Roy Eric: Fisheries Act 1996 Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Roy Eric: Fisheries Act 1996 Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
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ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 I thought we might have had someone from the Government side or the parties supporting the Government take a call in between— 
Hon Annette King 
: We’ve had our speeches. 
ERIC ROY 
: I know. I thought there might have been another one. I thought this was significant legislation. Whenever we patch legislation or deal with legislation that relates to property rights—and that is essentially what this does—my expectation is that there would be a full and complete debate about it and a scoping of the issues of concern. I would have thought so. However I am happy to take the call. 
We are debating the Fisheries Act 1996 Amendment Bill (No 2). My colleague Phil Heatley outlined a number of the significant issues that pertain to this legislation. New Zealand has a very proud record in its fisheries management. I had a small part in the 1996 Fisheries Act as chair of the select committee for some 20 months amongst a very polarised sector—fisheries has some quite diverse interests who are very interested in the activities of fishing. There are those people who are involved in commercial fishing those people involved in commercial fishing who are leasing there are recreational fishers there are people involved in customary take and there are a whole lot of environmental groups out there. Each one of those interests has a perspective so it is very much like oil and water in about five sections—it is a stratified mix of groups who are very polarised and it is very difficult to come to a decision. 
My point is simply that amongst all of that amalgam of ideas about where we should go the 1996 Fisheries Act was regarded as a world leader. It set out purposes and principles that were all about sustainability. It gave property rights and it shifted the resource into a property right for the individuals to have ownership. The concept of that ownership was that when the fishers owned the resource they would value it look after it and treat it sustainably along with what was enshrined in law. 
That worked all very well for a long time but suddenly when the ownership was there the price of some of those fish stocks along with what they were currently worth on the world market created a kind of industry of jurisprudence around trying to find holes to extend the right to fish and in some cases the right to mine fish. It also created an increasing opportunity for property rights. The law had to be robust—that is the point. 
Sitting alongside that we have an issue at the moment where it is probably fair to say that the fisheries sector is under as much stress as almost any financial sector in New Zealand for the reason that it is heavily dependent on two factors that are under pressure. It is a high fuel-user; one cannot shift boats and harvest fish without consumption of quite a bit of fossil fuel. Also it is largely export dependent and at this particular time there are many people who have said that our dollar is overvalued. So fisheries have had substantially increased costs and they have had the value of their returns reduced by a dollar that is a bit overinflated. 
Let us look at how New Zealand fisheries are actually managed. Looking at the bill for the first time is a little bit like looking at alphabet soup. There is a whole range of very complex letters—for example “MSY” “TAC”—that are very meaningful to the fishing industry. But there are a whole lot of decisions—in fact 629—that have to be made by species and by quota area. By taking all of the different species and all of the different quota management areas in order to get some precision about the management of fish stocks that is where the legislation has ended up. There may not be hoki just for New Zealand it is divided into five different areas and so on for all of the different species in New Zealand. 
We have a situation now where section 13 of the principal Act was challenged—and my colleague Phil Heatley outlined what happened in relation to that. If the Minister is going to make decisions that are robust particularly when a reduction has to be made then those decisions are likely to be challenged simply because of the pressures I have outlined. So we need to give some clarity about what section 13 means. If we left it as it is there are two things that could happen. The Minister could demand more information of the industry and that it be provided in a more reliable or robust form than the Minister currently has in order for him or her to make a decision. Or the Minister could make no decision. As far as the industry is concerned that would be deemed to be reasonably untenable. 
It is probably fair to say—and I did say it—that this is a very very polarised industry but for the first time in a long long time we had the representatives of the sea harvesters the Seafood Industry Council come to us with the Ministry of Fisheries and say: “We recognise we have a problem and we need to work together to make a patch.” That is what this bill is; it does not do anything other than give clarity around section 13 of the Act so that the Minister can make some decisions on the best information available. 
The nub of the matter is contained in clause 4 of the bill which talks about the Minister being able to consider the current level of stock producing a maximum sustainable yield and that the Minister must use the best information available—I think that is the old legislation. I have lost my notes on the bill that I had sorry. 
So it is important that we give the Minister the opportunity to make these decisions and give the Minister some kind of robustness about this. On the best information available he is to make a decision. So what sorts of things are actually available to him? Assessing the maximum sustainable yield or the biomass of the maximum sustainable yield is not simple because one cannot actually go and count the fish. But there are some tools out there that actually enable that to happen. One can get a sense—and that is all it is—of what is out there and the more information one has the more accurate that sense is. There are things like catch history and catch effort—we have the fishermen actually record how much effort has gone into the catching of their fish. There are also fish caught as a by-catch when someone is targeting another species. All that kind of information comes into it. 
This bill allows the Minister to make those decisions based on the best information available. I think that that is a very sensible approach; it is one that the industry and the ministry have come to an agreement on because they realise that fishing is a very important industry for New Zealand and that it has to be sustainable. If it is not seen as sustainable in the world’s eyes then the consumer will turn off buying New Zealand fish. We have had various people at times putting out things like the  
Best Fish Guide 
. If only their information were as accurate as the ministry’s I am sure we would have had an entirely different list. 
So from all of the information that is there one takes the maximum sustainable yield and from that one calculates what portion is mortality what is poaching what is recreation and what is customary. That gives a total allowable commercial catch. The Minister needs to be able to make these decisions—as Phil Heatley said 1 October is when the fishing year starts. We would have loved to have more time in the select committee to deal with this matter on a wider basis but we have targeted those groups that are interested—or we will be targeting them—and invited them for submissions. They have had a bit of a heads-up they have been thinking about this and the Seafood Industry Council I would imagine has been canvassing its members as to their views on this. So we are certainly supporting this to go to select committee. If something really unusual pops up we will have to consider our position but at this point we support this bill going to select committee.