McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Mr Deputy Speaker—[Interruption] The place is falling apart.Iain Lees-Galloway: That member's falling apart.IAN McKELVIE: Ha ha! The Government welcomes the Heron report into the New Zealand fishing industry. As so often happens in these cases it is inevitable that these reports lead to a great improvement in practice. I think that without reports and without investigations into the methods that we use as a country for whatever it might be—whether it is fishing farming animal welfare or whatever—it is very difficult to improve practices so I am confident that this report will lead to the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) improving its practices significantly. Just a little bit of background to the report: there were three fisheries investigations put out into the public arena some time earlier in the year. This is the third of them. In the first two MPI made decisions not to prosecute commercial fishermen who were allegedly undertaking illegal activity. The reports found in those two instances that MPI was justified in not taking prosecution. In the third instance—this one—MPI's decision not to prosecute has been found to be somewhat flawed. We heard from the Minister for Primary Industries and he assured us that MPI will move swiftly to improve and rectify its processes. We also expect that fishers and fishing companies will improve their practices and obey the law where appropriate. The industry has proven in the past that it is capable of changing its methods very quickly and I am sure this will be no exception. I will go into a couple of instances where those changes have happened very quickly. A couple or 3 years ago this Parliament debated the foreign charter vessels legislation which effectively banned the use of foreign charter vessels in New Zealand waters. It was very hotly debated at the time by the fishing industry. There was significant concern that some entities in New Zealand would not be able to use their quota and they would not have access to the fishing vessels and practices they needed in order to catch the number of fish that they were entitled to catch. That has proved to be flawed as the foreign charter vessel fishing legislation was introduced very quickly into New Zealand and picked up very quickly by the companies and the entities that owned quota or fishing vessels. It is a little bit like a farmer getting rid of his Fergie" TEA—it significantly improved the equipment available to the fishing industry. So as this sort of process happens it enables the fishing industry to pick up new technology and move very quickly. The other thing that has happened in the fishing industry that I think has highlighted a very successful activity—and interestingly has come about as a result of the Primary Growth Partnership between the fishing industry Aotearoa Fisheries Sanford and Sealord—is the Precision Seafood Harvesting system which has enabled the fishing industry to make great progress in the way it catches its fish and the way fish are preserved and not damaged as they go through the process. So this sort of technology will come along and will continue to come along and will improve our opportunities as a country to lead the world in fishing practice with our monitoring systems and the way our fishing industry preserves fish for its long-term future. If fishermen do not have the appropriate quota for the species that they catch they pay a penalty for what is known as a "deemed value". The Ministry for Primary Industries sets these penalties. If you think about the way the deemed value is set it is hugely important that the balance is right in this respect as it encourages those fishing companies that are catching fish that they do not have quota for to dispose of those fish—return them to the sea. If that balance is not correct it is going to create a practice that is not necessarily in our best interests. It is very important that that process is managed in an appropriate manner and MPI has a challenge with how it does that. I think also when you come to dealing with things like deemed value and a catch that you cannot manage there is clearly room for significant improvement in the types of processes and the methods we use to catch those fish. If we can either retain them and use them or return them to the sea intact we will be a whole lot better off. So there is some progress that I think will be made in that area. It is important that we do—and it is important that MPI moves very quickly to encourage the fishing industry to I guess pick up new technology—find new ways of managing the process and get on with their business of fishing in a satisfactory manner. The Government as I said earlier welcomes the report. There are opportunities for us to improve very quickly what is going on. The ministry will move very quickly and it has proved that in many other areas in the last few years—when you think about MPI it has some significant challenges. It manages our biosecurity and it manages almost everything related to our farming systems which of course produce most of New Zealand's income. I think it has been impressive in the way it has picked up a lot of the challenges it has had around animal welfare and biosecurity particularly. I am confident MPI has the ability and the strength to move very quickly in this area as well. I do not think there is any doubt we will see a significant improvement in processes around this industry and around these practices as we move forward. The Government will respond to this report very quickly. There are a number of actions that MPI will undertake: obviously a review of the compliance functions with an aim to providing clearer national leadership and accountability for fisheries compliance; and secondly reviewing and updating MPI prosecution policy and guidelines with input from Crown Law. I think it is quite apparent that towards the end of this year the Minister will be coming back to this House with legislation to capture some of the actions that MPI deems necessary to rectify some of the issues that have been identified in this and the two previous reports produced this year. I will not take any more time of the House on this issue but I am confident that the Government as a result of this report and as a result of this debate today will move very quickly in this area. I think like many other challenges that we face as a country we will deal with this very quickly. Thank you."