Allan KiritapuKIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): I must also join in the calls from this side of the House with my colleagues to celebrate you good sir on your day your rā whānau [birthday]. Nō reira kei a koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Hari huritau. [So back to you Mr Speaker. Happy birthday.]Look I want to just pick up from the previous speaker Matt King. He made an interesting statement just prior to sitting down. He said There's a lot more pragmatic ways to go about saving the fisheries." Silence. And that's the thing. Like they're all happy on that side of the House causing a muck and putting out all sorts of disastrous doomy-gloomy kinds of misinformation to our communities and in particular to our rural communities about what the impacts of this legislation are going to be. The reality is the Nats are anti-whitebait. They're anti - our environment anti-conservation and anti - recreational fishers. I can say that as a recreational fisher myself. Look you talk to people on the ground about what we're actually trying to achieve in this bill. What are we trying to do? We're trying to ensure that the livestock of our native fisheries our īnanga our kōkopu—that those species are protected ma rānō for a lifetime—our tuna. The reality is that in recent times an absence of the ability to regulate an absence of the ability to be able to set aside conservation areas—in our tikanga we have a tikanga a law as most of our tribes do to moderate and regulate our fishing stock. We regularly implemented rāhui where we didn't take kai from certain areas. Those laws were adhered to by all of those who occupied those spaces.Like for some areas that isn't the dominant law; tikanga isn't the dominant law or not everybody will adhere to those people that put down those rāhui. So I guess that's where the challenge for us on this side of the House is. If we want to preserve our fisheries in particular our indigenous fishing stock well what's our plan? I want to acknowledge the Hon Eugenie Sage. It's always tricky when you go to try and introduce regulation for things that we as New Zealanders take inherently. You know fishing is etched into our DNA. I think I was born with a blimmin fishing rod in my hand and some waders on my feet. But you know for a lot of us it is a big part of our lifestyle. So it can be really challenging. That's what we saw from the Opposition for nine years. We saw that when there were issues that were too tricky to actually delve into they just didn't bother—they didn't bother. And what's the consequence of that? Well when we look at our fisheries stock it is a classic example. Oh I can see the Hon James Shaw down the back there. You know they're tackling some really big issues on our environment; whether that be our fresh waterways whether that's climate change. These are really big fundamentally challenging issues that the last lot just did nothing about. I applied I think quite a conservative lens to this bill because I was very very wary about undermining I guess you know the lifestyle of good old New Zealanders who just want to go down and catch a feed. So as I challenged myself to try to understand what the intentions of this bill were I got to understand well actually there aren't many fishing stocks in New Zealand that don't have some kind of total catch allocation or some kind of management system. Well īnanga there's no management system. If I want to go and commercially catch and sell īnanga from any old river when they're running I can. Nobody else is going to moderate that.Maureen Pugh: So?KIRITAPU ALLAN: Did I hear "So?" I hope I didn't just hear "So?" on the other side. Maureen Pugh: Yeah you did. I said it.KIRITAPU ALLAN: You said "So?". Why should we be saying "So?" about a native fishery stock that we're watching being completely decimated. Look actually that member who just said that and I we both come from areas that strongly survive on those types of fish. I've got a two-year-old daughter. Imagine if my two-year-old daughter grows up right at home by our Rangitaiki awa. Imagine if when she gets to I don't know be 16 whatever it is and they don't have the possibility or the ability to go fish their awa. What if the knowledge that my father-in-law Wharekaihua is passing on to Hiwaiterangi—what if she can't give life to those practices and those teachings because we I this side of the House everybody in this House have not been diligent enough have not turned our mind to it enough have not done everything that we could in our time whilst we have the ability to make laws to conserve our cultural identity our social identity? This is a mere manifestation of that but one that is so significant to that member's communities and to mine. So look this is a long-term problem. This is a problem that we all have to work out how we're going to balance engagement. Man the last thing we want to do is see a blimmin ban on whitebait. I love it. It's such a big part of our culture my culture our family's culture. But the reality is that we have to do something. Then I went through the details. Well what are we actually trying to do? OK well no there isn't going to be some big massive blanket ban that goes on for ever and ever around whitebaiting. We're going to set aside conservation areas. We're going to make sure that those fishing spots—they're not going to be there for ever. There's a very good Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that Minister Sage introduced I think it was yesterday. I want to again acknowledge her because there was such consternation around this bill. There has been a lot of misinformation that's been put out into the public sphere and it's been right old misinformation as well. But that aside Minister Sage worked diligently I think with recreational fishers and groups that have clearly worked alongside her to ensure that we were making the best fit legislation in this area.She introduced SOP 360. Now this one here provides authorisations for fishing in conservation areas. It will require anyone fishing in a conservation area to have an authorisation—a permit; that's fine—in the same way that they need to have authorisation to take plants from conservation areas and the like. That's fine. That means that we can ensure that there is sufficient stock that's it being monitored and that what is being taken is sustainable.The legislation will still retain powers to introduce authorisation processes for whitebait fishing in conservation areas and that's because they may be necessary in the future. So I think you know for me this is a pragmatic bill that has to tackle some fundamental issues that for us are long-term issues because on this side of the House whilst we have the privilege of holding power the challenge is that we exercise with an absolute diligence the obligation of the exercise of that power. If I turn to the member from Invercargill Ms Dowie her SOP 389 inserts new section 26ZHE "Taking of whitebait". She introduced two SOPs that completely undermine the whole intent of this bill which is the preservation of these indigenous fish species. Her first proposal was restricting the ability of the Director-General of Conservation to take any action that would result in prohibiting whitebaiting in a conservation area. This proposal goes back to my original point in my response to the member Mr King. OK you don't like the plan—don't like the plan so what's the plan? "We've got a plan." they said—"We've got a plan." But what's the plan? This here this SOP—yeah here it is. This SOP says that you can do nothing—you can do nothing to ensure the preservation of those indigenous species.So then let's turn to the next one—spawning sites requiring the director-general to consult the property owner if the director-general proposes to declare an area on private property to be a spawning area and it gives landowners an appeal right over such declarations. So the property rights of the landowner trump the ability of the Crown to exercise its obligations of preservation of indigenous species. What's the plan? That's going to be my catchcry to that side whilst they sit here and relentlessly produce misinformation about what this side of the House is doing.I'm proud of the work that our Ministers are doing. I'm proud of the work. They are tackling really challenging and difficult issues. So I take my hat off to the Minister the Hon Eugenie Sage and all of her colleagues and those of my colleagues that are on the Environment Committee that worked hard to ensure that this is a good piece of legislation. I commend this bill to the House."