Fisheries Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Fisheries Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Thank you, sir. I move, That the Fisheries Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the Fisheries Amendment Bill and, at the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 12 September 2022.

This bill is needed to strengthen and modernise New Zealand’s fisheries management system to create a more sustainable, higher-value operating model for fisheries and to better incentivise good commercial fishing practices. The fisheries management system overall has served New Zealand well. However, it is a product of its time and it reflects the science and technology that was available when it was developed in the 1980s and 1990s, and because of some of those constraints within the system, there are disincentives for better fishing practice, which can reduce the catch of unwanted fish. Current rules contribute to commercial fishers catching too much and then discarding too much, both in terms of less-valuable species and different-sized fish. This of course has an effect on the fishery, which has an effect on the economics as well as the sustainability of the resource.

Perhaps one of the most serious aspects of the current regime is the illegal discarding of unwanted fish. This was shown under the last National Government when Operations Achilles and Hippocamp came to light, and, as a consequence, the then Minister, the Hon Nathan Guy, kicked off some of the measures that are ending up in this in respect of the likes of cameras on boats.

When we get better rules, we can also start to improve some of the offence provisions that are in the existing Act. Historically, because fisheries offending has been so hard to detect, when it is detected, normally far out at sea, far from the public eye, the penalties for these hard to detect breaches have been very severe so as to disincentivise them, and now that we’ve got new technologies such as on-board cameras, we’ve got the opportunity for improved monitoring and verification and for consequential changes to offence provisions.

The bill seeks to address the issues of both legal and illegal discards by simplifying and strengthening the current rules around what fish and aquatic life can be landed and what can be returned to sea. In response to these new rules, the bill proposes to introduce new graduated offences, rules to improve the effectiveness of on-board cameras, and related cost-recovery arrangements, and it also makes some changes to enable quicker decision-making in respect of fishing, perhaps within a fishing year, in a way that will be good for the industry as well as the environment. The bill also proposes to introduce a new defence to allow commercial fishers to lawfully return catch to the sea when necessary to save protected species. Strangely, that’s currently illegal.

These changes sit within the reform agenda that we’ve got going, which includes the introduction of electronic catch and position reporting, and on-board cameras being rolled out across most of the inshore fleet. By simultaneously improving the level of monitoring and verification of catch with on-board cameras, reducing the ability of fishers to illegally return unwanted catch to the sea, and providing for proportionate offences and penalties, we will incentivise better fishing practices.

With respect to new landings and discard rules, the bill amends the Fisheries Act and associated regulations to clarify that all quota management fish caught by commercial fishers must be landed and accounted for within the fisheries management system unless they fall within an exception that has been issued by the Minister. The bill proposes to establish three criteria for the Minister to consider when issuing exceptions for returning catch to the sea. These are, firstly, whether the stock or species has an acceptable likelihood of survival; secondly, whether retention will have a negative economic value—by that they mean whether it’s going to spoil other catch in the hold; for example, ammoniating catch species if, in the hold, it will ruin the other fish—and also to consider whether in some cases mandatory returns are needed for biological, fishing management, or ecosystem purposes.

Some current exceptions of stocks and species will meet the new criteria and will continue in place. Most stocks and species will be transitioned into the new system over a four-year period. This will start with the most significant species by catch volume or by proportion of total landings. I expect that within the first two years, exceptions covering 75 percent of the catches of fish below the minimum legal size and 97 percent of live releases under Schedule 6 will be reviewed.

As part of the transition, there will also be amendments to fishing regulations to reflect the new system and these amendments will be in place before the end of the transition period—i.e., 30 September 2026. The transition period is also needed to allow fishers some time to adjust their operations and to develop ways of creating value from currently unwanted fish.

The bill enables through regulations new ways that fishers can dispose of unwanted catch on land. Under current settings, they’ve got to deliver their fish to a licensed fish receiver or through wharf sales, with some limited exceptions, but there’s no obligation on the likes of the licensed fish receiver to accept all catch. So new regulations will give fishers access to other legal ways to dispose of their catch on land where it is appropriate, which will be in very limited circumstances.

As I’ve said, the bill alters the penalties regime. The maximum penalty for the most serious offending will be retained, but an infringement and demerit point system will be developed through regulation to address lower-level repeat offending.

Changes are also needed to support the effective use of on-board cameras. The bill clarifies that all commercial fishing - related activities can be effectively observed by equipment such as on-board cameras. The bill also clarifies that tools such as on-board cameras that are used to develop a service that is cost-recoverable can be cost-recovered.

There are also changes being made through the opportunity this bill presents to enable faster rule changes at times within a season. Things are pretty sticky at the moment and sensible changes are prevented, so we’re trying to update this. For example, there could be a pre-agreed range of catch enabled in advance and triggered within a season so that they can be used for the benefit of the industry or, if we’re approaching a sustainability limit, for the benefit of the environment. The bill also proposes similar changes to amateur fishing regulations by empowering the Minister to specify recreational management controls in a regulatory instrument.

In respect of the protected species defence, currently no defence is available for returning catch to the sea for the purpose of saving or releasing protected species like sharks and rays. The bill proposes a new defence provision that will allow commercial fishers to return those to ensure their survival—not just protected race and shark species but also marine mammals.

There has already been extensive consultation on these proposals over the years, and, indeed, some of these changes have been long called for, but really couldn’t be made until we had funded cameras on boats. So that consultation has included another round between February and March 2019 and has shaped the policy proposals in the bill. Continued engagement after the bill passes will be integral to successful implementation.

This is going to the Primary Production Committee. It is an important process. I look forward to receiving the select committee report at the completion of their deliberations, and I encourage people to submit. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I, along with my colleagues, look forward to sharing the National Party’s thoughts on this bill, and, as the Minister has said over the last 10 minutes, this has had a pretty long gestation. It’s been the thick end of a decade where issues relating to the quota management system and, particularly, the sustainable use of New Zealand fisheries—that it’s not operating as effectively as it could be and that the incentive regime around reducing unwanted catch is not optimally set up. We had the 2015 review, we had the 2016 Heron report—which the Minister referenced—under Nathan Guy’s time, and there’s been subsequent Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) compliance projects as well.

But, as the regulatory impact statement notes pretty clearly, whilst there’s broad support for the need for reform, there’s still limited alignment, in our view, on what to do. One thing that keeps coming back consistently is there is a lack of trust that exists within the sector for reasons that can’t be traversed in these 10 minutes, but it remains a challenge to ensure that we get the right outcome with this bill.

As the Minister has said, the four main provisions: amending rules for what fish must be landed and what must be returned to the sea, enabling graduated offences and penalties, streamlining the decision-making process for setting catch limits, and some technical management changes to the Act to assist with the roll-out of cameras. At its core, it removes the Schedule 6 exemptions that are currently in place, with a far narrower band of opportunity for fishers to release to the sea, and, of course, that is supported with the planned significant roll-out of on board cameras. So, in a nutshell, this bill imagines significantly less fish will be discarded, cameras and observers in increasing numbers to check compliance, graduated penalties, and streamlined decision-making. At first brush, it all sounds reasonable, but then when you dig into the detail there’s some genuine complaints that we have real concerns with, and we expect the select committee to be able to have, as the Minister said, some focused deliberation on it.

Fishers are likely to exceed their annual catch entitlement—which is called ACE—and will have to pay deemed value because they’ll be returning more fish landed than was hitherto the case. There is a limited market currently for that unwanted smaller fish, and so there is likely to be more fish dumped to waste, but the penalty regime was, in our view, an improvement over the quarter of a million dollars—a $10,000 fine for one or two fish that are accidentally caught in a net when it gets dropped again seems excessive, and the risk is that these rule changes are not as flexible as what the sector actually needs. You can have a theory which sounds fine in Wellington, but it must actually pass the sniff test of being workable in a boat out in the ocean.

There is going to be significant commercial impact. Your own regulatory impact statement makes it very clear—and I quote—“We expect significant fleet rationalisation will occur over the medium term.”—that means less people involved in fishing vessels in our local inshore fisheries. That is an outcome of this, and we need to be very mindful of that as we progress through this.

Your regulatory impact statement also says that even with cameras—and this is actually, I think, a critical issue—and observers, it is very difficult to determine the size of the fish, the species of the fish, and the likelihood of survival of the fish, and is very challenging and difficult for both observers and cameras. So cameras are not a panacea. They clearly help, but the idea that these rules are going to be comfortably overseen by a plethora of cameras needs some testing. Indeed, in the conversations that I’ve had in recent weeks with fishing operators themselves, they have talked—with conversations that they’ve had with MPI, they have talked of up to 30 cameras per vessel. I mean, the cost is prohibitive. You really get a sense there that whoever that was in MPI who was making that assessment of how to manage the issue had lost all sense of reality.

So we need to have clarity from the Government around how these cameras will be rolled out. The technical amendments make sense, but we’ve got to be assured that this is going to be a practical application of this technology, and the privacy concerns that have been raised with me over recent times absolutely have to be clarified. We have raised specific questions of the ministry with respect to the privacy issues relating to the footage from the cameras, and, to date, have not been given a satisfactory response.

So a number of significant concerns that we raise from the National Party side of the House. One of the key ones for me based on my, I guess, primary industries history is that when you look through this regulatory impact statement designed by your officials, Government members, there’s not a single mention of the word “pragmatic”—not a single word. Ultimately, as the Minister has said, if you’re going to land something here—excuse the pun—that is actually going to be workable from an industry and stakeholder perspective, pragmatism needs to infuse the final conversations over the next two or three years.

But, in the spirit of fairness, there are elements here that deserve support. There is value in simplifying the decision-making framework so it is more nimble and fleet-footed. This is an ongoing expectation of consumers globally, that you have a line of sight over the sustainable fishing practices for your fisheries and that you can demonstrate that with transparent reporting and data. Our competitors are moving into this space, particularly our European friends. They are moving their fleet into the same type of regulatory regime and, as we know here, as an export-orientated country, you must keep a very keen eye on what your consumers are expecting of you and ensure that your own business practices are meeting that and, if necessary, have that backed up by a regulatory regime.

There is, in short, an issue to improve here. The real question that we need to ask ourselves over the next three months is: is what the Minister has provided in this suggested bill exactly the best to progress it? We would argue there is much improvement needed before it finally gets passed in the House.

The reason, ultimately, that the National Party is supporting this bill through the first reading is those points of principle, if you like, in terms of what’s happening globally that I’ve outlined but also the Minister made it very clear that he has been, I think, quite realistic in terms of the transitional arrangements. They’re to be in place until 2026. That does give the sector some time to respond but, above all, they must be able to respond to final regulations that pass the sniff test of practicality. I have seen it before over the years that the Wellington idea just simply fails when asked to operate in an industry context and, in this case, a marine context many miles from the New Zealand shore.

We’ve got to get the balance right here. We’ve got a fantastic industry with fantastic people, a product that is world-renowned and the demand for it is growing. We’ve got to ensure that a regulatory framework that we finally come back from select committee with is fit for purpose to ensure that they remain successful in the future. The National Party supports, with some reservation, this bill.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m delighted to speak in support of the Fisheries Amendment Bill. Can I acknowledge Mr Muller, who has just resumed his seat, for their support for this bill.

This is a really important piece of legislation. It has had a long gestation under the previous Government and now through Minister Parker, our oceans and fisheries Minister, who is leading this work and has actually brought it through to this point.

This Government has a vision. We want to ensure the long-term health and resilience of our ocean and coastal ecosystems, including the role of fisheries. With that vision to the fore, we have a very busy work programme of a range of measures that are coming through, such as the implementation of cameras on boats, and now also through fisheries systems reform through this bill.

So this is a lot of work. I want to acknowledge all of the officials that have been involved, and likewise the stakeholders, who are a very important part of our industry, because let’s not forget that fishing plays a very important role in New Zealand, in our economy, and in our society.

Commercial, recreational, and customary interests all form our fisheries regime, and let’s not forget that commercial fishing employs 13,300 people. It contributes $4.2 billion per year in total economic activity. It included $1.35 billion in export revenues just through to the year June 2021. In addition, recreational fishing is also a very popular activity in New Zealand. About 700,000 people each year enjoy recreational fishing, and they spend almost $1 billion on recreational fishing and related activities.

We mustn’t forget of central importance is the role of tangata whenua in fisheries—the customary fishing rights that have been affirmed through the Treaty of Waitangi, through settlements that we have with the introduction that came of the quota management system. So there are a lot of stakeholders up right across the country who have a very keen interest in this legislation.

This is a great piece of legislation because it updates a range of measures. Ultimately, we want to improve the behaviour and we want to improve the productivity of our industry but also we want to look after the resource, because we can have all the rules in the world and we can have all of the measures in place, but if we don’t look after the resource, we don’t look after what’s in the ocean, then what do we have?

So I commend the Minister for introducing this legislation. Landings and discards—we want to really update these rules.

I want to commend the Primary Production Committee. I know they will be giving a rigorous examination of this bill and will be hearing from submitters from up and down the length of the country.

But, ultimately, these are measures, which need to be put in place, have long been called for. I want to acknowledge once again the role that this Government is playing, led by our Minister, to ensure that we continue to drive this work programme forward and to deliver on that vision. I commend this bill to the House.

I call Tim van de Molen. It is good to see you. Welcome back to the House of Parliament.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s wonderful to be back here in person rather than just on these beautiful screens that we have here now.

Look, I’m happy to rise and take a call on this and I’m looking forward to being a member of the select committee, the Primary Production Committee, that will consider this more closely as we progress through the legislative process. We absolutely agree there are some sensible aspects of this bill that we support, but, as my colleague Mr Muller has mentioned, there are some areas that we are concerned about as well.

Now, I just want to touch on some of the comments we’ve just heard as well in terms of the Labour Party vision for fisheries. I think most Kiwis would agree that a sustainable ocean environment is something that we should all aspire to have. It’s an important part of what it is to be Kiwi, and given that we have the fourth-largest exclusive economic zone, it’s critical that we manage that appropriately.

I would just note though that we haven’t seen much action in terms of marine reserves, so I certainly encourage the Government to step up the pace there. Actually, the five years under this Government is the longest time since the 1980s in which we’ve not had a new marine reserve established. There were 11 under the nine years of the National Party, so I’d encourage the Labour Party to step up and enact some of that vision we just heard around protecting our fisheries.

Indeed, the other comment I would just pick up on was around the recreational fishing aspect. That is very much a part of what Kiwis do as well, and enjoy. I enjoy going out and dropping a line in the water—not so much the catching part but dropping the line is more my area of expertise. But, again, we’ve seen some terrible behaviour over the last year or 18 months ago, when there was a story that came out of horrendous overfishing of pink maomao up the Coromandel Peninsula, which was actually a loophole that was allowed, and that overfishing of some thousands of fish caught recreationally was an area that really needed to be jumped on. So I know there has been some work done now, finally, from the Minister to try and address that, but it just highlights for me the fact that in the fisheries area overall there is still work to be done.

Again, I would just note that we need to ensure we are progressing our action quickly on this. I did write to the Minister shortly after that event aired publicly around a proposal that I put forward to put in a stopgap measure—a temporary limit on the recreational finfish catch—to ensure that that sort of behaviour couldn’t be repeated. But the Minister turned it down at that time and it has taken until only just the last few months, I believe, for his proposal to come out to try and address that issue. So I hope that one does get solved.

In terms of what we are looking at here, the main provisions: as we’ve heard already, there’s some good stuff in there, and we support the graduated offences and penalties aspects that are being considered and we’ll be looking at whether they are appropriate, but also the technical management changes—those things all make sense and there’s not a massive issue with that. The other two aspects, though, that I do want to expand on a bit are around amending the rules for what fish must be landed and what must be returned. That’s an area that has been reasonably controversial from both the commercial fishers’ perspective and, obviously, recreational fishers in instances where they have seen some of these discarded fish washing up on beaches and there are the concerns they have around the sustainability of the commercial sector off the back of that.

We’ve heard about those commercial parts being addressed, but the one I would really like to delve into a bit more is around what’s a pretty unique aspect, I suppose, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research vessels like the Tangoroa, which, as part of their research, catch fish. In some instances, they catch quite large volumes of fish, and those fish can be discarded because they simply don’t have the capacity on that vessel to process the volumes of fish that they are catching. I think that’s an area that we really need to look at quite closely, and I’d hope it could, potentially, come under this bill, because I think it’s not a good example to see a Government research vessel discarding fish simply because they don’t have sufficient processing capacity on board. I accept they’re a research vessel, but, actually, I think it’s sending the wrong signal to be discarding fish. So I’d be interested to see whether those aspects would come under this bill as well.

The other key point around streamlining the decision-making process for the setting of catch limits is an area that I’m really keen to see improve, because we have seen that the Minister’s actions over a number of years in terms of adjusting those limits has been a very significant change for a lot of those individual fisheries. When we think about the 642-odd fisheries that there are in terms of fish stocks around the country, making significant adjustments in some cases—in some cases, well over 100 percent changes of significant magnitude to those commercial catch limits—it makes it quite challenging for those commercial operators to be able to adapt their systems to either cope for a significant reduction in commercial catch, total allowable commercial catch (TACC), or a significant increase, which might give them opportunity.

So I would really like to see a tightening of the process—and I hope that will come under this bill—to really enable a more streamlined process, perhaps, of the scientific assessments to ensure that we are better monitoring those limits, because if we’re only doing assessments of these fish stocks on a sporadic basis and that then shows there has been either a significant increase or decrease in that particular fish stock over the period of that time, the Minister’s subsequent action is to adjust the total allowable catch (TAC) accordingly, but that can have massive implications. So I’d really like to see this tightened up so that we don’t see those sorts of massive swings upwards or downwards in the TAC, because that has a big impact for the TACC for our commercial operators, in particular, who are trying to run a business in this space.

We saw, I think, that it was 2019 that was the most recent assessment. Only 290 fish stocks, I think, out of our 642 were assessed, so we’re only talking about 49-odd percent of fish stocks being assessed and, at that point, 20 percent of those stocks that were assessed were considered to be overfished—right? So of the fish stocks we assessed, and we certainly didn’t do all of them—granted it was 70- or 80-odd percent by volume of fish caught. But of those we assessed, one in five was overfished.

So that, to me, says that we have some real issues around how we’re managing these fish stock assessments, and we need to be a lot better at projecting those fluctuations and assessing movements in those. I accept that there’s a cost alongside that, of course, but that’s something that I really hope will be considered in some depth through the Fisheries Amendment Bill to ensure that in the first instance, we retain a very sustainable fishery—that’s something we should be putting first and foremost. It’s very important for New Zealand anchor brand, but it’s what everyone, I think, would want as well. But, alongside that, it gives more certainty then to those commercial operators, as I said, to have a more streamlined business operation, where they’re not having to suddenly adjust for significant changes in their total allowable commercial catch limits.

So, on that basis, I’m happy to commend this bill. I look forward to, as I said, being a part of the select committee process. I am a little concerned, though, that we are seeing a shortened report back on this bill.

Again, we’ve seen this in a number of instances from this Government where they have put forward a reduced or shortened report-back time on a piece of legislation for no particular reason, it appears, other than perhaps it was late getting to the first reading stage and they’ve been wanting to rush it through. The issue that raises is it potentially takes away the ability of everyone who might wish to have their voice heard to do so, given that shortened window. Granted, it’s not excessively short like we’ve seen on some of the other pieces of legislation, but my question would be why do we need to cut that back at all. Why can we not allow a fulsome process to occur on this bill, given, as Mr Muller mentioned, it has taken quite some time to get to this point? Why are we now rushing it and cutting down those few months for submitters to make their case heard when I believe it is absolutely critical that those submitters are heard?

We’re talking about making significant changes here for an important industry within New Zealand. We must hear their views on it. We have heard some views in the past, and Mr Muller, I know, and myself have had a number of conversations with some of these commercial operators, who have expressed concern around the practicality of implementation of some of these proposals around cameras, for example, and the costs alongside that. So I’m very keen to ensure they have an appropriate window to give their views on this to make sure that we are coming up with practical legislation that can be implemented for the sake of the industry.

So, on that basis, I do support it and I look forward to being able to make some positive changes to, hopefully, get this to a point where it can pass with support from all parties across the House. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Fisheries Amendment Bill as the chair of the Primary Production Committee, the committee that will be considering this piece of legislation. Can I acknowledge and thank the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries for bringing this piece of legislation to the House and to us. I know that my fellow select committee members will be looking forward to hearing from submitters, and there will no doubt be quite a lot of interest in this piece of legislation.

We are an island nation and, as Tim van de Molen, the member who’s just taken his seat, mentioned, we have many recreational fishers around New Zealand who quite enjoy getting out in the weekends and doing a dabble at fishing. Perhaps not catching, as the member mentioned, but they still have the enjoyment of being able to get out there and have a go.

We’ve also heard that this has a huge economic impact for our country as well, but, most importantly, I think what this bill works to do is to create a more sustainable fisheries model, and that is of utmost importance, because we have seen overfishing throughout the years and it just can’t continue. It does also bring the fisheries management in line with the practices of the 2020s.

The member opposite raised a concern around what he believes is a truncated process. This is going to have a shortened time frame, and I just wanted to mention to the member that the reason for that is it is quite likely that 1 October is when the fishing year begins, and so we do need to have this piece of legislation back into the House and moving forward for that time.

We have heard that this bill will bring in graduated offences that will be proportionate to the offending that occurs. We’re going to be covering off new rules and regulations around the landing and discarding of fish, which members already have gone into quite some depth around, and so I won’t relitigate all of that.

This is a good piece of legislation, and I appreciate members opposite supporting it at first reading. We do look forward to the select committee process, where there’ll be the opportunity for everyone to have input and bring this piece of legislation to fruition. I commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe, te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you. I’m pleased to take a call on the Fisheries Amendment Bill. The Greens will be supporting the bill to select committee in order to hear public views.

This bill wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for the work of Dr Glenn Simmons and the Auckland University business school and their exposure of the scale of dumping and high-grading in New Zealand fisheries. Their work, released in May 2016, really brought to public attention the fact that fish of low economic value were routinely being dumped overboard by fishers as they sought to target species of a higher value, higher grade, or avoid having to pay the deemed value penalty for catching quota fish species which they didn’t have annual catch entitlement—or ACE—for. Dr Simmons showed that there was really gross under-reporting of what fishers were catching over many decades. Some 25 million tonnes of fish between 1950 and 2016 hadn’t been reported by New Zealand to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.

So it has been a fundamental rule of the Fisheries Act for a very long time—since 1986—that when commercial fishers catch quota species of a legal size, they must land and report those catches. It’s always been illegal to dump fish, but the system had relied on honest reporting. What the Simmons report and Operation Hippocamp and Operation Achilles showed—which enforcement staff in the Ministry of Fisheries undertook because of the ministry’s recognition of this ongoing problem of under-reporting and misreporting—was that there was a lot of dishonesty in the industry.

The problem with Operation Hippocamp and Operation Achilles was you had very effective enforcement staff, but senior management and the Ministry for Primary Industries made a decision not to follow through on their enforcement work and not to prosecute, and, as the Heron Report concluded, that process and decision making was flawed. So there’s a whole issue of a lack of public confidence and trust in the fishing industry, and I think that while farmers throughout Aotearoa have recognised that they need to change their management practice and their farming techniques to earn that public trust and confidence and to maintain their social licence, the same thing hasn’t happened in the fishing industry.

So we’ve got this bill, which is requiring that all fish be landed if they’re in the quota system, and just in terms of terms, quota is a right to take fish from a stock. That generates an annual catch entitlement at the start of each fishing year—in October—which is the annual catching right, and of course that can be traded. Commercial fishers purchase an ACE to match the fish that they aim to catch.

So it’s really disappointing that it’s taken over eight years for the Ministry of Fisheries and Fisheries New Zealand to actually develop this legislation, but it is good that it is here, because this requirement that all quota species which are caught have to be brought back and landed should—the hope is—encourage more innovation and should encourage better utilisation of fish that are caught. Here we really need to learn from international best practice, from countries like Iceland: 80 percent of the fish that are caught in Iceland are used, whether it’s taking calcium out of the fish frames to make calcium supplements, or whether it’s using fish skins of cod to make high-end handbags. But in Aotearoa and elsewhere, a lot of the fish, once the fillets have been taken, are discarded, ground up into fishmeal, or, worse still, go to landfill. This requirement to land and to report, and the graduated system of penalties should help improve enforcement in this space, so we are supporting that.

But there are some criteria which provide some exceptions to the rule of landing all fish, and one of those is that retaining it would have a negative economic value. Now, the Minister referred to species which let off—some of the shark species—a high level of ammonia and taint the rest of the catch, but we have some concern around this criterion and, potentially, efforts of the industry seeking to widen that definition of “negative economic value” and what exceptions can be provided to enable them to discard more fish at sea. So we’ll be particularly interested in the submissions on that point.

We’d like to take up a point that Todd Muller raised in terms of the division within the sector. It was something that the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor commented on as well: the very high level of distrust amongst stakeholders of the data that’s used to set the total allowable catch and within the sector generally. I really encourage all of those making submissions to think about the sustainability of fisheries, the collapse of a number of fish stocks that we’re seeing, and the impact of climate change on our oceans, and to think of the bigger picture and the outcome for environmental management and good fisheries management, rather than just the interests of the commercial fishing sector, because we need to move beyond that division and we need to have a much more sensible and focused fisheries management system.

That’s where the Green Party is disappointed in this bill—that it’s not moving to ecosystem-based fisheries management. It’s not even seeking to give priority to the sustainability principles in the Fisheries Act. It’s not using input controls. They were considered and then rejected—input controls like closing more areas, having more controls and restrictions on the type of gear that can be used. We have a big problem with bycatch: the thousands of seabirds that are caught, the dozens of dolphins, the hundreds of fur seals that are caught each year in fisheries like the hoki fishery and the squid fishery. That bycatch issue isn’t being adequately addressed by the industry and the bill doesn’t really deal with it.

Certainly, there is a defence to release marine mammal species if they are caught. That is good, but there needs to be a stronger regulatory regime and much greater emphasis on sustainability, not only to ensure an ongoing fishery, but to recognise, as others have noted, that consumers are increasingly looking for real proof that wild fish are caught sustainably, and in Aotearoa New Zealand, we cannot establish that for all of the species, particularly because of the very limited data.

When you only have $22 million being spent, on average, in the years between 2017 and 2020 on fisheries research, that’s a puny amount, and that contributes to the lack of data. Again, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor highlighted that that leads to decisions based on uncertain data and information, and it has left big gaps in fisheries management. In Budget 2022, we need to see a much-greater investment in fisheries science and research in order to underpin a much more sustainable regime.

Certainly, there are provisions in the bill to ensure that cameras can be used to observe the processing and any discarding that happens on board once fish are landed, but, again, there needs to be a much more rapid roll-out of cameras on boats. It’s not good enough just to prioritise the Māui dolphin fishery because of the concerns about the impact of trawling on Māui; they need to be used and rolled out much more quickly.

So we too in the Greens are concerned about the truncated select committee report-back period. We recognise that the Minister wants the bill in place for this fishing season, but then there’s a four-year transition allowed, so it seems a bit at odds with doing it quickly and then allowing four years’ transition. It would be better to ensure that the legislation is right, because there will be quite a lot of contested submissions on the bill. But we do encourage the Government to really focus on some of the more fundamentals and to move away from the ethos that we’ve got at the moment, which focuses on maximum exploitation of fisheries—fishing stocks down to the level at which it’s assumed that they will maintain themselves. That is not the basis of ecosystem-based management or sustainable fishing.

So the bill makes some small improvements. We’ll be particularly interested in submissions, but at this stage we’re only supporting it to select committee.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party, and we oppose this bill. We find that it’s an unnecessary and costly solution that appears to be looking for a problem.

We note that the Ministry for Primary Industries’ regulatory impact statement talked of extensive consultation over a long period of time about fisheries. They held public meetings, they had hui, they had one-on-one meetings with key Treaty partners, which includes the Iwi Fisheries Forum and Te Ohu Kaimoana. What they represent are the interests of Māori commercial fishing businesses, and they give advice to 58 mandated iwi organisations. That is indeed a large proportion of tangata whenua stakeholders. Other stakeholders who were also consulted, including those with interests in commercial and recreational fishing arenas, were small and large operators, those with quotas, individual fishers, and companies who fish using quotas: those with total allowable catches, and those with TACCs as well—the total allowable commercial catch.

What I found interesting was the feedback that was received by an independent technical advisory group conducting the consultation, who actually found that all groups—whether they’re Māori, recreational, commercial—stated that the fisheries management system was sound. Yes, they said there was room for improvement, but every law has room for improvement. What this bill actually achieves, though, is not necessarily improvement but over-involvement with rules that have no proper cost-benefit analysis.

We keep being told how we need to do better, and large sweeping changes occur off the back of these statements. ACT would like to point out just how good we actually are on the global scale, just for a nice change.

Multiple international studies have ranked New Zealand’s quota management system and its management of particular fish stocks against a range of global indicators. Our rankings in all of these studies have consistently been at the higher end compared to other countries. New Zealand scored amongst the highest of 53 countries that were analysed in an evaluation of compliance with article 7 of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, and this covered six fields of fisheries management. We have ranked among the highest in the world in terms of prospects of fishing sustainability and the overall effectiveness of management.

With all these good international outcomes for our current management system, I then sought to find substantial data on the impacts of this legislation, and do you know what I found? It was actually not much, because there’s very little analysis on the impact.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) noted in their regulatory impact statement that they have data limitations. Further to that consultation that was held in February and in March in 2019, they left MPI determining that they had little insight on the marginal impact on the operational costs or any one-off costs that may be required. MPI has acknowledged that the operational and administrative costs that fishers incur from catching and processing fish is not accessible to them and that there are varying complexities with each fishing operation. However, what MPI do state is that the majority of the cost for implementing this regime is, effectively, expected to fall directly on to the commercial operators, of which many are smaller, independent operators, and they will be hit the hardest.

The proposed changes to landings and discard rules are going to have the greatest impact on our commercial operators. All licensed fish receivers, quota holders, and annual catch entitlement holders will be incurring extra and additional costs: added costs to an industry that does employ 13,300 people and contributes $4.2 billion per annum to our total economic activity; added costs to a system that has no need for such fundamental change, based on the consultation feedback to these proposals.

Something else that I read in the MPI regulatory impact statement has led me to have some concern. It’s about how far the cameras on boats mandate is eventually going to go under this Government, and I wonder if this piece of legislation is a precursor to more invasive legislation that is yet to come. You see, MPI spoke of the need for cameras on boats to ensure that there’s verification and monitoring of catches that can take place but that the landing and returning of fish to the sea can be checked—that they can observe fishing. This is why they want to have their cameras on boats.

But what caught my eye was the repeated use of the added phrase which is including transportation in capturing of the electronic equipment. I see that both the MPI document and now the bill also refers to provisions to install electronic and other equipment to observe fishing-related activities, and this includes “the return, abandonment, processing, or sorting of fish, transportation connected with fishing,”. MPI wanted to amend the definition of fishing to broaden the power relating to the installation of cameras on boats in order to observe wider fishing-related activities such as fish processing. Their definition of the processing of fish includes land-based activities related to fishing, such as the filleting of fish in fish factories and also at market. This Government makes a fine job of telling New Zealand businesses that while globally we’re being hailed as one of the best in the world at management systems and sustainability, “We don’t trust you to get it right and we want the ability to film everything that you do, just in case, and just because we can.”

We all have an interest in ensuring that we have a sustainable fisheries regime and that we protect the species we harvest so our future generations also have a harvest supply, none more so than the fisheries sector. If they deplete our source at source and if they don’t continue their world-wide recognition of the great job that they actually do in New Zealand waters, they won’t have an industry. Like farmers, they have the greatest respect for their resource, and sustainability of the product is paramount to the success of the business. It’s not rocket science.

One last point I’d like to make: making changes without understanding the cost implications and making statements that the commercial sector will have to pay for these rules means that the commercial sector is going to have to offset these costs. Added costs to the purchase of kai moana during a cost of living crisis with no cost-benefit analysis, imposed on groups who believe that management is actually sound, is absolutely nuts. It’s telling our communities that the reason your seafood has gone up in price is because the Government wants to watch how you got that fish.

No doubt there’s a fair bit of work to work through in this bill, but at this stage of the process, ACT is opposing it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise as a member of the Primary Production Committee, who will be taking on this bill, and—

💬 Chris Bishop: Oh, you’re on that too?

—yes—as a member of the Primary Production Committee, it’s important to look at how much aquaculture does for our economy. The fishing seafood industry is worth $4.2 billion to our New Zealand economy and it employs over 13,000 people—2,500 of those are in the commercial fishing and aquaculture sector—and New Zealand export earnings for seafood are $2 billion and are expected to rise from there, exporting over 267,901 tonnes, from a report I have read.

When I looked at the legislative statement and worked through some of these objectives, I noted from one of the members that he talks about pragmatism. I can say that we are a very pragmatic select committee, and so this bill coming to our select committee will get a very good hearing. We make such good use of all members in the select committee. We’re quite collegial a lot of the time because we work in the interests of the primary sector. That is why I am so looking forward to doing the hard work that’s required of us as we bring this legislation through all stages. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call. I call Harete Hipango—five minutes.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you. I stand to take a call in the first reading for the National Party on the Fisheries Amendment Bill. I don’t come from a level of experience in terms of this highly specialised interest area, but the experience that I do come from is in terms of relationships. In the Chamber this afternoon is the former chair of the Māori Affairs Committee. I acknowledge my colleague Rino Tirikatene in terms of the leadership that was there when Treaty settlement bills came before us on the Māori Affairs Committee, and there were some significant components that were addressing these fisheries issues.

The Fisheries Amendment Bill, as has been well traversed in debates before the House, and it’s been an interesting debate because people stand and rise and speak from various perspectives and contexts. So the purpose of this bill is to amend the Fisheries Act 1996 with an aim to strengthen the effectiveness of New Zealand’s fisheries management system.

The context that I address the House in also is as spokesperson for Māori development. Māori development from my lens and perspective is very much about our people, positioned in different places at different times. People, place, and the kaupapa—what the purpose of this bill is. In my Māori development spokesperson role, part of that is about the Māori economy, which is a significant contribution not just to Aotearoa New Zealand’s economy—it’s some $70 billion and exponentially growing—but the international economy, and Māori have a vested interest in fisheries—a 50 percent vested interest—in terms of the New Zealand fishing quota. So that’s the context that I address the House in relation to this bill, the Fisheries Amendment Bill.

I don’t sit on the Primary Production Committee, which this bill, after the first reading, will go to, before the members of that committee, for prudent and responsible scrutiny around the particular elements and aspects, the detail, and the content to the letter of the proposed law. The context that I talked about also significantly—the detail in terms of this bill has been spoken about, but my mind turns to 18 years ago today, and this is the correlation in terms of people and place over the expanse of time.

On 5 May—today—18 years ago, in 2004, there was a gathering of some 20,000-plus people who arrived on the Parliament grounds in protest to the Foreshore and Seabed Act. That was the origin and the beginnings, the seedling stage, of the Māori Party, when Dame Tariana Turia crossed the floor, left the Labour Party, came to the other side, and formed the Māori Party.

What does this have to do with this bill? Ultimately, it came down to the interests that Māori have, not only customary interests but the interests. In the Fisheries Amendment Bill, at my cursory glance and my eye coming over this, talks about the allocation of total allowable catch between Māori customary fishers, recreational fishers, and commercial fishers.

So in the one minute and 20 seconds that I have left in terms of canvassing this bill, that will be left to the scrutiny of the members of the select committee. But I pick up a note, again, from my Māori development lens, in my spokesperson role that I have, and it is that I invite the select committee, in the same way that we did in the Māori Affairs Committee, to be cognisant of the 50 percent quota management that’s vested in the interests of Māori fisheries per se. The general policy statement in the explanatory note of this Fisheries Amendment Bill notes, “Recreational fishing is a popular activity for both New Zealanders and tourists—about 700,000 people fish each year and spend almost $1 billion [on that aspect of the fishing]. Tangata whenua have a central role in the sustainable use of New Zealand’s fisheries resources, as … kaitiaki (guardians) and users of customary fisheries, and as recreational and commercial fishers.” On that note—and finishing—“Commercial fishing employs approximately 13,300 people and contributes $4.2 billion” to the economy, and on that note, with the remaining three seconds, the National Party commends this bill through to select committee with reservations. Kia ora.

This is a great bill. It makes sense. We’re looking forward to getting it to select committee. I don’t see any need to delay it any further. I therefore commend the bill to the House.

💬 Chris Bishop: Seven seconds—well done.

Thank you.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. In the words of the great James K Baxter:

The little ships

From the harbour sail

Bang in the teeth

Of a southerly gale

And they carry home to you and me

Snapper and groper and tarakihi.

Except, of course, they won’t unless we do more to make our fisheries sustainable. It is an important industry. This, however, is an important bill that recognises, as my colleague across the House on the ACT benches did not, that, in fact, there is extensive evidence of routing of the system and the illegal disposal of catch. This bill will make it possible to have a more accurate taking of information and more accurate penalties that won’t just be a big hammer on the occasional catch, but a constant series of graduated penalties, which will enable us to sort this system out. I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. That was a very short speech from the Labour members, who are supposed to be here supporting New Zealand primary industry and also supporting environmental awareness in this country. It’s a strange day when we see the Labour members trying to rush through legislation without actually giving it a full discussion.

Now, we had a very good speech from my colleague Todd Muller, and also from Tim van de Molen, which actually went through some of the really big issues that will arise from this legislation. As the National Party has said, we will be supporting this legislation in its first instance. We just want to make sure that it is done appropriately and in the right way and achieves the purposes that have been set out. That is the balance, I guess, that we need to see in this legislation.

We all value our fisheries, and they are an important part of an island nation that has a huge economic zone. It’s a very important part of our economy, and it’s also a very big part of our culture and heritage. The maintenance of strong fisheries is something that I think is universal within this Parliament through all political parties, but we need to make sure also that any rules that are put in place are practical and realistic, and this Government has a history of not doing that.

Our caution around this bill is to make sure that in the select committee process we actually do have rules that businesses that operate in the commercial fishing realm can actually live with. One of the most horrifying, you could say, points that Todd Muller—well, it wasn’t horrifying, but it raised the fact that there potentially would be a loss of fishing capability as a result of the impact of this legislation. That seems like a direct approach by the Government to reduce another primary industry, and that is something that we don’t need to see happen.

We need a robust fishing industry. We need it strong. We need to make sure that it is capable of maintaining its catch in the future. But we don’t need to shut it off just because of some ideological view of how much fishing there should be or how little fishing there should be. So I would be worried when I heard that in your speech, that that is what the regulatory impact statement had indicated.

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Read it. There’s more than that.

More than that? So it could be even worse—that’s what the Labour members are saying. So we will need to work that through in the select committee.

It’s really important that we don’t lose our capability of a fishing sector, an industry that has had a history of some of the strongest companies in New Zealand and also had a very strong history for iwi. We’ve got many in this room who have connections with iwi and fishing and who would value and want to maintain that sector for iwi going forward. So I think it’s really important that we don’t lose the capability we have there.

Another issue that we need to be very careful around is privacy. The issue of putting cameras on boats sounds great and it is something that’s been talked about in this House for about a decade, and the reality of it is that it didn’t come in under this Government when they had promised to do so and work had already been started in the previous Government. There is the fear that the big hand of Government could take that role and use that information and that data to its own purposes rather than for the success of the sector, so I think there’d be valid concerns that the sector would have. In select committee I think it’s important that that’s thrashed out and that we have a bit of comfort there for everybody going forward.

With the bycatches and things like that, it’s very difficult to see how some of that could actually work out in reality. What’s the use of that fish that has to be kept now, and Tim van de Molen raised the point around research vessels. So some of those issues need to be worked through as well to make sure that we have a fair policy in that area as well.

So, in essence, we support anything that’s going to be for the best interests of the New Zealand fishing sector and New Zealand fisheries to make sure that we have a strong fishery going forward. This bill does have some good points in there that will lead to some modernisation, you could say, of the rules around the fishing sector. However, we’re very much aware that that can also go the other way, and a Government can take it too far and it could be very detrimental to the sector. So we’re trying to protect the sector as well as getting those goals that everybody in the House wants to see of having a strong fishery that’s there for future generations. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As a mad keen fisho, I’d just like to stand and take a brief call. I absolutely love this bill. A shout-out to Harry Hudson, my tutor, who taught me everything I know about fishing. I know he’s watching at home, as are many, many fishos out there.

This bill is a really useful piece of legislation. It supports a holistic, integrated approach to managing oceans and fisheries. The fisheries management system needs to be strengthened to ensure commercial fishing is sustainable, productive, and inclusive. Let’s face it: when we can take and count everything that is landed, including what is killed as it is landed, we will know a better story about our fishing catch. We can better manage, we can then also use that data to identify markets, and we can also make some decisions about who we choose to buy our fish from.

This is a really important piece of legislation—could talk for hours on it; won’t. I commend it to the House.

The question is, That the Fisheries Amendment Bill be considered by the Primary Production Committee.