Peters Jim: Fiordland Marine Management Bill — First Reading 
Peters Jim: Fiordland Marine Management Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:622;Page:18120] 
JIM PETERS (NZ First) 
: 
 Who would come to the House having read through the Fiordland Marine Management Bill and accompanying documents and not commend the bill? New Zealand First does just that. A locally based incorporated society has worked since 1995 to develop in consultation with the widespread community and with all the stakeholders involved a plan that has finally culminated in this bill. The motives are there particularly with regard to the integrated management of the area and the special features that make that area quite unique. 
But having said that one wonders why we have a piecemeal intervention into the whole marine reserves process. Some of us were involved with the Oceans Policy and worked through it many months ago. So where is that overarching all-embracing policy? Why is it not here to set out the indicators and determinants of where our total marine shelf marine life and coast should be with regard to their future and preservation? That is not here. We also have a Marine Reserves Bill on which submissions were heard many many months ago. There is no indication whatsoever that the present Government wishes to advance that bill. Yet at the same time the Department of Conservation is endeavouring to promulgate marine reserves elsewhere against local opinion. I refer particularly to Mimiwhangata Great Barrier Island and more important to those in the far north the projected Three Kings Islands reserve. Those are all examples of the use of haphazard systems to develop marine reserves and they are all in various stages of uncertainty because of local reaction. 
I will now draw the House’s attention to some issues that in perusing this bill I find rather interesting. The first one is why the local authority Environment Southland is not the determining body for this bill. There may be very cogent reasons for that not being the case but one has to ask whether it is part of the Government’s policy. Yesterday we heard in the debate on the Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill of interventions upon local authorities. We know that there probably had to be interventions with regard to Environment Canterbury. Is this yet another intervention upon the regional coastal policy which was created only in March 2004 and which—as far as I am able to see—is a very very sound proposed coastal plan? One would expect the local authorities to have a major role. I do not see that at all in this bill. 
Secondly when I look at the proposed regional coastal plan for Southland and at the various delineated boundaries and areas in the plan I see some strange omissions. One wonders and I hope that submitters will bring this issue to the Fisheries and other Sea-Related Legislation Committee whether there are cogent reasons as to why there is a fenced-off area. When I look at the coastal plan and see the delineation from Awarua Point southwards along that coast I wonder why a significant part of that area is not part of the plan. The coastal plan states that the values of the coastal marine area are very diverse and include ecosystems habitats natural character amenity open space landscape biodiversity and historical spiritual or conservation values. It states that those values are the heritage of future generations. One wonders therefore having seen that statement in the outline of the coastal plan why those values are not extended to a much greater area of the coastline particularly as when one goes through the attributes of those sections of the Southland coastline—and by the way it is a very significant one of almost 3000 kilometres—one finds there are other areas to the south that should be part of the plan. So I suggest to the Minister and to submitters that attention be given to why the fenced-off area is considered to be significant by the guardians and not a much larger area. 
The third major point I want to bring to the House is that behind this bill was a “gift and gain” concept. The gift and gain concerns commercial and recreational fishing—where the gift is through a reduced take—and tourism operators. I would like to be reassured that this bill will go out to each and every one of those stakeholders in order to make very certain that they really feel that the final version of the legislation represents a gift and a gain—that what they have given away will be a substantial gain to them and to the environment long term. In that regard I particularly notice in the coastal plan that special importance is given to the sheltered anchorage areas of Southland’s coastline. The single most important safety feature available to fishermen in Fiordland it states are the few sheltered bays and anchorages. I would like to believe that every one of those areas has been preserved in this plan. Not only are they of value to commercial and recreational fishers but also they are of value to cruising yachts to pleasure boats and to tourist launches. In fact they are of the same value today as they were to Captain James Cook so many many years ago. Although one would hope that those special features of the coastline are preserved in this plan on looking at the anchorages that are listed I am not altogether certain that they are all included. 
Last of all I want to draw the House’s attention to the issue of why this bill is not going to the Local Government and Environment Committee. The bill has mixed features. It is a bill that concerns the Department of Conservation and also concerns the Ministry of Fisheries. There is a Marine Reserves Bill before the House that wishes to exclude fisheries totally from the oversight of that bill. Yet this marine reserves bill which is intended to incorporate into the national system probably the largest marine area in terms of size and capacity that has ever been incorporated into it is to be looked at by the Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation Committee. I am not saying that that is the wrong way to consider matters with regard to the sea but it does send a mixed message as to what the Government really intends. I hope some submitters on the bill will come back to that matter particularly because when I look at the Southland Regional Coastal Plan I see one major submitter. One would not have to hazard a guess as to who that submitter is—it is the Department of Conservation which has attitudes with regard to coastal management that are sometimes rather perverse and rather strange but that cause ratepayers many many thousands of dollars in resolving the department’s local reference orders. 
The last thing that this bill may do is that if the Minister accepts—and the ministry does accept I hope—that the fenced-in area is too small then the same studious attention would be given to the wider area of Southland’s coast and particularly to the area to the south. That would mean that there is a truly integrated approach not just in the area set out by the proposed framework of the guardians but for the wider area of Southland. I am quite sure that the local authorities down there would be very pleased to be party to such an approach because the cost of preserving that environment long term would be shared—as it ought to be. I do hope the Minister keeps that point very much in mind because it seems to me that the fenced-off area is too small. The reasons for preservation are relevant to a much wider coastal framework than that—and they should be if this bill is to progress further with the widespread blessing of the wider community. Increasing the size of the area would be of far greater benefit than the currently proposed area and would preserve the essential core values that the regional coastal plan states should be the core values for the future.