Roche Denise: Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 15 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17297. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I am delighted to take a second short call for the Greens. We will be supporting the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill’s progression through the House. We will be supporting it because this bill seeks to address the human rights and working conditions of workers on foreign-owned vessels in our waters it seeks to improve the management of vessel safety and also seeks to set in place improvements to manage our fisheries more sustainably.Although we support this bill we are also of the mind that we should be introducing the provisions of this legislation in the earliest time frame possible. The first Ministerial Inquiry into Foreign Charter Vessels was completed 2 years ago and the recommendations were very clear. We urgently need to address the fact that the foreign charter vessels fishing in our waters are committing human rights abuses in many cases and employment rights abuses and taking enormous risks with the health and safety of their crew and with the fishing vessels themselves. They are often using dodgy fishing practices that threaten the very sustainability of our fisheries and our international reputation.Although I acknowledge that we are taking steps now to address the problems associated with foreign charter vessels the proliferation of these ships must be tracked back to the deregulation of the coastal shipping industry stemming from the late 1980s which first allowed foreign-owned rust buckets flying flags of convenience to undercut and undermine our locally crewed and frequently locally owned shipping companies. This neo-liberalism spread through to the fishing industry as well. So instead of investing in the development of local fishing crews and boats to take up the quotas the desire to reap a profit resulted in local quotas being fished by Korean Russian Indonesian—you name it; whoever was cheapest they picked up the work. I am told that there are roughly 2000 foreign workers working on foreign charter vessels in New Zealand waters and their work could have gone to New Zealanders. The profits of these New Zealand companies have been reaped from pitiful wages for the workers through breaches of human rights and—it is scary too—from badly maintained ships. In relation to the workers on the worst of the foreign charter vessels I am reminded of that quote fromTheGrey River Argus in 1920 which says: “If blood be the price of your accursed wealth good God! We have bought it fair.”The Greens support the steps taken in this legislation to clean up the industry and we need to do so because we are copping heavy international criticism. At the end of last year the European Union Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries warned that the EU was about to designate South Korea as an illegal fishing nation which jeopardises not just the catch from Korean boats chartered by New Zealand fishing companies that end up in Europe but also the catch from those boats that are processed in China or Korea or wherever. Clearly our international reputation is at stake. We have also been criticised by the United States State Department. In the middle of last year the Secretary of State released a report into human trafficking and New Zealand features in that report as a destination for human traffickers. The report points to the plight of foreign men mainly from Indonesia on foreign-flagged vessels in our waters and outlines incidences where workers have been subjected to physical violence mentalabuse sexual abuse and have had their passports confiscated and been trapped by debt bondage. We have heard more and more about how workers have been underpaid trapped and threatened.We must act promptly because the abuses and reckless disregard for safety is still continuing. In January this year one of our Government observers was seriously injured when his lifejacket was snagged on a conveyor belt on a Korean-owned fishing vessel in Bluff. Our Green MP Steffan Browning through the Committee of the whole House process will bring a Supplementary Order Paper to the Committee to debate to bring forward the starting time for this legislation. Thank you.