Dowie SarahSARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Oh thank you Mr Chair. I am delighted to take a call on Part 1 of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill. I do have to start by saying that this side of the House is disappointed that we cannot support this bill. Of course we supported it at first reading to go to select committee to be worked through to do our due diligence because of course we do support conservation and want pragmatic solutions with respect to the protection of our indigenous freshwater fish. However as I said in the first reading this bill goes too far. It was a somewhat poor process and we are left concerned especially with Part 1 which is the operative section that sets out to in itself prohibit the taking of freshwater fish—especially whitebait—from the conservation estate and also goes further to reserve the right to put in place further regulation with regard to the taking of whitebait outside of the conservation estate. I note the member opposite started to talk about clause 7 and that is in fact the operative part which outlines the prohibition on people being able to take indigenous freshwater fish from the conservation estate unless there is express authorisation. As such I have tabled in my name Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 389 which seeks to amend that clause 7 and insert a new section 26ZHE which suggests that (1) A person may fish for whitebait from a conservation area in accordance with the Whitebait Fishing Regulations 1994 or [the] Whitebait Fishing (West Coast) Regulations 1994." I think that this illustrates the pragmatic side that we subscribe to here on this side of the House—the National Party—in that we understand that whitebaiting is a Kiwi tradition and that whitebaiting puts food on the table and it also creates livelihoods. Now that does not fly in the face of not wanting to eat populations to extinction; it's simply acknowledging a tradition and we are of course favourable with respect to pragmatic regulation practical regulation that looks to conserve the species but we are not supportive of a blanket prohibition. When it comes to the way clause 7 is written at the moment and especially looking further as we will debate into Part 2 with the transitional clauses that basically allow whitebaiting on a conservation area for a transitional period of a year—although I note that the Government itself has put in an SOP to extend that two years. That in itself suggests that there will be a blanket prohibition on the whitebaiting moving forward. As part of my SOP 389 I take it further and say that "(2) The Director-General—(a) must not take any action that would prohibit or result in the effective prohibition of … taking whitebait" but can put in place measures to sustainably manage that fishery and that may include things like looking at the net size that is used with respect to fishing time limits for fishing and the number of nets per person. So they're more pragmatic and practical measures to look to conserve the species moving forward but not look to kill people's livelihoods or to stop a Kiwi tradition that has been ongoing for years and years and years and that allows people to go out and recreate and put food on the table. So we're looking at sensible solutions on this side of the House. We hope that the Minister in the chair Eugenie Sage will look at this SOP and see sense and support it. I know my colleague Maureen Pugh will speak about the effects of this on the West Coast given that 85 percent of the land there is conservation estate."