Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Thank you. I move, That the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill will have major benefits for freshwater conservation and for threatened native fish, and also for the control of noxious fish like koi carp. It’s a small but vital step in the Government’s work to give New Zealand’s native species a much-needed helping hand. Aotearoa New Zealand has 56 species of indigenous freshwater fish, most of them unique to this country. Of them, around 70 percent are threatened or at risk of extinction. Populations of native fish have declined markedly over the last decades, and I noted Dr Liz Craig’s comments last night during the committee stages, when she referred to enormous whitebait catches by the kerosene tin back in the 1930s in Taranaki, and that reducing to just a cupful in terms of catches in the same rivers in the 1980s. So this bill is part of the Government’s action to help prevent extinctions and regional extinctions of our native fish species—species like the giant kōkopu, the short-jawed kōkopu, the kōaro, and the īnanga, which are four of the six species in the whitebait catch and which are all threatened or at risk of extinction.

Our indigenous fish, though they are small, are a vital part of our country’s natural heritage. They’re also important economically, culturally, and socially. Yet, as Minister of Conservation, I inherited a very antiquated framework for supporting native fish and for dealing with noxious fish. The freshwater fish regulations had not been reviewed since 1983, so it was a priority for me as a new Minister to update the law. This bill was introduced to improve the fisheries management legislative tool box, because without a modern and effective suite of tools, managers are prevented from taking the most effective and efficient steps to address the issues facing native fish—whether those are barriers to fish passage, and that’s particularly important because a lot of our native fish are migratory, spend part of their life at sea, and need to be able to get down rivers to migrate and then back up them at an early stage in their life—and to deal with issues like the loss of spawning sites and damage to those sites, and also to deal with the fact that at the moment, native fish are second-class indigenous species, because they don’t enjoy the same protection on conservation land outside reserves and national parks as all of our other native wildlife do.

So the bill makes changes to rectify that, and it will enable the Director-General of Conservation, in two years’ time, to close some reaches of rivers or whole rivers to fishing through the authorisation process. There will, despite the scaremongering of the Opposition, be public consultation before any areas are proposed for closure. That is an important tool in ensuring that there are some waterways throughout New Zealand where native fish can live without the risk of being fished and ending up in a net or a whitebait patty. That is to help protect those native fish populations, to enable them to thrive, and to ensure that we have a healthy whitebait fishery into the future. So it’s changing the law to give our native fish a helping hand for present and future generations.

It is a small and technical bill, and as I said at an earlier reading, it’s attracted a remarkable degree of public attention. I think that underlines how much people value native fish, and also some of the scaremongering that has occurred. So I acknowledge all of those who are really interested in native fish who made submissions, and acknowledge the work of the Environment Committee and the changes it made in response to submissions which clarify provisions in the bill and ensure it is a better piece of law.

The committee considered very carefully the issues that were raised in submissions, and one of those in particular was the interrelationship between management plans for native fish and those for sports fish. A lot of trout fishers were concerned that clause 5(3) of the bill meant that those native fish management plans would override plans for sports fisheries, so that clause has been removed from the bill, and that change is supported by the Fish & Game Council. In addition, the Government made a further change to ensure that the whitebaiters would not see any changes this season or next in terms of the authorisation provisions and the closures that could be made in relation to conservation land.

But contrary to the claims that some have made during recent months, this bill doesn’t make major changes to the existing arrangements for the management of freshwater fish. What it does do is create tools that can be used after consultation and after good analysis, and that’s things like ensuring that when councils and others are cleaning out drains to improve the management of water flows after rain, they don’t end up killing native fish without thinking. There’s been a lot of community concern when that has happened and species like eels have been killed.

So the bill also recognises, from the initial consultation that the Department of Conservation did last year, the widespread public support for improving the management of our native fish. That was an overwhelming theme of the submissions that came through under that consultation process. And that is exactly what this bill is about; it’s about providing better tools to manage threats to fish, whether it’s impediments to fish passage or the damage that happens at spawning sites.

It’s providing greater certainty about where the spawning sites are, through the process of the director-general declaring what sites are spawning sites. It’s providing more flexibility in terms of the activities that could happen there than the existing law does. And it will help ensure that activities don’t impact on the viability of those sites for spawning. I was really pleased in the debate in the committee stage that there was support across the Chamber for better protection of our spawning areas, because this Government wants a healthy whitebait fishery. It wants a fishery where whitebaiters can always be assured of getting a decent catch, without worrying that they are eating threatened species. We’ve already started the discussion around how we improve the fishery—that is going to continue later this year with the release of a discussion document with Cabinet’s approval. This bill will ensure that the provisions that come out of that can actually be implemented.

So I have really welcomed the engagement of passionate people through the different stages of the bill. They’re the people who love to get out, who go spotlighting at night to see native fish in the streams—fish that can be almost the size of your hand—they’re people who chance their luck with a scoop net on rivers and streams across New Zealand.

The bill is not just about whitebaiting, though that’s been the focus of a lot of the debate in here; it is also a bill about ensuring that threatened species, like our longfin eel, can migrate downstream to make that epic journey to Tonga to spawn. It means there’ll be more tools to look after the amphibious Canterbury mudfish, which spends half of its life hibernating in a muddy bed of streams. It means that the beautiful banded kōkopu will now have more help to climb to new heights—these fish are incredible climbers and can be found over 500 metres above sea level.

So this bill is about part of the work that this Government is doing to improve freshwater management, work that Minister Parker is leading with the Essential Freshwater programme, work to improve the Resource Management Act to ensure that all of our rivers are swimmable for both humans and fish within a generation. So it’s a bill that fixes the issues that we inherited in the Conservation Act, the gaps around management for indigenous species, it puts them on the same page as our other indigenous wildlife species—our kiwi, our kākā, our whio. It’s a bill about improving the habitat, and that can make a critical difference for native fish, ensuring that they can spawn safely, and that is the basis for improving populations—the work that has been done in areas like the Mawhera and the Grey River shows what a success that can be. So I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in opposition to the third reading of this Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill. And wasn’t the Minister hopeful? What we’ve seen so far is a so-called minor and technical bill introduced into this House, there was a lack of consultation with affected parties on the introduction of it, and now we have the Minister talking about a process that will follow the passing of this bill—and we are supposed to trust her. Well, I’m sorry but Minister Sage is certainly not trusted on the West Coast, she’s certainly not trusted in Southland, and she won’t be trusted elsewhere in the country if she continues to ride roughshod over recreationists’ interests.

This bill is, quite frankly, flawed. There was a failure to pick up my Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that we were hopeful to get across the line, and if they had gone across the line, we were hopeful that we could support this bill, but that was not to be the case. We over on this side, of course, being pragmatic conservationists, want to protect our indigenous fish but certainly not at the expense of riding roughshod over our recreational fishers—that’s certainly not good enough. We want our people in New Zealand to go on to the conservation estate and enjoy it and enjoy its special character.

I’m not going to take too long to oppose this bill—it’s opposed on only a couple of points—and that is because in black and white this bill looks to put a prohibition on the taking of indigenous fish from the conservation estate, and that means a ban on whitebaiting. You’ve already heard the Minister talk about closures of rivers, and that is certainly on the cards. I’m sorry to say, again, in black and white, that closures of rivers are a ban on taking whitebait. That is where she is headed—and, certainly, that’s where she is headed, because I had requested information under the Official Information Act, and, lo and behold, what I received back from this most open and transparent Government is a document that is blacked out page after—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Redacted.

—page after page. Redacted—that’s right, Mr Simpson.

So she certainly has the intention to go further and ban the practice of whitebaiting, when there is no quantitative evidence as to the population numbers and where there has been no research done on river to river. While she talks about the protection of habitat, there’s certainly no quantitative evidence on that either, because there are rivers and rivers and rivers untouched in the backblocks of Fiordland where there are whitebait spawning quite happily. So, look, that research needs to be done before we can actually look to manage the fishery more sustainably.

I tabled two SOPs and one tabled amendment. They looked to strengthen this so-called minor and technical bill. The first, obviously, is overturning the prohibition and looking to use tools to put in place pragmatic regulation to assist the species and look at managing the fishery of whitebait. The second puts into place some natural justice principles around the declarations of spawning sites so that private property owners’ rights were not again ridden roughshod over, but that they had a right of reply with respect to the spawning sites on their land and any activities that could occur around them. And then the final looks at the information fed into the regulation-making power that is part of this bill, to be using evidence, to be using research properly, and to be using practical measures available to us to help protect indigenous fish rather than simply going to a ban—for example, on whitebaiting—from the onset.

So, look, this is not a minor and technical bill. It goes further than what we want it to. We wanted to strengthen it, and that’s why I raised two SOPs and a tabled amendment—they were declined. We are simply not in a position where we can support this bill.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. This is a very special day not only because Mr Zuckerberg tells me it’s Mr Speaker’s birthday but also—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Don’t bring me into the debate!

—because we are taking another step on the long journey to clean up our waterways and protect our conservation estates. For too long we have stood by whilst our waterways have been degraded. Look, I have no doubt that many people do enjoy sitting on a riverbank with a six-pack or a sunshade and some food and spend their days pulling indigenous fish out of our waterways. There was a time where, perhaps, that was OK, because they could pull them out a kerosene tin at a time, but those days are gone or at least, they’re gone in some places.

Look, this legislation is based on science and it beggars belief that the National Party members have stood up and said there’s no evidence.

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: Running roughshod.

Running roughshod, like an unshod horse—roughshod. And that is absolutely appalling. They only have to google “indigenous fish in New Zealand” to come up with a comprehensive study which lists four of these species as not endangered but on the threatened with extinction list. Now, you can dismiss that. You can say, “I’m sorry, I don’t believe a scientific paper.”; you can do that along with the anti-vaxxers and the rest of them out here. But I tell you what: I listen to scientists, and when they tell me we’ve got a problem, we as a Government have a duty to take action—and that’s what we’re doing.

Now, Miss Dowie may well be able to tramp into Doubtful Sound with her whitebait net and get the whitebait out of the pristine rivers there. Good luck to her. I don’t think the Minister of Conservation has it in her sights to ban whitebaiting on that particular catchment. But there are other catchments which are desperately ill. They are languishing and they need protection and that is what this is going to do.

These are truly unique fish, indigenous fish, part of—here’s an irony for you. Did you know that if you’re walking through a national park the lichen on the tree is more protected than the whitebait in the river? You can’t scratch the lichen off the tree. That would be in breach of the Conservation Act but you can take the indigenous fish out of the stream. How about that? That makes absolutely no sense. So all we are doing is saying that when we are within a conservation area it’s all protected; not everything except our whitebait fritters.

So this is just about sustainability. You know, the huge hoo-ha as if the sky is going to fall. But what this is simply doing is giving the Minister and the Director-General of Conservation some powers to manage this fishery so that it is sustainable. It’s no good continually fishing it to extinction, till it disappears. So here we have a simple bill saying we can take some steps. And look, if a particular catchment is at such a threat that we need to pause whitebaiting in it for a while, then let’s do that. But let’s not shout “Ban” from the rooftops as if the whole of New Zealand has been told to go home and pack up their whitebait nets and their gumboots, because it’s simply not true. It’s scaremongering, it’s inaccurate, and it shouldn’t be said.

In so far as there are some protections which may touch on private property it’s absolutely essential, because we know the most important area is the spawning grounds and sometimes those spawning grounds are on private property. It may well be that you don’t want someone putting a drainage ditch through the middle of a paddock where the stream in the middle of that paddock is, in fact, a very important spawning ground. So it’s absolutely appropriate that the director-general on reasonable grounds can say—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Say that again.

—on reasonable grounds can say, “I believe that an important part of this catchment is important for conservation, important for the preservation of this species of indigenous fish, and it is not to be tampered with.”

There was this whole suggestion on the other side of the House earlier in the debate on this bill that this was carte blanche; that this was outside or above the law. And I know for a fact that the other side have heard of judicial review, have heard of the High Court, have heard of the fact that if a Government official or a Minister acts outside their powers or in an unreasonable or irrational way they are subject to the courts. So don’t pretend. Don’t pretend that this isn’t the case. Don’t suggest that there is no recourse. Don’t suggest that this is an unfettered power because it’s entirely inappropriate.

The other thing that this bill does—and, you know, the Minister has shown the wisdom of Solomon, or perhaps Sheba, in absolutely balancing the interests of sports fishing, because we know sports fish—trout, largely trout; salmon as well—are introduced species and we know that they can have an adverse effect on indigenous fish. They are, in many cases, predator fish: they eat smaller fish and other insects and what have you. So it is appropriate that there is a relationship between the indigenous fish management plan and the sports fish management plan. Now there was some difficulty, some tensions about the relationship between those two plans, and the Minister has said that they sit together—one is not more important or less important than the other but they need to take each other into account.

So this bill is not some world-changing bill. It is not going to change the entire culture of New Zealand. We’ll still be able to effectively manage a sustainable fishery. People will still be able to enjoy their whitebait and everything that goes along with it, including those important cultural aspects, although I understand catching whitebait’s often not part of the activity, but in any event what it does is it strikes that balance. It’s a step that should have been taken long ago. It’s part of a long-term plan of this Government to tidy up our waterways, protect our environment for the long term not just for you and me, not just for our children, but for our children and our children’s children as well. I’m very proud to be supporting this bill. This Minister’s done a great job and I commend this bill to the House.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s deeply ironic to have the chair of the Environment Committee floundering around talking about banning whitebait. He was trying to fill his 10 minutes as adroitly as he could but actually he was really beginning to stretch credibility when he talks about a Minister, the Minister of Conservation, who has brought to the House a bill that she refers to as being minor and technical, which, as became so immediately obvious and apparent at select committee, there was nothing minor or technical about. It was a piece of legislation that was designed, initially wrapped up in some kind of conservation camouflage, to be protecting our indigenous fish species when actually all it was about in reality was a none-too-subtle attempt to ban whitebaiting, and that became very clear as we worked our way through the bill.

My colleagues in the National Party team on the Environment Committee put forward a number of, I thought, really good, sensible, practical solutions that the Government could have adopted if they had wanted to, if they been of a mood to it, but, no, such is the ideological drive of Minister Sage—and we’ve seen her humiliated, actually, in recent weeks because of her stubborn, relentless, determination to stick to ideological political positions on matters relating to her other portfolios—that it doesn’t come as a surprise that the same thing should happen with this bill. And so it’s been a slippery little bill from the very beginning and it’s a bill that we’ve found—initially, we tried to find a way to support it, but upon closer inspection and trying very hard to work our way through it, we found a Government that was stubborn, obstinate, and not willing to compromise at all. We oppose this bill.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. But first, I’d actually like to begin with saying “Hari Huritau”. I believe it is your birthday—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): We all have them.

—so best wishes to you and I’m sure there’s going to be cake after.

It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill, the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill on behalf of New Zealand First and I’d just like to acknowledge, beginning with the committee, the Environment Committee, the great way that we have all worked very hard and diligently on this bill. A little bit of panel beating—yes, we did a little bit of panel beating—but we certainly got there in the end and I think have delivered what is going to be very important protection for our native, indigenous, freshwater fish, because actually that is the focus of this bill. It is about ensuring that this taonga will survive into the future.

Now I’d just like to talk about whitebait in terms of the Mahurangi Technical Institute, which is based in Warkworth, and I haven’t had the opportunity through any of these calls in previous readings of this bill to talk about this institute. Mahurangi are basically breeding whitebait in captivity. They are farming whitebait and this is evident every Saturday morning at the Matakana market. You can pop down and have a Mānaki Whitebait fritter. What they’re also doing in conjunction with iwi, Ngāti Tahu, Ngāti Whāoa, is they are endeavouring to—because kōkopu were part of their staple diet, they’re very keen to reintroduce the kōkopu to the Upper Waikato catchment. So alongside Mahurangi Technical Institute, they are hoping to release into the wild habitat again and also into Tāwharanui, which is probably one of the best areas on the whole planet—in paradise, take a left at Matakana, and head over the hill. To release into the wild habitat—the Mānaki fish scientist Paul Decker, he’s been working on this for a number of years so that when the whitebait become extinct from a specific habitat, they’re able to reintroduce these farmed whitebait.

Now, this is a really interesting feature about whitebait, and you might like to consider this the next time you happen to eat a whitebait patty—because they won’t be banned. Whitebait, if they can’t smell the pheromones of their own kind, then they’ll never go back to that particular habitat; they will never go back to that freshwater environment. So how do we repopulate these areas that have lost the whitebait? We introduce farmed whitebait, which will then release the pheromones which will draw back the natural, indigenous native whitebait to that habitat. So that’s a very interesting thing. So fear not, the whitebait patty eater, because we have the technology and it is coming to you from Mahurangi Technical Institute, thanks very much to Dr Paul Decker. Maybe I’ve just given him a new title, but, anyway, Paul Decker, the—certainly the grandfather of the whitebait. So that’s interesting, I think, in terms of whitebait. It brings another dimension to the conversation that we are having—so farmed fish, bringing them back into the habitat to regenerate the stock of whitebait.

Just through the course of listening to the submissions through the Environment Committee, I did note that Fish & Game played a very important role in terms of helping us to find a way forward for ensuring that the particular focus that they have in terms of trout and the trout hatcheries and the role that they play to make sure—so there was a clause in the bill that they weren’t particularly keen on and so we did listen to them. And this is, you know, a direct relationship that we developed through to ensure that that clause 5(3), I believe it was—we managed to get that taken out of the bill. So they ended up being relatively happy with where we landed, in fact, there were three changes they suggested; we ended up landing with two changes and they felt that they were well listened to. So that was great to be able to work with them, and I acknowledge the way that they worked constructively, too, with members of the committee.

You know, we have 56-odd known native freshwater fish species. They’re really interesting—tiny fish that migrate huge distances from fresh water out into the ocean; we’ve got some fish, well, eels, that manage to clamber up high heights. Some of these fish have been travelling our waterways for 23 million years, and now some of them are getting munched as they go through drained wetlands or through hydro areas, and so we really do have to do our bit to ensure that these fish are protected.

So this bill literally just gives powers to better manage and protect these species. It will certainly update and clarify the Act and give regulation-making powers to implement the bill’s changes. New Zealand First—we were really pleased to be able to work with the Minister of Conservation, and, through her Supplementary Order Paper 360, enabled that there would be a period of time of two years to enable the status quo to remain, because there is a review going to be undertaken. There’s actually no consensus at the moment on what regulation changes are needed; everyone does actually knowledge there needs to be some kind of change, but not to their particular type of fishing. So it’s going to take a period of time; there will need to be consultation with iwi through that review process, along with fishers, and taking stock of all the views and opinions. That’s not something that will be rushed. So enabling those two years before there are any changes, I think that is a very sensible approach. We’re pleased that the Minister was able to accommodate New Zealand First in making that change, so I just acknowledge the Minister there.

I have found it, generally, a really good committee to be on, the Environment Committee, because we have a focus that is about the environment. So one of the things I know that we do all have in common is a need and an understanding to protect not just our conservation estate but all of those species that are in various habitats around New Zealand. So I find it really interesting that on this side of the House we take an approach that is about the wellbeing of our ecosystems, about the wellbeing of the various species that make up these ecosystems, and that is an approach that we take, perhaps, relatively holistically across our peoples, across our families, across our communities, and throughout into our ecosystems as well. Unfortunately, the other side of the House—they call it a pragmatic approach, but really it’s, I believe, a self-centred approach. But I think humanity can show that we can care for all of the little itty-bitty creatures, including our incredibly special indigenous freshwater fish. So, in conclusion—very pleased to support this bill, proud to be part of the select committee, and thank all of submitters to the bill and for their work in helping to shape what I believe is a good piece of legislation that will protect these species. So in conclusion, I commend the bill to the House, and happy birthday to you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very happy to take a call on the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill at third reading. I would just like to start by pointing out it’s always interesting to listen to Minister Sage, especially tonight, when in her contribution she spoke about the National Party scaremongering about whitebaiting, and in her famous last words said, “Trust us, we’ll consult before we act.” It would have been nice if she had actually taken that advice in this case, because here was the perfect opportunity for her to, in fact, consult—because part of the process that really fell down right at the beginning was the consultation process. We ended up with a bill that has taken a year. It’s a minor, technical, fix-up bill that has taken a good part of a year to get to third reading, and if that Minister had consulted at the very beginning that process would have taken a lot longer. We spent a huge amount of time in the Environment Committee toing and froing and listening to submissions, when if, in fact, consultation had been done right at the first instance we wouldn’t have been put in that position. In fact, Fish & Game would have been able to have had their say right at the beginning, and the huge process that we went through toing and froing over one particular clause that we ended up taking out after months and months of debate would have been avoided. So if Eugenie Sage had only taken her own advice—“Trust us, we’ll consult.”—this process wouldn’t have been so fraught.

It has been well traversed—this bill is about introducing enhanced tools so that fisheries for our freshwater fish can be more greatly protected. There are a lot of freshwater fish that are endangered; 75 percent were at risk of extinction, and that was in 2013, and 50 percent of them are found nowhere else in the world. That is due to a loss of habitat and degradation of habitat, and we are all in agreement that something needs to be done about that. But the reason that we are not supporting this bill is because we do not believe that it strikes a good balance in a number of cases.

Now, it’s been well traversed already about the whitebait argument, so I’m not going to go into that. I am going to talk, however, about the property rights that we have a problem with and that we do not feel there has been a good balance struck between. Now, Mr Duncan Webb did talk about the fact that there is the possibility of court action, but “At what expense?” is the question that we put up. We actually put up an amendment to say there actually needs to be greater consultation with landowners when it comes to identifying spawning sites. That was voted down, very unfortunately, and that means that in this instance we are unable to vote for the bill because it doesn’t strike a good balance between protecting our indigenous fish and looking after the landowner’s rights, and so we will not be supporting this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and, of course, I must also wish you a happy birthday. I just want to let you know that I will not be forgetting your birthday as it is also my sister’s birthday, Kristy Kewene. Just thought I’d drop that into Hansard. It is her birthday today as well, so happy birthday, Mr Speaker. Look, it is an absolute pleasure—an absolute pleasure to speak on the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill. I’ve been listening carefully to this debate, and it’s a perfect example of how our Government is tackling the big, long-term problems facing this country.

We know that the degradation of the environment is absolutely evidenced in the fact that many of our rivers are no longer swimmable. That’s something that the Opposition were quite happy to allow to continue.

This Government is committed to improving our freshwater systems, and we have a broad programme to restore freshwater systems and freshwater diversity. The Minister for the Environment, David Parker, has introduced a new direction under the Resource Management Act in regards to this. At the same time, we’re taking strong action to protect our environment: we’ve banned single-use plastic bags, we have banned new offshore mining permits, and we’re working with the urban community and our farmers for a new zero-carbon future. We’re managing land use with a sustainable land-use package so that the runoff and sediment don’t clog our waterways. After nine years of neglect there’s a lot to fix, and this is something we can’t fix straight away, but we’re getting started, and we’re making good progress.

So I commend our Minister of Conservation, the Hon Eugenie Sage, for her balanced approach here; better protecting indigenous freshwater fish that have been neglected for so long, while ensuring that the right to fish and managing fisheries still exists.

I’d like to take the opportunity to thank the officials who worked diligently on this bill. It did take us a long time to get there. We’ve taken a lot of time to discuss the issues. We listened and spent a lot of time managing the expectations of community and making sure that this piece of legislation worked. So I really want to thank the officials and the clerks who worked with us. I also greatly appreciated one particular official who often showed us pictures of these very rare and indigenous fish because sometimes it was quite technical, so I appreciate that.

We have 57 species of freshwater fish, and over half of these are found only in New Zealand, 22 species are threatened, and 17 are at risk. Our freshwater fish are much worse off than our native birds. We’ve seen a massive loss of spawning sites, loss of fish passage, and loss of wetlands and habitat that these fish need. We all know this. Everyone agrees with this but the Opposition yesterday tried to tell this country that, yes, even though indigenous freshwater fish are important they’re not as important as private land-use rights. I wonder if they thought about indigenous fish in the same way as they thought about, for example, the Kiwi whether they would treat them the same. No one objects to Kiwi nesting on their land. No one talks about the loss of land-use rights that aren’t disrupted. We propose, very simply, to do this exactly for our spawning sites as we do for birds.

The Supplementary Order Paper 360 in the Minister’s name yesterday ensured that anyone fishing in a conservation area should have an authorisation. The member Dr Duncan Webb said, and it was a great example, that if you take lichen in a conservation area that lichen is more protected than indigenous fish—I think that was a really good example. So a person will need to have authorisation in the same way that they need to have authorisation to take plants from conservation parks, or fish reserves, or national parks. That’s about fairness, and really that’s what we’re about. It’s about our environment and it’s about our biodiversity winning.

This legislation is one of the tools in the tool box. It’s not the end of the whitebait fishing. It’s not the end of the world as we know it. However, if we fail to act now New Zealand will lose some of its precious biodiversity. I say we must act to do all we can to support our unique and precious environment and these species.

We had 1,406 submissions, and we heard 61 oral submissions during the time that we sat in the select committee. Overwhelmingly, the majority supported the intention of the bill to give greater protection to freshwater fish. I am grateful really for the time that those people took to give us those submissions. They were meaningful, they were useful, and we crafted the legislation around some of the very good suggestions that they made.

I’d also like to acknowledge my dear friend Dr Deborah Russell, who began the process of shepherding this piece of legislation through the House as the Environment Committee chair. That was then picked up by Dr Duncan Webb. Both of them have managed a really seamless process. It’s been a long process but an enjoyable process to participate in.

So look, all we’ve heard from the Opposition is it’s not fair that we’re going to have a ban, a life ban, on whitebait. It’s not the case. It’s scaremongering. It is plain and simple scaremongering. The Opposition also talks about not trusting the honourable member Eugenie Sage in her consultation. I actually think that that was pretty on the nose. I think the Minister has stood up and said that there is consultation. We know over 3,000 people have started that consultation process around whitebait. There is a formal process in place. People are talking and they are passionate about this issue, and we are hearing them, and they are speaking to us. So I don’t think that that was a very fair or reasonable thing for the member to say. I absolutely refute it.

The bill does a number of things, but one of the things, I guess, that I’m particularly pleased about is this bill also strengthens the tools for managing threats to customary fishing, such as the management of damage to spawning sites. So where indigenous fish are and customary fishing rights exist, the protection, or the better protection, of those spawning sites and the customary right to take continues, and, in fact, it’s strengthened.

We’re getting on with delivering for the people of our nation. We’re focused on the long game, not the next election cycle. We’re looking at fixing the multiplicity of issues that have been the legacy of nine years of the National Government. That party ignored poverty, ignored the health and wellbeing of our people, and ignored the environment. I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party in opposition to the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill.

I do want to begin by acknowledging the Government backbenders—backbenchers. Slow down, Matthew, slow down, say the right things: the Government backbenchers. In fairness, they came into Parliament to make a difference, and they came into Parliament to pass law. I feel for them: their first term, they want to pass law, make a difference, and they’ve been told to take their time, filibuster their own bills because their executive has run out of ideas. What’s worse, over the last two months or three months they weren’t even allowed to filibuster, because what we experienced was a gaggle of Ministers in here all taking up the opportunity to seize the Government backbenchers’ calls to filibuster. But now the executive has run out of steam, and they’re not even bothering to turn up themselves to filibuster, and they’ve thrown a few bones to the Government backbenchers.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): There’s a fair bit of that going on. And after 60 seconds at least say “whitebait”.

Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Go on.

I would like to help. I would like to extend an offer of support to the Government in helping pass this bill by resuming my seat very promptly. I’d encourage them to do the same.

This is a split call. I call Jo Luxton.

What a pleasure. What a pleasure to take a call on the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill after that member who has just taken his seat, Matt Doocey. He had the audacity to talk about filibustering, and I think he spent a whole 1½ minutes doing just that and didn’t mention whitebait once as you suggested.

Anyway, I want to say thank you. I want to acknowledge the chairs of the Environment Committee, Dr Deborah Russell, who was originally the chair of the select committee, and then, following on from that, Dr Duncan Webb. I think it’s important also to acknowledge the select committee too, because they do the hard work and the hard yards when it comes to legislation such as this.

I have one question though: why are the Opposition opposing? Do they oppose now just for the sake of opposing everything that this Government puts forward? So negative—“negative National”. But that’s OK. You know, I kind of feel that if we were talking about tahr, there would probably be a lot more passion, and they’d be more willing to protect something like tahr, which is a pest. But what we have here is a Government that is making moves to protect and improve the productivity of our fisheries and our waterways, and here they are up in arms. This is actually a good thing—this is actually a good thing. I wish that you—not you, Mr Speaker, but the Opposition—would take the time just to recognise that and join forces with this side of the House and get this legislation through the House unopposed. But I guess that’s just too much to ask.

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: “Negative Nelly”.

That’s right: “negative Nellies”.

You know, in New Zealand we protect kiwis, we protect our native birds, we protect insects, and we protect even lichen, so I found out this evening. So why not protect our native fish? They are in trouble. Just because we can’t see them, they don’t have pretty feathers, and they don’t parade around in front of us, doesn’t actually mean they are not worth protecting. They are native to our country, which is an extremely precious and important thing.

We know that we’ve got 57 species of indigenous fish here in New Zealand. Of those, 22 are listed as threatened and 17 are at risk. As I said before, just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t need our protection.

This piece of legislation, I noted too, actually created a huge amount of interest, with 1,406 submissions, and overwhelmingly the submitters supported the intent of this bill. About 1,406 submissions—that’s a lot of submissions and is actually a lot more than what I’ve experienced in some of my other select committees. So that just goes to show how passionate people are and how much they care about this issue.

Unfortunately, we have seen a lot of scaremongering from the Opposition, saying that this is going to be the end of whitebaiting—nobody is going to have any more whitebait fritters—but that is actually not the case. We know that three-quarters of our native fish are threatened. They are at risk or at risk of extinction. So we have to act. We have to do something now. We cannot sit on our hands and do nothing. So I want to thank Minister Sage for bringing this legislation to the House. She recognises the importance of protecting our native fish and the waterways in which they live in and spawn in.

We had a large number of submitters that were concerned about whitebaiting and what this bill might mean for whitebaiting—that it would be the end of commercial fishing for whitebaiting, but it’s actually not the case. What we know is that on conservation land we have the opportunity to protect our whitebait, to give them the opportunity to swim, to live, and to spawn without the risk of being captured by nets. If we continue the way we have been continuing and don’t look to protect anything, we can say goodbye to whitebait fritters because we will fish them to extinction, and I am sure that New Zealanders do not want to see that happen, because that would be a catastrophe. It is one of our, I guess, iconic things here in New Zealand to go along and have whitebait fritters when they’re in season.

So I’m not going to continue any further. I just want to acknowledge again the select committee and the Minister and the submitters, and I highly commend this bill to the House.

Matt King—five minutes.

I’ve got a very short contribution to make. We oppose this bill. We oppose this bill, and we oppose this bill on a number of reasons. But let’s talk about whitebait—let’s talk about whitebait.

The Greens, in their ideology, they’re against recreational fishers, eelers, and hunters. That’s pretty obvious. But, in principle, I’ve got to say I oppose any bill that gives Minister Eugenie Sage the ability to ban. I oppose that in principle. I’ve got to oppose it. She loves banning it—she loves banning. I don’t want to give her in any bill power to ban something. But in that case, it gives her the ability to ban. But, you know what? Wait a few weeks, and a Labour Minister will overturn it. So there you go.

Very little consultation. The previous speaker, Jo Luxton, spoke about the right to take it to a judicial review. That costs money, so we’d rather that the right to appeal, the right to consult, is written into the bill. So we took these Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) forward and got opposed. New Zealand First could have supported our sensible SOPs, but they toed the line, got in behind the coalition Government, and went along with the Green Party line.

There are more sensible ways to protect our fisheries. Accordingly, we don’t support the bill.

I must also join in the calls from this side of the House with my colleagues to celebrate you, good sir, on your day, your rā whānau [birthday]. Nō reira, kei a koe, e Te Mana Whakawā. Hari huritau.

[So back to you, Mr Speaker. Happy birthday.]

Look, I want to just pick up from the previous speaker, Matt King. He made an interesting statement just prior to sitting down. He said, “There’s a lot more pragmatic ways to go about saving the fisheries.” Silence. And that’s the thing. Like, they’re all happy on that side of the House, causing a muck and putting out all sorts of disastrous, doomy-gloomy kinds of misinformation to our communities, and in particular to our rural communities, about what the impacts of this legislation are going to be. The reality is the Nats are anti-whitebait. They’re anti - our environment, anti-conservation, and anti - recreational fishers. I can say that as a recreational fisher myself.

Look, you talk to people on the ground about what we’re actually trying to achieve in this bill. What are we trying to do? We’re trying to ensure that the livestock of our native fisheries, our īnanga, our kōkopu—that those species are protected ma rānō, for a lifetime—our tuna. The reality is that in recent times an absence of the ability to regulate, an absence of the ability to be able to set aside conservation areas—in our tikanga, we have a tikanga, a law, as most of our tribes do, to moderate and regulate our fishing stock. We regularly implemented rāhui, where we didn’t take kai from certain areas. Those laws were adhered to by all of those who occupied those spaces.

Like, for some areas that isn’t the dominant law; tikanga isn’t the dominant law, or not everybody will adhere to those people that put down those rāhui. So I guess that’s where the challenge for us on this side of the House is. If we want to preserve our fisheries, in particular our indigenous fishing stock, well what’s our plan? I want to acknowledge the Hon Eugenie Sage. It’s always tricky when you go to try and introduce regulation for things that we as New Zealanders take inherently. You know, fishing is etched into our DNA. I think I was born with a blimmin fishing rod in my hand and some waders on my feet. But, you know, for a lot of us, it is a big part of our lifestyle. So it can be really challenging.

That’s what we saw from the Opposition for nine years. We saw that when there were issues that were too tricky to actually delve into, they just didn’t bother—they didn’t bother. And what’s the consequence of that? Well, when we look at our fisheries stock, it is a classic example. Oh, I can see the Hon James Shaw down the back there. You know, they’re tackling some really big issues on our environment; whether that be our fresh waterways, whether that’s climate change. These are really big, fundamentally challenging issues that the last lot just did nothing about.

I applied, I think, quite a conservative lens to this bill, because I was very, very wary about undermining, I guess, you know, the lifestyle of good old New Zealanders who just want to go down and catch a feed. So as I challenged myself to try to understand what the intentions of this bill were, I got to understand, well, actually, there aren’t many fishing stocks in New Zealand that don’t have some kind of total catch allocation or some kind of management system. Well, īnanga, there’s no management system. If I want to go and commercially catch and sell īnanga from any old river when they’re running, I can. Nobody else is going to moderate that.

💬 Maureen Pugh: So?

Did I hear “So?” I hope I didn’t just hear “So?” on the other side.

💬 Maureen Pugh: Yeah, you did. I said it.

You said “So?”. Why should we be saying “So?” about a native fishery stock that we’re watching being completely decimated. Look, actually that member who just said that and I, we both come from areas that strongly survive on those types of fish. I’ve got a two-year-old daughter. Imagine if my two-year-old daughter grows up right at home by our Rangitaiki awa. Imagine if when she gets to, I don’t know, be 16, whatever it is, and they don’t have the possibility or the ability to go fish their awa. What if the knowledge that my father-in-law, Wharekaihua, is passing on to Hiwaiterangi—what if she can’t give life to those practices and those teachings because we, I, this side of the House, everybody in this House, have not been diligent enough, have not turned our mind to it enough, have not done everything that we could in our time whilst we have the ability to make laws to conserve our cultural identity, our social identity? This is a mere manifestation of that, but one that is so significant to that member’s communities and to mine.

So, look, this is a long-term problem. This is a problem that we all have to work out how we’re going to balance engagement. Man, the last thing we want to do is see a blimmin ban on whitebait. I love it. It’s such a big part of our culture, my culture, our family’s culture. But the reality is that we have to do something.

Then I went through the details. Well, what are we actually trying to do? OK, well, no, there isn’t going to be some big massive blanket ban that goes on for ever and ever around whitebaiting. We’re going to set aside conservation areas. We’re going to make sure that those fishing spots—they’re not going to be there for ever. There’s a very good Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that Minister Sage introduced, I think it was yesterday. I want to again acknowledge her, because there was such consternation around this bill. There has been a lot of misinformation that’s been put out into the public sphere, and it’s been right old misinformation as well. But that aside, Minister Sage worked diligently, I think, with recreational fishers and groups that have clearly worked alongside her to ensure that we were making the best fit legislation in this area.

She introduced SOP 360. Now, this one here provides authorisations for fishing in conservation areas. It will require anyone fishing in a conservation area to have an authorisation—a permit; that’s fine—in the same way that they need to have authorisation to take plants from conservation areas and the like. That’s fine. That means that we can ensure that there is sufficient stock, that’s it being monitored, and that what is being taken is sustainable.

The legislation will still retain powers to introduce authorisation processes for whitebait fishing in conservation areas, and that’s because they may be necessary in the future. So I think, you know, for me this is a pragmatic bill that has to tackle some fundamental issues that for us are long-term issues, because on this side of the House whilst we have the privilege of holding power, the challenge is that we exercise with an absolute diligence, the obligation of the exercise of that power.

If I turn to the member from Invercargill Ms Dowie, her SOP 389 inserts new section 26ZHE “Taking of whitebait”. She introduced two SOPs that completely undermine the whole intent of this bill, which is the preservation of these indigenous fish species. Her first proposal was restricting the ability of the Director-General of Conservation to take any action that would result in prohibiting whitebaiting in a conservation area. This proposal goes back to my original point in my response to the member Mr King. OK, you don’t like the plan—don’t like the plan, so what’s the plan? “We’ve got a plan.”, they said—“We’ve got a plan.” But what’s the plan? This here, this SOP—yeah, here it is. This SOP says that you can do nothing—you can do nothing to ensure the preservation of those indigenous species.

So then let’s turn to the next one—spawning sites, requiring the director-general to consult the property owner if the director-general proposes to declare an area on private property to be a spawning area, and it gives landowners an appeal right over such declarations. So the property rights of the landowner trump the ability of the Crown to exercise its obligations of preservation of indigenous species. What’s the plan? That’s going to be my catchcry to that side whilst they sit here and relentlessly produce misinformation about what this side of the House is doing.

I’m proud of the work that our Ministers are doing. I’m proud of the work. They are tackling really challenging and difficult issues. So I take my hat off to the Minister, the Hon Eugenie Sage, and all of her colleagues and those of my colleagues that are on the Environment Committee, that worked hard to ensure that this is a good piece of legislation. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I stand, too, to speak to the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill in its third and final reading tonight. For me, this is a very sad day, and I’m going to use my short contribution to apologise to the thousands of people who go whitebaiting, to the hundreds of thousands of people who enjoy eating whitebait. It seems that we have been given a transitional grace period of two years, but after that I believe all bets are off and there will be a ban in rivers and especially on the West Coast, adding to the 61 that are already closed over there.

I am apologising, also, that we could not have the scientific evidence that we introduced into this debate considered. I’m sorry we could not get the Government to consider the quantitative data that we also introduced into this debate. I’m sorry to all the people who joined the West Coast Whitebaiters Association to add their voice in opposition to this bill because they believed that their experience and their local knowledge would’ve actually made a difference to this outcome. For instance, there’s been four days in the last month where you’ve been able to go whitebaiting, because the weather is not suitable. I’m sorry some of our rural property owners are going to lose more of their private property rights, and I’m sorry we couldn’t get this Government to listen to reason. We could not get them to listen to the science, and we could not get them to listen to the facts. One fact is that a Canterbury fish biologist who’s been studying whitebait for 15 years said to us there is no clear evidence that whitebait are on the decline, and it doesn’t matter how much whitebait you catch; it will make no difference to the final population.

This is a sad day, and I’m sorry this bill is passing tonight.

It’s an absolute pleasure to take the final call on the third reading of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill. Basically, growing up, I have really fond memories of biking over to my grandmother’s house with a couple of mates I always took with me. We used to grab her whitebait net and then lug it down to the river, and then we’d spend the afternoon whitebaiting. We always had a really great time—didn’t catch much, but it was a really good way to spend an afternoon. Thinking back, my mum grew up on the river whitebaiting and my grandmother also before her. Basically, that’s where some of those family stories came from about catching so many whitebait that it filled the kerosene tins. They had to lug them home, and they fed the leftovers to the chickens.

The issue is many of us grew up whitebaiting, but this is not the “Conservation of Whitebait Patties Bill” and this is also not the “Conservation of Rights to Gravel Extraction Bill”. This is the conservation of indigenous freshwater fish bill, and particularly our threatened freshwater fish. Even a lot of the really experienced whitebaiters down on the river, they also believe that things need to change to protect this vulnerable fishery. So this is a really, really important bill. Why is it important? It is because so many of our freshwater fish are threatened or at risk of extinction. When we looked at the Ministry for the Environment’s 2017 freshwater report, they were monitoring 39 native freshwater species, and they reported that 72 percent were either threatened or at risk of extinction—so most of our indigenous freshwater fish, and that also included four of our whitebait species, along with lampreys and longfin eels, all of them threatened and at risk.

Fish are unique, in a sense, in New Zealand in terms of our indigenous species. We’ve got native birds, we’ve got reptiles—they are protected no matter where they live. They can live in a conservation area, they can live in a reserve, they can live in a national park and they’re fully protected, but thinking about our threatened indigenous freshwater species, they’re only protected if they’re in national parks or reserves. So if they’re in conservation areas, then they’re not protected from fishing. So this bill paves the way for better management of our freshwater species, but it also protects the habitats in which they live.

If you think about the life cycle of our freshwater fish, habitat is incredibly important, because when they’re swimming downstream to spawn, what they end up doing is spawning and laying their eggs in that long grass that, basically, get laid at spring tides, and then the eggs mature and they wait for the next spring tide to float them off, larvae hatch, and they go out to sea, and then the whitebait swim back up the river some months later. That’s an incredible interaction with the environment at every space. So if we’re mowing the grass verges so there’s no long grass, if we’re putting in place obstacles so they can’t migrate, if we’re draining all the swamps and wetlands, then it’s really, really difficult, particularly if we’ve got a lot of pollution nutrients entering our water. It makes it very, very difficult.

So what this bill does is it not only looks at protection from being caught in terms of whitebaiting; it also looks at some of our habitat protection. The first thing this bill does is it, basically, puts restrictions so that the director-general can set regulations about catching those species in our conservation areas. So what it’s talking about is the director-general may, by issuing notice in the Gazette, authorise the taking of indigenous freshwater fish from areas other than national parks, but it also particularly says that without those authorisations, then you can’t fish in a conservation area. So those regulations are incredibly important, but because, again, it’s important to have that consultation, those regulations won’t be put in place and become active for at least a minimum period of two years, so we’ve got that time from when this bill comes into force that we can have that consultation and set up that regime properly—incredibly important.

Also, it is looking at spawning sites and protection of them, but also putting in place regulations around declaring noxious fish that we can look at how we manage those in terms of control prohibitions, and also looking at things in terms of barriers that get erected within rivers that can stop fish migrating up.

There are a lot of extra tools in this tool kit that are incredibly important for the protection of our vulnerable species, so I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.