Eckhoff Gerrard: Aquaculture Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Eckhoff Gerrard: Aquaculture Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17749. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT) 
: 
 I would like to refer back to just a moment or two ago before the last couple of speakers to the Minister’s outburst and that is really all it could be described as. If in fact the Minister had some real justification he would have stood in this Chamber and explained to the Committee and to the people listening to this debate why the Crown Law Office blanked out three pages of advice—or what should have been advice—that should have been put in front of this Committee. I ask the Minister to explain to the House why we got three blank pages of Crown Law on this issue but I am perfectly certain that he will not do it. 
In talking to Part 5 I believe that without question there should be an open-door policy to aquaculture in this country. We have a huge coastline massive amounts of water available and there should be an absolutely open-door policy. The policy that this Government is operating is a brown-door policy because if the person is Maori then that person gets special treatment. The people of this country are sick and tired of this racist nonsense. Maori are perfectly capable and always have been perfectly capable of running their own industries. Let us look at Ngai Tahu in the south for example. They do not need special help or special attention because they are more than capable and have been extraordinarily successful. I suspect that what is happening is that Ngai Tahu and other Maori are laughing up their sleeves at this Government’s naivety. They will be saying: “If they are prepared to give us 20 percent for nothing—totally unjustified—then we will take it.” They treat this Government as the village idiot. They will keep on grabbing from the Government as long as the Government is silly enough to hand out this extra 20 percent. We know why it is being done. We know it is being done for votes and to protect the hides of the Labour Maori caucus. It is payback for the foreshore and the seabed legislation. 
But I want to talk about the space that is to be allocated that must be of an economic size. I wonder whether any of the officials or the Minister could tell me what an economic size is and how it will be determined. For if we look at this whole question of an economic size in terms of agriculture for example an economic size of a farm in Southland might be 400 acres. The same carrying capacity in the high country of the North Island or South Island might need to be 40000 acres to carry the same amount of stock. Really this is what we are talking about. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Did I hear some sort of utterance from a member of the Government? Those members do not know what they are talking about. The carrying capacity varies hugely from region to region between bay and bay where the aquaculture might be sited. How on earth is an economic size to be determined by a bunch of officials or indeed a regional council? It cannot be done. The way it is done is that people put their ropes into the water and after a period of time work out that growth is not occurring quickly or there are too many ropes or they need extra size. So in many areas the aquaculture areas might be too small to allocate 20 percent extra because the economy of scale to that marine farm will be lost if they lose that extra 20 percent. 
This is a practical common-sense situation that I personally have experienced and the farming community has experienced. The same concepts can be applied to aquaculture and essentially the same principles apply. It is possible to get water that is full of nutrients and like the Southland plains is highly fertile and can sustain a high carrying capacity. What happens in open water or in another bay where there is little or no nutrient by comparison is that the size will have to be doubled trebled or quadrupled sometimes to achieve the same carrying capacity.