Fisheries Amendment Bill

Mōrena.

💬 Hon Members: Mōrena.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): We’re off to a cracking start—I’m loving this. When I left the Chair last evening the House was considering the second reading of the Fisheries Amendment Bill. I now call on, from the National side, Joseph Mooney.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak this morning on the Fisheries Amendment Bill. I’m going to start just by speaking about how important fisheries are in my electorate of Southland. I’m lucky enough to have most of Fiordland in my electorate, and this is an area that has the CRA8 fishery, which is the largest mainland fishery geographically for crayfish. It extends from Long Point south to Stewart Island and the Snares, the islands and coastline of Foveaux Strait, which is Penny Simmonds’ territory, and then northwards along the Fiordland coastline to Bruce Bay, about 50 kilometres north of Haast. While the overall area is large, almost all fishing occurs within 8 kilometres of the shore. There are 146 CRA8 quota share owners, and shares trade for more than $1.8 million per tonne equivalent. The CRA8 fleet operates in the most remote coastal area of the South Westland and Fiordland areas, and the value of the landed catch is estimated to be some $122 million, based on the average price paid to fishermen.

I also have, I’m glad to say, Te Anau, which has had a very challenging time over the last 2½ years with tourism. It’s also home to the Fiordland Lobster Company, and this is quite an exceptional company. It is Te Anau based; the headquarters are in Te Anau. It’s a vertically integrated lobster company, and it is New Zealand’s largest exporter of high-quality lobster, dedicated to the sustainable fishing and live export of wild-caught southern rock lobster. Sustainable fishing is an important point which this Fisheries Amendment Bill is endeavouring to address. I would just say that the Fiordland Lobster Company started back in 1988, when New Zealand introduced the world-leading quota management system, ensuring sustainable fishing for generations to come. A year later, in 1989, 15 Fiordland fishers created the Fiordland Lobster Company. In 2010, it expanded its operations into Australia, where it operates under brand South Australian Lobster Company. The head office is still in Te Anau, nestled in the heart of Fiordland, with lobster-receiving depots and export packing factories located throughout New Zealand and Australia. So it’s quite an amazing success story.

Now, this bill is one that is endeavouring to make some changes to strengthen the effectiveness of New Zealand’s fisheries management system. It also repeals the Fisheries Act 1983, which is no longer used. National supports legislation that enhances the protection of New Zealand’s marine environment and encourages better fishing practices that enables our fishing sector to sustainably thrive. National believes that fish dumping and illegal activity happening under the current system must change in order to prevent lost future economic opportunity. We still, however, have some strong reservations about this bill, following the select committee stage. National is deeply concerned about the potential for costs to outweigh the benefits once changes are enacted. And, on that, I should note that it is a particularly challenging time for the fishing industry. Just last month, it was reported that fishing boats are tied up, unable to feed a hungry world market. The price of fuel has increased over the last year by around 150 percent, and what this means in real terms is that fuel is consuming up to three-quarters of the value of the catch. That leaves little to pay crew, freight, and other costs, without factoring any return to the fisher. There are currently boats reported that have been tied up because it’s simply not economic to go out and fish. So we need to keep that in mind as we look at this, and that is why National is concerned for the potential costs to outweigh the benefits.

Crucially, the detail on how these amendments will be operationalised by species is left to regulations that are yet to be developed. The success of the regime depends largely on Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) pragmatism in developing these new rules for a transition period that ends in 2026. It’s certainly my hope that MPI is pragmatic, particularly taking into account the fact that it is an incredibly challenging time in the fishing industry with the costs, in particular of fuel, and that we do need to catch fish to feed the world. So the bill is not perfect, and elements of the design will be criticised by many, if not most, stakeholders because if the rule changes are not flexible enough to meet our diverse industry, in terms of species, operator size, regions, and innovation, many operators could be put out of business. That is the last thing we want to see. The sector wants a pre-set decision framework. It does understand the need to reduce bio-catch waste and accepts on-board camera implementation. They want the criteria to be applied fairly, reflecting the realities of trawl fishing. They accept that a more adaptive and granular penalty regime is an improvement on the cliff-face model that exists currently. Although some changes were made to bill during the select committee process, we are not satisfied that enough has been done to address stakeholder concerns. When National is in Government in 2023 and the transition process has begun, we will closely monitor what parts of the bill are working, which ones aren’t, and we’ll seek to improve those parts.

We have some concerns with the landings and discards sections in this bill. Currently, discards back to the sea can occur within a very strict set of exceptions, which may have a disproportionate impact on inshore fishers, depending on how pragmatic or otherwise officials are when setting those regulations. The priority should be achieving a workable outcome that increasingly focuses on the benefits of cameras on board to assist with transparency of on-board performance rather than a strict interpretation of the primary legislation. As noted in the main committee report, we remain concerned that the penalty regime has no consideration on the various value weightings of respective species. We believe that, when setting fines regarding the discarding of fish, referred to in new sections 252(3A), 252(5A), and 252(5)(ba), regard should be had in matter including the species and, importantly, value. The sector does need assurance that it won’t be hit by the bill’s proposed changes, especially businesses still grappling with the economic downturn as a result of COVID-19 and now the impact of high fuel prices and high labour costs, which is having a real impact. As I mentioned earlier, it is resulting in boats being tied up, and in fact it’s having a disproportionate impact on smaller operators—the people that we want to see stay in business. So that is something to watch closely.

This bill places emphasis on the potential for New Zealand to be a world leader in fisheries management as the result of changes proposed. That is something New Zealand has been very good at, with the development of the quota management system many years ago. This is endeavouring to continue on that same trajectory. National, however, is less concerned in this instance about doing it first and, as I said, is primarily concerned about making sure it’s done right. So this is a bill that we will be supporting, but we will be watching closely to see the impact and, hopefully, see the pragmatism from MPI in the way that it is applied, to ensure that we can continue to have sustainable fisheries and people can remain in work and continue to feed the world from New Zealand’s fantastic waters. So, with that, I will conclude my remarks.

Mōrena. It is a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Fisheries Amendment Bill. It’s been a long process through select committee and as we’ve seen in recent times, a really great one because at select committee we get the experts in and they’ve really helped us grapple with some incredibly complex issues that are seen in very, very different ways by a huge range of stakeholders who will want the best for our moana and our kai moana, but have different ideas about how we approach that.

This bill is a result of realising that we need to take the opportunity to upgrade our arrangements, our quota management system and our fisheries management system. These came about more than a generation ago when we didn’t have the knowledge, the data, the technology, and the ability to really judge and assess what is going on under the ocean, and to be able to modernise that is a really great opportunity. And of course the other side of that is, as we’re leaning into the world environment, the global market, we want to be able to hold our heads up high honestly and say that we have a sustainable fishery, and to lead by example. That isn’t just about delivering fish that is sustainably caught, but teaching the rest of the world how we can do it. I think there’s some wonderful intellectual property as well as cultural practice we can share as we lead the way, it’s exciting times.

The cameras and the landing and discard rules, this is about incentivising behaviour. This is about focusing the mind and making sure that every opportunity to improve technology and practice means that our fisheries are best protected. I want to thank all of those who turned up to select committee, especially our fishers from Taranaki, our inshore fishers. We heard about those fishers who are really struggling with their costs of production at the moment. I really appreciate and want to acknowledge the huge effort they’ve gone to over the years to really be proactive about taking up new technology and really testing out the opportunities that come with having cameras on boats and the additional data and knowledge that they will be able to contribute to the system. That will take years to implement, because we do need to make sure that we learn how best to use this data. They engaged in good faith and we truly believe that this is a bill that is fit for purpose. I recommend it to the House.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Thank you. I’m pleased to take a call on the Fisheries Amendment Bill. It was a very interesting bill to join the Primary Production Committee on.

Can I start by thanking all the submitters. We had nearly 500 submissions, and 56 submitters presented in person. They, particularly the individual fishers, gave the committee a much-better appreciation of some of the practical issues around fishing, their concerns about rising fuel costs and around rising maintenance costs for older boats. I came away with a very strong impression that those who don’t own quota, or don’t own annual catch entitlement, and have to lease it, but who are doing the hard work at sea, are really being squeezed. Really, I think it’s incumbent on Government to look long term about what sort of support is needed and how we enable people to transition out of the industry. The answer is not as National is suggesting, to roll back the regulation, but to look at the future here, and there may well be an opportunity for some people to transition out and for Government to help them do that. Can I also thank the recreational fishers and environmental groups for their really thoughtful submissions and for quite a number of submissions from industry.

There are a lot of people who care about our oceans, who care about fish, and who care about fishing. But we need some fundamental changes to the Fisheries Act 1996 to achieve sustainable fisheries management in the interests of healthy oceans, not just tweaking it. It is disappointing that Labour, this term, without the handbrake of New Zealand First—which, of course, got big donations from fishing companies—is not using its strong majority to make substantial changes to the Fisheries Act.

There are elements of the bill which the Green Party supports, but we do have this fundamental concern that, as the Environmental Defence Society noted, the bill entrenches the existing single-stock utilisation - centric approaches to fisheries management under the quota management system (QMS). It doesn’t progress or resolve issues with the implementation of the sustainability principles in the Fisheries Act.

The provisions that we do support are the new rules around landing and discards. They’re intended to help discourage dumping, discourage high-grading, and ensure that all fish that are caught are reported, accounted for, and brought back to port. They are intended to ensure that fishers are more selective—they actually catch the fish that they want to sell. Of course, in the QMS, we’ve had a requirement in the Fisheries Act that all QM species are supposed to be landed, but we’ve had very complex, very permissive, and very broad exceptions. We saw the huge scale of dumping, misreporting, and under-reporting when Dr Glenn Simmons from Auckland University did a 2016 report, and he showed that, since the 1950s, fishers have caught more than double what they reported and what New Zealand reported to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Then, we had the Heron review after Operations Hippocamp and Achilles when the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) didn’t prosecute. That Heron report showed that there was widespread dumping of unwanted fish, and MPI’s decisions had been flawed.

So now we do have the requirement in the bill that fish be brought back to port. I’m sure fishers were listening closely to the Minister last night, when he highlighted that the current exceptions to landing requirements, which are listed in Schedule 6 of the Act, will continue to apply for up to another four years. Officials advised us that some of those exceptions will continue indefinitely.

Also, the bill provides, in clause 14, in new section 72A, a significant discretion to the Minister to be able to provide exceptions to the landing rules and to allow fish to continue to be returned to the sea. The committee’s recommendations here removed the very subjective criteria, “negative economic value”, which was problematic. But there is a big exception if there is an acceptable likelihood of survival of the stock or the species, and the Minister can have regard to social, cultural, and economic factors that the Minister considers relevant when deciding on that exception. So we think that provides too much flexibility, and we have got a Supplementary Order Paper there.

Another of the concerns, which is one that we shared with fishers, is that because fish have to come back to port, there may not be markets for some fish and there is a potential that they end up going to landfill. So we want MPI to look at this really closely once the bill’s passed, and ensure that we don’t have fish being caught and then ending up in landfill, because that would be the very worst outcome, one almost as bad as fish being caught and going to be processed to fishmeal, a very low-value use. So we really want MPI to have a very close look at what happens to fish that are being brought back to port that don’t currently have a market.

So while the industry had concerns about the landing and discards rules—and I really thank organisations, like Fisheries Inshore, which very helpfully produced a graphic illustration of some of their concerns, and talk about a shared vision for fisheries—I think everybody’s got a shared vision of sustainable fisheries. It’s how we get there where there’s a lot of conflict.

So there are concerns from the industry about the landing rules, but major concerns around the pre-set decision rules from environmental and recreation fishing organisations. The industry did support the pre-set decision rules. As Barry Torkington, who’s a former commercial fisher said—and I quote—“In return for cameras on boats, this bill quietly lays the foundation for changes that have been widely unpopular in the past, yet highly desirable to commercial interests.” These changes, because they allow the Minister quite wide scope when applying the rule to make changes to the total allowable catch or the total allowable commercial catch, there is a big concern from environmental NGOs, recreational fishers, that this will allow changes that benefit the industry without allowing public submission. They pointed to a number of examples—the fishing down of rock lobster in the Hauraki Gulf; tarakihi, though the Minister’s recently made decisions on that; scallops and the fact that throughout Aotearoa there is really destructive scallop dredging, overfishing has occurred and really collapsed our scallop stocks. Changes have only occurred there because of widespread public concern and the Minister being flooded with submissions.

So the concern of a lot of organisations is that because MPI at the moment only has the ability to adjust catch limits for between 20 and 30 stocks—and it’s saying that it needs these pre-set decision rules to allow it to be more agile, more flexible—there is the risk that too much can happen behind closed doors, with too much influence from commercial industry and without that ability for the public to really have their say. Certainly, when pre-set decision rules are first developed, or when they are amended, there is public consultation, but there is no ability to consult when the rules are actually applied. So if the original rule has too wide a range for adjustments to the total allowable commercial catch, for example, there is the potential for decisions which might drive the stock down. So there is a fair amount of scepticism amongst those who think MPI is far too closely aligned with commercial industry, and is captured by it, around how these pre-set decision rules will actually work.

But the lost opportunity—what’s missing from the bill? There’s no change to the purpose of the principal Act. We’ve still got that 19th century mentality that there are no limits to the exploitation of nature. I take issue with the statements from the previous National speaker that this is about fishing to feed the word; that sort of an ethos is how we really deplete stocks, how we deplete our fisheries, how we don’t recognise the current crisis and the need for fundamental change.

There’s been no updating and strengthening of the precautionary principle in section 10 of the principal Act. That’s been unchanged since 1996, despite 25 years of progress and developments in international law about how we better define “precautionary fisheries management”, and despite the United Nations General Assembly and the Food and Agriculture Organisation developing guidance and calling on States to better define “precautionary fisheries management” and apply it.

So there are elements of the bill, particularly around the landing and discards rule, that we support, but it is a lost opportunity to go much further and recognise the oceans crisis, recognise the huge depletion of a number of our fish stocks and the impact that that has had on ecosystems. It is a lost opportunity to move to really good ecosystem-based management.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. ACT won’t be supporting this piece of legislation at this second reading, and I’ll iron out why, if I may. We had a very collegial relationship in the Primary Production Committee when this piece of legislation was heard, and we had dozens—dozens and dozens—of submitters come in: coastal fishermen, recreational fishermen, blue-water fishermen, and coastal—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Fishers.

—fishers—yeah, thank you very much. There’s a real problem, and I’ll iron it out, if I may, with new section 72A in clause 14. It’s been well canvassed that this is very, very problematic and, if I may—I’m sorry for the interjection; I didn’t make sense of it over there—there’s a real problem with the coastal commercial fishing fleet and the blue-water fleet. If I can highlight the reality of it, the simple fact is that the coastal commercial fishing fleet often catches a plethora of species: mid-water fish, surface fish, deep-water reef fish. Anecdotally, we heard multiple submitters say, “Hey look, in this instance, mid-column fish”—things like mullet and kahawai—“are being caught in the same net. One is targeted and one is not.”

Now, just very quickly as we go through this, new section 72A speaks to treating bycatch, and it’s not monetised in as much the same way as high-value species. If I may read it out, it’s having discard of 50 fish, more or less, having a penalty regime attached to them. In that regard, if I may, that would speak to pilchards having the same penalty regime attached to them as 50 kingfish.

The industry has gone to massive lengths to try and minimise and reduce unwanted bycatch. Six-inch mesh has gone to a 5-inch and then it’s gone to a 4-inch, the design of the mesh has changed from a diamond to a square, corkline technology has improved massively, leadline technology has improved massively, and yet there is still unwanted bycatch.

When it talks to landing and discards, deck wash—now, I just want to try and conceptualise this for people who have never spent any time at sea on a boat. You’ve got a 2-tonne net, potentially, in the blue-water fleet coming aboard with a tonne or half a tonne of fish inside of it, and there will be subsequent species that are caught. The technology is emerging. We absolutely agree—and this is logical, and all the submitters agree—that the likes of the camera roll-out was beneficial to the industry, and, by virtue of that, they could then understand the health of the ecosystem and the biomass.

But as proposed—and I want to speak to the practicality, not the political theatrics—this is a really difficult problem for coastal fisherman, and it was canvassed by Joseph Mooney earlier. Fuel costs are monumentally more than they were 12 or 24 months ago, and that’s one thing. A lot of the seasonal staff that came into, especially, the blue-water fleet—this industry and these commercial operators couldn’t get staff. Then you’re throwing this at them.

The reality is that there is a 13,000-strong part of society—employees, staff—that goes into this and that is part of this industry, and it’s worth billions. There is emerging technology, but I go back to the practical application of the Fisheries Act as it is being proposed. Landings and discard rules, a penalty regime—and let’s read it out, if we can. It speaks to discard of 50 or more fish being faced with a $100,000 fine, and fishers that offend two or more times in a three-year period could receive a maximum $250,000 fine. Well, gracious me, how does that work if you’re a set-netter commercial fisherman on an inshore fleet? Are you going to be prosecuted for the one offence on which perhaps you haven’t had your day in court? You go on about your business, you’re out fishing again, and there’s a subsequent bycatch of 50 fish or more.

Now, I don’t know if anyone understands the mullet fishery—yellow-eyed mullet. That’s a mid-water to upper-water column fish species. Inadvertently, there are commercial fishermen that catch them for the sake of selling them to the bait fish market. They have bycatch of kahawai. Instantly, there’s potentiality for a massive prosecutorial reality there.

Now, try and reconcile this. The industry has gone through rigorous change in mesh size, floating cork development, and leadline so they can actually set these nets at different places in the water column. This is the kind of innovation that this industry is constantly seeking to improve on, and yet here we have an exponentially ramped-up prosecutorial reality for 50 or more bait fish being treated as if they’re high-value southern bluefin tuna.

Based on this sort of logic—or the lack of it, I think, is the point—ACT won’t be supporting this bill at the second reading. We want to give this industry some surety to invest in the future, because at the end of the day, most of the concern is around table fish—or what you might call exotic fish species that are, basically, sold to domestic consumers here in New Zealand—being heavily predated or fished out. Again, the technology is emerging. Thus far, the industry has done marvellously well, I think, to adopt the narrative of having cameras on boats to further alleviate bycatch. I don’t think that, as proposed, the penalty regime we are being confronted with here is anywhere feasible based on the technology as it sits. We cannot support this bill at this second reading. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

谢谢, Madam Speaker, and talofa. I’m very pleased to be speaking on this Fisheries Amendment Bill, a bill that’s trying to incentivise the change of fishing behaviour to target fish rather than have them being discarded. As the previous speaker, Mark Cameron, was talking about, one of the ways of doing that is this graduated offences and penalties regime, and I want to spend a moment talking about that. At the moment, under the current Act, penalties are very high and so it seems unfair to prosecute those low-level offences, and so there’s been an aim to have proportionate offences for more effective and frequent enforcement.

What happens at clause 20 of the bill, which amends the penalties section at section 252 of the Act, is this then refers back to section 72—that’s amended by clause 13 of this bill. What the Primary Production Committee has done at that clause 13 is separate out the “50 or fewer” and the “more than 50” offences that the previous speaker referred to.

Clause 20, the penalties section, has three important different parts: one, at new subsection (3A), is that where there are two or more offences within three years, then that $250,000 maximum fine applies for your second offence; at new subsection (5A), that 50 or fewer can result in a $10,000 maximum offence; and then in the middle, at new section 252(5)(ba), is that more than 50 can result in the $100,000 which is in the current Act. So that’s how this this graduated offences and penalties plays out within the bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party will support this bill, but I have some concerns about the nature of the legislation. I think the first one is what the ACT Party just raised, rightly, around the 50 fish and the size of those fish depending on, you know, the type of fishery and what the fishing process involved is. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense on a practical level, and so certainly that’s an issue that needs to be addressed, because it just doesn’t make any sense on a practical level.

The other side of it is, I want to just draw a parallel to the dairy industry, for example, around the discarding of dead animals. Basically, in this process here, you’re going to have to bring back everything on the boat. That’s essentially what they’re saying, and that’s what the Minister wants to see. So it’s a sledgehammer approach; it’s not taking into account any practical nature of it. The Labour members shake their heads, but that’s what the bill says. You bring it back, and there are very small exemptions but, effectively, you have to bring it back. And then what’s going to happen to it? It’s like a dead cow; you have to pay to get rid of that, don’t you? You have to pay 80 bucks to JD Wallace to get rid of that, and that’s going up every day.

So what’s going to happen here is that basically that dead fish that you’re bringing back, it’s not going to be a marketable product to that extent. It’s going to be expensive for small fishing companies. It’s going to be a real impost on them. The big guys will work out a way of doing it, and they’ll have connections, and they’ll make approaches with the companies that will use that product, but the really small fishers are going to find it hard, and they’re going to be stuck with all this dead fish that has to go into landfill, which is exactly what the Green Party doesn’t want to see happen. I don’t think anybody potentially sees that that is a better result than that fish being at sea, so I’m not sure if the practicalities of this bill will actually work. First of all, you’ve got an issue around that size of fish, and taking into account the comparable species, but also the practical reality of what actually do you do with the dead fish that comes back. There’s not going to be a market for it. The Green Party said there could be other uses for it. People aren’t going to be buying dried fish that come off a boat like that, are they? It’s not what you’re going to be buying at the supermarket. So its potential problem is that it goes into landfill. That’s the reality.

💬 Ian McKelvie: It’s better for your dead cow, Bennett.

Mr McKelvie would like to sell a dead cow, but I don’t think you can get away with it.

So it’s one of those things that is a very delicate area. Everybody wants to protect the fisheries. Everybody wants to see New Zealand fisheries thrive and be a valuable resource for commercial and non-commercial use; there’s no doubt about that. That’s a given, and that’s why we have a quota system and all those things. But we also need to realise that this is not a simple industry, where a Wellington politician can say, “Anything that’s caught can come back.”, like David Parker does, and think that’s the practical reality of how you do business. The reality is that there will be bycatch, and 50 is not much, and the exceptions are very difficult to make a reality. So it’s going to be a situation where I think you’ll have the fishing industry come back and knock on Parliament’s door within a year or two and say that this is a bill that has demonstrably caused a lot of grief, especially to smaller fishers. You might want to have an industry dominated by a couple of big fishing companies, but I think that most industries in New Zealand are better when there’s some small business in there as well. If we don’t have that variation, we don’t have the next generation of fishers coming through that are actually more proactive in wanting to look after the fishery and that. So I think that there’s some work that still needs to be done on this, and the Minister should take that on board and relook at some of those issues.

I call Angie Warren-Clark—five minutes.

谢谢, Madam Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to stand and talk on the Fisheries Amendment Bill—not a select committee that I’ve sat on, in terms of the legislation, but I have kept a real interest.

I wanted to just start by correcting the record in terms of when we talk about fisheries and people out fishing, the easiest term is “fisher”. So that’s for those of us women who fish, and there are many in the industry out there. So that’s just a clarification; let’s try and use non-sexist language in the House.

So, secondly, I’d also just like to talk on one particular part, in terms of the catch. Basically, what this bill is looking to do is around selective targeting. It’s incentivising and supporting our fishers out there to use better methods to catch fish. Now, this small fisher that we know is using the technology, or using fishing technology that really supports a sustainable catch method because they cannot afford the large parts of technology out there. So this piece of legislation will hopefully change the way that we move about.

It is also really important that we think about fish in the context of the world. Recently, I was in Malaysia and I looked at the type of fish that that country eats. Never underestimate what fish we have and can eat in this country. I think that that’s where the secondary market comes in, and I think that this is about change to an ecosystem model, as opposed to a high-grade model where we just take a very selective amount of fish, mouli up the rest, and throw it over the side. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It seems as though everybody in this House has got a sustainability story when it comes to our fishing stocks, and I just want to reminisce about the time that I went to the Chatham Islands with my good colleague Paul Eagle. It is in his electorate, and we got the privilege of going over there. What I found was that whilst the rocks were flush with pāua and the space around the island was filled with crayfish, actually, they used to have a booming scallop industry there. The scallops are long gone from the area, and they are poorer for that—poorer because they’ve realised that, actually, they didn’t manage the sustainability of the scallop stocks around the Chatham Islands, and now they’re a distant memory.

So everything that we do has to be set up around the sustainability of our fisheries. It is a grave concern. We do have climate change—it has arrived—as well. The industry is under increased scrutiny. So we need to make sure that we’re doing the best that we possibly can for the sustainability of our fish stocks if we want them to last on into the future and if we don’t want to have more stories like the scallop industry, or lack of, in the Chatham Islands.

This Fisheries Amendment Bill is a really good bill that brings all of those settings into the new age. This isn’t the end, though. We’re going to have to keep adjusting the settings when it comes to the sustainability of our fishing stocks now and into the future. So I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. One of the perspectives that has been missing in this debate and indeed the report back from our select committee to this House from our deliberations on the Fisheries Amendment Bill is that there was no agreement at all across the various stakeholders who presented on the bill, and that gave a very clear voice to the fact that issues relating to our oceans and fisheries are some of the most contested in this country. We had impassioned submissions from commercial fishers and particularly those, as my colleague Mark Cameron from ACT mentioned, inshore fishers who are owner-operators who are particularly concerned that the rules around landing and discards along with cameras could ultimately lead them to decide that it is all too hard and that they have to walk away from a sector and an industry that in many cases has been in their lives and their families’ lives for generations.

We had recreational fishers who saw this bill as a Government-inspired attempt to partner with the commercial sector to ensure that more fish were harvested at the expense of recreational fishers. We had iwi representatives who said that in no way did this bill address the fact that from their perspective the primary relationship with respect to any issues relating to oceans and fisheries was one of the Crown and iwi and that a consultative framework was missing. Then we had the NGOs who said that this bill will see the treasured taonga of New Zealand, our exclusive economic zone, further threatened, further put under pressure, at the expense of future generations.

All four stakeholders said that this bill does not meet their expectations, with the exception, I would argue, of, broadly, the seafood industry, who has been working for years through successive Governments to try and get a framework that was more relevant than the framework that exists today. One that creates some flexibility and surety for their business as to what they should bring back and account for—not only under their annual catch entitlement but what they needed to bring back as opposed to discard to the sea. One in which the rules around how to manage a particular fishery, a particular species, could have some clear framework that could be agreed up front, so that when the fishing stock changed over time they didn’t need to go through an incredibly laborious process of ensuring that every one of those stakeholders was in alignment before the Government or the Minister of the time made the change. And, of course, what was outlined to us at the select committee was that you will never get that alignment. The degree of dysfunction and disconnection between those particular parties is at record levels.

Therefore this bill is a step forward in and of itself but it doesn’t in any way deal with the fundamental tension that exists in our oceans and fisheries space. Now, the Government has set up, for the first time, a Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, Minister Parker, but there is an inherent tension in the way the Minister delivers against that mandate. On the oceans side there are people such as the very respected, in my opinion, Eugenie Sage from the Green Party who gives voice to the concerns of many in the New Zealand that the pressures on our oceans generally are not being appropriately focused on, and then the same Minister has to reflect on the fact that we have a $1.6 billion seafood export industry. It is a big part of our primary sector. We deliver—not only to New Zealand but to the world—food that is highly valued, and somehow he has to manage a quota management system that reflects on the interests of Māori, ensures that we don’t over fish, ensures that customary rights are protected, and ensures that over time the oceans in this country are improved and enhanced.

And so this bill, rather than dealing with those inherent tensions, adds more layers of framework and rules and scaffolding to what I would argue is a fundamentally dysfunctional system. Now, the National Party will support the bill because landings and discards and particularly, actually, a framework to get pre-set decision rules with respect to how you approach a particular species makes sense. But the rules in here, when we tried to grapple with it as a select committee, were mind-numbing. And I have to say, with respect, that we’re getting only two-minute contributions on behalf of the Government side on a bill that has got this degree of complexity. I think I can speak generally on behalf of all colleagues across the House who sat on that committee—and we were constantly having to use every bit of our brains to try and navigate this—when I say that to now listen to two-minute speeches that sort of tip over the top of it, I think, does a disservice to the sector and actually to the bill that we are trying to progress.

Tāmati Coffey: You agreed; we agreed. Let’s go.

I was at every single one of those—thank you, Mr Coffey—every single one of them. And it deserves more reflection on the challenges of trying to get the balance right. Now, I think where the balance has been broadly struck is the concept, as I said earlier, of a pre-set decision framework across the various species of the quota management system—makes sense. If you can create a sort of parameter in which all the players can operate and operate in a way that is more flexible and able to respond more deftly to data—which tends to turn up in sort of clumps—around the effectiveness and the healthiness of that particular species, that makes sense conceptually. But what I noticed as we walked through this process was it was just layer after layer of additionality of more process, of more considerations, and of more decisions being handed, essentially, back to the officials and the Minister to have to grapple with. So all the rules associated with the pre-set decision rules across all the species that currently sit in the quota management system, that sits in front of us for four years; all the rules around landings and discards and what counts and what doesn’t and what’s survivability. All of that has to be dealt with species by species over the next four years. And you could actually see it, frankly, in the faces of the officials when they were putting on a good face that, “Yes, we’ll be able to manage this.” Frankly, they can’t manage the current obligations on them, in all honesty, based on not a function of competency; it’s a function of resources and what’s expected of them. And we have layered up even more on Fisheries New Zealand over the next four years in partnership with the sector.

Our view is that, on balance, where there is a choice between pragmatism and being pure, the National Party signals very clearly—we have an expectation that the officials and the Minister default to what is practical, and you have had good contributions from this side as to some of the challenges, particularly for inshore fishers, of getting that balance right. We intend to focus on that very significantly. We have three Supplementary Order Papers that we will talk to, which I think add greater clarity to the balance that is sought by this bill. But I remain disappointed that the great opportunity of trying to genuinely create a framework that tries to put in alignment those tensions between commercial and recreation and customary, and the NGOs who want us to essentially look at a postcard. That has not been resolved, and until it is resolved, the great potential of our moana stays unrealised. Thank you.

谢谢.Talofa, e te Mana Whakawā. Always an honour and a privilege to stand to make a contribution in this House, and in this case, the Fisheries Amendment Bill. I would like to acknowledge Minister Parker for his leadership in shepherding one of many important bills into the House. I hear that it was bipartisan select committee, so I’d like to acknowledge the leadership of Jo Luxton in chairing this committee. I want to thank the submitters for all their submissions into this bill. Can I remind the House that this Fisheries Amendment Bill would amend the Fisheries Act 1996, and that the amendments proposed will modernise and strengthen the New Zealand fisheries management system.

The bill would do five things. It will empower the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries to establish pre-set decision rules for sustainable measures. Secondly, it would amend the commercial fishing rules related to the landing and returning of fish, and empower the Minister to require or permit fish to be returned to sea. It will introduce a graduated offences and penalties regime, and lastly, it will extend the requirements for the use of on-board camera monitoring to include fishing and fishing-related activities, including sorting, processing, and discarding of fish.

My favourite catch of this bill is in Part 1, clause 4, amending section 2(1), where it is about the substantive provisions and it talks about what actually would happen about the returning of the fish, how cameras would be installed, and how data would then be reviewed after it has captured. I don’t want this to be the one that gets away, let’s reel it in. I commend this bill to the House. Mālō.