Prosser Richard: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12165. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call in this Committee of the whole House as we examine the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill. Vote Primary Industries is a crucial appropriation. The primary sector underpins the entire economy and in areas such as fisheries it overlaps into our very way of life. Going fishing is synonymous with the development of New Zealand society and the New Zealand nation itself. From our first-nation’s peoples and their canoes to the earliest European discoverers from the sealers and the whalers to the surveyors and the settlers and the colonists anybody and everybody who came to these islands since time immemorial has had the ability indeed the right to throw a line over the side and catch a fish. For many if not most of them fishing was a matter of pure survival. The ocean provided dependable sustenance where the bounty of the land was a far more frugal affair.Today that reality remains for literally hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. Ordinary people up and down the length and breadth of this country enjoy nothing more than the opportunity to take to the sea and bring home a feed for themselves their family and their friends. It is a birthright the stamp of egalitarianism that set us apart from the feudal restrictions of class and ownership that so many of our forebears experienced in the older countries of a previous world. New Zealanders cherish that birthright. Everyone is equal in our society and everyone is equal where the baited hook hits the water—the doctor the lawyer the accountant the farmer the labourer and the truck driver. Anyone and everyone can throw a line in the water and anyone and everyone can catch a fish. The rules are the same for everybody. Or are they? I ask because many people could be forgiven for thinking that under this Government some have become more equal than others.Every New Zealander who fishes in the sea knows the importance of the fisheries resource everyone knows that this resource is finite and everyone knows that it must be harvested sustainably and that all other users must be treated with mutual respect. The nation charges the Government with the responsibility of managing that harvest managing the sustainability of that harvest and setting the rules that will ensure that mutual respect and the preservation of everyone’s rights are upheld. We put in place a system of rules and laws of quota and catch limits for the purpose of ensuring that there will always be fish in the sea—fish that our egalitarian people can catch to feed their families sustainable populations of fish that will still be there in years to come so that the children of our egalitarian people and their children and grandchildren will still be able to go down to the sea and fish to catch the food that is their birthright and their inheritance.We task the Ministry for Primary Industries with the responsibility of administering those rules and we fund its activities through Vote Primary Industries. We hope and trust that the ministry will get things more or less right and we hope and trust that the Government will fund it adequately and give it the direction and the tools that it needs in order to ensure that the fisheries resource is properly and sustainably managed and that the right of all New Zealanders to go down to the sea and fish is preserved. Wehope and trust that they will get it right. When they get it wrong we are given cause to question in whose interests they are working.The old saying goes: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” But teach a man to fish and then cut his daily catch limit in the snapper 1 fishery from nine fish down to three and I have to ask what will he do then? Will he be able to justify putting petrol in his boat let alone paying for his gear if the number of fish he is permitted to bring home is worth less than the cost of going to get them? Why I ask is the bag limit for ordinary recreational fishers being cut in this arbitrary and pointless fashion? If the fishery is under pressure if the fish stocks are being mined unsustainably and if the populations need time to recover then why are the ministry and the Government not looking to reduce commercial catch limits when it is the overfishing and the unsustainable practices of some in the commercial sector that have been the cause of decline in our fish stocks in the first place? Why should the recreational fisher be forced to bear the cost of a problem that is not his fault?And how much will it cost? How much of Vote Primary Industries will be spent on hiring fisheries officers and equipping them with vehicles boats pepper spray handcuffs and whatever other tools they are going to be given to allow them to focus on chasing ordinary citizens for the crime of catching more than three fish from their little tin boats when the trawler operating right alongside them is allowed to carry on business as usual with no reduced limits adding insult to injury by dumping tonnes of fish made useless as they are crushed in a trawl net? It is an unspeakable injustice and a pointlessly wasteful mismanagement of a precious and finite resource.New Zealand First when in a position of influence over the Government will reverse this focus. We will give priority to the needs of ordinary people and permit the commercial harvest of only that portion of the fishery that is surplus to those needs. We will prioritise Vote Primary Industries accordingly and manage its appropriation properly and responsibly unlike this dreadful administration whose dreadful Appropriation (Estimates 2013/14) Bill we unequivocally oppose. Thank you.