SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe. E mihi ana Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku tēnā kōrua. E mihi ana Tangaroa tēnā koe.[Thank you. I acknowledge Ranginui and Papatūānuku greetings. I acknowledge Tangaroa greetings.]I'm delighted to speak on the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. But can I first acknowledge the passing of kaumātua James Brown Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki Ngāti Pāoa and Ngati Porou and send aroha and condolences to Debbie and his wider whānau. James Brown was a true rangatira: charismatic fierce and always a champion for Ngai Tai ki Tāmaki. The case that Ngai Tai ki Tāmaki took as far as the Supreme Court is now a landmark for how the Treaty of Waitangi should be implemented under the Conservation Act by Te Papa Atawhai. That concerned of course Motutapu and Rangitoto and the concessions which were issued there. Moe mai rā e te rangatira. [Rest in peace noble leader.]So the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana Te Moananui-ā-Toi is one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most valued and heavily used coastal areas. It has sustained people culture identity and mana whenua for generations. He taonga tuku iho—treasure passed down through the generations. It once had flourishing shellfish—kūtai scallop beds—over thousands of hectares which helped ensure that the water was clean and provided kai. It was a food basket. It contained some of the earliest areas settled by Māori. It's critically important to Māori and it's critically important to New Zealanders. That's why the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park was established 23 years ago.This bill will help restore some of the health to the Hauraki Gulf through marine protection because it has been a taonga in trouble for some time. We've seen the three-yearly reports that the Hauraki Gulf Forum puts out which have been unflinching in their description of the health of the gulf. The fact that our fish species—fish like snapper crayfish—kōura—have declined by over 56 percent and seabirds by some 67 percent; the gulf is not flourishing. On land there have been enormous efforts to get rid of predators and to safeguard shorebirds and seabird nesting sites on some dozens of sites in the Hauraki Gulf. But you go beneath the water and it is a very different story. The decline in those big numbers of snapper and of hāpuka—of groper—those big fish with the jaws that can crush kina has led to the kina barrens.I really hope that the Environment Committee will be invited by the Neureuter family trust to Ōtata which my colleague Chlöe Swarbrick and I had the privilege of visiting to see what has been achieved on land there where wētāpunga have been reintroduced where there's been work to protect the seabirds but you have the kina barrens just offshore.I'd really like to acknowledge the work of people like the Neureuter family trust; the Hauraki Gulf Forum its former chairs Pippa Coom and Moana Tamaariki-Pohe its current chair Nicola MacDonald and its chief executive Alex Rogers; all of the community organisations and environmental groups Forest & Bird Greenpeace World Wildlife Fund and LegaSea; mana whenua like Ngāti Pāoa who have put rāhui in place around Waiheke Island supported by Chlöe Swarbrick to make an initiative to try and restore the health of the gulf. The work that has been done to reintroduce kūtai—mussels—so that those shellfish beds on the seabed get re-established. And they've had to contend with some of the biosecurity issues and obstacles that the Ministry of Primary Industries has in place.There's been enormous public and community concern about Tīkapa Moana. This bill is a response to that. As the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries Rachel Brooking—the response there to limit bottom trawling is also a response to the public pressure. I do agree with Simon Watts that Government is way behind public opinion here but this bill is a great step forward. It's long overdue.Marine reserves which are designed to protect our nature from extractive uses to help recovery of fish stocks as the Cape Rodney-Okakari Point Marine Reserve has shown have been enormously successful in helping kōura and snapper and other species rebuild. But they only cover less than 1 percent of the gulf. So the extensions of Leigh and Te Whanga-nui-o-Hei / Cathedral Cove are very welcome; so is the establishment of the new high-protection areas—12 of them—including one around Ōtata the Noises and five seafloor protection areas where some fishing is still allowed.This bill goes back to Sea Change which started under a former National Government admittedly in 2013 but did not get progressed much until last term when we took it off the shelf. Sea Change and the community organisations that were involved in that wanted to reduce the impact of activities on land—things like subdivision land development and farming so that you reduce the nutrient pollution and you reduce the sediment pollution. It's interesting that National has criticised but not recognised that it's been the Resource Management Act and the natural and built environment legislation which are the key tools to reducing the impacts of those activities on land. Sea Change was about recognising and protecting cultural values restoring depleted fish stocks and benthic habitats protecting representative marine habitats and promoting some economic development while ensuring that marine environments are restored.Then we had Revitalising the Gulf which the Greens didn't think went far enough. But that had themes of kaitiakitanga and guardianship of replenishing mahinga kai—fish stocks—again of ki uta ki tai—from the mountains to the sea—ensuring that what we did on land was connected with our oceans and ensured healthy oceans and kotahitanga—everyone working together. I really acknowledge the work of the Hauraki Gulf Forum for promoting that ethos of kotahitanga.We've had a major crash in fish stocks; we've had a major decline and loss of seabirds. So the protected areas that this bill provides for are a small step forward. Several of them are located next to the cable protection zone which at the moment is the major protected area in the Hauraki Gulf because it prevents fishing so that they don't get tangled up with the submarine cables.I hope that the Environment Committee is not inundated by submissions from recreational or commercial fishers seeking to reduce the size of those protected areas but instead by submissions seeking to extend them. As part of the process of developing this bill MartinJenkins did a report in August 2022 which showed that fishing in the proposed protected areas accounted for 2 percent to 3.5 percent of the total revenue generated by permit holders across all quota management areas that included the Hauraki Gulf and that the total impact on GDP for establishing these protected areas would be between $4.2 million and $4.9 million in the October fishing year. That is tiny in terms of the overall value of the gulf. This is the bare minimum in this bill of what is needed to establish marine protection. We have seen a separate consultation-exercise around bottom trawling. All four options being proposed by Government provide for bottom trawling to continue. Public opinion and sentiment is that bottom trawling should end so that we can have the restoration of those benthic habitats which fishing gear damages and destroys.So we've got to go much further. I really hope that Chlöe Swarbrick is re-elected as a very energetic MP for Auckland Central and the Hauraki Gulf to continue to work with communities with the Green Party next term to champion further mahi and further initiatives to restore this taonga of Tīkapa Moana / Hauraki Gulf - Te Moananui-ā-Toi to full health. This bill is a start but I hope too that the select committee actually gets to visit places like Ōtata so that they can see for themselves.Scientists have been hugely involved in all of these efforts for protection. Auckland Museum has a whole team involved in studies around Ōtata. So the ACT Party's contribution was incoherent in just assuming that science wasn't involved. And National and ACT are supporting it only to select committee. So we need a Labour - Green - Te Paati Māori Government to ensure that we go further faster and measures like this don't get overturned. Kia ora.