Ewen-Street Ian: Aquaculture Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ewen-Street Ian: Aquaculture Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17762. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 One of the issues that concerned marine farmers was their ability to alternate between species on their farms. They felt they should be able to vary between green-lipped mussels blue mussels Pacific oysters rock oysters—well perhaps not rock oysters—and so on according to the economics of farming at the time. Their analogy was that they wanted to be able to operate in the way that a land farmer does—alternating between sheep cattle deer pigs goats or whatever—and the members of the Primary Production Committee agreed with them. We thought there was a good argument for marine farmers to have a degree of flexibility. 
The only conditions we put on it were first that they had to apply when they originally got their consent to farm multiple species; once their applications were approved they could move between species. The other constraint we put on it was that they could do it only amongst filter-feeding fish. We were very aware that fin-fish farming uses a considerable amount of additional supplementary feed so there are problems in terms of waste material the effluent from the fish themselves and the fact that a species like salmon consumes something like four times its own body weight in fish that is imported usually from South America. While it may be highly profitable locally it is totally unsustainable on a global scale. 
I want to move to the transitional provisions in Part 7. The existing holders of leases and licences for marine farms are deemed now to have coastal permits for another 20 years from the date of the passage of this Act. That will be very good news for existing farmers. It will give them certainty for 20 years obviously. But where application is made for a new aquaculture management area space or an expansion of existing farms there will be some problems and that is where the transitional provisions apply. A regional council that wishes to enlarge an aquaculture management area will invite the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Fisheries to make an aquaculture decision. In the past the obtaining of a fisheries permit after a resource consent has been granted has been a source of huge frustration for marine farmers. They have their consent and they are ready to go; they wait for their fisheries permit and they wait and they wait. There is no time limit on how long they have to wait. We have heard of examples that were just outrageous—of farmers waiting for many years. This bill is trying to bring forward the input from the Ministry of Fisheries in the process so that when somebody applies for a coastal permit he or she gets approval—or not—from both the ministry and the local council. 
What we are doing though is putting very strict guidelines on the activities of the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Fisheries. I have to say that general confidence in the Ministry of Fisheries amongst fishers and others is low. I hope things will change. The ministry has a new chief executive and maybe the culture will change. But my having said that we have decided that strict time lines and objectives need to be laid out so we have said that in deciding whether to make a determination or a reservation about an aquaculture decision the chief executive can have regard to only three things. They are the effect of the aquaculture marine area on first the biological diversity of the aquatic environment; second the productivity and biological abundance of fisheries resources; and third habitats of known significance for fisheries management. The bill also specifies that the aquaculture decision must be very explicit in terms of the species affected and whether commercial recreational or customary fishers are affected. 
We have also been very clear that we are putting a time limit on the chief executive and the time limit is 6 months. Over and above that we have also allowed for an appeal to the High Court. Anybody who has made an application or the chief executive or the council can appeal to the High Court on matters of substance. It is not just matters of process which is what used to apply in terms of judicial review; matters of substance can now be sent to the High Court. 
These transitional provisions are excellent. I think they give marine farmers a degree of certainty that they have not had in the past. A lot of them have said that they would go overseas.