Eckhoff Gerrard: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
Eckhoff Gerrard: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14567] 
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT) 
: 
 We are debating clause 67 “Qualifying years”. I want to read to the Committee some correspondence from United Fisheries one of the players in the scampi game and I hope the Committee will reflect on those qualifying years as I do so: “United Fisheries was one of the very first fishing companies to enter the scampi fishery and was the first company to be issued with a commercial permit for scampi fishing. The salient point here is from the late 1980s onwards United Fisheries was unable to obtain any scampi permits. They have always argued that they were wrongfully denied access to the scampi fishery during that crucial time between 1988 and 1992 and thereafter.”  
So that was a company that did qualify. It was trying to fish during that time but it was denied access by the ministry. Is that fair? Absolutely not. But really this issue goes beyond the word “fairness”. We know that what is fair to one person is not necessarily fair to the next. In trying to allocate fairness to everybody I suspect we will end up with nothing but a huge amount of unfairness. I personally have always believed that the word “fairness” should be struck from the English language. What should happen is that ministries or allocations should do what is right. I repeat that. We should always do what is right. Ultimately I think these things will become fair after a period of time. 
Certainly during the qualifying years United Fisheries and others were treated very very unfairly especially those down in the far South. The Dunedin office of the ministry had a policy of not issuing scampi permits during that time. That was a method of excluding that particular company. Others were allocated potting devices by which scampi crawled into the pot. That was just a waste of time. The time effort and amount of catch was just not relevant. One could not catch commercially. Those that were involved in potting to establish some sort of catch history during those qualifying years were again not treated as they should have been. 
I have to wonder why we have qualifying years—why we have that arbitrary figure. Some would argue that in any of these things one needs to have a definitive time frame of 1 2 or 3 years. It seems to me that when a company or a fisher can show that there has been effort—their boat might have been laid up for some reason or another such as a broken crankshaft or the fisherman himself might have had a broken leg and been out of action for 6 months or so—an arbitrary ruling in legislation that something has to happen during particular times or in particular years can be very very unfair. 
Again I come back to the point I made earlier. We will always have unfairness surrounding every fishery that we have ever allocated quota to. I guess that goes back to the days of blue cod orange roughy or hoki or—it does not really matter. I suspect the question of fairness during the qualifying years was a difficult one to determine. While there is every sympathy and understanding for those particular companies especially in the scampi fishery it is fair to say that we are hopeful that ultimately what is right will occur and that the ministry will understand and recognise that the unfairness that has gone on should be rectified.