Fitzsimons Jeanette: Aquaculture Reform Bill — First Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Aquaculture Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:15117] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Greens welcome and support the Aquaculture Reform Bill but I have to say that we have grave concerns about the very short time period of 3 months allowed for the select committee to do its job. This is a big bill. 
Hon David Carter 
: It’s 2 months. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: 29 November? This is August; September October November—3 months. 
Hon David Carter 
: And you have to call for submissions. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: Yes that is part of it. This is a big bill with big issues and many stakeholders. There are complex issues of interface with the Resource Management Act. It is also a burden for small parties with few members who each have to cover a much wider range of issues than the large parties do and where the inability of one member to be in the House for several weeks because he or she is hearing submissions at the select committee does place a real burden on the rest of the caucus. 
If it were not for the fact that the moratorium is about to expire and we have to have legislation in place I would be voting against the referral motion. The Government was well aware that the moratorium was going to expire and that the bill should have been in the House earlier than it has been but given that it is not I do not think we have much choice but to try to do it in those 3 months. 
 Parliament has been waiting a long time for this legislation. When I first came here at the end of 1996 the select committee I joined had previously considered a bill to try to deal with the complex issues of the interface between the Fisheries Act the Marine Farming Act and the Resource Management Act. The bill had been reported back to Parliament and Parliament did not proceed with it. The committee I found myself on then proceeded to consider it again with some changes and we reported back to Parliament; and again Parliament did not proceed. Now finally after many years we have a bill that deals with aquaculture properly and I guess we all think that that is a good thing. 
It creates a single consent process under the Resource Management Act instead of the complex overlapping permit systems under three different pieces of legislation. As well as streamlining the process for marine farmers the bill also gives the opportunity for better environmental controls by putting it clearly under regional councils. The environmental impacts of marine farming range from “negligible” for things like mussel farms which simply catch the nutrients in the water that washes past them to “quite significant” for some forms of fin-fish marine farms which have to be fed with 10 times their weight caught from the wild fishery and which are in no sense a substitute for depleting wild fisheries. But the impacts of each of those types of farming need to be dealt with properly under the Resource Management Act and under Part 2 of the Resource Management Act which makes it very clear that this legislation is about sustainable management. 
Aquaculture is about a right to space not about a right to fish. So it should be managed like rights to space on land rather than like the Fisheries Act and the quota management system. So this is the right place to put aquaculture. As with land consents are limited to 35 years which is actually a long time; it is virtually a person’s whole working-life. We cannot foresee the sorts of conditions that might pertain at the end of that period and it is entirely appropriate that consents should expire at that time and that renewal should be possible if it is still appropriate and if the fisher has behaved according to the rules. 
We have to keep in mind the fact that unlike farming on land marine farmers are using public space for private purposes. That is fine because they are also contributing economic wealth and jobs to the community. But they should never think they have the same rights to that space as a farmer who owns land; and they do owe the community appropriate behaviour and good management of that space and concern for the activities of other users of coastal space with which they might come into conflict. 
The Greens supported the imposition of the aquaculture moratorium because we were seeing a gold rush for marine space with no proper controls. Regional councils had created some quite stupid inconsistencies in their coastal plans and there was a need to get that sorted out before we allowed more applications to proceed. One particular inconsistency in my neck of the woods was the Hauraki Gulf in the Firth of Thames where we have a line down the middle of the firth that separates Auckland region on the west side from Waikato region on the Coromandel side. On the Coromandel side Environment Waikato had set two very specific areas saying: “You may have aquaculture within these two areas but not elsewhere. You may have this large a farm you may have this many of them and here are the conditions.” Just across the water on the other side Auckland had said: “You can apply anywhere you like and we’ll consider it on a case by case basis.” 
We have two major concerns about the legislation. Some councils still have no aquaculture management areas. The moratorium has been there all that time and they have not stirred themselves and put the necessary plans in place. It is too much trouble or it is too expensive. So the Government has decided to allow them to be lazy to allow them to not do their job and to allow marine farmers to introduce private plan changes which transfer the cost of the planning process away from the council and on to the marine farmer. Well if the only people involved were the council and the applicants that would be fine—that is the people who benefit from the decision picking up the cost and it saves ratepayers. 
But what about the third party to the hearing—that is the public? What about the people who have very strong feelings themselves about where on their stretch of coast in their favourite bay it is appropriate to put marine farming structures and where it is not? Instead of participating in a single process whereby the council sets out a plan for its whole region and says: “Here here and here but not there.” they are now potentially going to have to take part in a series of processes whenever a marine farmer pops up and says: “We want this area designated as an aquaculture management area.” They will have to go through a whole plan-change process and then a couple of months later another farmer pops up and says: “By the way we want this bit over here designated as an aquaculture management area.” I can just see some of my friends out there who have a real concern about their local environment being run ragged trying to deal with all these different applications and that is not fair. 
We support strongly the 20 percent given to Maori. It is a logical sequence of the Maori fisheries settlement of 1992 but we are not in favour of allocation being left to Te Ohu Kai Moana. It is actually a cop-out. This is a very onerous task as is evident if we look at how long it took in the initial fisheries allocation. This proposal could have been considered by the select committee that was considering the Maori Fisheries Bill. The committee could have put some allocation proposals in place before the bill continued but that opportunity was denied to it. We do not think it is the function of Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd to do this work. It does not want to do it. The Government should establish an allocation process and take responsibility for its implementation. Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee does not believe that it is the Government’s general dogsbody for managing the issues that are too hard. Nevertheless we support the bill.