Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I move That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. On 16 May the University of British Columbia in concert with the University of Auckland released the report on the fish returns in New Zealand saying that the only way that the New Zealand fish landing records could be correct is if somehow New Zealand fish unlike those in the rest of the world miraculously sort themselves into good fish and less valuable fish and all the good fish line up and go into the net and all of the low-value species and all of the specimens that are below good commercial value and all of those that are too big somehow escape the net and they are never reported. That is essentially what the report said on 16 May. It said that the New Zealand returns are wrong and that New Zealand grossly—not just by some marginal amount but grossly—under-records the number of fish that are caught in the quota management system. What was the immediate response of the ministry? The ministry said: No there's nothing to look at here." I have got the release of 16 May 2016 quoting Dave Turner the Director Fisheries Management in the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) saying that the ministry had concerns about the methodology and conclusions. Then on the second page of the release it says: "MPI takes any suggestion of illegal fishing activity including dumping seriously. Where evidence is available MPI will investigate and prosecute." Who was that? Dave Turner from the fisheries management team at MPI. Within a couple of days of that a leaked report came out of MPI—in fact a series of leaked reports the most serious of which is probably the Achilles report Operation Achilles. What did that report show? That report showed gross breaches of New Zealand's fishing laws. I have got the report here—there were two reports. The first report recommended that all permit holders who had been shown to be grossly under-reporting catch by chucking the bycatch away—it recommended that all permit holders and skippers be dealt with by way of prosecution. It said at paragraph 1.4: "These recommendations are based on each of the parties satisfying the evidential and public interest tests as set out in the Solicitor-General's Prosecution Guidelines." When that came out what happened? Well we had the same officials who had leaked in the defence of the ministry at the time say in respect of the Operation Achilles prosecution—and I am quoting from what was said on TV3 by the same Dave Turner: "We ended up with a legal opinion that we could not prosecute the fishermen for discarding fish because the cameras had been placed on the vessels for the purposes of a monitoring trial in regard to protected species." Was that correct? Did the Heron report find that correct? No. In fact the Heron report found that that was not correct. Who else took to the media that day? Another senior person at the ministry Deputy Director-General Scott Gallacher and what did he say on that day on TV3? He said: "Unfortunately there was not enough evidence to prosecute." Really? What did the Heron report say in respect of that? The Heron report said there was enough evidence to prosecute. Although one of the reports from Crown Law to the ministry of fisheries has not been released in full because privilege has not been waived it is pretty clear from the report that the Crown Law advice was that there was enough evidence to prosecute and yet there was no prosecution. And for 3 years the ministry not only sat on its hands but it supressed the reports so much so that the lower-level officers within MPI which were aghast at this protracted and illegal practice—which was so pervasive in the industry and not being policed—in the end leaked the document which is why it has come into the open. What did the Minister say back then? The Minister said—and this is Minister Guy on 18 May 2016 regarding the investigations into the illegal fish dumping—"There has been no cover-up here. These are internal draft investigations part of which has been unfortunately leaked." So the Minister is getting in on the lag. "There's nothing to see here nothing that's been done wrong by MPI. There is no evidence of illegal fish dumping. There's been no cover-up."—that is what the Minister was saying on 18 May. It became within a matter of days incredible for the Government to maintain that stance and to continue saying "There's nothing to look at here." and so it got Michael Heron QC to carry out a report. What does he say? Mr Heron has done a thorough report.Andrew Little: He's a former Solicitor-General.Hon DAVID PARKER: He is a former Solicitor-General—the lead prosecutor for the Crown in the land. He starts by recounting the University of Auckland study that it had done with the University of British Columbia and unlike the Minister and the ministry he is not quick to wave it aside. He does not say "This is a junk inquiry." which is still the ministry's position in respect of these things. He says that as a result of the news that followed that up and the leaking of the Achilles report amongst others—there were two others. One was Operation Hippocamp. I do not think I will have time to go into all of them. But in respect of those he says that it is wrong the assertion that was being made—that there was not enough evidence to prosecute—and he says it is wrong the assertion that there was some deal that somehow this could not be prosecuted. I want to divert just slightly into another issue which I will not deal with in as much detail but the camera footage on this Operation Achilles also showed the bringing on board in nets of dolphins that had been caught in the nets and killed. They had drowned—the dolphins had drowned—and that is a terrible thing. What did the video footage show? It showed the fishermen letting the net out again and flushing out the dolphins. In fact one was so entangled they could get rid of the evidence of only one of them and they actually had to bring the other dolphin on board. Again was there anything public about that at the time? Did the ministry say: "We've got problems in respect of dolphin bycatch and we've found evidence of this."? No—absolute silence. Why is this level of silence and incompetence at upper echelons within MPI allowed to continue for year after year after year? I am going to go back to the issue of the bycatch. Mike Heron QC in his report goes through the law and says that subject to limited exceptions if it is a quota species then you are meant to take all of the substandard ones as well—you are not meant to dump them—and if it is bycatch and it is not the quota species that you are targeting you are meant to take that and you are meant to return that in your fish returns and you have to pay for a right to fish that bycatch as well. He goes through some of the complexities of that and he points out that it is not easy to police. But then he says: "Well it can't be too hard. At least one of the vessels that was being looked at did it all legally. If one of the vessels can do it all legally why can't the others?". If one of the vessels can do it legally why is it that MPI does not think it should be requiring the others to because the other thing that has become clear in these reports is that this is not just a one-instance breach. This problem has been there for years and it appears—although I have not quite got to the bottom of this—that for the last 5 years the ministry has been talking about doing something about it but it is just that in the last 5 years it has not. For 5 years during the period when it has been developing these new electronic techniques for better monitoring the widespread illegal practice that it has known about and that has been occurring has not been prosecuted. The most obvious example is the Operation Achilles example but I suspect that that is just the tip of the iceberg. If the report from the University of Auckland and the University of British Columbia is right—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Five minutes.Hon DAVID PARKER: —thank you Mr Deputy Speaker—then the amount of this illegal dumping is enormous. It is not just a small amount; it is enormous. Indeed in Operation Achilles it found that fully half of the elephant fish being fished—it is quite a common species—was being thrown away. Half of it—not 10 percent not 5 percent—Hon Member: Unbelievable.Hon DAVID PARKER: —but half of it. It is unbelievable as my colleague says. So for this to go wrong was it some isolated person making a mistake within the ministry? No this went up very senior in the ministry and there is correspondence between Scott Gallacher and David Turner who were both very senior within the ministry—at least one of whom has moved on. We are told it is for unrelated reasons but I think that deserves a little bit of scrutiny as well. These two people effectively had to agree between themselves before the prosecution would be dumped and did they? Yes they did. There is another aspect that worries me in this. There is an internal memo that is dated 2 October 2014. It has got the names obscured but you can work it out from the report that it is actually from Dave Turner to Scott Gallacher the two people whom I have talked about and I am sure of that when I reconstruct this. At the end having discussed the pros and cons he said: "If you do decide to warn rather than prosecute I would suggest talking to [name blanked out]." I am curious as to whom that person is who is blanked out. "If you do decide to warn I would suggest talking to [name blanked out]. [This same person] has swung onside on a lot of issues lately and walking him through this matter would give him a good understanding of the issues that I think he knows are real anyway but would show how we are being considered in looking at the big picture. He has a lot of influence over fishers and could be an important driver of change." Who is that? I reckon that is likely to be an industry participant and I think that is evidence of the fact that the ministry may have been captured by industry interests. Why else would it be saying: "Well look don't prosecute. Just talk to this person on the side who's been helpful in the past." Hon Trevor Mallard: Talley or Goodfellow? Which do you reckon—Talley or Goodfellow?Hon DAVID PARKER: I do not know who it is Mr Mallard. I do not know who it is. It could be someone completely different. The other thing is why did ministry officials choose not to prosecute? Well again Heron says it was for the wrong reasons—partly because they were embarrassed that it would show up that previously they had not prosecuted. So this was not the first time—Andrew Little: It perpetuates it.Hon DAVID PARKER: This just perpetuates it. They say: "Well look we'd be embarrassed because it would show up that previous times we've let people get away with it and not prosecuted them." This really calls into question the validity of what we think is the sustainability of our quota management system. These data errors are not minor; they are large. We do not know how pervasive they are. We have got independent research coming out of the universities saying that the data is complete rubbish—well not complete rubbish but the flaws are so gross that you would have to question it. There is no doubt in my mind that there is serious doubt as to whether our fishery is being fished sustainably and whether stocks are being driven down. I know the ministry comes along and it says "Oh well there's plenty. There's abundant fish. Therefore there is no problem." but that is not so much these days based on science as on catch effort and we do not know whether as a consequence of this misreporting it has got those calculations wrong. And to be perfectly honest I do not trust the ministry to do that independently by itself. The first time we have had an inquiry independently into any of this we have found serious wrongdoing and we have had a cover-up for years which that inquiry has shown to have taken place despite the Minister's queries. I feel very misled by those senior officials who said there was no evidence and there was a deal that meant that they could not be prosecuted. Both of those assertions were made in the media to protect the position of the ministry. They were both made directly to the media deliberately. One time it was also backed up in writing at the time. I think we need to question those ministry officials and I think we need to get to the bottom of this with some further independent scrutiny of what has been going on in MPI."