Grigg NicolaFISHERIES AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingDebate resumed from 18 October.NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): I rise on behalf of the National Party to speak in support of the Fisheries Amendment Bill though that support does come with some caveats. National supports legislation that enhances and protects New Zealand's marine environment. Indeed we do have a long track record on passing legislation—during our last term in Government—to enhance and protect marine environments and we do what we can to encourage better fishing practices that enable our seafood sector to thrive sustainably. As I have spoken about so many times in this House previously this country does rely on our primary industries and of course our fishing industry plays a very large role in that. But we do—like everyone I would I would hazard a guess—believe that fish dumping and illegal activity that is far too easily occurring under the current system must change in order to prevent lost future economic opportunity. I was actually lucky enough very recently to attend a trip to Fiji with the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee where a large part of our trip was focused on the illegal and unregulated and unreported fishing activity up in that region in the northern part of the Pacific where they estimate almost a billion US dollars of fish is taken out of those fisheries per year. So we will as a party support what we can to come down hard on activity like that.As I said in my opening statement we do though have some reservations about this bill following its select committee stage and that's where I'd like to refer the House to the National Party's differing view and that we are particularly concerned about the fact that the operational implications of the bill have been left very much to regulation. I know the members of the National Party—and indeed our colleagues in ACT—did fight long and hard during the select committee process for there to be changes made to the primary legislation as opposed to in regulation and unfortunately as often is the case these days we didn't quite have the numbers and we were voted down. But we do want to place for the record our continuing disquiet and concern about that. We did find in select committee that there was quite some resistance whenever we sought to put those clarifications into primary legislation though we didn't actually get a reason as to why we were getting that resistance which is disappointing. We believe that the penalty regime has no consideration on the various value weightings of respective species. I know colleagues did talk a long time about pilchards compared to tuna and who should be given weight as to what was more important to be taken into account when bycatches were dumped. But we believe that when setting fines regarding the discarding of fish referred to should be had in matters including their species and their value. If I just quote from the National Party's minority view it says We also have concerns with the landings and discards section in the bill. Currently discards back to the sea can occur within a very strict set of expectations which may have a disproportionate impact on inshore fishers depending on how pragmatic or otherwise officials are when setting the regulations." And of course that comes down to the crux of our concern with this; it really is down to the officials of the day as opposed to something being set in black and white and legislation. So it really is quite arbitrary. So we as a party will be watching the subsequent development of those regulations closely. We really do want to see a good balance struck between the ongoing improvement of fishing practice but ensuring a viable inshore—and of course deep-water—commercial fishery can continue. So to understand this bill it's important that we understand what it's actually measuring. The quota management system (QMS) that this bill seeks to strengthen is a process that actually oversees hundreds and hundreds of fish species which populate our nation's seas in and around the exclusive economic zone but they can be divided up into sections. And this is where it does become quite complicated. This is where the frustration has arisen from the lack of adaptability and accountability to those total allowable catch rules—hence the need for this bill to be brought before the House—and that they change and that they move all the time. So as I understand it the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has only assessed 50 fish stocks in 2021. But to give that some context I understand that the current stocks within the QMS is huge with about 98 species that are divided into 642 separate stocks within that quota management area. So to put it simply the existing legislation is simply not equipped to accurately measure this massive amount of data in this massive area.As I went through before the issues that we have primarily have been with that accountability with the status updates—there is less than 3 percent of the total fish stock that's been assessed meaning MPI has no up-to-date data or visibility on what is actually out there nor indeed the environmental impacts that fishing is currently having on New Zealand's seas and waters. So just to conclude really this is quite a procedural change. We have registered forthrightly I think our reservations about the bill. We will continue to monitor this. We have heard very strongly the feedback from the industry. We do encourage the industry to keep communicating with MPI in the development of those regulations. We do want to see these as fit for purpose as possible. So we do support this bill. We are concerned about the potential for its costs to outweigh benefits once changes are enacted but we do look forward to seeing how those early interventions have an impact."