Delahunty Catherine: Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
Delahunty Catherine: Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
[Volume:672;Page:18736] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party has some major concerns about the Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3). We are supporters of aquaculture particularly in the appropriate places but we think opening up public space that is highly contested with a bill of this nature is a recipe for ongoing conflict. We are concerned about the years and years of work that has been done particularly in the area where I live in the Coromandel-Hauraki area where Environment Waikato and a stakeholders group worked in detail on a plan that has been overridden. That is our concern. We do not think that aquaculture should not be developed or that aquaculture does not have a lot to contribute but those people who have all been in touch with me are deeply concerned that their whole process was a waste of time and has been marginalised while powers are being given to the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture. 
Although we agree in principle with and support the aspiration declared in the commentary which is to “provide an efficient legislative and regulatory framework that would enable the sustainable development of aquaculture within the coastal marine area.” we do not think given the difficulties we have seen that this bill will achieve that aspiration. It makes sense to develop some enabling legislation that focuses on genuine sustainability and long-term strategy and action but this bill does not do that. 
The declared position of the Government and other supporters of the bill is that we need to facilitate aquaculture above other activities. It is being touted as the next billion-dollar industry which reminds me of investment in kiwifruit or goats or whatever is the great “gold rush” of the time without thinking of the long-term consequences of what is a very complex and contested space—that is the marine environment. We are yet to have an oceans policy and we are yet to have all kinds of policies in place that are needed before we start carving up and selling off these rights. 
The enthusiasm for allowing rapid development needs to be tempered by ecological and social constraints which this bill falls short of. If we do away with aquaculture management areas or some similar provision of designated space that will open up what many submitters at the Primary Production Committee referred to as a “gold rush”. The proposals on sequencing of applications by the amendments introduced in clause 35 do very little to change the “first in first served” default position which means there will be pressure on applicants to submit an adequate proposal rather than to devote time to preparing a more sustainable one. 
There were repeated references in the first reading debate and at the select committee and by the Government to our need for the aquaculture industry to be normalised within the Resource Management Act and treated more or less like any other activity. That denies the reality that issuing permits to use marine areas for aquaculture effectively denies public access in favour of allowing for exclusive use of what is currently public domain. Recreational boaties and fishers are particularly concerned by these proposed changes. I am very aware of this issue. I held two public meetings in the Hauraki area in the Coromandel and Thames. They were attended by recreational boaties and commercial fishers who raised major concerns about the issues. No other public events were held except for a very strange consultation process run by the Government. No one in our area knew the status of or outcome of the process. It was pushed through very rapidly and it did not connect to this bill in a clear way. It has resulted in concern and confusion right across our region about what this bill does particularly in the Waikato. 
Sandra Goudie 
: That’s crap. 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY 
: The local member says that that is rubbish but then she was not actually at the meeting and has not engaged publicly with the issue. No one has heard her talk about it so we do not really know what her view is whereas I have heard what the fishermen say about it. They are concerned about opening up this area not only for aquaculture as we know it which is a well-established industry that a lot of us support but also for cage fish farming in a way that is utterly risky economically and environmentally. 
The marine farming industry is effectively freeloading if it is allowed to generate substantial profit but pay no resource rental to the Crown for extracting nutrients impeding alternative public access or use and degrading landscape and seascape and amenity values. We have to ask who is really benefiting here and why this is going ahead because marine farmers do not pay rates. If this was land they would be paying rates for what they do to the environment. Lots of aquaculture is well managed but some of the proposals on the table—which can be opened up through this legislation without proper input from the public without regional decision-making and without the stakeholders who have worked on these issues for years—are of great concern and involve threats to the environment that we have not seen before in this country. I am talking about the sow crates of the sea. I am talking about the potential for cage fish farming which is not sustainable. There is a proposal to do that in the Hauraki Gulf right now. 
The mechanisms proposed for the issue of the permits are sufficiently complex and require the participation and agreement of so many different and conflicting interests that we doubt that the outcome will meet the practice in terms of anybody’s wants or needs. Although the proposal to allow for consideration of any undue adverse effects on fishing which is one of the key issues for the fishing community to be carried out in parallel with the Resource Management Act process seems reasonable in practice there will be enormous pressure on the Ministry of Fisheries to consent to the granting of a permit if the relevant regional council has indicated its approval. 
It is highly undesirable that consultation with affected parties be at the discretion of the ministry rather than mandated as proposed in new section 186D set out in clause 35. I refer to a very good submission from the Environmental Defence Society to the Primary Production Committee because it made some excellent points. One of them was referred to by I think the previous speaker Moana Mackey: “The Minister of Aquaculture’s powers to recommend regulations to amend regional coastal plans under clauses 65 and 96 should be removed.” The Green Party thinks they are unnecessary. It is interesting that Moana raised the issue of precedent. How many other Ministers will get powers and what powers? Will we give more power to Ministers to decide on mining on land for example? I am sure that would be equally as unwelcome as a gold rush in the marine environment. 
The submission continues: “The other functions the Minister of Aquaculture introduced by clause 65 of the Bill including suspending receipt of applications for coastal permits authorising aquaculture activities and making a direction to process and hear together applications for coastal permits … should be removed. These functions should [be] undertaken by the Minister for the Environment on advice from the Ministry for the Environment.” rather than the Minister having the say-so over these issues. 
The Environmental Defence Society also made some very good points with regard to the Tasman regional coastal plan and the Waikato regional coastal plan under clauses 100 and 101. We support those clauses being removed from this bill because we do not believe that they are in the long-term interests of the industry let alone the environment. We support the points made at the select committee about the undermining of the integrity of the Resource Management Act although I do not know why we would expect the Government to listen because it has already undermined the Act’s integrity on a lot of fronts and I imagine that will continue. 
The Government is undermining public confidence in the Resource Management Act. Undermining confidence in the Resource Management Act is a serious matter because no matter what powers we give to the Minister people will fight back about their space. A huge Auckland community as well as a huge Coromandel community use that space. The other key point on which we support the Environmental Defence Society is the issue of favouring one activity over another: “The provisions favour aquaculture against the myriad of other activities”. 
We have a lot of issues and we do not believe that the proposed changes are necessary. We believe that we have Resource Management Act processes that should be respected and we believe that we should actually consider all the work that has gone on in the past. 
Finally I will talk about the specific example I am familiar with which is that under the current opening up of places like the Hauraki Gulf Tikapa Moana there is a proposal to bring in a totally new sort of aquaculture: cage fishing farming of hapuku or kingfish. It is entirely unproven if we look at overseas examples. Are we going to import fishmeal? We were asked by people at public meetings where else this was going to come from. Are we going to import small coastal fish species out of other people’s catchments to feed bigger fish inside cages? The fishing community is concerned about disease and the environmental communities are concerned about pollution but in the end it is also an ethical and moral issue about other people’s fisheries. It is not going to make money—if that is what other members are interested in—if people have to pay more to bring in the fish to make the other fish get big and fat. 
If we want to export fish why do we not look after our fisheries allow our wild fish to be healthy and then export those fish? That is proven technology. Cage fish farming the sow crates of the sea is highly resisted by many people in the Coromandel area who support aquaculture. Like in the Tasman area a lot of people support aquaculture but they want fair planning and they do not want new forms of technology around fishing and cage fish farming to be in conflict. They are very concerned that it is not only uneconomic but also environmentally risky to bring in caged fish under a bill like this and to wipe out all the work that has been done in the district to try to make our aquaculture management areas properly planned. It has always been controversial.