Browning Steffan: Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19730. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green):I rise to speak to the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I am absolutely rapt that the Government has managed to get this on to the Order Paper so that we are actually debating this. As I am doing this I am also ever hopeful that the Māori Party will come across and see this bill go through in this Parliament the 50th Parliament. If it does this will be the end of a disgraceful era that has persisted through successive Governments. But there have been changes. There has certainly been a change of will particularly as social agencies and civil society I will call it—people who are academics authors investigative journalists and a range of people—have come out and exposed the abusive behaviour that is going on for the sake of small profit by various fishing companies in New Zealand. It would appear that the Māori Party is persisting in supporting what we see as rather poor behaviour.I know that a range of organisations—and I will list them: Anglican Life Human Rights Lawyers Association Slave Free Seas the Salvation Army Canterbury Indonesia Society Maritime Union of New Zealand Anglican Refugee and Migrant Network Service and Food Workers Union Canterbury Community Law Centre. There is Peter Dawson a maritime lawyer; a crew advocate and translator Elyana Thenu; Dr Ani Kartikasari a crew advocate and translator; Dr Christina Stringer and Dr Glenn Simmons who wrote the book Not in New Zealand’s waterssurely?; Guye Henderson; and Rachelle Boulton. These people wrote to everybody in the last few days. Well they actually wrote to the Minister for Primary Industries—thank you Minister—the Rt Hon John Key the Hon Steven Joyce and the Hon Gerry Brownlee to try to get this bill in because it was not on the Order Paper and this Parliament was about to rise. Those people wanted to see the change. They are good representatives of the community and they have said that it is an opportunity to get this through.I believe there may be a bit of politics in behind this at the moment and I am hoping that some of these issues can be resolved overnight so that tomorrow we can see the passage of this bill through the House. I anticipate seeing the Māori Party in the Committee supporting this so we can all finish the 50th Parliament knowing that this legacy is behind us.We recognise that the bill has exemplary aims in protecting the human rights of crew on these foreign charter vessels operating within New Zealand’s jurisdiction. And there are other aspects. This bill is to ensure a full observer programme on fishing vessels for the purposes of vessel safety employment and fisheries research management and enforcement. Further we as the Primary Production Committee under the good chairing of Shane Ardern—who I think has been a very good chair and I missed his valedictory unfortunately today—worked very hard on this bill. We really thought we were getting somewhere and it was only at the last minute that this other exemption came in for Treaty settlement quota which was most unfortunate.There was another exemption and I put my neck on the line in exposing that one because it was looking after only tuna species. It was absolutely fantastic when the Minister announced the removal of those two exemptions. It was a very very good move. Not only that he went further than I had expected and removed the exemption on exceptional circumstances.So we have just the one exemption that is left in the bill and that is appropriate only to the degree that the labour clauses and the observer angles in it are still managed on those ships in the rare event that they might be used for scientific purposes. So we are very very pleased to see the end of those exemptions.In recent times I have had continued communication about the abuses that went on in those ships. They are the sorts of things we do not even like talking about: the rape of crew the beating of crew the putting of crew into chillers for punishment crew going without food and all sorts of oppressive behaviours that we would not accept on land here in New Zealand. We obviously do not accept them out there either and we want that changed. So we are looking forward to a change of heart if the Māori Party has indeed blocked leave. I am giving it a little bit of credit for maybe half an hour to come through and show us that change. It would be fantastic. I do not really want to follow down the path of my colleague Damien O’Connor of accusing it of too much just yet because I think there may be some politics at play. So I would welcome the Māori Party in the Committee at any moment to make some changes.There are people out in the community right at this moment who are waiting and hoping. Some I gather are praying. I am not of that persuasion but I am certainly right there with them to see that change come through through the goodwill and the humanity in all of us including in that other party. I will have another call shortly. Thank you.