Peters Winston: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 3) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Peters Winston: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 3) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:15137] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 The reality is that this bill will be passed through Parliament unless the Green Party and United Future come to their senses. If they do come to their senses then this bill will not proceed and we will have time to consider its serious and dramatic flaws. 
I have had a chance to look at the legal opinion provided by the Minister of Fisheries to me. I was told he had two legal opinions but he has not; he has one from the same man—twice. Well the day the courts of this country believe that the 1992 settlement was envisioned by Maori at that time to include the zone beyond the exclusive economic zone it is high time we start changing our judges. What the Minister is saying is even if we got a contract off Chile for example nevertheless the Maori people—whether or not they invested one cent—would gain 20 percent. Surely the Maori people are not so unfair that they think that is right. I do not know of any sane rational fair Maori who thinks that is fair bearing in mind that the Maori Fisheries Commission has hundreds of millions of dollars and could join our New Zealand fishing companies now make an investment and gain its 20 or 30 percent that way. That is the honest and fair thing to do and why we are facilitating these sorts of demands is beyond me. 
More important why did the Minister not go and get a second or third legal opinion from some Queen’s counsel down town on whose academic expertise we could more rely? 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: We have got three. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Well if he has three where are they? I have only two legal opinions here written by the same man. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: They say the same thing. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Oh they say the same thing. Well if they say the same thing why have we not seen them all. Why are we not privy to all the legal opinions that say that? But can he show me the Maori who says that 20 percent of the Ross Sea Dependency resource is owned by Maori? Many years ago I said that in a statement I made at the time and I got a letter from a Maori who said: “Well in our mythology one of our waka went down there.”—and that is a fact. It is one thing for Maori to make fair claims— 
Brian Connell 
: What’s his name? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: What is his name? It was such a long time ago. I threw the letter in the round filing basket as I was so disgusted with it. But it is in the name of Maori that many of these claims are being made. My message to the Maori people is to ask how it benefits them if this sort of baseless claim is allowed to be promoted by a Government that is in trouble because it does not understand the Maori people and whose members have not been doing their work around the Maori rohe and as a consequence seek to sneak this bill through Parliament and somehow ingratiate themselves with the whanau and the brothers back home. Mr Tamihere knows full well what I am saying; the Maori people are sick and tired of members who are lions on marae and lambs in Parliament—and this bill will not save them. 
There is a significant injustice here. Why should a fishing company take the risk of capitalising into boats and of putting men offshore in a very very high-risk environment if no matter what it gains by way of quota history 20 percent automatically goes to Maori? Let me ask the Greens this: where do they think Maoridom is going if that is a fair policy? What do they think they are doing for the Maori people if they advocate that? And what about United Future of all parties? Where in the family doctrine of United Future does it state that it is right to treat one member of the family differently from the other? Where is that doctrine? Why do we have it in respect of this legislation? 
The other thing I want to ask very clearly is where the Ministry of Fisheries gained the idea that green-lipped mussel spat is to be found only in the far north. Where did it get that idea from? Nine people will become the exclusive owners—from now on in perpetuity it seems—of that resource. Where on earth did it get that idea? Where is the scientific evidence? Do all those spat that I have been seeing on the beach at places like Whananaki and Whangaruru get there by some sort of mistake? 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Are they yours? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: That is what I said: are those ours or are we to allow others to take what is a resource and develop it into something huge? I know for a start that if we allowed aquaculture off the coast of the Bay of Plenty 20000 tonnes of spat could be harvested per year and 400 people could be employed.