Eckhoff Gerrard: Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Eckhoff Gerrard: Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17782. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT) 
: 
 Before I get into my speech I have to say that after listening to Mr Woolerton’s speech which I thoroughly enjoyed I think he is almost overcome by the spirit of Christmas with his charitable rendition of what the Government is doing. His normally dogged nature and criticisms did not come forth. However we are all somewhat different from one another. I never really thought that in my time in this House I would debate a bill that had an entire part dedicated to fixing up the other parts. Part 6 of the Aquaculture Reform Bill was totally dedicated to fixing up the other six parts—there were seven parts in that bill. I find that to be absolutely extraordinary. That bill may I remind the House was titled the Aquaculture Reform Bill. So if it was about reform why have we put into legislation a whole part that is dedicated to the future fixing up of the mess that we are tragically just about to pass? 
Let me make it very clear that both I and the ACT party which I am proud to serve are absolutely in favour of the wonderful aquaculture industry—that fledgling creative industry. It reminds me very much of the agricultural industry in its very very early days when somebody decided to take to the skies with stuff called superphosphate. It had never been done anywhere else but someone decided to try something that was interesting innovative and creative. I do not really even have to tell Mr Cosgrove how successful that industry was. But in the agricultural industry that initiative did not come about as a result of constraints controls and plans; it came about because innovative creative people decided that that was for them and away they went. 
The Primary Production Committee met some of the people involved in the aquaculture industry—and I must say that the select committee did a great job going out and actually talking with the participants in the industry as distinct from the Minister who stayed in Wellington. We met some wonderful people and we could see the enthusiasm and the dedication that they had for the industry. Rather sadly we also heard from those people that in Blenheim I think it was at least five people from this rather small industry have left New Zealand to go overseas. That was just in one area. How many other people how much expertise and how much capital have left New Zealand to go to Australia and Chile where the industry is absolutely burgeoning? Anybody can go to Chile and buy space. Yes people can buy it—the very thing I have been advocating. They can buy space. It is not given away; one can purchase space just like anybody can purchase land. Why is the logic of doing that so difficult for this Government to grasp? 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: ACT selling off something else. 
GERRARD ECKHOFF 
: It actually works I say to the Minister. He should try it. He should try doing something about understanding the realities of life in other countries that have shown us the way forward by showing us that security of tenure absolutely guarantees a successful industry. 
Sadly we now have a situation in New Zealand where in 20 years’ time people will not know whether they can continue in the aquaculture industry. Those of us who have been in industry for a long time—in my case for about 35 years—know that 20 years is a very very short passage of time. Mr Samuels knows that. He has been a fisher and he has owned motels and so on. He knows that 20 years of development goes by very very quickly. After only 20 years the participants who have started off in the aquaculture industry will have to go cap in hand to a regional council and ask whether they can please continue. A council that knows by and large nothing about the industry will say that yes the marine farmer can continue in it but the council will specify the rules and the regulations that he or she must abide by. A council will impose certain cost structures on marine farmers believing that because they are in business they must therefore be wealthy. Well what utter nonsense that is! Most people in industry—and it does not matter which particular industry it is—struggle. They struggle to pay the wages. We heard my new colleague Kenneth Wang talk about having to go without paying himself wages. That is so typical of businesses. Many many people in industry in this country do not make a lot of money. 
I do not notice terribly many marine farmers or aquaculturalists out there who drive around in Rolls-Royces and have huge amounts of property elsewhere. Aquaculture is a very difficult industry to survive in. In Australia it is rocketing away and in Chile and elsewhere in South America it is doing extremely well. But New Zealand has decided to tie up the industry in red tape and make it even more difficult for the people of this country who want to get involved in that excellent industry. 
One of the great problems that the aquaculture industry even now is recognising is the role of the Department of Conservation which is known commonly throughout New Zealand as the “neighbour from hell”. The Department of Conservation will totally dominate the industry because it has been given veto rights. The department has been given the right to say to a regional council when a company or an individual wants some space that it will have a look at the space first and determine whether it wants that space for conservation purposes. The applicant may then get whatever space the department does not want. It is well known of course right throughout New Zealand that the department is controlled by the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society and that the society’s former chief executive Kevin Smith now runs the Minister’s office. The department’s fingerprints are all over this legislation. It gets the first and second bites of the cherry. I have absolutely no problem with the department being involved in the management of marine reserves. But let us give the industry an equal chance to get established and show that it can do a wonderful job. 
I am not joking when I say that potentially the aquaculture industry could be an $8 billion to $10 billion industry. The feral fishery is in huge decline; everybody knows that. So if we want to eat seafood—and we do; we all know how good it is for us—we will have to look differently at the way we do things out on the ocean just as we had to look differently at the way we did things on the land when we first came to this country. If we had to apply every 20 years for a right to farm on land in this country nobody would bother to do so. That will happen I suspect in this fledgling industry as I call it. I certainly wish the aquaculture industry every success and the ACT party wishes it every success. I had hoped that this bill would set the industry on a path to the future so that it can invest with real confidence not just in the water but in the infrastructure on shore and in developments overseas as it finds its markets. I suspect with regret that that will not happen following the passage of this legislation through the House today.