Jones Shane: Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Jones Shane: Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15323] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora no tatou. Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Along with my other colleagues I rise to support this bill going to the Primary Production Committee. In 1992 the Hon Doug Kidd was the Minister of Fisheries. During his tenure he identified that aquaculture by 2010 would produce $1 billion worth of foreign exchange earnings. He then moved on and surfaced many years later as an expert guiding the current Ministers in terms of how those dashed expectations of his might be achieved. I have to say that the range of ideas contained in this bill most certainly should be supported to the select committee and we should listen very carefully to what ideas might come out of the select committee to ensure that the balance does not tip too far one way or the other. 
The current value of the aquaculture industry is approximately $370 million the vast majority of which goes overseas. Indeed the major mussel stakeholders are about to leave to go to China in the forlorn pursuit I rather fear of acting in a cohesive fashion to ensure that we do not continue the curse of so many New Zealand exporters of undercutting their neighbours. This is an opportunity for us to redress what has been a spectacular episode of non-activity and indeed in the minds of Maori marine farming enterprise owners a spectacular failure that goes back to key decisions taken by Ministers over the last 3 or 4 years. 
In an attempt to respond to the Klondike effect where people were screaming around the country and actually camping on coastal real estate without having either the capital or the connections to ever develop that space we unwittingly created in those days a speculative rush. When we had communities that probably had the ability to leverage their other assets and put capital into aquaculture they found they were being charged extortionate fees to take a secondary stake in this coastal space that had already been locked up by a range of entrepreneurial characters who as I said knew not a thing about exporting and who lacked the ability to amass the necessary elements to create any enterprise out of it. 
Then we came forward with our response and froze that part of the industry—that is new space. But I have to say that new space is only part of what is needed in this industry. As with all industries if we cannot settle upon a sustainable or maintainable export price then it is very hard to grow or even stay solvent in this industry as many mussel farmers oyster farmers and others will tell us which is why this industry is seeing critical mass dynamics at work. That is more a statement on the industry as opposed to this legislation but it is important that we have a very good understanding as to what really are the problems we are trying to solve here. Obviously in a simplistic way too much red tape or too many complex and costly planning provisions are key issues that both major parties have deep concerns about. If this bill can simplify that then we may see some fresh investment. But we will not see fresh investment unless we can see sunlight in the market place—that is the export markets. 
That raises questions as to how well organised aquaculture exporters are what level of collaboration there is amongst them and to what extent they can work together without falling foul of the law in relation to using practices that might raise the ire or cause the attention of regulators to be directed towards their activities. 
In addition for the past 5 or 6 years there has always been a funding problem—once the aquaculture management area model was brought into law. Areas would be created as aquaculture management areas and within those areas punters who wanted to create a business there could make an application. Those aquaculture management areas were never going to be created without central government funding. To date none of the big parties has shown much zest for spending the millions of dollars necessary for aquaculture management areas to be created. In addition when an aquaculture management area is created the costs facing an investor are inordinately larger than the costs facing an opponent. The opponents are able to use the fruits of social democracy being married with resource management and bring their concerns to the table and actually require an exhaustive consideration of things that are both relevant and irrelevant. If one is an investor wanting to enlarge one’s enterprise one faces those considerable hurdles but that in itself can be traced back to the inability of regional government to fund it and also I am told the inability of the ratepayers who stand behind regional government to put serious dough on the table to allow it to determine which areas under the planned environmental management strategies will be dedicated; and if we were to go for a private plan change then that in itself is a very expensive exercise. 
This is relevant to Maori and I suppose the jury is still out as to how the Maori entitlement will be settled flowing from the deal done in the time of I think it was David Benson-Pope. How will it happen? Will it be cash? If there are no aquaculture management areas how will they be allocated their space? The obligation upon the Crown is clearly reflected—I think it is section 53—and there is the ability to take different routes forward so we look forward to hearing what both the industry and Maori players have to say about that. 
It is useful to think about how aquaculture can move into other species. At the moment it comprises primarily mussels and oysters but there is a large market for finfish. I come from Te Aupouri iwi and we unwisely invested many millions of dollars in a land-based fish farm. The fish farm has since been discontinued. Fortunately the asset base was such that the assets have been able to absorb the losses that come as a consequence of dabbling in capitalism and of getting Scandinavian technology and learning that the ability to enforce the contract against Scandinavians is actually proportionate to the distance that they are away—that is one has to go a long way to get them to observe their obligations under the contract. But that is another matter. 
There is a great deal of scope for the farming of finfish. I only hope that when the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture comes back to us later in the Committee stage he ensures that there is scope in this bill for investors to move from one type of aquaculture species to another depending on where the market trends are taking us in terms of our export potential over the medium to long term. Although this is an important resource management issue at the end of the day aquaculture is about exploiting natural space and natural resources and transforming that into jobs enabling firms to take a risk and generating a flow of goods and services that hopefully will lead to the generation of foreign exchange earnings. At a deep level that is what we are really on about here. I have my doubts about whether the rhetoric spouted by the Hon Gerry Brownlee will ever come to pass—he has pinned a great deal of hope upon the aquaculture industry to be a new inordinately large growth industry—but we will support this bill’s referral to a select committee. Kia ora.