Heatley Phil: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Heatley Phil: Fisheries Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:616;Page:11686] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 Mr Acting Chairperson it is good to see you resident in that Chair. I am hopeful it is a signal of things to come. This side would certainly support that. 
By way of introduction to Part 1 “Preliminary provisions” it is worth outlining what the bill is about generally. Part 1 includes the purpose clause which I believe is reasonably adequate but not perfect. I shall table an amendment to improve it and get it a lot closer to perfection than it currently is. The bill ensures a full and final settlement of historic under-recovery and over-recovery of levies collected by the Ministry of Fisheries and the Department of Conservation. 
A cost-recovery regime was introduced into fishing legislation in 1994. It allowed fisheries services such as monitoring research and so on and so forth to be undertaken by the Crown and it allowed Department of Conservation services such as monitoring and research to be undertaken. It also allowed the costs of that research monitoring and other services provided by both the Ministry of Fisheries and the Department of Conservation to be recovered by them and to be paid by fishers in the various sectors. 
The levies for research monitoring and other services are collected from a particular fishery such as the snapper fishery. Those services are returned to the snapper fishery. The services are not returned to individual fishers; they are returned to the fishery in question. So levies are collected from all fishers within a fishery and the services are returned to the fishery in general not to individual fishers. That may seem a pedantic point but when we get into the debate as to how this money this over-recovery is redistributed in the industry it becomes a very important point. 
I would like to move an amendment—and I shall be putting it on the Table shortly—to the purpose clause of the bill. We note that clause 3 “Purpose” contains three purposes. I will move that the primary purpose state—it will be No. 1—the following: “This Act acknowledges the discrepancies in conservation and fisheries services levies collected for the period 1 October 1994 to 30 September 2002.” There is a good reason for that. I know that Ian Ewen-Street will agree that although we see a negotiated agreement here we have never seen an acknowledgment or an apology from the Ministry of Fisheries or the Minister of Fisheries or from the Department of Conservation or the Minister of Conservation that those levies were collected and underspent. It is alluded to certainly in the negotiated agreement. But I recall that back in 2002 a bill was passed that had come from the Regulations Review Committee and that actually confirmed and validated the levies that had been collected. It made legal what appeared to be unfair and unreasonable. That particular validation bill made legal the levies that had been collected and underspent—and that should not have happened; certainly it should not have happened year in year out. I think it is important that clause 3 “Purpose” acknowledges that discrepancy because it would mean that the Ministry of Fisheries and the Department of Conservation put on the record that yes they did collect and underspend and in some cases under-collect and overspend—I acknowledge that also. 
I just put that to the Committee. I shall move an amendment to insert a new subclause (1A) in clause 3.