Abel SteveSTEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. I appreciate the call. Minister we clearly see your bluster and certainty around the need to trample on your garden-variety Kiwis in the regions who want to have input on what happens in their commons and to make these dictates from on high from the throne of central government. But I do wonder in considering what a reasonable piece of legislation might look like if you have any mind to making some reasonable amendments to this. Obviously we oppose it in its entirety. But given the nature of this House with this current Government being so averse to even the slightest improvement or tweak on an otherwise bad piece of legislation I wonder if you in your wisdom and experience might consider that there are in fact some well-considered amendments that could improve this bill—Mr Chair; through the Chair I should say as I've been advised. Thank you.Hon Members: Mr Chair! Mr Chair!STEVE ABEL: I haven't finished. I know you'd like me to be finished but I haven't quite finished yet. It's the passion.One of the things that came up in the hearings Minister was the impact of fish farms—finfish farms—being quite significantly different to molluscs. Finfish farms produce a lot of waste: faeces from the fish and uneaten food. They are well known and understood across the world to generate problems of pest organisms. The nutrient loads that make their way to the seafloor suffocate benthic communities and turn the seabed hypoxic and anoxic. They have impacts on wild fish species and wild species of all sorts of varieties. The antibiotics that are put into finfish farms also have an impact on the environment and the detritus that comes out of a finfish farm can travel for up to 1000 meters indiscriminately. And finfish farms make up a tiny percentage of our total farms—around 2 percent of total consents—and so I have a proposed amendment here that would not give this 20-year extension to finfish farms.In recognition of the unique characteristics of the complexities we've had with them here in this country with fish dying en masse in one instance—or other instances as well—and of the significant impacts they have is it not correct that they should be subject to a more thorough scrutiny and consent process? And simply the existing status quo consent process could be applied to finfish farms who wanted to extend their consents. They would not be entitled to this exceptional privilege of an automatic 20-year extension. So the proposal is Minister—and the other consideration is that unlike molluscs finfish are considered as sentient in our legislation and some people in a number of submissions characterised some forms of finfish farming as like battery farming at sea. I know the Minister will have a lot of fun with that but that is a view that is taken because fish are animals too. Given they make up only 2 percent of our consents would not excluding finfish from the bill recognise their more substantial environmental effects? Under this amendment they would be given this free pass that they perhaps should not have.So Minister in clause 4 new section 165ZFHB we propose inserting a subsection (2) on page three after line 16: However nothing in this subpart applies to coastal permit authorising aquaculture activities in relation to finfish as that term is defined in section 2(1) of the Fisheries Act 1996." That is a proposal that seems nominal and reasonable and I hope you will consider it Minister. Thank you."