Carter David: Aquaculture Reform Bill — Second Reading Instructions to Committee In Committee 
Carter David: Aquaculture Reform Bill — Second Reading Instructions to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:622;Page:17688] 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 This legislation extends the Treaty of Waitangi grievance industry for generations to come. National will of course oppose the Aquaculture Reform Bill and it will do so principally on that basis. The legislation without principle and without negotiation gives Maori 20 percent of aquaculture space. 
Hon Annette King 
: What did you do with the Fisheries Bill? 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: I will tell the member about the Fisheries Bill if she gives me a minute. 
Not only does the Aquaculture Reform Bill give Maori 20 percent but over the next 10 years the Government is instructing councils to gift to Maori up to 40 percent of all aquaculture space about to be created. The important point is that when Maori submitters came before the Primary Production Committee the whole lot of them said that the bill will not settle any grievance. Not one Maori submitter said to us that this was settlement. All of them said that there has been no negotiation but here the Labour Government is trying to settle what it sees as a grievance simply by gifting to Maori without discussion or negotiation. Those submitters left us in no doubt at all that the bill will provide no full and final settlement. 
Why give Maori 20 percent or 40 percent? That is the important question I ask the Minister. The answer the Labour members gave us at the select committee was that this bill was unfinished business associated with the 1992 deed of settlement. We took the opportunity of asking the officials to give the select committee any proof that the business was unfinished and had been deliberately left to one side during the 1992 negotiation as the Minister has just claimed. 
Phil Heatley 
: Was there any proof? 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: We asked for the proof and it finally came back from the officials that there was no written record at all as to whether the business was unfinished. But help was on the way. Maori submitters told us they had the proof and would table it. We waited days and days and days for the proof. 
Phil Heatley 
: Did it come? 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: It never came—from any Maori submitter. Help was finally on the way. The Hon Dover Samuels stuck his hand up and said that in 1992 he had been one of the negotiators which was news to the select committee and he then promised to table documentary evidence that the aquaculture industry had had the claims associated with the 1992 settlement put to one side. To date we are still waiting for the Hon Dover Samuels to table any evidence at all. 
I take the opportunity of reading one paragraph from the 1992 deed of settlement signed between the Crown and Maori. Paragraph 5.1 states: “Maori agree that this Settlement Deed and the settlement it evidences shall satisfy all claims current and future in respect of and shall discharge and extinguish all commercial fishing rights and interests of Maori whether in respect of sea coastal or inland fisheries (including any commercial aspect of traditional fishing rights and interests) whether arising by statute common law (including customary law and aboriginal title) the Treaty of Waitangi or otherwise and whether or not such rights or interests have been the subject of recommendation or adjudication by the Courts or the Waitangi Tribunal.” That is absolute clear evidence that everybody who signed that document in 1992 accepted that it was full and final. 
I took the opportunity of talking to two former National Party colleagues Sir Douglas Graham and the Hon Doug Kidd. Both those Ministers who were intimately involved in the discussion say that there was no unfinished business associated with aquaculture. That is their clear memory of those discussions. Yet the Labour Government comes along and without principle or any justification at all—apart from trying to curry favour with Maori associated with the seabed and foreshore—is gifting to Maori up to 40 percent of aquaculture. I say to the Minister that generations to come will still be debating the Treaty of Waitangi and the grievances associated with it and this legislation does nothing to help. 
I turn my comments to the bill itself. In 10 or 11 years in this House I do not recall a bill coming before a select committee that was as incompetently prepared as this one from the new Minister of Fisheries the Hon David Benson-Pope. It was so incompetent that it simply would not work. Let us consider the first major issue the committee had to grapple with and that was the issue of security of tenure for existing marine farmers. It was as if the Minister had never bothered to get in a boat and go and have a look at some of these things because he would then know that in the case of some of the salmon farms millions of dollars are invested. The bill as it originally appeared before the committee meant that come the end of farmers’ permits to occupy the space they had no rights of first refusal unless their council agreed to it. 
What aquaculturalist would invest millions of dollars in an industry unless such a simple issue as security of tenure was addressed? That was the greatest issue presented to us at the select committee and I am pleased to say that the committee members and the officials worked hard to achieve what is now in the bill as reported back today. The aquaculturist now has the right of first refusal provided he or she has operated in a satisfactory situation unless in the exceptional circumstance that the council needs to consider another way. The feedback I have seen from the industry is that that is a vast improvement on what was presented to the select committee. That improvement came about because of the way the committee worked. It had nothing to do with the incompetence of the Minister the Hon David Benson-Pope. 
The second point that needs to be made in this debate is the time constraint the select committee was under. We had 4 months from the time the bill was introduced in the House. Ministers have had years to prepare the legislation. The Minister’s earlier response had been to impose a further moratorium but when he finally decided to table a bill he gave 3 or 4 weeks for submitters to prepare submissions for the committee and then he gave something like a month for the committee to hear submissions and a month to consider the legislation. I thank the officials for their work. Those guys worked 7 days a week to help get the Minister and his hopeless incompetent Government out of that mess. I also pay tribute to the select committee secretariat for their work. I thank Bob Bunch Mary Hay and Steven Mitchell for their huge commitment in working with the committee to right the mess. 
The select committee achieved a large number of changes through the legislation and I will certainly take the opportunity of speaking to those during the laborious Committee stage we will enter into shortly. But I want to say that the most telling line of submission before the select committee concerned the way it is becoming increasingly easier for New Zealand aquaculturalists to take their expertise to other countries. Countries like South America and Australia welcome the expertise of New Zealand aquaculturalists and make it easy for them to operate in their countries whereas this Government has been putting in place in front of the aquaculturalist more and more bureaucracy and more and more encumbrances to developing an industry that has huge potential for the country. 
The legislation has been hugely improved. I thank the select committee members who worked with me through that process. Some of them clearly got more involved in the process than others but at the end of the day despite the time constraint the 141 submissions the 34 hours of hearings and the 34 hours of deliberation the bill has been reported back in substantially better form than it was before it came before the select committee.