Mackey Moana: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 11 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15823. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): The previous speaker Jacqui Dean is earning her salary tonight! I am very happy to stand and take a call—Hon Judith Collins: Well you know at least she does earn her salary not like that member.MOANA MACKEY: Oh calm down! Calm down! It was just a joke Mrs Collins. Have a sense of humour. Anyway I am very happy to stand and take a call on the Subantarctic Islands Marine Reserves Bill. It is a very interesting bill and it was a very enjoyable experience having this bill at the Local Government and Environment Committee. I wish we had more pieces of environmental legislation coming to the Local Government and Environment Committee that we could all agree on and that are actually doing good things for the environment as opposed to undermining and destroying the environment which is usually the tenor of environmental legislation we deal with at that select committee. But in this instance it was a very good piece of legislation.I think it is important to note that nearly all the submitters who came along did say that they did not think it went far enough. They were very supportive of the protections that were being put in place but they did feel that the areas being protected were not sufficient. We responded by amending the review period in this legislation from 5 years down to 2 years in order to reflect the fact that they did not feel that we needed to wait that long period of time in order to make those decisions and determinations.This bill will create three marine reserves: the Antipodes Island Marine Reserve or Moutere Mahue; the Bounty Islands Marine Reserve or Moutere Hauriri; and the Campbell Island Marine Reserve or Moutere Ihupuku. These are incredibly important parts of our subantarctic ocean. They have been recognised as World Heritage sites and in that respect we welcome this piece of legislation.Marine reserves have had a bit of a bumpy ride in New Zealand in general. I think it is fair to say that in terms of marine policy right across the board we are kind of playing catch-up. We do not really know a lot of what is out there in our marine environment particularly around the various ecosystems around the make-up of the sea floor. In fact the Australians have a lot more information than us because when they did a lot of their oil and gas development in the 1970s they required the companies to do that work and to provide that spatial information about the marine environment to the Government. They have been able to base a lot of their policies and decisions on information that they required as a bottom line and as a condition of that activity going ahead. We have not had the benefit of that so what has happened is that right throughout the decades we have sometimes had a rather piecemeal approach to how we deal with marine policy. As previous speakers have said it would be very very desirable to see a far more coherent approach to marine policy in New Zealand and to have a strategy for how we want to use to enjoy and to extract resources from our marine environment but to have a strategy instead of siloed debates around each of those issues without connecting them up. That unfortunately is what has been missing in New Zealand.Again comments were made around the fact that we have benthic protected areas but then we have issued mining permits in those benthic protected areas and for a lot of the general public that does not make a lot of sense. Why would you create these protected areas and then allow mining to go ahead? These are conversations where we have enormous numbers of layered pieces of legislation all sitting on top of each other different strategies and different approaches but it is difficult to find a coherent strategy for the use and enjoyment and protection of our marine environment.Marine reserves have had a long history in New Zealand but we have not actually gone that far in terms of the percentage of our marine environment that is put into these protected areas. They are important because they are very effective. We have a marine reserve up near where I live—from Pouawa just north of Gisborne up to Whangarā—and it was very controversial when it went in. When you are dealing with marine policy because that work has not been done there are a lot of existing interests there. There are a lot of people who make their livelihood out of that environment so when you start to talk about changing the way in which they may have to operate in that environment sometimes they do not like it. There was real concern that we were locking up the ocean I think they call it—cutting off large parts of areas that had previously been open to fishing and shutting those down. Of course the idea of locking up an ocean is not very real. Fish are not going to magically stay within a marine reserve or go outside—Dr Rajen Prasad: Passports.MOANA MACKEY: They do not need passports; thank you Mr Prasad. But what in fact happened was that within a very short period of time we saw an incredible resurgence of the fish stocks within the marine reserve. We saw species coming back that we had not seen for a long time in our waters and this was in a relatively short period of time. I think Chris Carter was the Minister of Conservation at the time when we went up there and it was only 4 years after the marine reserve had been created. They had a PhD student who was doing her PhD work on that particular marine reserve. What she was doing was she was measuring the amount of legal size crayfish that she was getting outside of the marine reserve and comparing that with inside the marine reserve. Bear in mind that of course crayfish do not know where the marine reserve is. I do not know maybe they do but it would seem unlikely. And yet outside of the marine reserve after 4 years—and we have a real issue with our crayfish stock on the East Coast; it is really heavily depleted—she was getting half a kilogram of legal size crayfish per pot and inside the marine reserve she was getting over 30 kilograms of legal size crayfish per pot. So that was an extraordinary resurgence of our crayfish stock which was in serious trouble. What happened was that the fishermen actually quite liked the marine reserve because the best fishing was suddenly on the border of the marine reserve. Everyone would ask how the fishermen were going to know where the marine reserve was. Well anyone who did not know where the marine reserve boundary was just had to look at where all the fishing boats were. It was pretty clear where the boundary was.What happened was that there is a reef at Whangarā that was not actually included in the marine reserve initially at the time. They actually ended up with an unofficial agreement to extend the marine reserve out over that reef in order to protect the crayfish stock. It was fantastic because kids would come down and go out to Whangarā. They would go walking on the reef. The crayfish were walking around in the day with their antennae sticking out of the water which is highly unusual because they are meant to be nocturnal. But they were walking around. Kids were getting to see crayfish in their natural environment. The Department of Conservation said to us that when it sends people down to actually just check on the stocks and do some of the chipping that it does and the tracing people actually ring the police to say that someone is fishing in themarine reserve and that they are taking crayfish out of the marine reserve. So then of course the police say that no that is a Department of Conservation worker and he is just there making sure that everything is OK.So we have had an incredibly positive experience of that particular marine reserve on the East Coast and that is why Labour would like to see more of these marine reserves created. The subantarctic ones do raise an interesting difference which is that it is one thing to police marine reserves that are just off the coast of New Zealand like this one but policing them in areas that are far away from New Zealand is a completely different matter. There are clauses in this bill to allow rangers to be appointed from the New Zealand Defence Force but I know that there have been concerns around fishing boats that have been seen around the Kermadec Islands Marine Reserve and from time to time other concerns are raised about fishing boats that just seem to be kind of hanging out there. Foreign fishing vessels—there is really no reason why they would be there. These people do email us and say that they have contacted the Ministry for Primary Industries and it really does not seem that fussed about it. Unless these marine reserves that are far offshore are going to be policed or checked—however that is done—then you can pass all the marine reserve law in the world but if people can just breach it and there are no consequences then it does undermine that particular piece of legislation.We are very happy to support this legislation. I would say to members on the other side of the House that I would not get too carried away. We are not solving climate change here. It is a good piece of legislation but there is an awful lot more to do. As previous members have said when we look at our marine ecosystem it is tied in to our rivers and our waterways in New Zealand. The entire health of that marine ecosystem is linked with the health of our land and with the health of our fresh waterways and we cannot just divorce them from each other and pat ourselves on the back for doing this whilst we turn the Tukituki River toxic in Ruataniwha which is going to spill out into the marine environment. You cannot just separate everything out and pretend that they do not all join up because that is not how these ecological systems work. We need to look after our environment on land at sea in our freshwater waterways and in the air and until we have a change of Government unfortunately we are not going to get that kind of strategic approach.