Flavell Te Ururoa: Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:649;Page:17728] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Mr Assistant Speaker tena koe. Kia ora tatou. Kia ora tatou i tenei po. I do not know whether members have heard about a good Te Arawa gentlemen by the name of Arthur Bloch author of the  
Murphy’s Law 
 books. He summed up this bill I think in one short sentence when he said something like this: “If you improve or tinker with something long enough eventually it will break or malfunction.” It seems to me that the aquaculture legislation is kind of like that—a tale where the art of tinkering has been taken to an extreme. 
In response to Maori claims regarding aquaculture the Maori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement Act 2004 was introduced to commit the Crown to provide Maori with the equivalent of 20 percent of aquaculture space in the coastal marine area which Mr Phil Heatley discussed a little earlier. Most believed that it had incredible potential for tangata whenua and for the nation. The concept was that Maori were granted 20 percent of the existing space but if the space was not made available by 2014 then a cash settlement would follow. This was a measure that tangata whenua appreciated in recognition that they could decide to buy commercial aquaculture space with the settlement money. 
The second part was that iwi would be granted 20 percent of new space—and this was where all the problems started to flow from as again Mr Phil Heatley and other speakers have talked about and pointed to. The fundamental problem is that too few new players including Maori will be able to enter the aquaculture industry. There is basically no existing space to allocate to Maori and because the process is so difficult and bureaucratic it is too difficult to get new space. 
I am not an expert on the industry but this is what I understand happened. Tinkering No. 1: in December 2006 the Government made a technical amendment through the Maori Purposes Bill related to the definition of pre-commencement space. Tinkering No. 2: on 15 May 2007 the Minister for the Environment David Benson-Pope announced that the Government had an intention to introduce a bill to make technical amendments to the aquaculture legislation. Tinkering No. 3: on 7 June 2007 the Government introduced a five-point scheme to tell Maori what they should do to work with a Maori manager employed by Te Puni Kokiri and to establish some national standards for sustainable aquaculture. 
That is all well and good but the problem is that there is a big fat white elephant in the room that no one wants to see. That fat white elephant is the major structural problem in aquaculture and that is the requirement for all new aquaculture management areas to require a private plan change to a regional coastal plan. This would be a huge expense for a private venture trying to get into the aquaculture with no certainty that it will get aquaculture space even after investing what could be thousands and thousands of dollars. So when this bill came up—tinkering No. 4—we had every expectation that maybe this time we would see the fundamental changes needed to address the issue of how we would get new aquaculture space in Aotearoa. 
The bill amends the legislation governing aquaculture—the Resource Management Act 1991 the Fisheries Act 1996 the Maori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement Act 2004 and the Aquaculture Reform (Repeals and Transitional Provisions) Act 2004. The bill we see corrects technical issues and provides some assistance in amending experimental areas outside the aquaculture management areas more usually known as AMAs. It seems that the Environment Court had defined these aquaculture management areas before the Act came in. This bill has been necessary to tidy up the definition of these areas before the High Court makes a decision on the matter. The bill also amends the Maori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement Act 2004 by revising the definition of “new space”. The No. 2 bill which is destined to follow this one also goes a little bit further to deal with the possible effects of spat catching and marine farming on fishing. 
These amendments are all very helpful but at best are nothing more than tinkering around the edges. The problem with this version of tinkering and the trail that preceded it is that it fails to address the private plan change requirement in the Resource Management Act that enables a new area to be established which other speakers have talked about. While iwi wait in line for the Crown to come up with the marine space others are fast losing patience with the Government which is tinkering rather than making a tangible effort to find any unused space. 
So is it any wonder that the Te Tau Ihu iwi have announced that they will take the initiative to join forces to seek early settlement of their aquaculture claims? I am told that Richard Bradley from Rangitane has confirmed that the iwi have asked for aquaculture to be included in their Treaty settlement. They have also included Ngai Tahu in their discussion. So we are seeing looming on the horizon the possibility of a settlement covering the entire South Island Te Wai Pounamu for we know that other iwi such as Ngati Rarua Ngati Tama and Te Atiawa have invested considerably on legal action to try to get the issues addressed. The block has come about because there is simply no new aquaculture space at the top of the South Island so iwi are working together towards a cash settlement instead. They have had to do it themselves because the Government has not. 
Officials of the Ministry of Fisheries have estimated that the total cost of the aquaculture settlement post-2014 could be up to $100 million but the essential issue for tangata whenua is not essentially about a cash offer; the issue is around protecting and preserving our rights to whenua space and resources rather than seeing space alienated further into the creation of private marinas. In this way there is a link to the Foreshore and Seabed Act in that the Crown is allocating space that does not belong to it and making decisions about marine spaces that tangata whenua should rightly be involved in. The decision by the Government to provide all Maori with aquaculture space since September 1992 was a unilateral decision made entirely by the Crown. In doing so it established a dangerous precedent in that it proposed settlement without any substantial discussion or negotiation with tangata whenua. 
The key point is that aquaculture will be too significant a feature of the fishing industry in the future for Maori to be excluded at this point. We need to see regional councils being consistent in the way in which they respond to aquaculture management areas. Currently it is an extraordinarily large process to go through—a process that is rather bureaucratic with no guarantees at the end. We need to have clear and consistent management that will oversee the issue of the quality of representative space for allocation to iwi. Our major concern is that tangata whenua will end up with marine-farming areas that are not likely to yield a higher than average productive capacity. 
Iwi and Maori organisations have already been playing a crucial role in the marine-farming industry as we know. A central challenge facing Government could be how to ensure that the sector is able to respond to the economic and environmental aspirations of iwi. We are also interested in seeing demonstrated the way in which the sector can sustain the progress of iwi in upholding the ancestral responsibilities that come with kaitiakitanga. 
We will support this bill at first reading as it attempts to move forward albeit in a very limited sense—as alluded to by Mr Phil Heatley. But we recognise also that the real issue of the quality of representative space for allocation to iwi remains on the agenda. The Government rushed through the 2004 bill leaving in its wake a lot of loopholes that left Maori vulnerable. The Government has not changed the legislation and closed these loopholes as promised according to many whom we have talked to but we believe that this bill at least closes one of those loopholes and as such it should be supported. 
Although iwi have been allocated aquaculture space under the Maori Commercial Aquacultural Claims Settlement Act 2004 a recent press release issued by the Minister of Fisheries indicates that the actual transfer of this aquaculture management area space to iwi has not yet occurred and that consultation is ongoing. The fundamental flaw of course is that none of the iwi aquaculture organisations has taken full possession of its aquaculture management area allocation under the Act. Many of these organisations had been undertaking aquacultural activities on aquaculture management area space obtained outside the provisions in the 2004 Act. These were established privately owned Maori businesses that have also qualified as iwi agricultural organisations under the 2004 Act. 
This bill is still needed for those iwi who want to get into aquaculture where there is new space available. So we support this first reading and we look forward to the ongoing debate.