van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. It's wonderful to be back here in person rather than just on these beautiful screens that we have here now. Look I'm happy to rise and take a call on this and I'm looking forward to being a member of the select committee the Primary Production Committee that will consider this more closely as we progress through the legislative process. We absolutely agree there are some sensible aspects of this bill that we support but as my colleague Mr Muller has mentioned there are some areas that we concern about as well. Now I just want to touch on some of the comments we've just heard as well in terms of the Labour Party vision for fisheries. I think most Kiwis would agree that a sustainable ocean environment is something that we should all aspire to have. It's an important part of what it is to be Kiwi and given that we have the fourth-largest exclusive economic zone it's critical that we manage that appropriately. I would just note though that we haven't seen much action in terms of marine reserves so I certainly encourage the Government to step up the pace there. Actually the five years under this Government is the longest time since the 1980s in which we've not had a new marine reserve established. There were 11 under the nine years of the National Party so I'd encourage the Labour Party to step up and enact some of that vision we just heard around protecting our fisheries. Indeed the other comment I would just pick up on was around the recreational fishing aspect. That is very much a part of what Kiwis do as well and enjoy. I enjoy going out and dropping a line in the water—not so much the catching part but dropping the line is more my area of expertise. But again we've seen some terrible behaviour over the last year or 18 months ago when there was a story that came out of horrendous overfishing of pink maomao up the Coromandel Peninsula which was actually a loophole that was allowed and that overfishing of some thousands of fish caught recreationally was an area that really needed to be jumped on. So I know there has been some work done now finally from the Minister to try and address that but it just highlights for me the fact that in the fisheries area overall there is still work to be done. Again I would just note that we need to ensure we are progressing our action quickly on this. I did write to the Minister shortly after that event aired publicly around a proposal that I put forward to put in a stopgap measure—a temporary limit on the recreational finfish catch—to ensure that that sort of behaviour couldn't be repeated. But the Minister turned it down at that time and it has taken until only just the last few months I believe for his proposal to come out to try and address that issue. So I hope that one does get solved. In terms of what we are looking at here the main provisions: as we've heard already there's some good stuff in there and we support the graduated offences and penalties aspects that are being considered and we'll be looking at whether they are appropriate but also the technical management changes—those things all make sense and there's not a massive issue with that. The other two aspects though that I do want to expand on a bit are around amending the rules for what fish must be landed and what must be returned. That's an area that has been reasonably controversial from both the commercial fishers' perspective and obviously recreational fishers in instances where they have seen some of these discarded fish washing up on beaches and there are the concerns they have around the sustainability of the commercial sector off the back of that.We've heard about those commercial parts being addressed but the one I would really like to delve into a bit more is around what's a pretty unique aspect I suppose of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research vessels like the Tangoroa which as part of their research catch fish. In some instances they catch quite large volumes of fish and those fish can be discarded because they simply don't have the capacity on that vessel to process the volumes of fish that they are catching. I think that's an area that we really need to look at quite closely and I'd hope it could potentially come under this bill because I think it's not a good example to see a Government research vessel discarding fish simply because they don't have sufficient processing capacity on board. I accept they're a research vessel but actually I think it's sending the wrong signal to be discarding fish. So I'd be interested to see whether those aspects would come under this bill as well. The other key point around streamlining the decision-making process for the setting of catch limits is an area that I'm really keen to see improve because we have seen that the Minister's actions over a number of years in terms of adjusting those limits has been a very significant change for a lot of those individual fisheries. When we think about the 642-odd fisheries that there are in terms of fish stocks around the country making significant adjustments in some cases—in some cases well over 100 percent changes of significant magnitude to those commercial catch limits—it makes it quite challenging for those commercial operators to be able to adapt their systems to either cope for a significant reduction in commercial catch total allowable commercial catch (TACC) or a significant increase which might give them opportunity. So I would really like to see a tightening of the process—and I hope that will come under this bill—to really enable a more streamlined process perhaps of the scientific assessments to ensure that we are better monitoring those limits because if we're only doing assessments of these fish stocks on a sporadic basis and that then shows there has been either a significant increase or decrease in that particular fish stock over the period of that time the Minister's subsequent action is to adjust the total allowable catch (TAC) accordingly but that can have massive implications. So I'd really like to see this tightened up so that we don't see those sorts of massive swings upwards or downwards in the TAC because that has a big impact for the TACC for our commercial operators in particular who are trying to run a business in this space. We saw I think that it was 2019 that was the most recent assessment. Only 290 fish stocks I think out of our 642 were assessed so we're only talking about 49-odd percent of fish stocks being assessed and at that point 20 percent of those stocks that were assessed were considered to be overfished—right? So of the fish stocks we assessed and we certainly didn't do all of them—granted it was 70- or 80-odd percent by volume of fish caught. But of those we assessed one in five was overfished. So that to me says that we have some real issues around how we're managing these fish stock assessments and we need to be a lot better at projecting those fluctuations and assessing movements in those. I accept that there's a cost alongside that of course but that's something that I really hope will be considered in some depth through the Fisheries Amendment Bill to ensure that in the first instance we retain a very sustainable fishery—that's something we should be putting first and foremost. It's very important for New Zealand anchor brand but it's what everyone I think would want as well. But alongside that it gives more certainty then to those commercial operators as I said to have a more streamlined business operation where they're not having to suddenly adjust for significant changes in their total allowable commercial catch limits. So on that basis I'm happy to commend this bill. I look forward to as I said being a part of the select committee process. I am a little concerned though that we are seeing a shortened report back on this bill. Again we've seen this in a number of instances from this Government where they have put forward a reduced or shortened report-back time on a piece of legislation for no particular reason it appears other than perhaps it was late getting to the first reading stage and they've been wanting to rush it through. The issue that raises is it potentially takes away the ability of everyone who might wish to have their voice heard to do so given that shortened window. Granted it's not excessively short like we've seen on some of the other pieces of legislation but my question would be why do we need to cut that back at all. Why can we not allow a fulsome process to occur on this bill given as Mr Muller mentioned it has taken quite some time to get to this point? Why are we now rushing it and cutting down those few months for submitters to make their case heard when I believe it is absolutely critical that those submitters are heard? We're talking about making significant changes here for an important industry within New Zealand. We must hear their views on it. We have heard some views in the past and Mr Muller I know and myself have had a number of conversations with some of these commercial operators who have expressed concern around the practicality of implementation of some of these proposals around cameras for example and the costs alongside that. So I'm very keen to ensure they have an appropriate window to give their views on this to make sure that we are coming up with practical legislation that can be implemented for the sake of the industry. So on that basis I do support it and I look forward to being able to make some positive changes to hopefully get this to a point where it can pass with support from all parties across the House. Thank you very much.