van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Madam Speaker. A pleasure to rise and take a call on the Fisheries Amendment Bill this evening. As we are getting late into the evening I am hoping we can keep everyone focused with their attention after that first riveting contribution by the Minister. Just a couple of aspects that I wanted to touch on here. Ultimately what we're talking about is trying to improve the sustainability of our fish stocks and the intent there is good. That's something that National certainly supports: enhancing that protection of fish stocks the sustainability and indeed our track record speaks to that having established 11 marine reserves over our nine years in Government. Interestingly this Government have not yet established a single one in five years of Government the longest period since the 1980s in which no new marine reserves have been established—but I digress. So the intent here as I say is good. We will be supporting the bill at its second reading but we do still have some concerns with it and I'll touch on those throughout this contribution. It stems in part from the quota management system (QMS)—ultimately our current model being relatively good but starting to show cracks. In my mind it seems it's not quite as effective or as responsive as it should be to enable us to have confidence that we are indeed protecting those fish stocks appropriately in a timely manner and are able to respond to any significant changes in biomass throughout our 642-odd fish stocks that we have around New Zealand. What we have seen in some of those and we can look at the recent data from the Ministry of Primary Industries around their fish stock assessments is that some 20-odd percent of the stocks that they assess—and they only assess a fraction of those 642—were overfished at the last assessment. So to me that suggests that we have some real concerns that must be addressed. It is my intent hopefully through this legislation that we will see an improvement in some of those areas whilst at the same time actually helping to give our commercial fishers a bit more confidence. Because what we've seen again through the QMS process is that we have significant fluctuations. At times we can have changes of more than 100 percent increase or decrease to a particular fish stock when it is eventually assessed because there's suddenly found to be a significant increase or decrease in the biomass of that particular fish stock. And so on that basis it can have a significant impact on a potential business operation if you are suddenly having your total allowable commercial catch limit decreased drastically off the back of one of those fish stock assessments. So my concern here though particularly for the smaller players is around whether or not the implementation of this bill and the costs associated with it are going to outweigh the benefits. Here I am—my third contribution on three pieces of legislation where we have seen in each instance a Government that is just happy to continually impose costs on businesses. We had it with the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Fonterra Capital Restructuring) Amendment Bill—there's millions of dollars more of additional cost going in there—we had it with the Deposit Takers Bill put forward earlier today and now with this one. In each of these instances it just seems that the Government have no regard whatsoever to the increased cost that their potential changes or their proposed changes will have on business. That's simply not good enough. Business underpins our economy and we need to make sure that we are supporting it. Of course we need to continue to evolve and to adapt and I think we can see those expectations from our markets starting to demand different management practices with regards to fisheries but also across the food and fibre sector more broadly. The perception around the sustainability or the traceability that people demand with their purchasing decisions particularly from a food and fibre perspective is absolutely critical. So we must continue to evolve to adapt to that changing demand as well and that's something we've had a really good history of here in New Zealand. Our food and fibre sector has always continued to innovate to evolve to adapt and to remain profitable. So I have confidence that our commercial fisheries operators will be able to do so in this particular piece of legislation and it's encouraging to see that they do have a four-year transition period as the Minister mentioned as well. But and I put that but" out there again cost is a big concern for us and I'm not confident yet that enough was done to actually address the concerns raised by stakeholders through what was again another truncated select committee process. This Government seems to think again it knows best and doesn't need to consult widely. We've seen it time and time again and the risk is I think that we are not seeing an appropriate level of consideration given to the concerns raised by a number of stakeholders particularly around that cost aspect. Yes technologies are evolving and it is getting easier to put some of that on board but there are still impositions. And of course some of the interpretation of how these main provisions will be brought into play is a real concern for these commercial operators as well because ultimately what we're being told here is "Trust us. We'll put it all in the regulations. Just trust us and we'll operationalise it from there."Well that's not good enough and that is one of the areas that we really would like to see a much clearer focus on because even with regards to some of the main provisions around the graduated penalties and offences what fish can be landed and what must be returned to the sea some of these aspects that are now going to be fleshed out through regulations when we're being told by officials that they are working on it and they'll come up with an appropriate framework well we have seen as I say unfortunately too many instances of legislation imposing significant costs on businesses without seeming to have any regard to what that ultimately means or what the unintended consequences of that may be. So that is a real concern that we on this side of the House have with this piece of legislation and the potential risk it provides to our commercial fishers whilst of course wanting to ensure that we are improving that sustainability aspect.So on those main provisions amending the rules of what must be landed and returned to the sea—repealing Schedule 6—yep that all makes sense. One of the aspects that I haven't heard addressed though that I really would like to hear from the Minister on through the committee of the whole House stage is not just around obviously the first aspect—acceptable likelihood of survival; that's fine and negative economic value being some of the exceptions for potential discard. But research purposes is an area that I've had raised that I understand is quite niche but I wonder whether or not that has come into consideration with regard to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd vessels for example being able to continue to discard. Are they then captured by these carve-outs or not and what are the implications for them undertaking research purposes where in some cases they obviously as a part of the research process have to land significant volumes of fish which they don't have capacity to store on the vessel and would have to discard? So I'm interested in whether that fits within this particular carve-out for what can be returned to the sea.I also have a concern around the graduated offences and penalties regime and this is an area where we did push in the select committee to try and get some more change because whilst we support having a graduated system rather than just the blanket approach we've seen or edge-of-a-cliff type of approach that we've seen previously what we're seeing now is that the graduated system is only focused around the volume of fish rather than the value. So when we look at the discard thresholds for those penalties if a discard of less than 50 in excess to the limit—less than 50—is discarded on any day that's a $10000 fine. Over 50 it's is a $100000 fine. Now that sounds like a graduated process but actually if we think about the types of fish stocks that might be part of this actually if we catch 50 southern bluefin tuna over and above what we're entitled to catch—50—that is a significant value of fish then we are only liable for a $10000 fine. But if we catch 51 pilchards—tiny little pilchards; a very low-value fish—we are liable for a $100000 fine. So that seems clearly to be out of proportion with the level of the offence. And so it shouldn't just be a number on that basis but should indeed be focused around the value of those particular fish.Then lastly on the streamlined decision-making process of catch limits I think that's actually a good aspect. It gives a bit more flexibility. The Minister then is able to be more responsive to those aspects I touched on at the start around significant fluctuations in fish biomass that can result in a need to change the fish stock or the commercial catch limits before a formal fish stock assessment can be completed which can take 18-odd months to do. Anecdotal feedback from commercial fishers could suggest that needs to happen earlier. So some of those aspects are good. Overall though we do still have significant concerns and we are likely to be putting forward a Supplementary Order Paper at the committee of the whole House stage but we support it for now. Thank you."