Dowie SarahSARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise in opposition to the third reading of this Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill. And wasn't the Minister hopeful? What we've seen so far is a so-called minor and technical bill introduced into this House there was a lack of consultation with affected parties on the introduction of it and now we have the Minister talking about a process that will follow the passing of this bill—and we are supposed to trust her. Well I'm sorry but Minister Sage is certainly not trusted on the West Coast she's certainly not trusted in Southland and she won't be trusted elsewhere in the country if she continues to ride roughshod over recreationists' interests.This bill is quite frankly flawed. There was a failure to pick up my Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that we were hopeful to get across the line and if they had gone across the line we were hopeful that we could support this bill but that was not to be the case. We over on this side of course being pragmatic conservationists want to protect our indigenous fish but certainly not at the expense of riding roughshod over our recreational fishers—that's certainly not good enough. We want our people in New Zealand to go on to the conservation estate and enjoy it and enjoy its special character.I'm not going to take too long to oppose this bill—it's opposed on only a couple of points—and that is because in black and white this bill looks to put a prohibition on the taking of indigenous fish from the conservation estate and that means a ban on whitebaiting. You've already heard the Minister talk about closures of rivers and that is certainly on the cards. I'm sorry to say again in black and white that closures of rivers are a ban on taking whitebait. That is where she is headed—and certainly that's where she is headed because I had requested information under the Official Information Act and lo and behold what I received back from this most open and transparent Government is a document that is blacked out page after—Hon Scott Simpson: Redacted.SARAH DOWIE: —page after page. Redacted—that's right Mr Simpson.So she certainly has the intention to go further and ban the practice of whitebaiting when there is no quantitative evidence as to the population numbers and where there has been no research done on river to river. While she talks about the protection of habitat there's certainly no quantitative evidence on that either because there are rivers and rivers and rivers untouched in the backblocks of Fiordland where there are whitebait spawning quite happily. So look that research needs to be done before we can actually look to manage the fishery more sustainably.I tabled two SOPs and one tabled amendment. They looked to strengthen this so-called minor and technical bill. The first obviously is overturning the prohibition and looking to use tools to put in place pragmatic regulation to assist the species and look at managing the fishery of whitebait. The second puts into place some natural justice principles around the declarations of spawning sites so that private property owners' rights were not again ridden roughshod over but that they had a right of reply with respect to the spawning sites on their land and any activities that could occur around them. And then the final looks at the information fed into the regulation-making power that is part of this bill to be using evidence to be using research properly and to be using practical measures available to us to help protect indigenous fish rather than simply going to a ban—for example on whitebaiting—from the onset.So look this is not a minor and technical bill. It goes further than what we want it to. We wanted to strengthen it and that's why I raised two SOPs and a tabled amendment—they were declined. We are simply not in a position where we can support this bill.