Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's an absolute pleasure to speak on this issue in the House because this is a really really important issue for the Rakiura / Stewart Island community. Unfortunately what this bill does is it provides a very simple solution to a very complex area. I think the issue we've got is that this bill fails to take into account the needs of the local community in terms of pāua divers in terms of those entering the water for recreational fishing—anybody that actually wants to use the water and at the moment has been talking about being afraid of doing so because of the risk of sharks.But it also fails to take into account the welfare of sharks themselves because in the bill it doesn't mention the role of sharks in terms of being absolutely protected under the Wildlife Act and taking those factors into consideration. The other area it is silent on is the Treaty of Waitangi and certainly down in Rakiura the Tītī Islands are incredibly significant culturally for Māori in terms of harvesting muttonbird—tītī—each year. So Minister Sage today has just talked about the fact that while this is an important issue and thanks Sarah Dowie for bringing this to the House we also need to do further work on this before we can put in place something that will address all of those issues.So what I'd like to do is just talk through some of those underlying concerns which suggest that we need further work in this area because I think what this bill does at present is it jumps to a single solution of setting up basically a compliance framework. I think a similar regulatory environment was in operation when Helen Cave brought her petition to the Local Government and Environment Committee saying that her request was that shark cage diving be banned. I think the issues she was talking about there were similar—about wildlife concerns about behaviour concerns about concerns of users entering the water. I'm just wanting to tease out some of those in a bit more detail because as I've said great white sharks are absolutely protected under the Wildlife Act. There have been a number of concerns raised about the impacts of shark cage diving on sharks' behaviour and also on the wellbeing—physical wellbeing—of sharks where they may bump up against the cages ingest ropes and come into contact with other sharks in quite a concentrated area.Basically down in Rakiura these pāua divers are talking about increased encounters with sharks since the shark cage diving operations were happening and also others recreational users talking about increased encounters and sharks following boats etc. So there are concerns. I think the Department of Conservation went and did a review to see whether this was indeed founded in terms of this changing the behaviour of sharks. I think what the conclusion they came to is that they couldn't make a call either way on whether it changed the behaviours of sharks in areas that weren't immediately in the vicinity of shark cage diving but were slightly further away. But what they did say is that what shark cage diving did is attract sharks that were in the vicinity to one place. The problem then is that you couldn't then undertake other activities in close proximity—so recreational fishing other commercial fishing activities in that same space—because it increased the chance of encounters. So their view was that then you needed a greater separation between those activities. But in the bill while you can make a submission there's no real weighting of the safety impacts of that. So if you've got two groups saying OK we would like to operate in the same space." there's no consideration that those human safety risks would be taken into account in any other way compared to other operational issues.Another concern as Minister Sage has suggested is there are no clauses there relating to the Treaty of Waitangi and Rakiura and the Tītī Islands have basically incredibly important cultural significance for Māori and being able to have a say as of right in what happens in the issue of shark cage diving I think is incredibly important. So that would be an important element of any future legislation in this area.So I think those three main concerns basically need to be addressed in any future legislation because the current legislation the limitation of it is it's set up so that any particular operator can go to the Department of Conservation and request a permit to do this and they need to be assessed on a one-to-one basis whereas what Minister Sage is suggesting is that we do further work to set up a new regime that balances the needs of the local community as well as the wellbeing of sharks as well as considerations of iwi under the Treaty and moves forward in that area. So I'm looking forward to further measures in legislation coming to the House in due course but in the meantime we're not happy to support this bill in the current form. Thank you."