Carter David: Aquaculture Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Carter David: Aquaculture Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17764. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 As we move towards the concluding stages of the debate in the Committee stage of the Aquaculture Reform Bill I ask the Committee to take note of Part 7 “Aquaculture reform (repeals and transitional provisions)” because it is a very important part that ensures that this legislation proceeds and works. I want the Committee also to note the considerable changes that have occurred to it through the select committee process. I raise that point because it is an absolute truth that the legislation as presented to the House was totally unworkable. It is a shame that the Minister of Fisheries the Hon David Benson-Pope who is the Minister in the chair is not prepared to stand and take calls to address questions about this part. He should be explaining how he ever ticked off legislation that was so poorly drafted it was totally unworkable. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: That’s a bit rough. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: Clayton Cosgrove who sat on the Primary Production Committee but who has not been prepared to take even one call now interjects and says that my comments are a bit rough. I suggest to Clayton Cosgrove that he should get out the notes he made at the select committee. He will find that the majority of the changes made— 
Ian Ewen-Street 
: I thought he was asleep. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: I will not comment on that. If Clayton Cosgrove gets out his notes and has a look at the significant amount of change that occurred throughout the select committee process he will see much of it is in this part. 
One of the important issues presented to the select committee was the district plan for the Tasman area. It is an area of New Zealand that would be eminently suitable to aquaculture but it is one that has been tied up in the Environment Court I think I am right in saying for almost a decade. Submitters came to us and said they were nearly at the end of a huge process. They said they were waiting now for a judgment from the Environment Court and this legislation as drafted by the Hon David Benson-Pope would mean that all that work and the hundreds and thousands of dollars they had spent would be completely nullified. So the select committee has had to tidy up the work of the Hon David Benson-Pope yet again and we have had to make a significant amendment to clause 153(4) to ensure that when the Environment Court rules on the Tasman Bay situation which we understand is imminent all the work and process that have occurred over the last 10 years are not nullified by this legislation. 
I want to move on to the deletion of clause 120. When this legislation left the desk of the Minister of Fisheries it contained a clause that stated that in the future all salmon farmers would have to apply for another consent in order to feed fish. 
Sandra Goudie 
: A tax rort! 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: My colleague Sandra Goudie says that it is a tax rort and I am sure that more costs would have been associated with it. The important thing is that those salmon farms have been operating for years. We visited one on a select committee tour in order to make ourselves familiar with the exercise. There is an operation in the Marlborough Sounds worth millions of dollars and what it does is to corral the salmon into cages and then logically it has to feed them so that they will grow. But the Minister did not seem to realise that part of the process of salmon farming is to feed the salmon. He suddenly suggested sending the farmers away to obtain another consent. What a nonsense that was from David Benson-Pope! It is absolute proof to me that he has not bothered even to go and look at how a salmon farm works. The good news is that the select committee was able to delete clause 120 entirely and that we have tidied up an inconsistency—a technical illegality—by making a minor amendment to clause 117. 
I now want to move to the issue of all coastal permits being extended with the passing of this legislation for one 20-year period. I want to take some time to talk about that provision because the workability of the 20-year extension was raised with us by one submitter Akaroa Salmon. Effectively its concern was that all the permits would roll over on exactly the same day in 20 years’ time once the law was enacted and it wondered whether the local authorities would be able to handle that. The select committee took note of Akaroa Salmon and the submission it received from Tom Bates because he is one of the most respected salmon farmers in New Zealand. He is a man who can be described as a true Kiwi battler. He does not have a big operation. It is nowhere near the size of that of King Salmon in the Marlborough Sounds. Akaroa Salmon is a relatively small operation that has been built on Tom Bates’ ingenuity and his commitment to the industry. I pay tribute to Tom Bates in the debate today because he typifies what aquaculture can do for this country if only we can get legislation enacted that allows it to happen. With regard to the argument raised by Tom Bates and his co-submitter Peter Cotton—both of those arguments were about the ability of councils to cope with all the renewals on the same day in 20 years’ time—I think that given 20 years to prepare for it local authorities will actually be able to cope. So we are not recommending an amendment with regard to that issue. 
I move now to another important change we have had to make which goes to the issue of off-site marine farms. I refer to clause 159. The select committee was staggered to find that in many cases existing marine farms are not operating according to the coordinates of their original approval. They have moved—some maybe inadvertently and some maybe quite deliberately. We now need to ensure that we pass legislation that corrects that and makes sure that the area of an existing farm at the moment becomes the authorised area for its continued existence. Submitters then raised the issue that if councils or the Ministry of Fisheries had allowed those farms to operate incorrectly and in the wrong positions who should pay the costs of making sure that we right those particular inaccuracies? We have recognised that there will be costs. In fact I think the Northland Regional Council said there would be significant costs. I think the committee was of the opinion at the end of the day that although there will be costs they will not be very significant. But in order to make sure that we get that particular aspect right we have changed the legislation to give councils the opportunity to initiate changes that correct inaccuracies. If we had left that to the individual farmers in some cases they might have seen a correction as necessary and worthwhile—and that was the way the bill was drafted—but in other cases individual aquaculturalists might have decided that because they had got away with inaccuracies for the last 5 years they would continue to get away with them and they would not have moved to tidy them up. I think that yet another valuable change made by the select committee was to allow the councils to initiate a change in that situation. 
Those are certainly the major points that spring to mind immediately. But as I said earlier anybody who is prepared to study what the select committee has returned to Parliament in Part 7 will see that the select committee as a whole worked very hard to change this part. The real question that arises is why the bill was so poorly presented and why it caused the industry so much angst in the first place. The only possible answer is that as many people have said in the Chamber in the last couple of days as we have debated aquaculture reform aquaculture is a very complex industry and it requires a competent Minister. I certainly hope Helen Clark is listening on the ninth floor to this debate and that she will take the opportunity to try—and I know it will be a desperate thing—to find somebody within the Labour Party ranks who is confident enough to handle fisheries. Harry Duynhoven has just put his hand up. 
Sandra Goudie 
: Impossible. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: Sandra Goudie says it is impossible. Well the industry deserves better than David Benson-Pope. That is the main thing—the industry deserves better than the Minister it has now. The Minister may be good at driving civil union bills through Parliament—that may be his real interest in life—but certainly he has shown that he does not have a lot of ability when it comes to managing the fisheries of New Zealand.