Franks Stephen: Aquaculture Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Franks Stephen: Aquaculture Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17766. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 Part 7 is Mr Hodgson’s shame. This is the part that one goes through mechanically. [ 
Interruption 
] He is not the Minister in the chair no but I ask members to remember he was the Minister who kicked all this legislation off—the former Minister who said that aquaculture was running wildly out of control. 
Hon David Carter 
: Yes the “Minister for Moratoriums”. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: The “Minister for Moratoriums” said aquaculture was wildly out of control and the councils did not know what they were doing so we should all have a breather and we would get a logical rational structure. He said we would get something in place that everyone could understand so that the industry could step forward confidently. Well when I read Part 7—and this is the first time I have read it—I find that it is an absolute catalogue of shame. It is stuffed full of interim solutions reservations and opportunities to second-guess and undermine. The clear property rights that it should establish are clearly not available and Part 7 recites the reasons for that. 
I know that the Minister is not taking calls here but Mr Carter’s very interesting speech referred to the specific requirement in clause 20 to obtain a permit for feeding or for the discharge of contaminants. 
Hon David Carter 
: 120. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Clause 120. Where has that clause gone? 
Hon David Carter 
: Unnecessary. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: So it has been cleaned out completely. I congratulate the Primary Production Committee on that. It is very rare to see a whole tissue of nonsense removed entirely without someone trying to save face by putting something back in to cover it. I take it then that the Government does not have a back-door way of getting at the same objective as that of the conditions that were dealt with in the feeding and discharge of contaminants clause. Although the table that appears in clause 111 sets out a process when I looked through it I could not see where the contaminants assessment came in. But maybe it comes by implication under the requirement for a resource management consent. 
Certainly after going through the transitional provisions the deeming provisions and the attempt to bring all that within one context it seems clear that either the legislation was over-ambitious in the first place or there has been a change of objective whereby it is now thought to be easier to leave people as they were. All the various lobby groups and interest groups and in particular the private fishers or non-commercial fishers whom the Government keeps talking about in this legislation are left to face a continual temptation to be affronted to keep negotiating and to constrain and limit the aquaculture areas without the legislation imposing on or giving aquaculture permit owners the best long-term incentive to look after their environment which is the right to take the residual benefit that goes with perpetual genuine freehold title. 
When I see the opportunities under this part for the Minister to intervene for forfeitures for variations and for changes through the registration processes it is very evident to me that this is a very different kind of asset for farmers to invest in from genuine property. With genuine property people get the benefit of looking after the property. They get the benefit of the improvements they make and they get the detrimental effect of ruining an area—of ruining the environment they are in. We can draw on the common law—which over the years has filtered itself—concepts of nuisance. This legislation has to rely instead on an inspectorate process—on a process of prescribing in advance what people can and cannot do and of filtering everything through experts who wield extraordinary powers. I have just been looking in the Regulations Review Committee at a set of regulations to deal with contaminants in an animal food chain. What strikes me there is the same point that comes through in this part of the bill: there is a view that people will only behave themselves if they are told what to do.