Muller Todd; Parker DavidTODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you Madam Chair. I appreciate the Minister's forthright start. Clearly we have made the point pre-dinner break with some force and now's the time for perhaps more of a forensic conversation with the Minister around elements of his proposed Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs). The Minister would be very aware because he kept a very close eye on proceedings of the Primary Production Committee of the scale of the perspectives that were put in front of the committee. The effort that the committee members with officials went to to try and get the balance right—noting as I did in this morning's contribution that at times the sector presented itself as the most fragmented in New Zealand primary industries frankly; every participant holding a view on the primacy of their view and the inadequacy of others. It made for challenging work as a select committee. But one of the areas that was a consistent conversation and focus and I would argue had very strong committee support was the pre-set decision rules framework. And it comes with significant surprise to us that the scale of the changes—as was discussed earlier the Minister ultimately has a right to change whatever he or she wants at an SOP stage but to turn up at such a late stage Minister and remove the entire section with respect to pre-set decision rules seems an extraordinary response.Minister your response pre-dinner saying Well look it's only a small portion in terms of pages to the larger bill" I don't think actually reflects in good faith the contribution of the select committee or indeed the various perspectives that have been brought to this issue by stakeholders through the select committee. As he notes in his thorough contributions to date the genesis of the concern around not only the landing and discards that we'll talk to shortly but also the important part of creating some flexibility and some certainty for sector participants with the pre-set decision rules. So my first question is can he please outline to the committee—his own side as much as ours I suspect—why we now have SOP 257 that amends the bill by deleting all the provisions relating to pre-set decision rules?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you for that question. The Fisheries Act runs to 670 pages. This amendment bill runs to I think it was 48—what did I say before dinner? Yeah 48 pages. These clauses 4 to 12—8 clauses that if the Supplementary Order Paper passes we're removing from the amendment bill—are about five or six pages long. The reason why I've reached the view that it's unwise to proceed with this at this stage is not political. It's because I'm trying to do the right thing including rebuild trust in the fisheries management system. I think I've already outlined to the committee the parlous state of trust in the fisheries management system that led to the changes that we've got to cameras on boats and discard rules. I think it's fair to say that as a consequence of that—and some other problems that we've had with some fish stocks that are very important to New Zealand populations including rock lobster snapper populations and tarakihi—there is a level of distrust in society about the decisions that have been made historically in respect of some fisheries issues. I thought and I like to think that through these increased transparency processes and the openness that we try to apply to our approaching of sustainability rounds that we were making progress in rebuilding the trust that has been undermined in recent years. Because I accept what the member says that there is a considerable antagonism between recreational and commercial interests in particular and there's also complexity around other interests including customary interests that are also important. I had regular discussions with my select committee members during the passage of this bill and I was supportive of the amendments that were proposed by the select committee which tried to deal with the concerns that were expressed by many submitters that the processes that were proposed for the pre-set decision rules to allow a Minister without further public consultation to change an amount of an allowable catch within a fishing season. I hoped that with the amendments that were made by the select committee that the issue would settle down and that the concern that had been expressed by submitters that was recorded by the Hon Eugenie Sage in the Green Party minority view would be assuaged by the changes that were made. But it's pretty apparent that since that time it hasn't settled down and that there is a deep suspicion amongst some people that allowing the Minister on the advice of the Ministry to change an allowance for commercial fishing within a season is from their point of view a backward step. Now I would make the observation that there are already two sustainability rounds a year at which there can be a change to the total allowable commercial catch and that the finer-grained changes that currently are proposed in the version of the bill that's in the Chamber at the moment but that we are proposing to remove really are at the margins and I haven't actually been given an example of where we would have recently used the power. So when I drilled into it with officials after the report back of select committee I wasn't satisfied that this was a necessary intervention in a really practical way and I could see that it was concerning to people who still have a distrust of other sectors and therefore I thought it was an unwise thing to proceed with. From their point of view people who are distrustful of the system like the fact that there is public input in decisions that change harvest levels."