders. The profits of these New Zealand companies have been reaped from pitiful wages for the workers through breaches of human rights and—it is scary, too—from badly maintained ships. In relation to the workers on the worst of the foreign charter vessels I am reminded of that quote from The Grey River Argus in 1920, which says: “If blood be the price of your accursed wealth, good God! We have bought it fair.”

The Greens support the steps taken in this legislation to clean up the industry, and we need to do so because we are copping heavy international criticism. At the end of last year the European Union Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries warned that the EU was about to designate South Korea as an illegal fishing nation, which jeopardises not just the catch from Korean boats chartered by New Zealand fishing companies that end up in Europe but also the catch from those boats that are processed in China or Korea or wherever. Clearly our international reputation is at stake. We have also been criticised by the United States State Department. In the middle of last year the Secretary of State released a report into human trafficking, and New Zealand features in that report as a destination for human traffickers. The report points to the plight of foreign men, mainly from Indonesia, on foreign-flagged vessels in our waters and outlines incidences where workers have been subjected to physical violence, mental abuse, sexual abuse, and have had their passports confiscated and been trapped by debt bondage. We have heard more and more about how workers have been underpaid, trapped, and threatened.

We must act promptly because the abuses and reckless disregard for safety is still continuing. In January this year one of our Government observers was seriously injured when his lifejacket was snagged on a conveyor belt on a Korean-owned fishing vessel in Bluff. Our Green MP Steffan Browning, through the Committee of the whole House process, will bring a Supplementary Order Paper to the Committee to debate to bring forward the starting time for this legislation. Thank you.

I am proud to speak in support of the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and I commend the bill to the House.

Bill read a second time.