Carter David: Aquaculture Reform Bill — Second Reading Instructions to Committee In Committee 
Carter David: Aquaculture Reform Bill — Second Reading Instructions to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:622;Page:17731] 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 I certainly want to speak to Part 3 “Conservation Act 1987” which contains clauses 54 and 55 and the consequential amendments. I want to do so for two reasons because this part is unique in two ways. First of all amongst 141 submissions we got no submissions on this part at all. To date we have been debating all the controversial parts of the legislation with reams and reams of submissions received from people who knew that the Minister had made a mess of the legislation. Finally we come to a little bit in the middle of the bill—Part 3 “Conservation Act 1987”—with only two clauses and lo and behold even the industry had nothing to complain about in this regard. 
But this part of the legislation is also unique in another respect. Since the debate has started the Minister has had to table four separate detailed Supplementary Order Papers because of his incompetence and not one of them has to correct clauses 54 and 55. So I want to take the opportunity to thank the Minister. Good on him; he has finally got one part right—the only part in 200 pages of legislation that he can say he presented to the Parliament with any competence at all. 
While I congratulate the Minister that is a dreadful record. The Minister of Fisheries who is meant to be in charge of the aquaculture reform legislation presents to Parliament 240-odd pages that are a diabolical mess and causes the select committee to work for I think 34 hours of deliberation—34 hours of hearing submissions. And here we finally come across a little snippet in Part 3 whereby we find two clauses that the industry had no objection to and more important two clauses that the Minister has not had to bring a Supplementary Order Paper into the Committee for us to correct his incompetence with. 
The Minister might like to tell members how he got Part 3 “Conservation Act 1987” so right when it is not even his portfolio area yet he got every other part of the bill into one unholy mess. I do not think that the credit can go to Chris Carter—I do not think so. I think the credit does not go to the Minister either. I think that this is one where officialdom has done well. 
Simon Power 
: No! 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: I think that it is. I do not think that David Benson-Pope even realised—[ 
Interruption 
] Ian Ewen Street mentions that I should wash my mouth out but I think we have to realise that in legislation like this if somebody gets something right it is fair to acknowledge it. That is the purpose of the Committee stage of the House. So in amongst— 
Hon Member 
: If they had a decent chair! 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: Well Darren Hughes is saying that the chair is at fault—the chair is at fault because there are two clauses in the bill that did not require altering through a select committee. So that is the chair’s fault! Well I say to Darren Hughes that he is a new member and he will not be here for much longer because Nathan Guy is out there tonight. He is door-knocking in Otaki. He will be here and he will be an excellent member. Everybody says he will be an excellent member because they have expressed a lot of disappointment with Darren Hughes. But Darren Hughes will realise when he reminisces on his short parliamentary career that one does not blame the chair of a select committee when two clauses out of a couple of hundred come back unchanged. That is not something one praises the chair of the select committee for and it is certainly not something one blames the select committee chair for. It means that somebody presented that little part of the bill to the Hon David Benson-Pope and that little part was right. So I say to the Minister congratulations on doing that at least.