Tirikatene Rino: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:3057. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):I am pleased to take a call in this appropriations debate. I want to talk about the primary industry forgotten by this Government and that is the fishing industry and also its sister aquaculture industry. We have heard three calls from Government Ministers 15 minutes of kōrero from the Ministers and other than a passing reference to maybe some SPATnz research and some rescuing of some freshwater fish in some drying-up rivers down south we have had nothing from these Ministers and this Government on our fishing industry. Let me remind this Committee that the fishing industry is the seventh-largest commodity exporter in New Zealand and we have the fourth-largest exclusive economic zone in the world—15000 kilometres of coastline. It is a very important industry. And not only that—it is important culturally and it is important socially. We all love to fish. And it is very important commercially. Basically the lack of support for the fishing industry from this Government is evidenced by the contributions from these Ministers or the lack of support for the fishing industry.If we delve into the annual review we can see that there is no leadership from the Minister because we know that he has been disempowered by his Cabinet because of the disaster that occurred in the Snapper 1 fishery and the debate that roared from that fiasco. So we are not getting the leadership in the fishing industry and if you look into the great department of the Ministry for Primary Industries where is fishing in the Ministry for Primary Industries? It is an undersized under-resourced little back office within the Ministry for Primary Industries and that is what our great fishing industry has been turned into under this Government. If we look at the fishing industry that industry is funded largely through cost recovery levies from the commercial operators. They pay their way and they would expect better services out of the Ministry for Primary Industries and from this Government.As an example let us look at the front-line fisheries officers. I mentioned earlier how vast our fishing resources are and how vast our fishing industry is and yet we have barely over 100 full-time fisheries officers actually investigating and working across our fisheries and that is across that vast fishing area. Coupled with that there is just lack of resourcing all the way through the Ministry for Primary Industries and the commercial sector has been underserved by this appalling Minister and the lack of leadership. He is not coming up with any of the goods. It is evidenced by this annual review. There is no mention whatsoever from the Minister about the seventh-largest commodity export industry in our country the great fishing industry. We are not seeing the resourcing going into front-line officers. We are also not seeing those other proposals that the Government has talked about. Two weeks before the election we heard about these proposed recreational fishing parks. We are waiting to see the discussion paper. It was supposed to be released months ago and yet we are still waiting.Hon Damien O’Connor: Another broken promise.RINO TIRIKATENE: Another broken promise. It occurred back in 2008 and now it is repeating itself. This is a Government that is absolutely disempowered. It is not delivering for the fishing industry. We are still waiting on these proposed fishing parks. But at the core of it we have a quota management system and we will shortly next year be celebrating 30 years of our world-class world-leading quota management system which controls the take from all of our fish stocks to ensure sustainability. It is world-leading. It has been lauded internationally and yet this Minister and this Government have been undermining and have not been defending our quota management system. Fisheries management goes to the heart of that. Where is the fisheries management advice that is coming through from the Ministry for Primary Industries? It is absolutely all about process. It does not want to tackle the big issues. Shame!