Sage Eugenie: Kaikōura (Te Tai-o-Marokura) Marine Management Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Kaikōura (Te Tai-o-Marokura) Marine Management Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 22 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19375. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. E ngā mana e ngā reo e ngā waka e rarau mai nei tēnā koutou katoa.[Greetings to you the Speaker of the House and to you all the powers voices and canoes settling in here.]I am pleased to take a call on the Kaikōura (Te Tai-o-Marokura) Marine Management Bill. The Green Party supports the creation of more marine protected areas around New Zealand and the protections contained in this bill. That is why we are supporting it because it does advance marine conservation. In New Zealand we are about a century behind on protection at sea compared with where we are on protecting land. New Zealanders generally think that about one-third of our marine area is protected according to a survey that the World Wide Fund did in 2011 but in fact less than 0.5 percent of our waters are protected as marine reserves. So this bill is a small step towards improving that statistic but as my colleague Gareth Hughes noted we do have some concerns about it and believe that it does not go far enough.Before I move on to that I would just like to acknowledge as others have done the huge amount of work that Te Korowai o Te Tai o Marokura did in discussing and identifying areas for protection and coming up with the package that has been put forward in this bill. I certainly enjoyed the visit that the select committee made to the Kaikōura area hearing the strong submissions from members of Te Korowai o Te Tai o Marokura and other members of the community about the bill because when law puts in place the views of the community it is generally good law.But this bill could have been improved if the marine protected areas guidelines that were developed by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Department of Conservation had actually been applied to the process of identifying areas for protection as marine reserves and dealing with their boundaries. It is in that area that we have some significant concerns because as the Minister of Conservation noted the Kaikōura Canyon is nationally and internationally recognised as a hotspot of biodiversity. When you apply the marine protected area guidelines that is about ensuring that marine reserves protect a representative range of the biodiversity that is present. The guidelines also talk about avoiding edge effects and here we have a very odd-shaped marine reserve with two lobes and about 12 different sides within a very irregular shape that submitters have said will cause difficulties with enforcement and will also compound the problem of edge effects. It is widely known with a lot of the marine reserves here and overseas that fishers will often sit on the outer boundary of the reserve because the reserve assists in increasing marine life obviously. That fishing will have an impact on species within the reserve. Where you have an odd-shaped reserve that in parts is less than a kilometre wide those edge effects will be intensified because of the very odd boundaries. That will limit the effectiveness of the reserve.Those concerns were set out in strong submissions by the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society’s national office and the Marine Sciences Society. Like Moana Mackey from Labour I strongly reject the claim by Maggie Barry that the submission by Forest and Bird was doctrinaire because it was based on very sound science about the impact of edge effects and about international best practice in terms of marine reserve design. It was very disappointing that the statutory agencies involved in the Te Korowai o Te Tai o Marokura forum process in that collaborative process did not help the forum to implement best-practice guidelines or the Marine Protected Areas Policy.We applaud the change that the Minister proposes to bring in a Supplementary Order Paper to reduce the review period from 25 years to 10 years and we hope that that review will address these issues of the extremely complex 12-sided boundary and the fact that the reserve does not protect all the areas that it should do. The experience around New Zealand has been that where you have had significant opposition to the establishment of marine reserves that has generally changed after they have been established and you have had strong community support. The Leigh Marine Reserve from Cape Rodney to Ōkākari Point—there was a lot of opposition to that. Yet when the Department of Conservation and others did a study in 2008 they identified that over 375000 people visited that marine reserve annually and they contributed $18.6 million a year to the local economy.So the fact is that this Hikurangi Marine Reserve protects less than 2 kilometres of the coast which is much less than any other marine reserve in New Zealand in terms of the length of coast protected. Even the tiny postage stamp Pōhatu Marine Reserve or Flea Bay in Canterbury which is only 215 hectares in size protects nearly 7 kilometres of coastline. Here with the Hikurangi Marine Reserve it is going to protect less than only 2 kilometres. That is overlooking a major opportunity for recreational tourism because the coast at Kaikōura is very accessible given that the State highway runs along it. As we have seen with the Tonga Island Marine Reserve in Abel Tasman National Park that resulted in a lot more visitors to the Abel Tasman more accommodation providers establishing more water taxi operators and more kayak companies. So there was a major boost in economic activity associated with marine protection and the same at Leigh. I think that if the reserve had been bigger along the coast so that it was easily accessible to people wanting to go diving and snorkelling and to see marine life where it is unfished that would have increased the significant benefits that Kaikōura already has from nature-based tourism around the whale-watching operation. So bringing that review period down to 10 years is certainly a good idea because we hope that the community will recognise that there are substantial economic as well as ecological benefits from increasing the marine reserve.We certainly support the collaborative process that has operated here but we think that it definitely needs to occur within the framework of the national policy—the Marine Protected Areas Policy—where you have scientists on the forum because there were not any scientists on Te Korowai o Te Tai o Marokura. We note in the regulatory impact statement of the bill that Te Korowai o Te Tai o Marokura identified the marine reserve as an area that would not have a major impact on fishing activity. So that focus on ensuring that the fishers are not too badly affected by the marine reserve and the lack of a strong science input has I think led to the very odd boundaries and the strange two-lobe shape of the reserve and the fact that it does not protect a lot of the canyon walls above 800 metres depth and that it has excluded areas like some critical seamounts which we know are a hotspot for biodiversity.So the opportunity for the review is where we hope some of the shortcomings in the marine reserve will be addressed but it is a bill that we support because it does take marine conservation forward. Thank you.Bill read a second time.Name changed to Kaikōura (Te Tai o Marokura) Marine Management Bill.