Heatley Phil: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Heatley Phil: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:616;Page:11697] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I would like to contribute particularly to the debate around Mr Ian Ewen-Street’s persistence on a matter that has been explained to him by at least three or four members and officials working together—that is that some fishers believe they should be beneficiaries of a cash refund. These are the people whom Ian Ewen-Street is looking to represent. 
Opposition to this bill comes from those who believe that the distribution of the $24.1 million as a reduction of future levies is unfair to those who paid the cost-recovery levies in earlier years and who have since left the industry. Mr Ewen-Street’s basic argument is that they should be beneficiaries of a cash refund. However he does not acknowledge three things. 
Firstly the settlement is consistent with the cost-recovery regime whereby under-recovery is to be debited and over-recovery is to be credited in a future period—that is from a past period to a future period and to the same general group of levy payers not to the specific levy payer. 
Secondly the levies are collected from that sector of the industry in order to be spent on the same sector of the industry—not on individuals. The Ministry of Fisheries and the Department of Conservation do not collect the levies to fund them to go and clean the boats of individual fishers to clean the nets or pull in the nets of individual fishers or to concentrate on issues relating to individual fishers but to that fishery as a whole. That is the point. The legislation takes a holistic view. It is concerned with the benefit that the services deliver to the industry not to individual fishers themselves. 
Thirdly if a fisher has left the business and sold the quota that fisher leaves behind the bills and leaves behind the income. It is like any business—if people sell their business it is gone unless they write in the contract that from then on they will still pay the bills and still draw the income. Those fishers have sold the business in this case the quota and have left behind the bills and the income. That is as simple an explanation as I can get with the complex mind I have in explaining this particular issue and I am sure that members will accept it. 
I have been quite intrigued as to Mr Ewen-Street’s argument about past levies being cumulative over several years or skipping back 2 or 3 years. I have some sympathy for his argument because Ministry of Fisheries officials convinced us—it was a bit dodgy—that although we read in the Act that it went from a past year to a future year that it was not cumulative for a number of years to a future year and that one could not go back 3 years for a future year it could be done. We were told that even though it had never been done by a Minister one could go back through cumulative years. I had planned to introduce an amendment on this part to make sure that in the future the Minister would be given the rope—I will pause there—to do that but I notice now and the Minister’s officials have kindly pointed out that in fact the provision is already in there. I acknowledge and concede to them that it is in there. 
New section 265(b) in clause 9 states: “the Minister has not previously had regard to under this section”. To what section? New section 265 states that “the Minister must … have regard to the costs of any conservation services or fisheries services incurred by the Crown in a previous financial year that … the Minister has not previously had regard to under this section.” In other words if he has had regard to the previous year he can also have regard to other years. It might be 2 or 3 years back or a cumulative sum of all of those. In summary I think that Mr Ewen-Street is a bit off the mark.