Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:3158] 
Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
Debate resumed from 3 May. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 It is with real pleasure that I stand today to support the very effective member of Parliament for Invercargill Eric Roy on his Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill. This Labour Government is making an absolute hash of marine reserve creation all over New Zealand. Whether in Kaka Point in Southland or Great Barrier Island in Auckland it is hard to find an area of New Zealand that the Government has not made a complete mess of in terms of consultation with its communities. Yet what we find with this Government is that for all Labour’s promises in 1999 about marine reserves it has made little progress. 
If members think back to 1999 they might remember that Labour said 10 percent of New Zealand’s marine environment would be set aside for protection. Yet 7 years later that has been achieved in less than 1 percent of New Zealand’s marine environment. I also draw to the House’s attention the abysmal progress that has been made in respect of the Marine Reserves Bill. Eric Roy is doing the hard yards for the Minister of Conservation Chris Carter. The Marine Reserves Bill was introduced and referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee in October 2002. That is more than 3½ years ago. Labour has a bill on which submissions were heard over 3 or 4 years ago that has still not been reported back by the select committee. What sort of mickey mouse Government do we have? 
Earlier this year last year and the year before that National attempted to move motions in the select committee in order to achieve some progress. It was Labour and—can members believe it—the Green Party that opposed our getting on with the business and reforming the Marine Reserves Act of 1971. There is consensus in this Parliament that that 1971 Act is out of date and needs to be updated substantially. Under the 1971 Act the sole purpose of a marine reserve is scientific. I think most of us today would say that marine reserves have a wider purpose than that. We want to have marine reserves so that people can simply enjoy the marine environment in its wild and natural state. We also want to have marine reserves because it is true that they strengthen the recreational fishing in adjacent waters. Yet again we are disappointed that Labour has made absolutely no progress on that legislation. Labour needs to be held to account for that. 
My colleague Eric Roy proposes that at the front end of the process for establishing marine reserves we inject consultation with the actual community. Has anyone ever heard of such a radical idea? Fancy having to talk to the local people! I know that for the Department of Conservation under Chris Carter talking with the minions the lowlife the people in communities is not something that Labour is used to. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Tell us about the long-term community communication plan. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I did not know there was such a thing as a long-term communication plan. 
Steve Chadwick 
: The principle of community communication. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Oh! The member for Rotorua has suddenly woken up and is in favour of long-term community communication plans. What Labour is proposing in the area of local government is the most bureaucratic expensive bull that I have heard of and my good friend Nathan Guy who is a new member of the House and a local councillor knows that it is a consultation farce. National will not back that sort of rubbish; we will back the sorts of sensible measures that Eric Roy put forward which reflect the fact that people actually care where marine reserves are situated. They want to have a say. That is where Labour is so misguided; it wants to see people buried in bureaucratic nonsense. 
Has anyone ever heard of anything as stupid as a long-term community communication plan? Does the member for Rotorua think we have the sorts of residents out there who want to be having meetings on long-term community communication plans for goodness’ sake? I tell that member who is so arrogant and so disconnected from her community that people want to be consulted about marine reserves. They want be engaged with that issue early on. So I say to the member that I hope she will be supporting Eric Roy’s bill. 
Steve Chadwick 
: We are! 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I am very pleased about that. That gives me some hope but perhaps the member for Rotorua might explain why the Government has been stalling on the necessary reforms of the Marine Reserves Act for 4 long years. 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 Madam Speaker— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I should have called the member previously so now she will need to seek the leave of the House to correct that. 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: I seek leave to speak on behalf of the Hon Chris Carter who had 8 minutes left to speak at the close of debate on the last members’ day. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker.  
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: It was my fault Dr Smith. I should have called the member previously. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Could you just clarify for the House that when a person has 8 minutes of speaking time left and is not available to be in the House that time can automatically be transferred to another member. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Yes it can be but I was not advised of that. I did not realise. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. Steve Chadwick has 8 minutes of speaking time. 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: I am pleased to notify the Opposition that the Government will be supporting the Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill. How could we not with that word “consultation” in the title? 
New Zealand has a biologically rich and complex marine environment. Our exclusive economic zone is the fourth-largest in the world—15 times larger than our land area and approximately the size of the continent of Australia. In effect we are a marine nation. More than 15000 marine species exist and are found in our waters including more marine mammal species and other marine species than anywhere else in the world. This Labour-led Government is committed to providing better protection to that vast marine landscape. I congratulate Eric Roy on his member’s bill because it seems to be committed to improving the way we seek to provide better mechanisms to do just that—to protect our marine environment. 
The Government has a Marine Reserves Bill before the Local Government and Environment Committee which I chair. The Marine Reserves Bill contains many of the provisions in Mr Roy’s bill. In addition the Minister of Conservation Chris Carter together with the Minister of Fisheries Jim Anderton launched a new Marine Protected Areas Policy last year. Perhaps that fact had escaped the member Nick Smith. The policy is designed to foster more consultation and collaboration between key stakeholders local government iwi recreational and commercial fishers conservationists and central government in determining which marine areas we should protect. Again that is a process that is remarkably similar in idea to this bill. Our committee may well decide to incorporate Mr Roy’s bill with the existing bill. That is an option well worth considering. 
Why are marine reserves so important to us? Well they provide the most comprehensive long-term legal protection of any protection tool for the marine environment. A wide range of human activities and impacts such as fishing discharges structures and pests can be prohibited or managed in an integrated way within marine reserves. Marine reserves aim to protect marine life within them in as natural a way as possible. There are now 28 marine reserves so I take exception to Nick Smith’s allegation that the Government has done nothing. We have 28 marine reserves established in New Zealand waters with a further three reserves having been approved and currently being surveyed prior to being declared marine reserves via Orders in Council. Collectively those reserves protect 7.6 percent of New Zealand’s territorial sea. However 99 percent of that is in two reserves around isolated offshore islands the Auckland Islands and the Kermadec Islands and very little—in fact even less of the area—is in New Zealand’s smallest national park the Abel Tasman National Park in our mainland territorial sea. Of New Zealand’s total marine environment just 0.3 percent is protected in marine reserves. Currently the highest level of protection outside our territorial sea—that is 12 nautical miles offshore—is through Ministry of Fisheries closures on trawling of 18 seamounts. Those closures bring the area of marine protection in New Zealand to just over 3 percent. 
We know that marine reserves work and as the Hon Nick Smith said there are far wider benefits such as educational benefits. Marine reserves are great places for school trips and projects. Marine education centres in Leigh Wellington Auckland Napier and Dunedin are testimony to children’s interest in their maritime heritage. There are research benefits that we are all learning about as we go along and there are also economic benefits. Marine reserves do not just bring back the fish and other marine life; they can also benefit local people. The 200000-plus visitors a year to the marine reserve near Leigh have contributed significantly to the local economy. Everything is connected. 
In conclusion we need marine reserves and other marine protected areas for good marine management but we also need to deal more effectively with land-based impacts such as sediment and pollution. We need to ensure that activities are managed sustainably over the whole of our coastal and marine environment. I will enjoy looking at aspects of Eric Roy’s bill in our select committee particularly that of consultation upfront prior to declaring marine reserves. I am pleased we are supporting the bill. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 I want to make the point that New Zealand First has long believed that the opportunity to throw out a fishing line and catch a fish is part of every New Zealander’s birthright and must be protected for future generations. It is something that makes this country absolutely unique and special to live in and for young people to grow up in. But I have to say that recreational fishers—and I am one myself—are not silly. They recognise the benefits of reserves. They also recognise the benefits of the spillover and how it actually improves their own take. But the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society has an agenda to turn 20 percent of our coastal waters into reserves and the Government has obviously indicated that it wants to turn 10 percent. Naturally people are anxious and worried about that. Therefore we believe that New Zealanders should be consulted about plans for reserves at an early stage of the process. So we will be voting for the bill to go to the select committee. 
We congratulate the member who introduced the bill Eric Roy because one can see his obvious experience from many years in select committees reflected in the way it was drawn up. We will await the select committee’s scrutiny before we give a guarantee of continued support however. 
 I want to hark back to 1997 when I was a Minister and Dr Nick Smith was the Minister of Conservation. He invited me to a dinner in Ngunguru to meet with Dr Wade Doak and a number of other marine scientists to talk over the issue of the Poor Knights Islands which were a partial reserve at that time but not a full reserve. We discussed the matter and then he consulted with me. He asked me whether I believed they should be turned into a full reserve. I admit that the arguments were compelling and I said yes I did believe they should become a full reserve. There was opposition particularly from recreational fishers but also from charter boat companies and other groups. 
I went to see the Poor Knights Islands for the first time a couple of months ago when there were celebrations for 25 years of the initial reserve having been set up. I had never been there before. The reserve is an absolute gem. If people have not visited the Poor Knights Islands they have not seen New Zealand. They have the biggest marine cave in the world. Evidently a German submarine was put in there—the one that lay the mines that blew up the  
Niagara 
 during the war. But below the surface is just amazing. I have never seen snapper as big as that. I did not know they existed. 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: Rikoriko Cave. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: Rikoriko Cave yes. I have never seen snapper the size I saw them there. [ 
Interruption 
] They were massive. And there was a whole range of species. Probably the fish at Goat Island— 
Hon Mita Ririnui 
: Is it a marine reserve or what? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: It is a reserve. It is a massive reserve. 
Hon Mita Ririnui 
: Well why did you catch it? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: I did not catch it. I was under the water looking at them. I was just looking at them and it was a fantastic experience. [ 
Interruption 
] The member would not have been looking at them; he would have been under the water catching them. 
There are probably more fish around Goat Island but the range of species around the Poor Knights Islands is magnificent. By talking that night to the scientists and to Wade Doak himself I learnt they are flabbergasted at how quickly the whole area has been replenished and the water has been restocked with fish particularly stocks of snapper. So I say to Dr Nick Smith that people out there were full of praise. He made a courageous decision and it actually paid off. He made the right decision. 
However there is still some grumpiness left and it is not over whether he made the right decision—the charter boats just turned into diving charter boats—it is about the fact that people were not consulted. Nick Smith has said that this Government has made a complete mess of the consultation process and unfortunately it was not strong at that particular time either. In particular Ngati Wai who perceive themselves as the kaitiaki and Ngati Taka which is the hapu in Ngunguru itself believe that the National Government rolled straight over them and did not consult them. They agree that there should be a reserve there and they have argued for it but they also believe that they should have been part of the process. 
All that we in New Zealand First can say is that we believe that this bill by having consultation at an early stage of the whole process will overcome some of the grumpiness and leave it behind. The same outcomes will flow through because of the genuine benefits that such reserves provide to New Zealand. I also say that if people have not been to the Poor Knights Islands they should use the opportunity over the Christmas holidays to take a trip up to Northland. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Thirty percent of New Zealand land is in national parks. It is outrageous that one cannot shoot birds log trees or mine on that 30 percent of New Zealand land! But I do not hear a huge outcry among the New Zealand public to reduce that figure to 1 percent. Less than 1 percent of our coastal waters is in marine reserves yet there is a huge outcry every time there is a proposal to protect a tiny area of marine ecosystem so that it can regenerate to something like its original state. We have vast areas where there is no restriction on fishing. We have a few very small areas where we say nature has to have its place too and there has to be a place where all New Zealanders can see the marine ecosystem as it originally was. In places such as Leigh where the marine ecosystem can be seen as it originally was it is just astonishing to see how biodiversity has regenerated since fishing and other extractive abuses stopped. 
The Green Party is strongly in favour of consultation and of communities being involved in the location of marine reserves but better provisions for this are in the Government’s new Marine Reserves Bill which has been languishing in front of this Parliament—in fact in front of the select committee I used to chair—for years now. I can understand Eric Roy’s frustration that that bill does not seem to be going anywhere despite the select committee having heard all the submissions on it given it a lot of consideration and formed some pretty strong views across the House about changes we could make. Those changes would improve consultation improve the role of iwi and hapu and prevent the current perception that the Department of Conservation is playing the role of judge jury and executioner on the whole issue. But the Government simply will not progress the bill. It was a huge disappointment to me when I was chairing the Local Government and Environment Committee that Government members were not prepared to advance the bill and it seems they are still not prepared to do so. 
So I can understand Eric Roy’s frustration and his wanting to bring in a bill that deals with only the consultation side of the issue. But that is not the right way to do it. We need to review the whole marine reserves situation. The 1971 legislation is anachronistic it is out of date and it does not deal with the modern world. It does not for example provide a proper role for iwi and hapu in the decision making and management of marine reserves. The new bill can do that—it already does so to some extent and there are ways in which it can be amended to further do so. I do not believe we should put an amendment bill through the House that deals with only the question of consulting people who want to fish. We have a substantial bill sitting on the Order Paper that will deal with that question and many other things as well. That bill will give us the opportunity to protect biodiversity at the same time as providing plenty of areas where people can go fishing. 
The Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill is not the way to take the issue forward. I challenge the Government to let the Marine Reserves Bill be debated at the Local Government and Environment Committee and to let some of the work that that select committee did last year and the year before reach fruition. The Greens will not support this interim bill. 
TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 Tena koe tena koutou te Whare. The Maori Party will support this bill in line with our principle that we believe in the right of people to have a say. In its purpose and intention the commitment to amend the Marine Reserves Act to ensure early consultation in the preparation of any application for the declaration of a marine reserve is positive. We encourage any opportunity for people to participate and for voices to be heard. 
Consultation is a key concept in honouring the Treaty relationship. I want to be clear that when we talk of consultation we do not mean the types of consultation exercises that may occur with interest groups such as fisher people surfers skiers tourism operators and so on. I want to say in this House that mana whenua are not an interest group. They are the Treaty partner and therefore consultation on the preparation of a marine reserve application must always be inclusive of any group that represents mana whenua interests. Te Tiriti o Waitangi provides for the exercise of kawanatanga while actively protecting the tino rangatiratanga of mana whenua in respect of their natural physical and spiritual resources. In order to exercise governance and protect and preserve the full authority of mana whenua consultation must be respected and an honourable process must be followed. 
A considerable body of case law has developed on the principles of consultation. The leading case is the Court of Appeal case  
Wellington International Airport 
 v  
Air New Zealand 
 and there is also the more recent  
Land Air Water Association 
 v  
Waikato Regional Council 
 decision. That case specifically discusses the principles of tangata whenua consultation. Although I am sure all members know those two foundation court decisions intimately I ask them to let me recap. In its essence consultation demands that the parties involved act reasonably and in good faith. In practice that means entering into the process without having first made up one’s mind about every aspect of one’s position. It means having respect for the issues and the people with whom one is consulting and not just doing the numbers. 
From the Maori Party’s point of view any proposal that stops politicians from running roughshod through communities has to be a good thing. This bill will put a process in place by which—through consultation—the applicant must explore ways in which the application may avoid or mitigate adverse effects on existing uses of the area of the proposed marine reserve. That may rectify or avoid such disasters as have occurred for mana whenua in the past such as in June 2005 when the Minister of Conservation Chris Carter announced the establishment of a marine reserve off Great Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf with scant regard for the interests of the mana whenua. 
The taking of Kaikoura Island and the Ngati Wai islands represented the very worst of processes possible in the setting up of marine reserves without consultation. Ngati Wai and Ngati Rehua exercise mana whenua over the north-east coastal area and Ngati Maru also has an interest in the north-east coast and marine areas. Those iwi were not uninterested parties. They were groups that had offered an alternative strategy that provided a partnership approach for marine protection. Ngati Wai was committed to working with the Government in the interests of marine protection and had also suggested a co-management approach. Instead the rug was literally pulled out from under its feet and it was forced subsequently to take action in the High Court to challenge the decisions from on high about offshore islands and marine reserves. 
We must not cut across mana whenua rights. We must hear the voices of those people and we must stop the relentless theft of property rights. If this bill can provide a stop to that process in time to really address Treaty-based rights we will all be doing well. The Maori Party will support this bill going to the select committee in order to ensure appropriate representation of and input from mana whenua in decision making and that their rohe is provided for. 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I begin by congratulating the member Eric Roy on having the Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill drawn from the ballot. United Future is very delighted that this bill has been drawn from the ballot because it is extremely topical and—as Tariana Turia has also mentioned—very controversial from a number of points of view. United Future members will be supporting this bill going through its first reading and on to the select committee. 
I should say at the outset that the principal reason for that is that the bill fits in exactly with United Future’s political philosophy. Our political philosophy can be summed up in the principle of subsidiarity. Some people in this House may be very familiar with that term; other people may never have heard of it. It simply means that political power should be devolved to the most appropriate level at which a decision should be taken. In other words it means that decisions proper to a family should be taken by the family. I guess we can go even lower and say that decisions proper to an individual should be taken by that individual. So we have the family the local community the local town the city and—only then and finally—the nation. 
It is appropriate that in the situation considered in the bill we give much more regard to consultation with the people affected. When a decision is made about a marine reserve a group of people in that location will be primarily affected; therefore they must have a say. It is interesting too from the point of view of the remarks made by the Hon Tariana Turia that the first time I ever came across the word “subsidiarity” was when a group of Maori came to talk to me and used the word. I had to ask them what it meant and they pointed me back to a social encyclical given by a Catholic Pope about a hundred years ago. That principle has therefore been a cornerstone of Catholic social teaching to this day—for more than a hundred years. 
When that group of Catholic Maori discovered the principle in a papal document they were tremendously encouraged. They said to me that precisely the whole problem about the implementation of the Treaty was that the principle of subsidiarity had not been followed. It must mean of course as the previous speaker has mentioned that we bring iwi and hapu and those with mana whenua into the process—not just as some window dressing exercise and not just so that a Minister can stand up here and say that people have been spoken to or even consulted but so that those people have been involved in the decision-making process. 
The process is the one that Eric Roy is bringing before the House in this bill. He is saying that those decisions must be taken effectively with the support of local communities and that that process takes consultation to its logical conclusion. When members think about that position they will realise that it is obviously the right position to be in. It is much better for decisions about marine reserves to be taken with the support of local and affected people—all of those we have mentioned: fishers tourists recreational users sailors tourism operators and so on. All those people need to be involved in the process and ideally they should feel that the outcome is one they have had a part in. 
This philosophy is much to be preferred to the nanny State philosophy that I must confess I see exhibited constantly in this House by the Green Party. That philosophy pretends that some people in our society who claim to have a much greater reverence for the environment than others for example somehow have a superior wisdom and that their view should prevail against other people’s views. I do not believe that that is where wisdom lies; I believe that it lies at local community level. I believe that it lies with the people affected by the decisions and that they therefore should be consulted and be part of the process. So United Future has great pleasure in signalling its support for this bill on its first reading and we will vote accordingly. 
SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to endorse many of the sentiments in this Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill that was introduced by a fellow colleague from the deep south. While I am on my feet I will say that I hope he takes our aroha and our mihi back to the whanau of Rakiura and the deep south area given the tragedy that has befallen key families in that community. 
As someone who has had some experience in maritime and marine affairs what I like about this bill—which I along with my colleagues endorse going to the select committee—is that it enables interested individuals stakeholders and tangata whenua to contribute and participate. Marine reserves are a controversial development. Obviously we want to see an improvement in ecosystem outcomes and in people participating in using and recreating in their local areas. But at the same time none of us actually want to see the potential of the marine environment completely locked up or dedicated to a single purpose. It is inevitable that marine reserves are controversial but unless there is participation and exchange of ideas that aggravation and controversy leads to people digging a ditch and not finding a way out of it. Obviously there are some overlap areas with our marine protected areas policy that was released earlier in the year. Marine reserves provide microcosms that enable people to see the variety of sea life and our young people to learn. More important they can be a focal point so that we can reacquaint ourselves as to how important it is not only to understand but to participate in the development of marine resources and to take more responsibility in our localities for the health of the marine environment in those areas. 
Those of us in the fishing industry have developed over the years some rather dim views about how marine reserves have been pushed willy-nilly by the more strident advocates from the environmental movement. Naturally we share some concerns with them but at the end of the day the Maori view is not a preservationist view. If there is a Maori view it is a conservationist and sustainable use view because if everything is locked up and preserved then one does not live. If there is one thing that can be learnt about the history of Maori it is that they are very adaptable people. They have altered their customs and attitudes to suit the vicissitudes of the circumstances they find themselves in. 
The select committee when it deals with this proposed legislation should remain alive to the prospect that nothing stays the same and nothing is static. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) 
: 
 I rise to speak in favour of the Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill. At present anybody can apply to create a marine reserve and once the process is struck the public becomes less and less involved in the process. This bill through legislation ensures not only the need to consult but also to do so thoroughly during the preparation of the application. The bill specifies that consultation must include groups that are actually representative of the community that lives by the sea people who use the sea for recreation and for earning a living through commercial fishing and/or tourism plus those who have an association culturally and through heritage such as the tangata whenua who we heard earlier this evening also claim the right through being a Treaty partner. 
The key to the need for this bill is that the present Marine Reserves Bill was referred to a select committee on 15 October 2002 and I understand that it has largely been neglected by the Government. It has not been reported back to the House. We heard from one of the previous Labour speakers about a maritime protection consultation process that was prepared last year by the present Minister of Conservation and the Minister of Fisheries. One of these new groups the West Coast Marine Protection Forum has in fact been established and has been working since I think last September. I attended one of its inaugural meetings at Hokitika. It has since been holding a number of other meetings throughout the Coast from Haast north. I spoke recently to the chairman of that group. 
Why then if that group is already in place do we need the new bill? The forum has representation from fishermen interest groups the Department of Conservation and the Ministry of Fisheries. I guess the reason we need this bill though is that it establishes a group through legislation. Based on the experience of the forum to date this bill has two key elements that will give the public some confidence for sadly the public seem to be losing trust in the present Government and its agencies in a wide range of activities that affect them. They do indeed. As stated in a report in the  
Greymouth Evening Star 
 of 27 April we are dealing with people on the Coast who do not deal with cosmetic change. They understand real change. The meeting was packed out with angry people. The sorts of comments called out did not indicate a great sense of trust in the present Government and its agencies based on the past or even looking to the future. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: Labour has abandoned the West Coast. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Labour has abandoned the West Coast indeed. A previous Labour voter told me: “Labour has left the Coast. The Greens want everybody else to leave the Coast. Thank God National’s coming back.” 
The forum is driven and established by the Department of Conservation which was very well-intentioned in doing so and the Ministry of Fisheries which was very well-intentioned in doing so but in fact it is not underpinned with the sort of legislation that looks after people in the way that Eric Roy’s bill will. I guess that the feeling is that the consultation could turn out to be cosmetic as so many other activities of this Government have turned out to be. People on the Coast are not happy with cosmetic consultation. They are not happy with being told they have been consulted when they have not but they will be happy with this bill and I congratulate Eric Roy on its introduction. 
That is the feeling that this Government and its agencies have generated in the minds of the public. There is a voiced concern that the Government has decided that 10 percent of the area will be put in reserve and there is a feeling of powerlessness to prevent the steamroller effect of an unfeeling Government having its own way regardless. We are not talking about a lack of public interest. Ninety people attended in Haast which is a big part of the local population. The meetings throughout have been well attended. There is a call for people to have a referendum. The interest is high; the process is weak. 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 I am delighted that we have received a large degree of support for the Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill at its first reading. I thank members for the generosity of their comments and I am looking forward to working on this bill in the select committee. 
Someone once said—I am not sure who the original person was because the comment has been plagiarised so frequently—that we do not inherit the environment the land or the sea from our forefathers; we borrow it from our children’s children. I think that is a sentiment that most of us have picked up on. I think that probably everybody here who has spoken today has concurred that marine reserves are important that they are an integral part as a tool in the management of our marine environment and that it is the degree to which we want to implement them that is the only difference. 
Can I just comment on one or two of the points that have been made in the course of the discussion on this bill. To Shane Jones who commented on the tragic loss in Foveaux Strait of those returning from the Titi Islands I say that yes I certainly will send the condolences of this House. In fact if it were not for this bill I would have attended the first funeral which was held this afternoon. The others are to be held this Saturday at 11 o’clock in Bluff and I will take the love and condolences of this House as Shane asked me to when I attend on that occasion. 
As far as the bill is concerned the point has been made that the process of marine reserves has largely stalled except for one stunning exception which is the Guardians of Fiordland’s Fisheries and Marine Environment and the establishment of eight marine reserves in Fiordland. That was done simply by a process of consultation. It is largely on that model as I said in my introductory remarks that I have based this bill. 
The Greens have chosen not to support this bill which I am a little bit disappointed about. Can I make a couple of comments with regard to that. Yes there is another bill at the select committee but it has been sitting there for some time and one of my intentions is to shake that with the passing of this resolution so I look forward to their support in progressing that. In terms of consultation this bill is somewhat more broad and requires a wider degree of consultation than does the 2002 bill as I read it. I think that is important. 
The other significant difference is that the bill I have introduced requires some elements of mitigation and I think certainly after speaking with members privately that there is a degree of discomfort with that among the Greens. Can I say that it is simply common sense and that if we take that out of the formula in setting marine reserves they stall and that is what has happened. Let me give members some examples. The Hon Brian Donnelly spoke of the establishment of a marine reserve at the Poor Knights Islands. The charter vessels did not want to buy into it but once it was established the mitigation was that they changed their modus operandi from catching fish to diving and looking and they did not miss out. 
 Probably a more significant example is in Fiordland where in this very hostile part of New Zealand anchorages are a key safety element. I began this part of the debate by talking about a tragedy in the Southern Ocean. What was required for those people who were opposing the marine reserves was anchorages. Every time an anchor is dropped down in some of these areas black and red corals that could be 1000 years old are being pulled up. In order to overcome that the mitigation was to create some permanent anchors. What a simple common-sense answer that is to the element of mitigation that this consultation actually requires. 
This is a common-sense bill. It requires consultation. With consultation comes success with consultation comes ownership and ownership will give the protection we need. I commend the House to vote for this legislation. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Marine Reserves (Consultation with Stakeholders) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
Ayes 113 
New Zealand Labour 50; New Zealand National 48; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 4; United Future 3; Progressive 1. 
Noes 6 
Green Party 6. 
Bill read a first time. 
Bill referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee.referred to Local Government and Environment Committee