Connell Brian: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 3) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Connell Brian: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 3) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:15136] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 The cameo performance of Winston Peters cannot go without some comment. He would have us believe—so easily he would have us believe—that he has spent very little time in the National Party. But when I look around at my colleagues now I see that with the possible exception of one Winston Peters has spent more time in the National Party than any other member presently in the Chamber. He might say his DNA is not all over some of these fisheries settlements but he and I know better. 
Let me turn my attention to the most hopeless Minister in the Cabinet and that is Mr Benson-Pope the one who is in the chair right at the moment. When I was coming down to the Chamber I thought I would pick up the bill and have a look at it. But then I came into the Chamber and saw his Supplementary Order Paper. It does not have just one page of changes; it does not have just two; it has 17 pages of changes and that is absolutely outrageous. This Minister is so hopeless that he will not even get on his feet and talk about the amendments that he wants passed by this Committee. He is afraid of doing that; he will not get up and do it because he does not understand them. He does not have the confidence of his officials—but I suppose I can hardly blame him for that given their recent record. 
 But it gets worse. When the second reading was given and the bill was referred to the select committee the Minister had the support of every party in the House. When the bill came out of the select committee that support had been lost—not just the support of the National Party and the ACT members but that of the Greens as well. What does one have to do to lose the support of the Greens on this type of legislation? [ 
Interruption 
] I do not know what it is but it has to be a fair bit as one of my colleagues has just volunteered. It is an absolute disgrace and the Minister will not even get up take a call and explain what is taking place. 
Now the Government wants us to put highly migratory species into the quota management system. Well foreign fishers sitting out on the next wave with their gaffs in their hands must be saying: “You guys are an absolute joke. These fish might be in your waters for 5 minutes or so but then they are out on the open freeway”—so to speak—“and we will take as many as we like.” How stupid can the Government get? This bill penalises the fishers of this country and this Minister knows it. That is why the support for the bill was lost in the select committee. 
It gets worse. The Minister’s own party members on that select committee are so embarrassed that they will not even take a call today to try to defend the measure and this Minister is completely out of his depth and will not do it. It gets worse. National is particularly concerned that what the Government is trying to do now is entirely premature. There is no international or even regional convention of putting these species into some form of quota system so why would one do it before all one’s major competitors do it unless one did not understand what was taking place? That is the issue at heart. This Minister is so hopeless that he cannot even get his head round that particular issue. 
If we are to go down this track we might expect that some of these fish are in danger but they are not—they are absolutely not in danger at all. Skipjack I understand exists in huge numbers across the globe but this Minister because of some feel-good reason wants to put it into some sort of quota management system. Well it is worse than stupid; it is just incompetent. Imagine a fishery off Chile where fishers say: “Well I can’t take this number of fish today because it might upset the Kiwis. They have a Minister of Fisheries over there David Benson-Pope who said we can’t take these fish because they are not in our quota management system.”!