Mackey Moana: Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
Mackey Moana: Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
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MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on the Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3). As a member of the Primary Production Committee I thank the member who has just taken his seat Shane Ardern for the very professional way in which he chaired that committee. Certainly I believe that the select committee process on this legislation was able to make significant changes to it which really showed the value of the process. I note that not all select committees are fortunate enough to have a chair like Mr Ardern who can facilitate that process and ensure— 
Craig Foss 
: The FEC has one. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: The Finance and Expenditure Committee has one Mr Foss. That is good to know thank you. I really want to pay credit to Mr Ardern as a very very good chair of that select committee. I also thank the officials who worked on this. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: That’s not what you said last week. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: The member should not believe anything I say to him. I thank the officials who worked on this very technical legislation and also all the submitters who took the time to come before the committee and present their points of view. It is important to note that there certainly was not unanimous support for this legislation and that a large proportion of New Zealand society remains very concerned about what this might mean in the future for the waterways that New Zealanders enjoy and want to be able to continue to enjoy. I guess as my colleague Damien O’Connor alluded to before sometimes we will have to wait and see where this legislation takes us. Certainly the previous Labour Government introduced legislation in order to try to better facilitate the development of aquaculture as a serious industry in New Zealand and we have no problem admitting that it did not work. The process that we set out did not result in any new space being created. The processes were obviously too complex and too costly and that is why we were more than happy to support this legislation and do what we can as an Opposition to facilitate the development of this very important industry. 
I will also note however that in 2008 we put legislation into the House to amend our own law which we had acknowledged was not working in the way we had intended or hoped. Perhaps that legislation could have been picked up and put through a lot sooner than this one has but that has been and gone and here we are with this legislation. I certainly hope it will have more success in furthering aquaculture developments than the previous legislation did. 
In saying that I think there remain a few areas in this bill where we do have some concerns. We hope that these will be able to be addressed in the Committee stage of the legislation. I think probably one area is the 20-year minimum for aquaculture consents. This basically says that the minimum consent period will be 20 years the maximum 35 years. We are told that that is intended to create a level of certainty for those who want to invest in the sector. If someone who wants to invest in aquaculture wants a shorter minimum period then they can apply for that but the council itself cannot do anything to request a shorter consent period. 
This seems to be very limiting on councils. We need to remember that councils in New Zealand are democratically elected to represent their communities. I sometimes get a little bit concerned when I hear people in speeches talking about councils as though they are just these undemocratic roadblocks to development. The fact is that they are elected by the people of their region to represent them and to make those decisions and I start to worry when we start tying up councils in red tape from Wellington in a one-size-fits-all type of approach which may not be appropriate. We can think of a number of scenarios where a local council representing the views of its constituents might have concerns over a 20-year time period for a consent in a particular area. It was an issue that was raised by some of the submitters and there did seem to be I have to say a level of distrust at the idea that we have to tell councils that it would be a 20-year minimum period and they should get no say in that despite the fact they are the ones elected to make those decisions. 
It will be interesting to see how that goes but I feel we could have shown a little bit more confidence in local government and our elected regional councils to make those decisions and to make them in the best interests of their communities. It seems to me that a one-size-fits-all 20-year minimum period is not the best way to do that. 
It could also have a number of unintended consequences because councils may indeed act far more conservatively when it comes to approving applications. If there is a 20-year minimum and they have concerns whereas with a 10-year minimum they might not have had concerns they may just decide that they will say no. That may be one of the unintended consequences which may stop again further aquacultural development. I hope this does not end up being a kind of false economy and that we do not end up with councils not feeling confident enough to allow projects to go ahead. Twenty years is a long time and it will restrict the ability of future councils to manage their coastal areas and that might not be something today’s councils will feel comfortable doing. 
I also note that there is a kind of conflict involved in putting in a 20-year minimum provision into these consents to create certainty but then giving a new regulatory power to the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture to just completely override regional coastal plans. Any good that is being done in terms of creating certainty with the 20-year minimums will be undone by an overarching sweeping power that the Minister will have to just override the regional coastal plan. That will create an enormous amount of uncertainty. I do not think we have heard a really good explanation or convincing argument as to why the Minister needs such sweeping and broad powers. 
To give an overview this provision gives the Minister broad powers to change introduce or remove provisions relevant to the management of aquaculture in a regional coastal plan without a requirement to consult the community affected although he or she is required to consult the relevant regional council. This comment has no bearing on the current Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture but I feel that that is an excessive power under this legislation. I would like to hear from someone the arguments as to why it is absolutely necessary. If it is to bypass the fact that there will be contentious issues over the use of aquaculture space those issues will not go away just because we give a Minister a sweeping power to ignore the community. In fact that could end up being counter-productive creating far more issues again putting councils in a position where they feel they have to pick between their community and these developments and end up being far more conservative in the exercise of that power. 
When Treasury is horribly opposed to something National is doing we probably need to take note. Treasury pointed out that that power exists within the Resource Management Act but there is a proper process attached to it. I was interested to hear the Minister saying that another tranche of reforms to the Resource Management Act is coming adding to these reforms because Treasury said this bill might undermine the work being done on those Resource Management Act reforms. Whether or not we agree with what the National Government has planned for the Resource Management Act Treasury has said it believes that what is happening here in this legislation is undermining the work being carried out on those reforms. 
If this power for Parliament to intervene in particular cases already exists in legislation that people are comfortable working with and whose processes they understand we have to ask why we have to go down this path. We have yet to hear that. I look forward to the next Government speaker explaining why we need such an unprecedented power because it is unprecedented and it creates a precedent and we should be aware of that. Perhaps it is the Government’s intention. Maybe this is the way it will go just allowing Ministers to completely undo everything that local councils and communities do. 
The key point is that this creates enormous additional uncertainty for people who want to invest in aquaculture. How will they know that everything they are basing their proposal on will not suddenly be whipped away by the Minister or overwritten? Given that this bill is meant to be about creating more certainty perhaps we will need to look at that in the Committee stage. 
I will not talk about the undue adverse effects test because other people have covered it and I am running out of time. The other thing I will touch on relates to some changes made under the emissions trading scheme to the way fisheries are dealt with. Again if we are taking aquaculture seriously it needs to be a whole-of-Government approach not just aquaculture legislation or whatever we do. Labour was very concerned when changes were made with compensation and assistance being put in to enable the fisheries sector to deal with the costs of an emissions trading scheme—and those measures were subsidies basically for the fuel—and the Government changed that to give it to the quota holders instead of the vessel operators. Rather than giving it to the people who would be going out and checking and collecting the Government gave that assistance to the quota holders. Most aquaculture stocks as far as I am aware are not in the quota management system. That means that unless an operator fishes a stock in the quota management system they now get no assistance under this National Government—and the Maori Party negotiated this—and its emissions trading scheme. They get no assistance with the cost of fuel and the emissions trading scheme charges.