Scott Lynda: Resource Management (Aquaculture Moratorium Extension) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Scott Lynda: Resource Management (Aquaculture Moratorium Extension) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:616;Page:11647] 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 I rise to speak against this bill. I point out that greenshell mussels are Marlborough’s biggest income earner. Back in 1989 they raised $25 million for the aquaculture industry. In 2002 they raised $260 million involving the farming of 5500 hectares and the provision of 4000 jobs in New Zealand. What has happened since that time? Well the industry had been growing at 20 percent but it is not growing at all now. Production has fallen because of this Government’s appalling handling of the aquaculture industry. 
I certainly hope the Minister in the chair Mr Benson-Pope pays a bit of attention. He needs to do something about the situation because the previous Minister of Fisheries did not. He was bound up in bureaucracy and did not manage to do a thing. A serious opportunity will be lost to New Zealand if this Government does not stop pandering to bureaucrats and environmentalists. It has to take seriously this amazing opportunity. Extending a moratorium will not do that. This is an opportunity for New Zealand as a whole because industries actually create regional development. 
I do not know how many members have visited the little town of Havelock but 15 years ago that town was dead. There were empty shops and the marina was shut. It was dead. Today Havelock is absolutely thriving. It has Sanford Industries jobs new houses restaurants and an extension to the marina. That all happened because of the farming of greenshell mussels and the people who made it work. 
Jill Pettis 
: And 4 years of a Labour Government. 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT 
: It has nothing to do with the Labour Government. All it did was reduce that 20 percent growth rate down to zero as it panders to the bureaucrats. 
Do members know why this moratorium is being extended today? It is mainly because this Government cannot get its act together on this issue or the seabed and foreshore issue in the Marlborough Sounds. This Government does not know what to do. It does not have a clue. It isgoing round and round in circles and doing U-turns as it tries to sort it out. It is easy to puta moratorium on but it is jolly hard to take it off. We predicted that if the Government put a moratorium on it would not take it off at the time it said it would. Many Government speakers said that would not be the case that it just needed a bit of a break that it needed to get the new legislation sorted out. But what has happened? Today we are debating the extension of the moratorium. 
Do we want this country to be wealthy or not? Do we want parts of Northland to be able to get into aquaculture or not? The moratorium is doing nothing to improve growth in New Zealand nothing to increase jobs and nothing to enable this country to do better and make more money. That money could be spent on health and education. The extension of this moratorium will only be damaging. 
Maori too are losing opportunities. We heard a lot about the Sounds and that Maori did not get involved in the aquaculture industry. That is not true. About 17 percent of those employed in the industry consider themselves to be Maori and that is compared with 11 percent across all other industries so a lot of Maori actually own aquaculture farms and are employed. They have not achieved that because of special privilege. They own those farms because they got into the industry and got on with the job. 
This Government is getting in the way of all those rugged individuals who have been developing the aquaculture industry. It is putting a huge amount of cost and bureaucracy on to the industry. It has done nothing but get in the way. The Government has not sorted out anything and to top it off the aquaculture law reform legislation which was touted to make life easier will only make things harder. It is just a mess. The bureaucrats have to start to look at how to help the aquaculture industry develop. 
When the Primary Production Committee went down to the Sounds the members did not realise they had been travelling past marine farms. They thought those things were covering the Sounds and affecting the pristine environment. I grew up in the Sounds and I think that aquaculture is a wonderful addition. Greenshell mussels are the only endemic species that we farm in this country. They are an incredibly healthy product and contain no fat—wonderful! We should be eating an awful lot more of them and a lot less McDonald’s. If New Zealanders did that the nation would be a lot healthier. 
We should be encouraging the industry. We are squandering the opportunity for export earnings to reach $1 billion by 2020. We are squandering the opportunity for new jobs. We must not forget that places like Chile will be in there like a shot. In fact they are already there. We have people in the industry today who have become so fed up they are off to Tasmania Chile or anywhere where they do not have to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare that this industry has become.