O'Connor Damien: Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 15 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17283. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): It is indeed a pleasure to rise and speak on this bill the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Good things take time they say and this issue has taken some time to be resolved. In fact there are a few members over there—and the chairman of the Primary Production Committee who I acknowledge handled this situation very very well. He was around in 1996 I believe—Shane Ardern: 1998.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Oh he came in 1998. Well indeed I was here in 1996 when the Fisheries Act was passed. To lay some groundwork for this I want to acknowledge the sterling effort of my previous colleague the honourable Graham Kelly who was the champion for New Zealand fishermen. He in the passage of the bill under the previous National Government fought—and it was a hard fight—to ensure that people working on boats in New Zealand waters were at least entitled to the same terms and conditions of any ordinary hard-working Kiwi regardless of what nationality they were and regardless of what boat they were on.He won that argument at the time. It was implemented in the Act in 1996 but it became apparent that in fact the implementation of that law was not occurring. In fact when we came into Government in 1999 it was thereabouts—and Mr Deputy Speaker you would probably recall this yourself—that we then did a review of the situation. It asked the question: is this law and are these terms and conditions being imposed? The fact was that they were not. The Department of Labour—it has been doing it in a few areas I have to say since then as well as back then that day—was not in fact checking on the conditions of people working on these boats.Then there was again an extended period before we had some action. I can applaud the Government that finally following the sinking of theOyang 70 boat in the Southern Ocean it saw the need to investigate this further. There was an inquiry. Again a previous colleague the Hon Paul Swain conducted that inquiry and came up with some recommendations that were effectively put into legislation.The select committee has looked at this. The proposal was to effectively flag all the vessels as New Zealand vessels and to ensure that anyone working catching fish in New Zealand’s economic zone—and it is a very big area—are on New Zealand boats or boats flagged under the New Zealand flag and that they are entitled to the terms and conditions that any good Kiwi would expect.It is not an easy life out there. I can acknowledge the great work done in my home town of Westport where a fishing school trained young Kiwis who were a bit lost into the fishing industry to earn really good money on New Zealand boats out catching New Zealand fish. We want to see that continue.What we had of course with the allocation of quota to smaller iwi groups—and we have got of course iwi owning the biggest chunk of quota in this country effectively caught through Sealord. But there were smaller iwi groups of course and other bigger companies that were relying on the foreign charter vessels to catch either highly migratory species or fish that came in over short seasons and as I say smaller groups that could not afford to go out and catch fish or buy a boat.If I can go back one step to “New Zealandisation” which was a term used through the 1990s to encourage New Zealand quota owners in the fishing industry to buy boats owned controlled and crewed by New Zealanders. It was a very patriotic and a very visionary approach that ran well for a number of years but then ran foul I guess of short-term management thinking cost pressures or whatever. And so though we had built up a reasonable fleet of New Zealand boats in fact we have seen that shrink back and the increasing use of foreign charter vessels.On these boats arguably we have people who are working in slave-like conditions. There is no other way to say that. We have heard numerous reports from crew who have come into New Zealand ports walked off their boats and demanded to have payment from the owners of the boats. They have described to colleagues both on this side of the House and that side of the House atrocious conditions that no person can tolerate let alone a Government that is mandated to ensure fairness and some kind of equity and some human rights in this country. Indeed we had people catching fish in the New Zealand economic zone who were treated like slaves who had no guarantee of receiving payment and salaries and remuneration for their efforts when they got back home. They were effectively held to ransom on a boat in the middle of the Southern Ocean or the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That is not a great place to be.This bill when it proceeds will ensure that all those boats catching fish will be New Zealand - flagged with the exception of some research vessels. That was not the proposal in the bill. In fact it is not the proposal in the copy of the bill that I hold in my hand. But the Associate Minister for Primary Industries has said that she will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper. That has come about as a result of last-minute interventions that no one on the select committee had any idea how they had occurred. I have my suspicions that the Government succumbed to some lobbying from the Māori Party and some iwi groups; that they sought an exception—Andrew Little: Too busy hosting them for dinner.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Well that is probably one of the discussions that came out of one of those dinners no doubt. Paying $5000 to go to a dinner and get this exemption put in a bill like this is certainly a good investment. That is probably how it happened. But I am not going to dwell on that issue. I think it is all very clear and apparent to anyone who has got half a brain actually what happened here. None the less the Government through maybe another dinner held by another group of people from the fishing industry no doubt was convinced that the exemptions put up for iwi and for other groups were in fact unsustainable. That is it was going to be difficult if not impossible to ensure that the spirit and objective of the bill—that is to ensureproper wages and conditions for people working on these boats—was upheld if we had exemptions for foreign charter vessels for pretty much any reason.So the Minister in his or her wisdom and Cabinet in its wisdom or not—or because of a dinner or something—have done an about-turn on this. We should not criticise the Government members because for once in their lives they have finally made the right decision. I think the members of the select committee from all parties could see that this bill needed to be passed. No fair-minded Kiwi could continue to accept the conditions on these foreign charter vessels. They are nothing but floating dungeons. As we saw with theOyang 70 that is indeed what happened for too many of these poor fishing workers.The Government has done an about-turn. We welcome that. We are not going to question why. But this will now enable the fishing industry to catch its own fish. We hope and we expect to process that fish in New Zealand or on New Zealand boats and to add value here in this economy and get out and sell this high-value protein to the rest of the world. At this point the fishing industry is not doing a great job in that area. It has to be encouraged and assisted maybe through things like accelerated depreciation or whatever to get new modern boats to catch fish freeze them down quickly process them and have the highest quality fish protein for the world’s most discerning markets.That is the objective we must have from what is one of the biggest exclusive economic zones in the world and one of the biggest areas of fisheries available to any country. We have got this jewel. It is run by a reasonably good quota management system—but it is not perfect. This bill enables everyone working on those boats to have at least a decent wage to live on a boat that is not a dungeon and to actually adhere to and uphold the conditions that were laid down in the Fisheries Act 1996 fought for by my colleague. Indeed New Zealand wages and conditions are owed to anyone working in this country.