Sage EugenieCONSERVATION (INDIGENOUS FRESHWATER FISH) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): I move That the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill.Our indigenous freshwater fish are a precious part of Aotearoa's natural heritage. Freshwater fisheries are also important economically culturally and socially. But as Minister of Conservation I have inherited an antiquated legal framework for managing these fish including regulations that haven't been reviewed since 1983. So this bill is a small but important step towards providing a better framework for improving the protection and management of indigenous fish and fisheries. We need to prevent the loss of any more native freshwater fish species and restore the health of their populations and fisheries. The bill doesn't make major changes to how fish are managed on the ground in lakes streams and wetlands and I'm committed to fully engaging with iwi and the public before any changes are made here. What it does do is make some technical changes to the Conservation Act 1987 to give us better tools to manage both indigenous fish and noxious fish like koi carp. It fixes some uncertainties and gaps in the law and will enable better regulations.So why do we need this bill? New Zealand has 77 species of freshwater fish—56 of those are indigenous and most of them are found nowhere else in the world. Twenty-one of our 56 indigenous freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction and that's a higher proportion than in almost any other country. Most of these fish including some of those which are closest to extinction are little known. They are often nocturnal they are shy and many of our lowland waterways no longer have healthy populations of them. With species like eels and the species that make up the whitebait fishery they are important fisheries but they are also in trouble. It's hard to believe that whitebait were once caught in such quantities that they were used as fertiliser but over the last century all of our native freshwater fisheries—eels whitebait lamprey—have experienced catastrophic declines. That's due to drainage of wetlands declining water quality obstacles to fish passage and their ability to move between fresh water and the sea and the loss of spawning sites. So we need to tackle all of these issues if we are to restore our fisheries.Freshwater fish and indigenous fisheries are managed by the Department of Conservation (DOC) under the Conservation Act and by Fisheries New Zealand under the Fisheries Act. Broadly DOC manages all freshwater fish species the whitebait fishery noxious fish fish passage and indirect threats to fish such as impacts on spawning sites; Fisheries New Zealand manages customary fisheries aquaculture and the eel fishery. So the bill clarifies the relationship between the Fisheries Act and the Conservation Act. It changes the definition of freshwater fish to make it clear that species which occasionally use fresh water like mullet and kahawai are managed under the Fisheries Act rather than the Conservation Act. It also makes changes to clarify how fisheries management arrangements under Treaty settlement legislation relate to management arrangements under the Conservation Act. In clauses like clause 5 that's changing the provisions for freshwater fish management plans so that the department can prepare a statutory plan for a particular freshwater fish species and have it apply nationally if that was desirable.The only native fish in Aotearoa which enjoys legal protection is the grayling and it's extinct. So native fish—if they're in waterways in national parks and scenic reserves they are protected from fishing but if they're in a conservation park they're not. The bill changes this so that native fish in waterways are given the same level of protection as other native wildlife and plants in conservation areas. In other words if fishing is to occur it needs to be specifically authorised. The bill also protects fish in local council reserves from recreational fishing unless the council has specifically authorised that through a sign for example. That covers situations where communities want eels and other native fish in their local recreation reserves to be protected from fishing but none of these changes affect customary fishing.The bill will make it easier for teachers and others to educate the public and students about native fish by deleting the current regulations which make it illegal to take native fish out of a stream—fish like bullies—show them to students and then return them promptly to the waterway without being harmed. That's currently illegal; the bill removes those regulations.Clause 9 relates to spawning sites and it will provide more flexibility around how these sites are protected. Fish have very strong preferences for where they lay their eggs. The number of eggs they lay and the proportion of those which hatch depend on the availability and quality of the spawning sites. For example with inanga—one of our whitebait species—they lay their eggs in vegetation on the banks of streams at spring tides at the highest point that the saltwater reaches. They need thick vegetation on those spawning sites to catch the eggs to keep them moist and to prevent them from drying and dying. So where you've got concrete and rock gabions and closely mown lawns that means that the spawning site won't have successful spawning. At the moment the Conservation Act protects eggs and it makes damage to spawning sites an offence. What the bill will do is allow regulations to define what activities constitute damage to a spawning site and what don't and that will provide more flexibility. It means that things like mowing a riverbank at certain times of the year where the spawning is not going to occur and there's no risk to the eggs can occur and that might be needed for things like flood control.Clause 12 amends section 26ZM of the Conservation Act and that's the section which controls the movement of fish between water bodies. It clarifies the application of that section because both DOC and Fisheries New Zealand have experienced problems in how that section applies to issues like fish movement and the issues that arise there around biosecurity and the disease risks to other fish. It will also streamline the process for low-risk decisions. Clause 13 amends and clarifies the existing provisions which allow temporary closures of fisheries for a period of up to five years and this is needed sometimes to allow for a research project for restoration work to be undertaken or to give the fishery a chance to recover from an adverse event and longer-term closures can be made through regulations.Most of the controls on fishing and the activities that affect our indigenous fish are done through regulations. There are regulations which control whitebaiting barriers to fish passage and noxious fish and what the bill does is provide some new regulation-making powers to fill some significant gaps in these powers. At the moment there's no power in section 48A of the Conservation Act to make regulations on noxious fish and only limited powers to regulate barriers to fish passage. So DOC hasn't been able to update the 1983 regulations that it inherited and the bill will fill this gap.Having the ability to make regulations to control activities like emptying drains and then killing the fish in the process or emptying the pumps that you can sometimes have in flood-control schemes will allow better protection for our native fish. I would note that in drafting the bill there's been quite a lot of care taken to ensure that it doesn't impact on the ability of the managers of sports fisheries such as Fish & Game to do their work but I'm aware that Fish & Game may believe that the bill could better address the interface issues between their management of sports fish and the Department of Conservation's management of indigenous fish. I'm confident that a further clarification is needed here. This can be done through the select committee process.This bill is technical in nature. It's designed to amend the tool box for fisheries management rather than to change management on the ground and it is a vital first step to improve the management of our very special indigenous freshwater fish and I commend the bill to the House.