Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm very pleased to take a call on the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill. This part of the Conservation Act has not been amended for two decades so what this bill is seeking to do is ensure that we have a much better regime which integrates the Conservation Act the Fisheries Act and Treaty settlement legislation around the management of whitebait. We want to ensure that the whitebait fishery is sustainable for generations. We don't want people eating whitebait patties when they're looking at species that are threatened or at risk of extinction and there are four of the six whitebait species—the giant kōkopu the shortjaw kōkopu the kōaro and the īnanga—which are all threatened or at risk of extinction. What the National Party and Ms Dowie's Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 389 is suggesting is that our native fish are a second-class indigenous species and that unlike our birds and our plants they should not be protected on conservation land outside national parks and reserves because that is effectively what this SOP 389 would do. There is no biological political or legal reason why whitebait should be treated any differently to other native species particularly given that 70 percent of native fish are threatened or at risk of extinction. What the National Party is also doing as Ms Dowie made clear is continuing to scaremonger about this bill and its impacts. What the bill does is ensure that the Director-General of Conservation (DG) is able to authorise whitebaiting in conservation areas and yes there are a lot of conservation areas on the West Coast. It also because of a suggestion and discussion with our Government colleagues in the New Zealand First Party ensures that the ability for the DG to authorise whitebaiting and perhaps close some rivers where there has been consultation on that will not come into effect until at least two years after this bill becomes law. Now Ms Dowie should well know that there are already whitebaiting regulations which set the length of the season the length of screens and the like that can be used and that actually help manage the fishery. There will not be any changes to those regulations without public consultation and this has been a major theme of this Government's efforts to promote a sustainable whitebait fishery. There was considerable consultation last year with people identifying what were the key issues for whitebait management. Some of those were issues like better protecting spawning areas better protecting our whitebait habitat and better managing the fishery and that is what this bill will do. So this SOP which Ms Dowie says is about being pragmatic would mean that the director-general and the Department of Conservation could not have whitebait—kōkopu īnanga all of those species—protected anywhere on conservation land in the way that we protect birds. It's effectively saying that they're very different from Kiwi from kākāpō from kākā—they're a second-class indigenous species. There is no need for this SOP because the Government SOP in my name SOP 360 is about providing more certainty to whitebaiters about this interim period of two years where there won't be any authorisation provisions in play and making sure that that transition is clear. But we do need to have some flexibility in the legislation that there may be reaches of rivers which could be closed to whitebaiting on conservation land for a temporary period or permanently and in fact on the West Coast of the South Island there are already a number of rivers which are closed to whitebaiting to ensure that these provide sanctuaries—areas where whitebait can spawn safely without the risk of being fished—and help boost the population that way. So this authorisation process is really important because it will allow the director-general on a case by case basis river by river informed by public submissions to decide whether whitebaiting is consistent with the management of that conservation area. So it is all about having a much better managed much more sustainable fishery to provide for whitebaiting for generations to come.