van de Molen Tim; Parker DavidTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd be very keen to hear from the Minister with regards to my earlier question as well but—Todd Muller: And some of the Labour MPs would be good. TIM VAN DE MOLEN: Yes—also a good point Mr Muller. I still haven't had a response from the other side of the Chamber with regards to my invitation to any member of the Primary Production Committee from the Labour caucus to take a call and share their views on the significant change that was landed on us just hours ago. But I don't see much interest over there at all—heads are quickly bowing down. So I did just want to pick up on that last respect raised by Mr Cameron as well because there is an area that I have some concern about around the graduated scale of the fines. The intent of that is good and I support that in terms of being able to have more flexibility but it's a point that we'd raised in the select committee as well around wanting to get more confidence. I'm interested in the Minister's view on this around the application of that particularly in instances where we see a fine of $10000 being issued for someone that catches up to 50 fish above the limit but it's significantly higher—$100000—for anyone catching 51 fish for example with the contrast there being that there's no consideration whatsoever for the value. So the example I could give is that you could catch 50 southern bluefin tuna. They'd have a significant value and over and above the limit you'd only be liable for a $10000 fine which is much less than the value of those fish. But on the flip side if you caught 51 pilchards for example then you'd be liable for a $100000 fine which would be for a much lower-value fish species. It seems to me that that is a totally distorted assessment of the value and ultimately the intent I think of the bill which is to make sure that penalties are appropriate to the level of the offence. In that instance it wouldn't be and I'm interested to know obviously how that will play out down the track and what confidence the Minister has that we'll be able to get that right and signal that to commercial fishers as well. The other aspect that I had touched on in my second reading speech was with regards to the discard aspect and how that may impact on research vessels—specifically the RV Tangaroa which is the NIWA research vessel for example. I understand that they have permits but I'm not entirely confident that that allows for the level of discards that may occur. So I'm interested in the Minister's views on whether that fits into the main provisions of this bill or not because obviously in some of the fish stock assessments that they're doing or the research work that they're doing they have to catch large volumes of fish and that will require significant levels of discarding because obviously over time that vessel has been adapted and no longer has the carrying capacity or the holding capacity in terms of processed fish that it had when it was first commissioned as a research vessel. I think two out of the three pounds have been removed from that vessel so is there an unintended consequence here that might actually capture that vessel in particular and others like it or are we confident that it will be OK? So I'm very interested in the graduated fines aspect and then the research vessel please. Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you Madam Chair. In respect of the research vessels research vessels already get a special permit from the fisheries and they don't need quota. They don't need to meet with the general fisheries rules and the same thing will apply here. They won't be caught by these discard rules just like they're not caught by the quota management system more generally. In respect of fines I would make the point that the fines the member asks questions about are court-imposed. They're the maximum that a court can impose in a prosecution. They're not an infringement notice; they're the maximum that a court can impose. Now if someone was prosecuted for—and they wouldn't be. But if they were to be prosecuted for catching 51 shrimp I don't think that the courts would be imposing a fine of anything like the maximum of even the smaller of those two fine levels. So that's an issue—if there was a prosecution—for the courts as to the fine that they would impose. I don't think it would take a very clever lawyer to convince a court that if they had caught 50 fish and the maximum was X they wouldn't fine them 10 times X for 51.