Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Ha ha! This bill is small fry in terms of what it does—in terms of what it concerns itself with. It is actually only tidying up some small matters in the Conservation Act. You know the scales have fallen from our eyes in terms of what might actually be in the Conservation Act. We've seen the holes in the net of protections around our precious fish and come across problems such as that native fish in national parks and in scenic reserves were protected but native fish in conservation parks were not. It was a slippery set of rules that people found hard to understand. So this bill is a bit of a grab bag of measures. It is not a dredge scooping up everything on the ocean floor. In fact it's a set of tools—you know a set of flies of hooks of rods of sinkers—each targeted at a specific purpose to try to catch exactly the right problem. To snag the particular problem to untie the knot to sort it out—this is what this bill aims to do.In fact for all the cries from the Opposition side of the House that there was no detail in this bill I tell you Mr Assistant Speaker that in fact there is a lot of detail in this bill and it tries to sort out some very specific problems. If we look at clause 5 of the bill something that it makes very clear is that sports fishing will be permitted but not at the expense of freshwater fish. So in other words there's a balancing of provisions there. Clause 5 amends a particular definition. It inserts a provision saying that where there is a provision in a freshwater fisheries management plan and a provision in a sports fish and game management plan then the provision in the freshwater fish management plan prevails. It's a really straightforward ordering rule there. If we go to clause 7 it inserts new sections 26ZHA and 26ZHB into the Act. What it is doing is it is making it very very clear that a person can take indigenous fish from a fishery if it is taken primarily for food consumption including for sale of food and it can be taken if the fish are taken in a manner that does not lead to their injury or death. So it does allow for sports fishing provided that those fish are returned to the waters as soon as practicable after being taken. That sort of detail is present in this bill. If we want to have a look at some of the real detail that's in here if we go to clause 13 of the bill it replaces section 26ZP(1) to (3) about closed seasons. Instead of having a closed season that may be imposed for any length of time it limits those closed seasons to five years. That's the kind of detail that has been put into this bill by the very careful and conscientious Minister of Conservation. So I say to you Mr Assistant Speaker that the Minister has been very very careful with this particular bill trying to catch exactly the right rules and trying to catch exactly the right regulations to make it clear what this bill would apply to.So for all the cries from the other side of the House I think this is a very careful bill. There has been one objection raised in particular for the Fish & Game councils. And I think this is quite an important objection talking about how Fish & Game has perhaps been excluded from this bill. But if we look at what Fish & Game's objectives are their objectives are to manage maintain and enhance" sports fish and game birds. In other words it's an objective that conflicts with the objective of protecting our indigenous fish. That's something we need to think about long and hard.As a final word may I pay a compliment to my former colleague at Massey University now at Victoria University Dr Mike Joy whose work on fisheries has been so important.The House adjourned at 10 p.m."