Carter David: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
Carter David: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
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Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chair. I would like you to take note that this is the substantive part of the bill and I think members may want to take more than one call. 
The issue that Ian Ewen-Street has just spoken about whereby we attempted to change the qualifications of the  
Drysdale 
and the  
Petersen 
 was worthy of investigation. The Primary Production Committee following the report it had done into the scampi issue that concluded in December last year was aware of the injustices that had occurred. The people who had received those injustices inevitably said to us that they wanted a solution not with a monetary payment but with quota and that point was accepted. 
 However we then have to look at the people who fished legitimately according to the law that subsequently allocated the quota years. Those people had rights to what they legitimately obtained. 
Ian Ewen-Street 
: But they weren’t legitimate. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: Ewen-Street interrupts and says that the  
Petersen 
and the  
Drysdale 
 were not legitimate. The operators of those two vessels felt they were legitimate at the time they commenced fishing. I will accept that they were not. They subsequently applied to the Ministry of Fisheries and were retrospectively validated to obtain those catches. 
So I say to Ian Ewen-Street—who I think genuinely put a lot of effort into his amendment and in fairness to him—that the select committee also considered whether his provision would be a means of creating some fairness out of the unfairness. But we resolved by majority that we should not create a further injustice by taking something that had been legitimately obtained—legitimately but also retrospectively I will accept—and I do not think the member really thinks we should do that either. It is not a fair argument to say that we should now just change the allocation of one particular operator—Simunovich Fisheries which happens to operate the  
Petersen 
 and the  
Drysdale 
—simply because it has a lion’s share of the fishery and a little bit taken off it will not matter. 
The reasons why the qualifying years were established in the Fisheries Act of 1996 mean that nobody at the time realised the significance of those years. We found out through the select committee inquiry that the fishers of the time had been quite categorically told by ministry officials that those years would not create catch history but subsequently the law that was passed by Parliament established those years and that is the law of New Zealand. If my memory serves me right it was voted for by the major parties in 1996 and probably by the lot. So the qualifying years do count. 
The issue then becomes a question of whether those extremely large vessels were allowed in. I say having reread the report by the Primary Production Committee and having read in detail the Helen Cull report released by the State Services Commission that there is no doubt that those vessels subsequently were given retrospective approval to operate in those fisheries at the time. There is no doubt in my mind that that was the case. 
Ian Ewen-Street 
: That doesn’t make it fair. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: Ian Ewen-Street says that that does not make it fair. That is true. I will accept that it does not make it fair and a number of aggrieved fishers were identified. I will pick up shortly on Phil Heatley’s point about a method by which we sought to address that unfairness. But I say to Mr Ewen-Street that it is equally unfair to take catch off somebody else who has legitimately obtained it. 
I come to Phil Heatley’s point. The National Party was of the opinion that those who received unfair treatment should receive if possible more than just monetary compensation. As those fishers kept saying to us it is quota that is important. There was and is headroom available in some of the scampi areas. I do not think that we cannot fairly address the unfairness to them by giving them a discounted price and entry into the quota management system but there is an opportunity to do what we did with the NgaiTahu Claims Settlement Act—to give people whom we recognise as having been aggrieved the opportunity to purchase at a preferential rate.