Wagner Nicky: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWagner Nicky: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 11 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15815. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central): I too want to support this Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill at its third reading. The Subantarctic Islands are a unique and spectacular natural environment. The land in that area is already protected under the national nature reserves status but this legislation will protect the ocean around that land. The whole area is so spectacular that it has World Heritage status. This legislation will make sure that these three island groups—the Antipodes Islands the Bounty Islands and Campbell Island—are able to join with the Auckland Islands in having marine reserve protection. The Auckland Islands were protected in 2003.These new reserves cover an enormous area of about 435000 hectares. It is a great step forward in protecting our oceans. It is absolutely in line with National’s long-established interest in marine protection. It was the National Government back in 1971 that passed the first Marine Reserves Act. That led to establishing the first marine reserve at Leigh just north of Auckland in 1975. In those days that was absolutely groundbreaking legislation and new to the world. That reserve in Leigh has gone on to entertain to educate and to inspire New Zealanders and people who visit our country from that day to this.Currently New Zealand has 48 marine protected areas. That covers about 8.2 percent of our territorial seas. These new reserves are so big that when they are gazetted that will increase to 9.5 percent of our territorial seas. Under our present legislation we can create marine reserves only in our territorial seas. There are more reserves to come. Since National has been in Government we have announced nine new marine reserves and there are further areas that are beginning stakeholder talks.Creating marine reserves can be quite difficult for communities. New Zealanders are absolutely passionate about the sea. They love to recreate there to swim and to fish. But sometimes there is a bit of a difference of opinion as to where marine protectedreserves could be. Of course we all want to protect the ocean but maybe the community does not want it happening quite in their own backyard. We have come up with a new collaborative stakeholder process that seems to make decisions about marine reserves much more palatable and easily done. That was based on the first collaborative approach taken by the Guardians of Fiordland’s Fisheries and Marine Environment. It is similar to the collaborative approach that we are seeing nationally in terms of things like the Land and Water Forum and we are also seeing it locally in terms of things likeTe Korowai o Te Tai o Marokura inKaikōura which is another marine protection mechanism.Basically the strengths of these models is that they allow everybody to have a say and allow them to work together to create a compromise that works for all stakeholders. Indeed this bill was written as a result of a collaborative stakeholder forum with input from iwi industry representatives scientific and conservation groups and the general public. This bill was based directly on their decisions. There is even a compromise written into the bill as there had been identified the possibility of a commercial deep-water crab-fishing industry around Campbell Island. This bill gives a window of time to explore that option. If the evidence shows that a viable sustainable fishery with minimal impact on the marine environment and ecosystems is possible then the boundaries will remain as stated in this bill. But if not the reserve will be expanded to take in the whole of the territorial sea around Campbell Island. The Local Government and Environment Committee has ensured that this will happen in a timely fashion and that the review must be completed within 5 years of the bill being passed.Finally I would like to say that the whole of the Local Government and Environment Committee supported this bill. We enjoyed working on it. It was extremely interesting. We believe that we have passed good legislation. We believe that it was based on a fair and effective process and that it will have a valuable outcome for our oceans. My only regret is that we as a committee did not manage to have a site visit.