Heatley Phil: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Heatley Phil: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:15182] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I follow on from the debate last week when Larry Baldock from the United Future party put before us his amendment to clause 58 to omit kahawai from the quota management system from 1 October this year. Currently it is gazetted to enter that system then. National believes that kahawai should go into the quota management system eventually and in fact we would like to see it go in as soon as possible. The quota management system would be the best way to manage that fishery; there is no doubt about that. However we have always said that that is dependent on the Minister’s allocation of the total allowable catch and the total allowable commercial catch. I must say that we were quite surprised by the Minister’s call on the total allowable commercial catch and by his restriction on recreational fishers up and down the country who see the kahawai fishery as their main target species. 
Why were we surprised by that? We were surprised because the Labour Party’s election policy on recreational fishing states—and Tony Ryall will be surprised to hear this because it affects the Bay of Plenty area where there are kahawai fishers and other members will be interested in this as well. Labour stated that it recognised the value of recreational fishing to New Zealand’s tourism industry and that a kahawai or trout caught by an overseas visitor and cooked or smoked by that visitor’s host may be worth 10 times more to the economy than one caught commercially and sold in the market. [ 
Interruption 
] Absolutely! The Labour Party and the Minister admitted that the recreational fishing of kahawai may be worth 10 times more to the economy than the commercial fishing process would be. Yet that Minister has seen fit to give an allocation to commercial fishers that will completely undermine that fishery for recreational fishers. The National Opposition certainly supports kahawai going into the quota management system but definitely not under those conditions in terms of the total allowable catch and the total allowable commercial catch. 
Kahawai is a very very small potato for commercial fishers. It used to be used for bait. I know that it is sent to Australia and put in cat food cans. Yet for recreational fishers kahawai is a No. 1 sports fish. The Minister should have taken that into account when he gave his economic analysis and he should have also taken Labour Party policy into account which states that Labour sees the recreational fishing of kahawai as being 10 times more valuable than the commercial fishing of that species. He should have taken that into account when he did his analysis. If this amendment is passed now it would be a good thing for the Minister because if it is not passed he will find himself in court. Recreational fishing groups are funded they are ready and they have the ammunition to take the Minister to court. The Minister will have to go through a long drawn-out process which he will lose and we will be back to square one whereby he will have to go through the allocation process again. By that time many many months will have passed. It will be well past the 1 October 2004 date and we will have to start at the beginning point again anyway. 
I say the Minister should encourage his Green Party lackeys to vote for Larry Baldock’s amendment. He should vote for it himself and he should sharpen his pencil and start again. He should make sure that the allocation that is made to the recreational fishers of kahawai truly reflects their interest and history in the fishery their passion for the fishery and the economic value to New Zealand of their involvement in that fishery. I tell members and people who live in Hawke’s Bay and those who fish from Napier and other cities and towns off the coast of Hawke’s Bay and off the coast down to Wellington that commercial fishers will now be able to take almost more kahawai than recreational fishers. Commercial fishers in Auckland off the Coromandel coast and off the Northland coast will be able to take almost more kahawai than recreational fishers.