Parker DavidTODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you Madam Chair. If I may Minister I'd like to ask a few questions around aquaculture. What consideration—and I'll put them together rather than—has he given to urgently using powers under the COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Act to roll over the various salmon-farming consents particularly at the top of the South Island that are up for renewal in the next year to ensure they don't get bogged down like the wider consent application for new water space? And aligned to that Minister do you accept the need for bespoke legislation perhaps similar to how the Parliament reflected on facilitating Rocket Lab as a new industry to enable proven aquaculture concepts like salmon-farming in New Zealand to proceed?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you. If I don't address all of these questions please put them to me again because I might not have picked up all of the questions. In respect of whether we're considering using fast track for applications I have as Minister for Oceans and Fisheries excluded myself from the consideration of the fast-track application which is in process because I thought that it would be a bad appearance if as Minister for Oceans and Fisheries I made that decision as Minister for the Environment to put something through fast tracking. Instead I delegated that decision to Minister Nash to act as Acting Minister for the Environment for the purpose of that decision who has to act in concert with the Minister of Conservation—so we're not closed to the idea of using fast track in respect of consenting of aquaculture space.There is a very sad history on consenting for aquaculture; it's been a lurch from one policy response to another—none of which have worked for 20 years. There was a gold rush under the first in first served" rules prior to 2008 when Labour was last in Government—we called for a moratorium. The moratorium was to allow councils to do some planning work which they then didn't do. The moratorium didn't work neither did handing it back to councils again because that just got bogged down under the last National Government and that didn't work either.There's been some progress on the re-consenting of existing sites in the Marlborough Sounds through a national environmental standard which sets out some re-consenting pathways but even that hasn't been as successful as one had hoped for. And this year we've had this terrible instance of the effects of climate change killing lots of salmon in some of the king salmon farms in the Marlborough Sounds area where they've suffered very high rates of mortality—so large that they had to make a notification to the stock exchange that this is going to have an effect on their profitability. They're in the middle of plan hearings with the relevant councils to get new space. I did seek advice as to whether we should have some intervention—I was advised that that would actually slow things down and make things worse rather than improve things.So we haven't done that but we are looking at what should be the process going forward so that we can develop an aquaculture industry because although there are environmental concerns with aquaculture that doesn't mean to say that you can't have aquaculture; it's just got to be in the right place with the appropriate biosecurity separation and the appropriate rules surrounding it so as to minimise environmental harm and at the moment the system doesn't seem to deliver that.TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you Madam Chair. Just building on that then and relating to the second question that I'd raised the work that the Minister has signalled is going on; is that in his mind likely to lead to specific bespoke legislation for aquaculture to enable future commercial opportunities to be able to proceed at far greater pace than clearly the challenges—I actually agree with him—that he's outlined over the last 10 to 15 years?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): There are essentially three choices: more national direction under the Resource Management Act; fixing it through the national planning framework which is the equivalent under the new legislation which of course takes a while; or a combination of both involving bespoke legislation—and a final decision hasn't been taken on that."